up on the (wet) roof, continued

All day long we played tag with the rain.

Breakfast in the sun room, but there's no sun today. A thick fog lifting just a bit to reveal darkening skies.




The radar shows a band of showers, but they should end in an hour.

(An hour later) We're clear for at least two. Let's go!
We're clamping down the glass panes on the roof with more butyl and screwed in boards. Delicate work. The screws cannot touch the glass.





Time and again the forecast is off. Right as we position ourselves on the wet boards, the rain comes back.
Let's finish this one and take a pause. Be careful! I say this now with even greater urgency. It's slippery out there!

I'm so focused on what we're doing that I barely appreciated how grand a rooftop view can be. We're looking out toward the barn and sheep shed. Same view as from the porch, only from a higher plane.






We do this stop and go work all day long. It rains. I read indoors. It stops. We go out. It starts, we get wet, we pause. And so on. By evening, I will have done my school work load for the day and we will have completed the clamping of all the glass panes thus far, adding two more panels to the lot. So now we have eleven down and five to go (for a total of sixteen; I'll get the number right yet!).

After supper, we run errands. A trip to my daughter's to babysit their cat.





Then a stop at Menard's (building supplies).  One-by-twos and, too, vinyl stripping for the roof edge.

My role in the roof project would have come to an end Sunday -- with the installation of the remaining panels, but we still have the problem of one nicked panel and no meeting of the minds as to what to do with it. At least Sunday promises us some clear skies. Whatever we decide will look more hopeful and bright in the golden light of the sun.

up on the roof, continued

The roof replacement project stalls as both Ed and I have work to do in the morning. Clouds hovered over the forested hills...


 


...and eventually the rain comes down, washing away some of that climbing and lifting energy we had. Back to the books again. These days I take my work to the south facing front room (how else to call a space that long ago used to be a front porch?). It brings the coveted winter sunshine indoors all season long. Soon we'll be eating breakfast there too. Soon? Oh dear, we really are that close to winter.





It rains and it rains some more. The dusty pale colors of the cornfields take on a richer hue. A last burst of green and gold color before it all goes away.





In the afternoon, the skies settle into their humid, occasional drip mode.
Want to carry some glass up?
Yes!





Sure, we have some minor missteps. Like trying to fit in the center trapezoid the wrong way. (My fault.) Or resting the glass in the living room while Isis, confused beyond hope, tries to walk through it. But by the time it was too dark to do anymore, we had hoisted and fit in five more panels. So we have nine up and only six to go.

The routine of carrying up glass is, right now, so set, so predictable, that the temptation is to just keep on truckin' until the whole batch is in place. That would give us a glass ceiling by the end of the weekend. But I tell Ed that we need to switch focus. The glass isn't clamped down yet. I want to see whether he can get the screws in without shattering the panels. And he has to design a different edging at the overhang. Something easy and durable and thin enough so that the rain and snow can just wash right over it.

And I need to put some heavy duty hours of reading under my belt if I'm to take off next Thursday eve or else I'll be traveling with great folders of work. I want so very much to have at least one weekend free of scholarly writings. Let the mind go soft. Let other senses kick in.

-->
In the meantime, I make a batch of broccoli soup to keep us going for a while. October, November -- these are broccoli soup months in my mind. Ed picked up some corn from a road stand, we still are reeling with tomatoes -- this is what good autumn suppers are made of.





The end of the week. A good week. But then, aren't they all, at heart, good weeks?

up on the roof

Ed was not up at dawn -- we were both up at dawn. His energy galvanized the both of us to attack the porch roof project full steam today, despite the predictions of storms and thundershowers.

So, after a quick and rough breakfast...





...we rehearsed the game plan. The pulley system, whereby we heave the glass panel up a ladder-like incline and then in some miraculous fashion Ed takes it off the pulley and lays it down flat was, in the end a no-go. I had the ultimate veto power and I expressed it.
I'm too terrified with that one! If it slips or I let go, the whole thing will come crashing and it will be my fault!
If you let go of it under any system the whole thing will come crashing.
Yes, but I especially see the crash coming if we hoist it up outside.

The alternative is to walk all panels (we're down to only fifteen: Ed reminded me that we conjoined the end ones, which were too skinny to manufacture on their own, with their neighbors) into the farmhouse, around three corners downstairs, then up the stairs, mastering a mega-tight turn on the stairs themselves, then finally guiding them out the bathroom window.

We practice with a ten foot board. Tricky, but doable.

It's all in the attitude -- I tell myself. Cautious, but positive. Evincing strength. Yeah. I can do this! (Besides, there is no third alternative.)

Most of the panels weigh only about forty-five pounds. But two -- the end ones -- are more than eighty and unfortunately, we have to begin with such an end one.

Isis watches.

I feel a rain drop. Another. We ignore it all. We have such an intense focus on succeeding with that first panel that I swear it would have to flash and thunder for me to suggest postponing the installation.

We've attached glass carrying handles. Suction cups. Bright red, to keep things cheerful. They help.

Up we go, barely managing the stair turn and then -- out the window, first Ed then me.

You'd think we were home free now. You'd be wrong. Remember, there is no roof over the porch at the moment. It's been ripped off. What remain are loosely placed boards of plywood. If you step on an edge of one, between the rafters, the thing would flip up and throw you down to the porch below.

"Be careful" are my words of choice. About a million times. Be careful, watch it, be careful, you're on the edge! Careful!






And, too, there is this tricky part, where we have to position the glass at the edge of two rafters. This is no rough approximation: it has to cover exactly a one-half inch surface of each rafter. No more, no less.

There's sticky stuff placed on the rafter. Butyl tape. Ed sprays it with water so that the stickiness doesn't catch the glass too early, before we're ready to let it go.





Careful! You're on the edge! Careful!
Can you lift your edge of the pane?
No, not anymore. It's stuck.
Switch places with me.
Careful!

A few more rounds of this and we're done. (The celebratory photo. On the roof.)





At least we're done with the laying of the first of the fifteen panels. Ed will be clamping them down further with wood strips. With the feverish hope that any screw wont touch the pane. Because if it does - boom! -- the entire panel will shatter. Edges of tempered glass are that vulnerable. (Once they're covered with wood trim, we can rest easy.)


The rain continues to tease us. A sprinkle, then quiet. It's muggy and humid, but we want to continue. With the second panel.

As we pick it up to carry it in, I say to Ed -- let's not get cavalier now. Just because we did one of the heavier panels...
That's right. Accidents happen when you're distracted.
And that's when the panel touches, just touches the metal hinge of the farmhouse door.
There is a small nick. Just like that. Ed looks at it. A quarter of an inch of vulnerability.
I don't think we can use this panel anymore, he says.

A quick consult with glass experts. There's no consensus. One says -- file it down and you're fine, the other says -- get rid of it: fifty-fifty chance it will shatter within a year.

Can you tell where in that dispute I stand?

So now we are down one panel.

But we have learned a lot. The edges of a tempered sheet of glass cannot be scraped by metal.


The day progresses in this ways for us:  He installs butyl and positions the plywood boards while I work on my readings, then we carry and fit a panel. And another. And another. Be careful! Be careful!

Four are in place, eleven still to go.

We look up to see it's almost evening.

But the first part of the roof looks fabulous! I'm staring at it from the corner of the kitchen:





We need to do a run to Farm and Fleet. Ed will cut tubing to run the screws through, so that they do not touch the tempered glass edges as he clamps down wood strips to hold everything in place. We're learning!

The next days promise more rain. A shame -- we're pumped to keep going. But a good thing, too. I've got work to do!

And the season moves closer and closer toward the colors of fall. And the beauty of that doesn't escape us. Up on the roof, down below. It's all grand.

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!