it's a mean world out there...

When you wake up to a lovely summer Sunday, with no pressure points to it, just the usual good breakfast on the porch...







... with a glance at the farmette flowers (through the porch screen)...






... and at the baby birds up there in the garage eves, waiting for their grub...






...and the hummingbirds coming in for the nectar...






...and the cardinal pair chasing each other without a care...






...And after all that, when you go to yoga class,  where the instructor talks in soft tones and the class breathes and moves in unison (even as each does his or her own rendition of the next move and the one after)...

...When you come home then to a quiet day and you devote yourself to rescuing flowers from weeds and from thirst and they grateful respond in their full glorious presentation...






...You tend to forget about the edge to a day, or to existence itself.

Until your cat steps outside and walks boldly and daringly past the garage  and the swallows, alarmed, swoop down on him in attack and he jumps high in the air to let them know who's boss --- this is when you are reminded that it's a tough world out there!

So whom do you protect? I say to Ed -- let's get Isis out of that path, they're going to tear his eyes out!
And Ed responds -- ...unless he goes after their little ones and tears their eyes out.

In truth, Isis isn't much of a bird chaser. It's not his thing. In younger years he'd go after the occasional mouse, just so he could assert his domain over the world out there. Mostly though he hangs low and minds his own business. But the courtyard -- that space between farmhouse, garage and flowerbeds -- is charged right now as the birds feed their growing pack and our cat parades back and forth, back and forth, exuding a threat by his very existence.


In other news -- I bite the bullet and spend a good bit of time watering (and weeding) the flowers and strawberries leading to the sheep shed. I tend to neglect the stuff growing there because the sheep shed, after all, begs for neglect, but I felt a twinge of pity today and so I hold the hose high and swap as best as I can at the mosquitoes disturbed by my efforts.

Fine. The flowers appear appreciative. But why is it that the minute, THE MINUTE I go inside, the weather predictors begin to speak of rain for the evening?

And indeed, this is no idle threat. It does rain.






So much so that I quickly convert the Sunday outdoor grill dinner to a Sunday indoor stove top dinner. Away from the rain that lashes wildly against the screens.






Oh well. The kids seem okay with it.






And no one complained about the stove-top cooking (sigh -- these are the tail end of the garden peas).


-


And eventually the rains die down and the weather people tell us that we'll have ourselves a glorious week ahead.

I can live with that.

time

I should have walked the farmers market downtown with my daughter, but, I'd fallen behind with my reading and so I decided, after breakfast...


 


... to stay on the porch and concentrate on work: I read, I take notes.  Hour after hour, I read, I take notes.

(...and I throw admiring glances at the flowers before me.)
















The humidity levels have gone down and I want so much to tend to the flowers (and veggies) in the yard! The mosquitoes are a real disincentive, but after a few hours, I shrug and go out into the beds anyway. For the most stubborn bugs, I have the zapper. Wave, wave, bang! Got'ya!

And I am assisted by the swallows. Surely this summer belongs to them -- they torpedo the bugs all day long and we forgive them their decision to build nests inside the storage garage -- their work on behalf of a mosquito free world needs our support! (We lay down sheets of plastic to catch all the bird poop we get for opening up this swallow hotel. When I scrunch my face and say things like "gross" Ed reminds me that every bird dropping here is a gravestone to digested bugs.





(How many of you know that I have an eight year old tatoo of a swallow on my lower back? When I have doubts about the wisdom of that whole venture, I think -- at least it's an image of a swallow. I had insisted on that. Yay swallows.)

In trimming spent stems and in weeding around my pots, I finally decide that it's time to replace the bedraggled pansies.

Ed, want to go to Johannsen's with me? 
It's been my go to place for gardening needs for maybe 30 years. Ed likes to go along, just so he can rib me about how addicted I am to buying starter flowers.

I'm thinking a few geraniums, maybe some alyssum  and that's it. I'm past my big planting spurt. Now it's just a question of keeping my pots brimming with blooms until, say, November.

As we drive up to Johannsen's, I see that their outside tables are nearly empty. I roll my eyes. The seasons change quickly in these nurseries. Spring explodes, summer retreats. The supply of good flowers dwindles.

But as I go inside, I'm a little puzzled. The greenhouse is nearly empty inside as well.

Ed points to a sign on the door: going out of business.

Say what?

The owners are frank: the next door car dealership made them an offer they could not refuse.
Why?? I ask. The place had been superbly packed with shoppers every time I'd come this spring.
One of the family members, a woman just shy of my age tells me -- our mom needs at home care now. That's $95,000 per year. Selling this will help.

I cried then. Really truly, I cried.

...For all the decades I'd watched Johannsen's evolve (in ways that few nurseries did). For the terrible expense of caring for the elderly. And really, for the endless times I'd side-stepped here, just to pick up a perennial, or an brilliant annual for a pot. All those years! Where do I go now?  -- I ask.
The daughter of the aging owner says  the obvious -- you'll go where we'll go. To the family run places that are still at it. And she lists names of familiar nurseries. I'll be looking for work now, but I'll tell you, I'll never work as hard as I worked here. Our father would have been proud of what we made of this place.





Yes, I agree.


We spend the rest of the afternoon chasing down chores we've been avoiding since our return: Woodman's -- the cheap grocery store,  Farm & Fleet, Menards, all that -- and then home. Past fields where the wheat has already been harvested -- that's how far into the summer we are...


 



...and past these two cranes. Hey, do you eat bugs too?







At the farmette, we spray the beds that line the path with our magic solution of diluted lemon ammonia and baby shampoo. And for supper, I reheat the chili and I pour glasses of sangria -- something we haven't had since Sorede.





Sorede. Was that truly so recent? Last month? Honestly?

Time is an odd thing. Expansive, generous on the one had -- but so tight and stingy when you just want to move quietly through a period of calm.

Funny how that works.

what are you gonna do...

The cat had a restless night. Ed was up, then down, I was awake, asleep, awake, awake...


The humidity hung over the morning, relentlessly, without a sing of dissipating. (We ate on the porch anyway. We are used to it.)
















At midmorning, I drove downtown to do weekly grocery shopping. The air conditioning in the car was sporadic. My feeling is that in a $600 car, you can't fuss about things like that. So I did not fuss.


In the afternoon, Ed and I went to the library. In addition to reading material, we picked up videos which neither of us really want to watch.


We encounter Lee at the side of the road and have the same miscommunications about her future here, on the farm fields around us. She gave us some flowers anyway.






The heat has caused some flowers at the farmette to wilt, so I watered much of the garden in the evening. When the winds kicked up, the mosquitoes disappeared. When the gusts died down, the mosquitoes came back.

Still, it is a beautiful evening. Looking toward the sheep shed,  with the new, expansive flowerbeds...






...and toward the farmhouse, always lovely, but especially in the evening in my view.






Would you believe it - I cooked chili tonight. On the hot hot day, I cooked chili. I had to! the first tomato ripened for us in our garden. I must finish the frozen batches this month!


The rest of the evening is spent on the phone with endless persons associated with my credit cards -- accounts which I monitor vigilantly. As of this morning: all was fine. As of this evening: One had been hacked into again and all my user information had been corrupted. Heh! You think you've got me? Wrongo bongo!

I persevere. I tighten security. I change identifying info.

I mean, you could get really upset by this stuff. But it is a reality and there you have it. What else are you gonna do... Continue, that's all. Continue, using your smarts as best as you can.

goldie on a summer afternoon

Is there such a thing as too many vegetables on your dinner plate? Maybe. The plan had been for me to make a salad in the style of the Nicoise (beans, tomatoes, potatoes, etc). But there was lettuce too, so there was that. And Ed chose this evening to pick peas, so I had peas to include.





Too much? Maybe. But it's all coming to fruition now! How can you say no to any of it?


Backing up to breakfast: on the porch. Despite the continued heat.





Work then. Until late afternoon.






The Fitchburg farmers market finally pulls me out of the steamy seat out on the porch. Lots of flowers there as well. And our baguette shop's actively (and happily) cooking up a storm. Who needs Paris!











From there, a sidestep to my daughter's place where Ed helps with some house repairs and I study Goldie, the cat.






Blasted adorable. Loves chasing flies. When she succeeds in catching one, she eats it.






But, we do stuff in the garage that kind of freaks her out. When that happens, she scampers to hide. In the bathtub.






Who knew cats could be so ... funny?


At home, I make supper. The one with too many vegetables. Or not. Depending on your inclination. Ours is -- not too many. Just right. Especially the peas from the yard. Coated with a dab of melted butter.

still hot

...and still humid and despite it all, we eat breakfast on the porch. A little rotating fan moves the air back and forth, shaking off a bit of the heaviness, the humidity, the oppressive quality of a steamy day.






Two weeks have passed since we returned from Europe. Two weeks?? Well then, it's  time to look forward and not look back, to make plans for the next twelve months and to stay on track.



 

And here, I should note two important realities:

First, I cannot resume let alone finish my Great Writing Project this summer. With a big new course to teach at the Law School, I am resigned to work for most of the remaining days of the summer. The new goal is to fully take on the Great Writing Project on January 3, 2014. More on that when we come to January 2, 2014.

And then -- most every summer, I think about trips that are before me. And so what's before me? I do not know. Maybe lots of quick hauls. Maybe ones at irregular times. Maybe something altogether different. It's odd for me not to know yet, but there you have it -- ever since my father died and ever since I started thinking in terms of longer cycles of time, the past predictability of trips -- always to Poland in December, and elsewhere with Ed in January, and Sorede in June -- all that is completely wiped out as I start now with a fresh slate. Which right now has many questions and proposals floating in an unsettled manner around it.






Let me add a few more notes about this hot, still very hot day: despite the weather, I agree to join my older girl on the Capitol Square for an evening concert and a picnic. To prolong the event, we meet up ahead of the concert for one of those cool and refreshing drinks -- one that fits so well in a summer mindset...






And then we stretch out on folding chairs to listen to music, except only slightly so.  Concerts on the Square aren't really for the serious music lover in you, they're for the communal, social impulse resting within us. We come together to sort of listen and to eat foods and sit back and tap tap tap with the foot and when, as in today, the summer throws one of her best evenings, you think -- life is quite the good thing, isn't it....


After the concert we walk back along the lake to my girl's place (where I left good old rosie, who is now over her hot flashes) and the night is gorgeous, truly gorgeous...






In the final stage of the day, rosie and I ride home and when that breeze hits me in the face as I pick up speed on the country roads, I think truly not much could be improved upon.

not again!

I'm surely not the only one to say today -- man, it's hot out there!

Loath that I am to live with the AC running, on days like this, I am so grateful for it! How incredibly lucky to live in a century old house with a terrific air cooling system! (Much of the credit goes to Ed, who reworked the duct system.) Still, I do not hate being outside, even with high humidity and temps pushing the mid nineties. So, breakfast on the porch:






(With such high humidity, the day appears misty and mild, with muted colors and fuzzy contours...)






And, too, I bike to my medical appointment (another check up -- of the yearly kind). My doc says -- I saw you on the schedule and I said to myself: my God, a year has passed already!
Glad to be a reminder of how age creeps up on you.

We then patter on about biking in hot weather -- as if, in our middle age (well, his middle and my older-middle) we need to pat ourselves on the back for belonging to the active set. But as I brag about biking from the farmette and he brags about biking up Old Sauk hill, he pauses and says -- I am sometimes passed by even older people who whiz by as if a hill was nothing, nothing at all for them.

An admission of our imperfections.


The ride from farm to city, then back again, is just lovely at this time of the year. There is the lake, of course.





And in the country stretch, there is the prairie, invading the strips along the path, filling them with graceful grasses and an assortment of the loveliest flowers.

This, too, is Wisconsin.






In the late afternoon, Ed and I finally get it together to head out to Paul's cafe. It's been nearly two months!
But before we go I say to Ed -- let me just pay my credit card bill. I'm fanatically meticulous about attending to this at the midpoint of each month.

I cannot get into my (online) account.
I try again. And again. Finally, I call customer service.
You're using the wrong login info, they tell me.
No I'm not. i KNOW my info on this account perfectly. (Indeed I do: I just changed all my logins when my identity was stolen in March. I keep good track of these things.)
You changed it all again recently -- the service rep tells me indulgently, as if I am just one of those teetering old people who got overwhelmed with too many security logins and passwords and can't keep it all straight anymore.
I haven't been to this account for ten days and back then, it worked perfectly!
I can almost sense his eye roll. My screen shows that you logged in just yesterday morning. At 6:45.

Damn. That wasn't me. My impersonator is at it again.

And so I spend the next hour reviewing all my accounts everywhere, changing passwords, securing my credit report, checking it all and oddly, oddly -- there is no tampering with anything, no use of my credit cards (yet), nothing except this one tiny detail -- the thief changed my login IDs. Ever so slightly, but s/he changed it. Why??

Someone out there is messin' with me!

Never mind, I'm on it! And besides, I have all these beautiful flowers to admire.






And to take care of. This heat is brutal. I spend a zen hour or two throwing water at them. Later, much later, when I come in to plate us some leftovers for supper, I can hardly remember what the issues of the day may have been. The flowers are holding their own. Life is good.

unusual twists, promised recipes

And then there were four

Ask me where I would like to go for breakfast and I'll say -- front porch! And so this morning, I soldiered forward into the raspberry patch (unfortunately, I did not pull the strings tightly on my netting garb and so for a while, I had a mosquito trapped inside my head cover, buzzing incessantly while I tried to see beyond him and pick the berries)...











...to bring in newly picked berries for breakfast (they smell of sunshine), then reached for the granola I 'd made just yesterday, and, too, for the coffee,  for the kefir -- in other words, the usual... And there we were on the porch again, Barbara joining Diane, Ed and me for a last meal at the farmhouse.










And so ended a weekend of sweet encounters with friends.


A summer Monday is a summer Monday


I had two appointments downtown today -- one with a student to review her exam and one in a clinic where I was to have a rather routine heart stress test. I'm old, I do insane things like dig ditches and climb mountains and so the doctor suggested that it might be a good idea to test the limits of my various physical exertions.

Being rather frugally inclined these days I parked the car at the hospital (in the meanwhile, Ed spent the better part of the day fixing Rosie and her heat flashes) and walked to my office. A good 2.5 mile trek, but hey -- free parking is free parking.

I was rewarded by seeing these two newcomers to campus.





I veered then to the lakeshore path -- the one I used to bike on when I lived in the condo to the west of campus. Pretty! And a tad more refined in the months when the students are away for the summer.





Not much has changed here. Well, maybe some things have taken on a more modern twist.





My student was late and my meeting went past the half hour I had estimated for it and so when I finally left my office to return to the hospital (for the stress test), I was, in fact, nearly running.

Did I tell you? It's hot and humid today in Madison.

The appointment instructions tell me I'm not to drink or eat anything in advance of the test. Well now, should I faint before I even get there?

Okay, I'm at the hospital. More or less on time. Pant, pant. The technician asks me if I have any concerns and I tell her that frankly, I'm already stressed, having run here in 90 degree weather to be on time. I tell her I'm thirsty. But, her protocol has it that I am more likely to faint and choke if I am hydrated than if I am not, so I remain thirsty until the completion of the test.

Have you had one of these tests? You know what they're like: you're on a treadmill and they keep increasing your speed and tilt, until you exceed any possible reasonable heart capacity and then they watch to see if you survive or have a heart attack. (If your heart goes nuts, then they conveniently have a hospital handy and you can marvel at the speed with which you'll be admitted and hooked you up to various monitoring devices.)

I get rather competitive on treadmills. If the technician tells me she did level five without great effort, I'm going to have to outperform that.

As I m puffin' away, she turns chatty. So, did you go anywhere this summer?
Mountain puff puff puff hiking puff puff puff in Slovenia. I figured that would put a pause into the back and forth.
So let me get this straight -- you're having a stress test after mountain hiking? This makes no sense!

How can I explain to her that for me,  teaching places more stress on the heart than any run up a mountain!

No matter, I've reached the heart rate goal. I tell her I've had enough.



This Old House

What's that buzz? Ed asks in the evening.
Funny you should mention it. I was curious, too, only I figured it's normal but beyond my comprehension. There are so many mechanicals at the farmhouse that I just don't get.

We walk down to the basement.
Oh no... He dashes upstairs and shuts off the water pump. I pretend I'm unfazed. I want to emulate the demeanor of a person who is never on edge, never stressed (in other words -- an Ed).
After a while I ask, without a hint of worry -- what's happening?
The water pressure is way high.

Okay, so the pressure is high.

Is the house going to explode??? I ask, less calmly.

He grins. No.

I think about the number of things that can fail in a house that is 100 years old. My list alone exceeds the number of fingers on my hands. And then some.


Recipes

Several readers asked for clues on how to cook foods that last a lifetime. So here are the two I mentioned yesterday:

"Crunchy chicken"

This one is (more or less) from the NYTimes 60 Minute Gourmet (publication date: 1981, where they are called Supreme de Volaille Milanese, because in Milan they like to put bread on their meats). It's easy, but it dirties a lot of plates. Oh well -- my kids have always loved it.

Chicken breasts, boned, skinned and cut into filets (meaning, cut in half so they're thin)
flour
1 egg for every 2 whole breasts
breadcrumbs (for sophisticated palates, add some lemon zest here. Or parmesan cheese. Or just breadcrumbs)
canola oil (or some other veggie oil) and butter if you want to stay true to form

So trim those breasts. Keep them neat and more or less same sized. Then, line up your bowls (or plates):
The first one will have flour: say a couple of TBSP per breast.
The second one will have the egg, with a dash of water and a splash of oil, all mixed up with a fork or something.
The third one will have the breadcrumbs (with the cheese or lemon zest, or plain)

The fourth plate will be there, ready and waiting for the finished breasts.

So you dip each filet in each bowl: first with the flour, then in the egg mixture, then in the breadcrumbs. Then lay it flat on the ready final plate. Pat down the crumbs so that they adhere.

Heat some oil (and butter) in a large skillet. I mean about 4 TBSP per 2 whole breasts. It's tempting to skimp here on the oil. Don't.

You'll be cooking the breasts for about 7 minutes on each side. The nice thing is that you can bread the filets ahead of time and put them in the fridge until you're ready to cook 'em. So sort of do ahead.

That's it. The kids liked it with macaroni and tomatoes on the side. These days they prefer risotto.


Greek Shrimp Salad (and separately, Couscous, even if you are not a couscous fan -- this one works well with the salad!) (credit: Gourmet magazine August 1991)

Now, the nice thing about this recipe is that it is like Ed's hair: extremely forgiving for any mistakes or omissions you may make. And it is easy to double, triple, etc etc.  In Madison, the Whole Foods store sells 2 lb bags of frozen cleaned shrimp for $14.99. These are fantastic for the salad! I generously plan a half pound per diner, but that will give me lots of leftovers. Which are great.

So, the original recipe is for 1.5 lb shrimp. Do your math and adjust it as you wish.

6 TBSP olive oil
1.5 lb smaller (but not tiny!) shrimp (shelled, deveined)
2 TBSP lemon juice
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1/4 tsp grated lemon zest (I use more)
1 TBSP fresh oregano, minced, (or 1 tsp dried)
6 oz of Feta, crumbled
3 tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1 c. thinly sliced celery
1 c. Kalamata or other black olives, cut into slivers. I buy canned to make it easy. And I use less than that.


For the shrimp: in large skillet, heat 2 TBSP of oil over moderately high heat until it just begins to smoke and sautee shrimp, stirring, until they are just firm.
Transfer them to large bowl. Do this in batches if you're using more than 1.5 lbs.
For the dressing: in small bowl, whisk together lemon juice, vinegar, zest, oregano and salt and pepper to taste; whisk in the remaining 4 TBSP of oil (until emulsified).
For the final prep: Toss the shrimp with the dressing, the Feta, the tomatoes, the celery and the olives until the salad is combined well. You can do all this up to a day in advance. Just cover and chill.

The Couscous:

1 TBSP butter (per each cup of couscous)
1/2 tsp salt
1 c couscous
1/3 c of pine nuts, toasted lightly (just put them in the oven for a few minutes. Watch carefully, once they start browning, they go quickly toward burning!)
1/4 c minced parsley
1/3 c thinly sliced scallion
1 TBSP white wine vinegar

In saucepan, combine butter, salt and 1 1/2 c water (for every cup of couscous), bring liquid to boil, stir in couscous. Let it stand, covered and off heat for about 5 minutes. Fluff with fork and stir in pine nuts, parsley, scallion and vinegar.
They say you can do this 6 hours in advance. I'm on the second day of it and it's fine!

And there you have it!