77

Many thoughtful, sweet comments appeared in response to my retirement post yesterday. Thank you! I have a few thoughts on questions you asked, so let me start with those.

First -- the most frequently asked question that comes my way is this: do you have any plans for retirement?

And the answer is simple: I do, but I'm trying hard not to commit to any of them (except for two... well, maybe three...). For so long, I've been doing a quick step: from one hour to the next, from one day to another in a sprightly and deliberate way, always with a schedule in the recesses of my soul, I am most looking forward to a freedom from it. At least for a while. Where Monday is like Saturday and September is like June and things don't have to fit around some other agenda. I want to see what it's like to wake up in the morning and to make up the agenda right there, on the spot. Without a to-do list.

Of course, I do have one goal and that is to pick up my Great Writing Project (great, as in big) and finish it! I've been working on a book for as long as I've known Ed. That's a long time! And I have bigger and better ideas for it, which in itself is terrible because it means yet again, it will be reworked from the beginning.

So there's that.

The other goal is to get stronger. You may find that to be sort of odd for a retirement goal, but I love physical strength and only during my trips away from home have I felt like I actually build stamina. So -- lift boulders, swim oceans -- whatever it takes. I will do it.

Then come the improvement goals: improve my photo skills, my photoshop skills, my use of the camera! Improve my languages! Get really fluent in my third and fourth one. Read the books I reserve at the library. Take classes! Yes! School is in my blood. Improve Ocean, improve the farmette, too, though that's rather seasonal.

And I know I'm cheating now because I'm on number four and you see -- this is the danger, I do not want to become a slave to lists, but this one is so obvious that if I don't put it down here, you'll think I'm dishonest: travel. There will be travel. But in the way that I cannot travel now, when I am tied to my work. Off season, more spontaneous, guided by price and interest, nothing else.

So no lists just yet. But, oh, to wake up each morning as if I were on a trip across the ocean -- enthusiastic about the possibilities! So many possibilities!


All that is a while away (77 calendar days!). Today was still rooted in routine.

Of breakfast...






Of work -- in the front room today, to vary things a little. Next to my little chickens.






Of visiting my daughter's cat who is alone today. And looking like she knows exactly how to hang back and do not much of anything!






Of working at our raspberry patch, just for a short spell!

Of checking up on my outdoor annuals, now smiling away indoors.











Of cooking dinner...






...of finding a minute to write here, on Ocean.

Of allowing myself to think ahead just a little to the end of work.

78

It's official: I don't have to be quiet about it anymore: in 78 calendar days I will enter the world of the "retired." Without employment and at least for a while (maybe forever) without looking to reenter the job market.

I have worked and earned money every single year of my adulthood. And my jobs have been varied! Oh, have they been varied!

I landed in the United States at 18 for reasons of work (I was an au pair). And even though I was also going to school and taking care of a young child, I took on additional jobs: shelving books at the library and then, my favorite -- being a cashier at an upper westside bookstore. And all those endless research assitantships in college! Getting paid to code data, collect data, all that data -- where has it gone? Who made use of it?

Right after college, I moved from New York to Chicago to go to graduate school. But not without jobs! I was a research assistant there too. And on the side, I was the receptionist at the U of Chicago Hospital -- collecting stool samples on the weekends from those who had to bring them in. Later, I worked at the Community Center, playing guitar and taking preteens to various recreational places.

The move to Madison brought with it the first full-time job -- teaching sociology courses to college kids in Milwaukee. Then the babies came and I entered Law School and still I worked: I clerked for legal offices at the university -- one, then another. Paid work. We needed the money.

After Law School, I got the coveted job at a large law firm. Unfortunately, it was in Milwaukee. We moved, my (then) husband commuted and then lo! A job opened up at a non profit that was affiliated with the Law School and I came back to Madison and to academia -- and for the last twenty-five years, I have stayed put, first, supervising students in legal clinics, then teaching classes. Many many classes. For those in the legal world, you may be surprised to know how broad my range has been: I've taught classes in Family Law, AIDS Law, Poverty Law. Courses in Professional Responsibility, and in Comparative Law. I have also taught the required Torts and the required Property curriculum. And most recently, I've added Trusts and Estates to my repertoire.

And when money was tight and I wanted to travel more, I added jobs to my job: some ten years ago, I joined the evening cooking crew at L'Etoile, our high-end restaurant and after a few years of prepping appetizers and desserts, I switched to foraging for them at the local markets. More recently, I boosted my income a bit by moonlighting at the French cosmetics chain L'Occitane.

I have worked an awful lot of hours! And I'm ready to stop.

Of course, there is the official date (January 10) and there is the more fluid timeline. The semester ends, exams begin, holidays take place, trips will be taken, grades for 150 students need to be posted, letters for students need to be written. Even so, on that date it will be a real turning of the page for me.

Let the countdown begin!


In other news -- there is always other news of the farmette, news that takes you right out of yourself and reminds you that seasons change and life goes on and you must react, or hide, or take note. I take note.


Breakfast, fixed in the kitchen, eaten in the sun room.






A commenter asked about the glass porch roof in the Fall: yes, it's managing to collect a few leaves, but there aren't trees directly overhead and it does have a slight slope so most of them will, with time, wash off. I was very tempted to go up there and sweep off fallen leaves, but Ed held me back. There's beauty in the occasional leaf, and in the drops of dew in the morning, and eventually in a snow cover come wintertime.

But we surely look up at the roof a lot. This, while I do my school work at the kitchen table.






I had a morning errand to run and so you get, too, a photo of the cloud cover pushing through...






In the late afternoon Ed and I hoist up a few "cages" for the fruit trees in the new orchard. It's a complicated process of building structures to protect the baby trees from deer. We've been far too lax in this and as a result, we've lost a large number of young trees.

Today, we salvaged (I hope) a half dozen fruit trees and cried tears (pretty close to that) over many that probably cannot be saved.






And then? Well, I wish I could have done more to secure the farmette for the winter season, but I had to work. And Ed? He had Isis to .... attend to.





And I count: so many days of work behind me, 78 to go.

more frosty thoughts

The first night's frost is a big deal.

The second night's frost is nothing more than a checked off moment in a string of frosty nights that will stretch, most likely, all the way until April. Rare will be the night when it doesn't dip below freezing.

When you wake up on these frosty mornings, a hot shower is sublime and it warms you up for a good hour or two. I don't touch the thermostat until the shower effects wear off, sometime after breakfast.

Yeah, breakfast. In the sun room.





But the hot shower glow does eventually wear off. And then you have to really work up the courage to choose rosie over the car to go to campus. It helps if there are wisps of sunshine.






You try not to think about how that sunshine wont be there to help you by the time you're heading home.

But I have to say, accustomed as I am right now to frost at night, I am not quite sure what to make of this, as viewed from my office window this afternoon.





Snow showers.

Rosie, I'm sorry. I meant well.

I am lucky. The snow shower passes by the time I ride home. I can see it retreating, there, over the lesser lake.





I'm home now. Yeah. Home.

frosty feelings

I love Isis so much, I tell Ed.
He doesn't believe me.
Moments ago I swept cat hairs off the couch and insisted that the litter box needed yet another cleaning, just because. I don't behave like a person who is in love.

But at the end of the day, Isis, to me, spells home. His snuggley side, his love of the farmhouse, his clamoring for a piece of that trout that I buy for him now every week -- they add up. 

And so on this tough tough work day, I come home late and I see Isis and I think (and say) -- I love this cat.


Otherwise, the day is as it was going to be: frosted over, for the first time this year...






With breakfast in the sun room...






Followed by work. When it is time finally to head for campus, I bundle up, drag out rosie ("do I have to? -- she asks... she is a fair weather girl) and... go nowhere. She will not start.

I want to shout - Edddddd! - but he is at the dentist's. I abandon rosie and apologize to the bumperless Ford for all the disparaging comments I've made about it lately.

I drive in. I give my two hour lecture. I drive back.





Ed is working on various motorized vehicles as I pull in. There was a bug trapped inside your starter system. That's why you couldn't start. 
A bug? A big bug?
Little bug. I cleaned it out. She's ready to go (tomorrow).

It's nearly dark. We go inside.

now we are cold

That really is a gusty wind out there!

Most of the day I spend just looking at it, from the same perch at the kitchen table -- starting with breakfast...





...through a long period of lecture writing.

You know how killing that is of your spirit, don't you? You stare at the computer screen, you write, you draw a blank, you do a quick step to your favorite blogs or websites, you come back and resume writing, you break again. You keep hoping for new distractions, anything to get your mind off of the task at hand because you've had it with the task at hand...

One such distracting place to run to in times of great work stress is the weather.com site. Looking at it now, including at the ten day forecast, I'm dismayed to see that we're in for a cold spell. With an occasional threat of snow-showers. Snow showers??

When I see that tonight there is a window of reasonably dry air, I suggest that we break from our various work obsessions and drive out to get that cider that we missed picking up this weekend at the orchards just north of here.

It is the perfect escape.

So first and foremost -- the classic pretty view from the orchards (at Ski Hi):





...and the documentation of the purchase:





As the orchard based shop closes for the day (we are the last customers), we see that there is still plenty of light outside. Or at least enough to do a side trip to Parfrey's Glen.

Parfrey's Glen. It's the first space devoted to state parkland in Wisconsin. For me, it's probably one of the most magical spots in the Midwest. Ed and I first went there early in our years together. Flooding closed the place down in recent years. In fact, we weren't sure if it was open now.

But it is open. And after driving around in circles (this is what we do so well: we nearly always take the wrong turn in our ramblings on the rural roads to the north of Madison),  we come to the state park entrance. Deserted now, in the early evening of a Fall weekday. We leave the car and walk up the trail. There used to be elaborate paths with supportive boardwalks. All that was washed away just a few years ago. These days, if you come here, you have to climb your way up the riverbed, flanked by the natural sandstone formations.

In the blaze of autumn color, as seen in the fading evening light, it is magnificent. Cold, yes, that: I'm in a my winter down jacket -- but beautiful to the core.















Nina




Ed




Ed




Nina, Ed












From there, the easy route back home takes you to the ferry that crosses the Wisconsin River at Marrimac. We're at the ferry landing just as the sun sets somewhere there, behind the clouds.






We've done this trip so many times and still we take the wrong turn and lose our way along the rural roads leading home. It is quite dark by the time we pull into our diveway, six jugs of cider and a bag of Chipotle dinner burritos in hand. 

now we are eight

Eight years ago, when he was a mere fifty-five (to the day!), he sent an email -- want to go out to an orchard?

I did. It was the first day I laid eyes on this tall guy who drove up in an ancient red car with a peeling stripe. (The car is still around, though the stripe is gone, as is most of it's body actually.)

We spent most of our days in each others company since that October day. In the first five years he'd be over at whatever dump (his description) I lived in. In the last three years, we've made our home at the farmette.

Shouldn't we sweep the leaves off the glass roof?
You don't like them there? They'll drift off eventually.
What if we get too many?

He stayed up most of the night fixing up a new laptop for my mom (her old one crashed and the new one has too many cluttery things on it -- at nearly 90, she'll never be able to navigate it unless all the quirks and foibles of the new Windows operating system are removed or made easier to work through). By the time he was ready to sleep, Isis was ready to be restless. We accept the fact that some nights will be calm and Isis will stay put or stay downstairs or stay invisible and on other nights he'll be causing a fuss. You can never tell which night will come when.

Breakfast. Pancakes, for a special day.






Want to watch vows on the NYTimes video?
It's odd how much we like to do this -- watch other people find joy in being together.







The idea was to go out to an orchard today. Not because Ed likes to commemorate anything as sentimental as our coming together however many years ago, but because it is time to get cider for the winter. Twice we bundled up and twice it began to rain just as we stepped outside. But the third time it stayed dry.

Still, it's too far to drive to the orchard now. Instead, we go to our favorite cross country skiing park -- just two miles east of the farmette, and we walk there.











The funny thing is, when I first saw Ed, there, in front of my apartment, he was waiting for me, pacing the railway tracks that run parallel to the road. Coincidentally, today, we are on tracks again.





Are you done? It's cold!
I want to find a rock to crack a black walnut.
You can't eat that! It looks rotten!
It looks fine. Want to try a piece?

On the path again.  The clouds release a small drizzle.

Do you suppose we should finish the front entrance to the farmhouse this spring? There are rotting boards and crumbling steps...
Maybe.

A few years back I would have wanted to do this for the aesthetics alone. Now I don't care that the door facing the road looks funky and bit run down. For us, the focal point of the farmhouse is the back, with the porch, looking out onto the sheep shed and the barn. But we like working on projects together. The reconstruction of the front entrance will be one such opportunity to do that again. I'm sure the design will be a tad original. And quirky. There always is that element of quirkiness to the this place.

We finish our walk just as the drizzle really gets going.





Tomorrow, we are told, is the official last day of our growing season. The hard frost comes, all tender plants will die back. We'll pick the last of the berries before then and I'll cast one last fond glance at all those flowers that kept right on going. Next year -- we'll see you again next year.

My older girl and her husband come over for dinner. We don't think of it as celebratory. Not really.

Hey, have a slice of cheese before the kids come...
Okay. Oh, good one! I suppose it's for them?
No, it's okay -- eat as much as you want.

I stir up the sauce for the pasta and saute the shrimp and chunks of salmon.







After, he and I watch old Seinfelds and Isis snuggles right next to us. The cat likes it that way. Both he and Ed doze off. I finish up the Ocean post.

Hey, thank you, Ed. And happy birthday.

growing things

The farmette has many trees. On balance, that's a good thing. Shade. A feeling of privacy. Spring buds, autumn colors.






(For my breakfast photo, I give you the mighty crab, which, in the morning hours, is abuzz with robins and their compatriots, hacking away at the red fruits.)







But for the most part, these trees aren't your sweet little trees put in some years back, still waiting for their adolescence. These are mega trees that tower and explode with new growth each year. And of course, some branches die off.

We have moved beyond the impasse, Ed and I. He no longer objects to sawing off dead branches. But to go after live limbs (ones that block light or bully their way into a space occupied by another) --  he says he cannot do it. And so as we once again team up to do our seasonal tree pruning (at least at the level where we can reach branches with our pole power saw), the negotiations begin.

That one. It needs to go.
No it doesn't.
It's killing these beautiful shrubs.
Fine, just that one. Sorry tree!
It'll love you for it. Trees like to be pruned.
How do you know?

And so on.






It's a massive project and we only have time and energy for so much of it. As we haul the last load of branches to the enormous wood pile out back, I look over toward the fields to the north of the farmette. They're used by truck farmers as well, though not anyone we know.






The skies are of an uncertain mode. Cloudy. Not cloudy. Partly so. It makes for a beautiful display! But I know what's coming: frost this next night. The most vulnerable flowers are having their last flowering moment.











Enough nostalgia. There's more work to be done! In the prairie grasses out back I see that we have our old foe trying to make a comeback -- the honeysuckle that we'd worked so hard to eradicate is sprouting again in small clumps.

We get to it: they all have to be clipped back. You leave one standing and you'll have twelve cousins joining it in the space of a month.


A commenter asked about our master plan here, at the farmette. It really is quite simple. We love that it is wild and untamed. That most would say "overgrown" rather than "manicured." That every flower bed is freewheeling and seemingly unplanned.

But there are limits to that prairie freedom out there. If honeysuckle were allowed free reign, these puffs of prairie seed would soon disappear.





If creeping charlie continued to mount its aggressive expansion, we'd lose our raspberries, our flower beds, our strawberry patches.

So we try to channel growth. To moderate, to redirect.


...And then we retreat inside, for a late late lunch of peanut butter sandwiches with Ed's grape jam, eaten at the kitchen table (bathed in the light of a bright Fall day).






The farmette at her seasonal best. Stunning, even if a bit unkempt and wild around the edges..

embattled

We continue to wage war even when we know the chance of victory is slim. The enemy isn't necessarily stronger than we are, but it is resilient. It'll come back again and again, even if we push them back with our exceptional might.

This is how I feel about bramble roses and creeping charlie.

When I first moved to the farmette, I thought that where I wanted there to be raspberries, there would be raspberries. Where I wanted flowers, there would be flowers. Sure, weeds, quack grass -- they're part of the deal here. But places where I sought control, where I waged war, would be mine. I have force and determination on my side!

So do they.

This morning, after breakfast...






...I work. Long, tedious hours of school work. Systematically I check off pages, write down assignments, take  notes on what I'd read. By afternoon, I am spent.

Time to refresh. Time to maybe put in the bulbs. I have some five dozen -- crocuses, tulips. No daffodils. I have hundreds of those in already.

But I get distracted. When did the bramble roses get so out of control? How did the creeping charlie creep into my primary flower bed? Ah, the nasturtium! In its abundant phase, it covered over the weeds. It covered over everything.







And of course, life continues and I have my attention elsewhere and now rose brambles are coming out of every conceivable space and creeping charlie is about to declare victory.

Not yet! I have might! I have determination!

I spend two hours pulling out deep roots of invasive devils. Heave! Pull! More! Come on!

Ed comes home and finds me with blood dripping down my face (bramble stalks fight back).

I suppose I should feel victorious. I brought things under control. For now.


 


But I know it's a temporary victory. It isn't a blow out celebration. They're hiding, but they'll be back. Next year, they'll be back.

But for now, I have to believe that I've made progress.

Dinner is of the easy kind: salad, veggies, eggs. That's it. Nothing more.

relax!

Breakfast, in the beauty of the windowed kitchen.






Outside -- it's raining again.











I was chatting with a physician about one thing or another (for example -- being excessively busy came up in the conversation) and she said -- have you considered going to relaxation therapy? (I'm guessing it's like physical therapy, except you're working on a wounded spirit rather than a pulled muscle.)

Well now, if I scheduled relaxation lessons, I'd be even more busy, wouldn't I? Yoga, for example, was my strategic relaxation class and I haven't gone since the semester started. There's a reason for that.

But she persisted. She thinks I need to slow down. Sleep longer. Etc.
Ha! All that will happen when I retire! 
Retire? She asks. My, that sounds good! (I should note that I'd place her age at around 32.)
I almost retorted -- meet you in relaxation class! -- but I didn't. Perhaps she doesn't have time for that kind of indulgence. Mindfulness, relaxation -- all noble ideas, if you have time to pause to consider them.

Still, I do get the message. And to prove to myself that I am on the ball, a slow rolling ball at that, I pause on my way home at Owen Park. It is one of the loveliest places in Madison to admire the changing palate of autumn colors. Surely checking in on the foliage there would give me the needed balance for an otherwise full day.






But I never leave the car. The photos are taken from a rolled down window.






Why? Because I'm already late for my next meeting.

I breathe in the scent of a mossy, wet forest...






...take one more picture from the seat of the car...





...and then get going.


In other news, we are bracing for frost next week. I don't mind the frost. I do mind that we haven't done the work to get the farmette ready for winter. The raspberry patch is in shreds. The old limbs on the many trees here need to be sawed off. Several packs of bulbs need to be planted. The porch needs a paint job. And the new orchard -- oh, the new orchard! It so needs our attention! It will never survive another winter of deer unless we build shields to protect it!

I add these things to my to do list and wonder if I should put at the bottom of it --  "attend relaxation sessions."


Still later, Ed comes home, listens to my summary of the day and steps in to take charge of my relaxation issues: Tennis. Now!

I am terrible at first, better as we play. It takes me a while to unwind.


On the ride home we wave to Framer Lee. It may be that this is the last of it -- that we may never see her harvesting flowers across the road again.


 


She waves her hand, pretending to hide from my camera. The flowers, Lee! I shout.  It's all about the flowers!

Isis greets us as we pull in with that meow that says -- where have you been?! 
Come inside, dear boy, I tell him. It's time to fix dinner. I got some fresh fish at the market. You can have the skin.

He appears happy with the idea. I settle in to cook.