excitement

First, a run through the ordinary. Nothing wrong with that! My "ordinary" moments are quite beautiful, especially when the sun stays bright and my world is calm.

Breakfast, in the sun room. I'm waiting for Ed to bring his bowls over to our corner by the window.






Then, a quick walk through the garden. I rarely post photos of the side garden -- the one that lines the dirt driveway. The lavender is doing well there. Still attracting the occasional bee.






And, too, I must thank the pots that lead up to the entrance of the farmhouse. Their blooms are always under-appreciated.






And of course, there is the front garden, displaying its own faded beauty.






Alright. Time to head to campus. You would not believe that we're on the second day of October! So warm! The food huts in Library Mall are doing a hefty business.






I have to stay downtown even later than usual. When I finally am ready to head home, I see that the sun has already dipped below the horizon. I'm just two blocks from the grand Lake Mendota. I'm tired, hungry -- all of it. Should I detour anyway? Yes I should.






And now I point rosie home. As I approach the farmhouse, I pause by Farmer Lee's fields. She still picks flowers for the markets, but I see that slowly, she is letting go of this bit of land. So that her cultivated flowers are mixing with the prairie. Against the backdrop of the changing foliage, it is a quite stunning display.






Alright, home. Dusk has definitely set in, but Ed is outside, working away. I see that the glass panels have arrived. After months of thinking this through, after all the preparations, corrections and speculations, he is at the point of wanting to bring together the final pieces. Here he is, constructing a way of moving the heavy panels -- all seventeen of them -- to the roof.





There is far too little light to forge ahead with things now, but I can tell he'll be at it at dawn. I continue to worry, but he is on a different plane now. For him, the excitement has set in.

work

Over the years, my tolerance for stress has plummeted. Twenty years ago I could send the kids off to school, attend court hearings, meet with students, prepare lectures, cook solid dinners, run kids between their various after school things, run PTA meetings, all in one day -- run run run and think nothing of it. Now, pack my day with a constant stream of work hours and I feel like I've run a marathon. (I'm writing this in the middle of the night because I am too tired to sleep. My ultimate measure of stress.)

I could never be president of a country.

There is, running parallel to my own work issues, the matter of the porch roof. Watching Ed labor through the various problems that keep surfacing is hard. (As is worrying that he'll come crashing down, especially as the boards are pried loose and there's not a steady base beneath him.) Of course, right now, my role is little more than that of being the worrier and, too, a sounding board for his concerns. The latest:  how am I going to get these eight food boards down from there? They're too heavy to throw!








We talk through every such problem that crops up. This morning, for example, after breakfast (it's October and we're still picking strawberries from the garden!)...






...we watched a youtube flim clip of shattering tempered glass. Did you know that you could throw a baseball at a sheet of tempered glass and nothing would crack? But if you tapped an edge with a hammer it would break into a million pieces? This little insight caused Ed to completely redesign (today!) the clamping down process, so that drilling in screws doesn't inadvertently "tap" and therefore shatter the sheets of glass. Those strips of wood he prepared all weekend long? No good. New ones with a protective lip for the screws will have to be made.

The farmette is a hub of work.

(And today, Farmer Lee's "sister" came to dig out the last of the beets and carrots on the strip of land she uses at the rear of the farmette. All around me, there is hard work.)






The question you might well ask is -- how long? How long before I catch up with work and allow myself to slow down? Before the roof project is done? Before the rhythm becomes one that is more in line with what I would call normal?

Actually -- a week. Maybe two.

The glass for the roof is being delivered tomorrow. A period of rain means we can't do much with it until Sunday. But on Sunday and Monday of next week, Ed and I will team up and haul the stuff up and he'll presumably not shatter any of it drilling in the screws and by mid-week, if all goes well, it should be done.

My work -- once I catch up with the voluminous readings, should, too, settle down. And, too, I have that mid-semester break to look forward to. It's toward the end of next week!

So just a little bit more.


In the meantime, despite the pace of work and worry, there is much to admire and to love here: the farmette gardens for example.

Even the coral bells are still blooming.






The day is so warm, so very warm! I've not used the car at all to get to classes this semester. (This is a good thing for many reasons, not  the least of which is that it's parked right by the newly discovered wasp nest.) We move fluidly in and out of the farmhouse -- it's all one expanse of summer-like air: indoors, outdoors, no difference at all.

Yeah, much to admire and love. Farmer Lee's fields across the road.






And the gentle evening ride home from work. Past the lesser lake, where the waters are so still!






Evening. I cook a throw together supper, as Ed continues to rip boards off the roof. Steady hours of work. Punctuated by meals...






...and sleep. Eventually. When the world stops spinning and the stillness of the night and the hoot of the owl out the window erase the last traces of the tumult inside.

early, late and not a whole lot inbetween

In one of those early morning moments, where you want to go back to sleep, but you need a little nudge toward drowsiness (because the race of thoughts in your head started much too early), I pick up the NYTimes on my laptop and notice a story about someone who had just died. It wasn't an unusual death (she was older), but this person was to me, once upon a time, unusually important.

Those of us who cook a big meal pretty much on most days of our lives, for decades and decades -- we usually have someone who got us going in those early years, when we were just starting. Our cooking heroes.

She was mine. Marcella Hazan. I read now that she was feisty. An Italian who reluctantly moved here and was appalled at the food she encountered. "back home, I wash my coffee pot with the water that you call coffee..." -- she was known to say (in Italian; her English was never great).

I loved her cookbooks. I think I have most if not all of them. Oh sure, I still used many many recipes out of the classic food magazines (in the way that people these days rely on epicurious.com and other Internet food sites). But inspiration for cooking, for finding the best, the fresh and honest came, for me, from Marcella Hazan.

I read that she cooked a daily lunch for herself and her husband until the day she died (at 89). I understand that. I cannot imagine not cooking. I cannot imagine relying on foods that are not prepared on my kitchen stove. So a quiet thanks to her here, on Ocean. For getting me addicted to cooking.


The entire rest of the day was spent on work and unfortunately, I did most of it on the couch, which means I now have terrific lower back pain. Stupid me.

I do offer the usual and to me -- utterly delightful moments out in the garden.

Breakfast first. On the porch.





A stroll to see what's hanging in there.

By the sheep shed:





In the flower beds:










I stumble upon this guy too. Drilling in holes on the strips of wood for the roof project.





We pause for the peanut butter and grape jam break on the porch, but I'm preoccupied with thoughts of work and he's preoccupied with thoughts of effectuating his roof design. Isis is not preoccupied with anything.






In the evening Ed reminds me that we did not play tennis. That I was a total couch potato. That it would be good to get out some. (Did I mention that we had another beautiful, sunny day?)

I didn't have it in me to go out late for a game, but I agreed to work a little outside on shoveling wood chips over the cleared portion of the raspberry patch. Ed loaded the cart repeatedly from the pile of free chips that we get from various companies that trim trees in the area and together we spread them over the cleared dirt. Until the moment when I look up and see him running.
Whaaaat????

I hit a wasp nest, he tells me.
Together we tiptoe back to the scene of the crime (as if noise is what will set them off again). Yes, there it is -- where all the wasps are flying madly in circles.
Now what?

We'll think about it tomorrow. There are too many small issues on our plate right now. Tomorrow seems like such a good time to review any of them.

Sunday

Looking over the handful of photos from this day, I notice they're almost all of the man and the cat. Together or apart.

It happens that way sometimes.

It was an ambitious day for all three of us, summarized best in one word -- work.

Ed sawed umpteen strips of board for the roof project.  If you have never attempted to work a power saw, let me tell you, it is not a pretty sight. Loudy, dusty, and terribly dangerous if you don't keep your hands and fingers at a safe distance from the spinning blade.

An example of the man, taking a pause, mask and earcovers temporarily suspended.





Isis worked on coming in and out of the farmhouse and porch. Actually, when he is this undecided about where to while away the time, it's us who do the work.











In the late afternoon I was so distressed about missing out on this fantastic set of sunny days that I took my work outside. It never is quite as productive (all those distractions!), but it does feel good to be out where the action is.






And finally, in the evening, we went back to the tennis court in the pines. The Saturday rains brought down some of the spent White Pine needles and so the game truly felt as if it were in the thick of a forest. (Ed's in this shot as well, though only as a small prop to the main point of interest -- our most special little place of retreat.






I'll end with the one photo that has no one in it. Not even Farmer Lee. She often stays away from her fields on Sunday. So, just the last drying stalks of the flowers and vegetables that have made this bit of road so splendid for us in the years that she has worked here.





And yes, the day was that bright and beautiful!

morning

It was such a pretty predawn and Ed was already moving pots around downstairs. [This was the last of the grape jam making operation -- and by the way, to a commenter who spoke of pectin -- we don't actually use it; just fruit, sugar, maybe lemon juice, maybe cinnamon if we're dealing with apples. I don't remember seeing pectin in Poland either. Is it an American habit to make jams with it? I don't know...]


This is the perfect morning for a rosie ride (for the newcommers -- rosie is my red moped) to Lake Waubesa.

I'm keeping the post short today. Photos from the ride, nothing more.






I like the lake best before the sun pushes through the horizon. For the real moment of sunrise, I take rosie to a hill of corn.

Just before the first burst of sunlight:






And just after, from a different perch.






One more look at the quickly ascending sun and the changing hues -- from red to gold:






And there you have it -- another beautiful September morning.

The ride back to the farmette is due west, so that I have the sun on my back and the crimson fields of soy before me.






I pull into our dirt road, past the old orchard...





And settle in to work.

I should note that Saturday afternoon brought much needed rain. Ed and I heaved plastic and bricks up on the porch roof to cover the gaping holes.

Now the rains have passed, the sun is with us again. The month of perfect weather. Absolutely perfect.

when people don't stop

Here's another installment in the mini Ocean series on "Life After Sixty:"

I was chatting to a doctor yesterday, one whom I rarely see (which is interesting in itself because, for being these days a fairly healthy person, I have been a very big user of the health care system). Somehow we got on the subject of when people retire.
I can tell you with complete certainty that I'll stop working by age sixty, he tells me. (For Ocean readers who do not remember this, I am sixty. This particular doctor is forty-eight.)

It struck me then that I do not know a single doctor with gray hair.

And that's been true for a while. My children's pediatrician took a year off in his fifties to go back to his old country (Switzerland) and shortly after resigned, filling in occasionally, but never again did he maintain a regular practice. The doctor who delivered my babies, too, retired in his fifties. He sold his worldly possessions, bought a boat and went off with his wife to live on the Caribbean,

By contrast, the university is full of gray hair. They cynics may offer a lot of ignoble reasons for that, but I'll throw out one that maybe you hadn't considered: lecturing can be addictive.

In the hallways, you'd occasionally hear faculty say that we don't get paid to teach, we get paid to grade exams. (I have to say, those of us who have taught the more loaded schedules would probably give an eye roll to that, but there is some truth in the fact that teaching is rewarding, in ways that maybe medical practice these days, ironically enough, is not.)

It's true that doctors earn more than the average academic (to say nothing of the underpaid academic). So that retirement becomes more attractive earlier. And yet, work satisfaction is, I think, what keeps profs glued to that lectern. Why should you move on if you like where you are, right?

To be continued in the next Ocean installment of  "Life after Sixty."


On to the regular Ocean fare:

For a long time now, I have been taking a weekend break in mid-October. The Fall semester is intense and that time away is always enormously invigorating. Last year I went to Maine. The year before, we took our kayaks down the Wisconsin River. And before, we did a whole series of camping weekends up north. Still earlier -- we camped on the floor of an empty flat in New York. So where to this year? Because the days have been so much like a treadmill, I haven't had a chance to think much about it.

Until today when something that Ed said make me perk up. And start a web search. It will have to be a solo escape again. Ed is too enmeshed in the roof project to take off (nor is my choice exactly his type of trip). That's okay -- it's only a long week-end away. More on that in a couple of weeks.


And now, let's get back to what's cookin' at the farmette: Ed harvested the last of the grapes that dangled seductively over the entrance to the sheep shed.




His jam making operations are in full swing. It's a round the clock project. I'll catch him stirring and sampling at midnight, or, like today, just before sunrise. But our reward is a winter's supply of jams. For my ever predictable lunch:






Finally, an update on the flowers: the warm September air has kept things lively in the garden. I leave you today with these evening photos of the best of the best. What a tremendously beautiful month this has been!

rebellion, part 2

I put on Mozart to drown out those rebellious thoughts (go out, go out! Do the yard work! It's a beautiful afternoon! Take a break, take a break!).

Ed is working on ripping off the porch roof. We have a window of good weather next week. It would be wonderful if the installation could begin then.

[A commenter asks if we're sacrificing cool summer days on the porch by introducing so much light. It's a valid question and one that kept us from doing anything for the first several years. But consider the arguments in favor of moving forward: first and foremost, the loss of light in the kitchen is, for me, tremendous! I can never work there without a light on. Five huge windows in the room and still it is always dark. And, secondly, the porch is completely north facing, with huge shade trees to the east and to the west and the backdrop of the house to the south. It most likely will retain plenty of shade. In the alternative, we'll either drape a few shades -- easy to do with tension rods and beautiful fabric -- or we'll put a nice, tilting umbrella over the table. And finally, Wisconsin has a few hot weeks, but even these typically have cool mornings and evenings. On balance! let there be light!]

The Mozart is serene and soothing, but my work stalls. I want that break so badly! The weather is near perfect Too hot! -- Ed says, but I'm not convinced. He's sweating as he comes down from the roof, but he's been up there and I've been down here, in the house and I want that last dose of Fall sunshine!

Maybe we can work on the raspberry bed?  The weekend is before me. I'm catching up! Breakaway!

I see in Ed a fleeting hesitation. He looks tired. 
But he wont pass on a chance to make progress outside. Or maybe it's that he knows how much being trapped indoors has affected me these weeks.
Okay. Let's get the shovels.

And so we go back to the patch and we dig and rip and dig some more and in the end I put such energy into these two hours of physical work, that we clear more today than in all previous days put together.






And then it's back to Mozart and patient reading and slowly the day turns into evening. I close the books and step outside again. It's a heavenly time of day.






Want to go to Menards with me? This from Ed: he needs to pick up lumber and screws and various roofy things and it's my turn to return a favor and go along.

And so we take the truck and load two by fours by twleves and one by twos and fours and I have to say that in the end, this may have been the best part of the day yet. There is something singularly special about picking through boards and loading the old pick up, hoping that they'll not jiggle off on the ride home.

A trip to Menards is not just a functional stop for building supplies. We always pause in various aisles, like the country folk who haven't seen the insides a city store for a long time, and this time, we notice that Christmas lights are on sale already and we spend a good half hour making the hefty decision as to how we should light the farmhouse doorway this holiday season.

It's dark by the time we get back home. The long boards can spend the night on the truck. We stumble in and reheat chili. With garden tomatoes for the salad. I have with me the feeling of a day well spent.






We wake up to yet another glorious morning of sunshine. A walk in the garden, then breakfast in the sun room. Just because.

roof

Finally, after many many questions, consults, measurements, remeasurements, the order is in: sixteen panels of glass for the porch roof. Three of them trapezoids, the rest - long rectangles. 

 So I am surprised when Ed tells me -- so, the glass people just called. A nice older woman. Works there to earn extra money so she can visit her grandchildren. Really sweet person.
I put down my books. I see a story coming.
She tells me they didn't quite catch that the strips were all 122 inches long. The price is actually higher for anything over 120 inches.
They can't add that on now!
She proposed we split the difference. I finally agreed.
So we're set?
Well no. She had to clear it with the manager and he came on and told me -- don't worry, we'll take care of it. Not sure what that means...
There's more?
Well, the guy says that actually, now that he has me on the line, he needs to tell me that they can't do the two end strips. They're too narrow.
So now what?
I'll combine them with the neighbor strips. But then he said as long as I'm changing things, I should up the thickness all around. To a quarter inch (it had been at 3/16).
Ed, where are we with the glass?
Well now, I think we're set!
Okay! We're set!
Just one small issue: combining the panels and upping the thickness means that the panels are going to be heavier...
How much heavier?
Not bad. I think the largest one comes in at around 80 pounds.
You're going to carry an 80 pound strip of glass up the ladder by yourself and precisely install it on the beams??
No. I have a better plan.
I bet you do...
We'll both carry it inside, up the stairs and pass it through the bathroom window.
You'll trust me to help you carry a plank of glass up onto the roof?
I'm going to get glass suction cups with handles. We can do this!
I'll drop it or bang it against the wall!
I'll get an extra grip. We'll be fine.

I write this because the porch roof project has had, all along, a certain bravado behind it. And the more we became convinced that it could move forward, the bigger came the taunt. The spacing turned out to be uneven. The roof nails were impossible to pry. On and on, the obstacles mounted and Ed shot them down. And now, this next one depends on me and wouldn't it be ironic that it should fail now because I crash the glass or move it in the wrong direction.

At the same time, ever since last week, my youthful default position -- the "I can do this!" that has, in the past, pushed me to move across oceans and race down mountains -- is nudging at me again. In recent years I've let Ed do the bold projects. Despite the big talk here, on Ocean, the "mustn't grow soft!" -- maybe I've grown just a tad, okay, more than a tad soft?

2014. The year of change for me.


For now, I'm reading hard and working harder. No pauses to water flowers. A quick walk through the garden...






...A look up to smile at these two (both of whom have grown softer, and that's a good thing)...






...then off to my office, where I stay until the long shadows fall.

(Looking out my window -- my, aren't they starting college at a young age these days!)







Evening. Back at the farmhouse, I see that Ed has plunged into making grape jam.





Another reason to smile.

I cut up the last of this season's tomatoes and make chili again.



And in the morning, we wake up to a misty sky...






...followed by a warming sun. Breakfast on the porch. For sure.