Tuesday

You know by now that Tuesdays this semester are my burrs, my most stressful work-packed days, my moments of madness and furious efforts to get on top of things.

So understand why these shots are important -- it's our modest most peaceful time -- breakfast.





After -- I again sit at the kitchen table and occasionally look out at the world outside. Tired of my robins? Okay, a non-robin photo. This dude is in the rose bushes.






The  outdoor thermometer that we rely on shows that we never get above freezing on this day. The fun little snow-shower from yesterday never fully melted, despite today's sunshine.





The days will grow a tad warmer again. And definitely they'll slow down for me. In the meantime, I'm a mess of tangled work strands.   And for today -- cold patches of snow.

different

Every now and then, we've been finding small puddles in the basement. At first, we thought it was the pickles, leaking their brine. Then we pointed a finger at the washing machine. (I'd be happy to blame the dryer which is perhaps thirty years old, but I don't think dryers leak water.)

A few days back, we explore it some more and it becomes clear that the water, at least in its most recent incarnations, is coming from a back up in the septic tank.

Mind you, we've had this problem before -- two years ago. We were told then to cut down the huge willow, or continue to suffer the consequences of the roots infiltrating crucial places in the system. Ed said something like "yeah yeah" and promptly ignored the advice. Perhaps with good reason -- it wasn't 100% clear that the willow was at the "root" of the problem.

So now what? Call the same people to run various cleaning and investigatory tubes down the sewer pipes? No, not Ed. He's going to rent the proper tools and do the job himself.

If there is one task that I would hire away if I could, it would be this -- clearing the sewage pipes.
This is how you and I are different -- Ed tells me.


I wonder how much he is influenced by a show we've been watching daily now: it's our go-to viewing option in the late evenings and both of us stay awake for it -- this is how much we love it. It's called Grand Designs and we pick it up on You Tube. We're toward the end of the second season already and we are mesmerized by it: it's a British series and it's about people building crazily beautiful houses for themselves in England. I think that Ed sees himself as being the one who designs and implements most everything about his immediate space. He doesn't shy away from the dirty tasks. From any tasks. Perhaps the shows remind him how much he is in control of all that goes right or wrong here.


In other news? Well, on a tediously work-filled Monday, me, I get excited by breakfast.






After, I work at the kitchen table -- in full view of the changing weather conditions outside.

I run out to record those initial snowflakes.

But I I toss those photos aside. The snow showers intensify. The white stuff starts clinging to trees...






Beautiful!











And so different from just yesterday! It's as if someone really put a motor under Fall so that we would get to winter alredy.





Of course, the prettiness of winter is an on again off again thing, even as the coldness of the season settles in without ambiguity.

But I can't look forward to changes for the worse. All I know is that today, different as it is from our past weekend weather, surely is beautiful.






Very very beautiful.





So yes, a work day for me. But a thrilling one, in the way that the first snow day always makes you look up. With a smile.

Paris, the last few hours

Spick and Span

Massive farmhouse cleaning. Sometimes I rush it and cut corners, at other times I'm intense about it. Today I am intense. Scrubbing floors, polishing door window panes -- the works. Why? Well, some weeks back, Ed finally admitted that we need a better kitchen carpet than the rag I threw down when I moved in. Daily, he would bring up horrible carpets that people were trying to off-load on Craigslist. And each time I refused. Too dark! Too ugly! No!

Next, he tried the bargains on Amazon. There are millions of carpets on Amazon, even if you limit the price to under $150.  (He tried under $100, but believe me -- you don't want to go there.)

Nothing looked good.

Finally, he caved and we shopped at a real store (though still online), purchasing a very lovely wool runner with just the right warm colors and an on sale price that was if not agreeable, then at least comparable to the ugly things posted on Craigslist or Amazon (meaning under $150).

I was merely getting the house ready for the new arrival.


And the carpet is lovely -- all wooly, thick and warm...

Wait, what's this? The door wont open over it?

Here's a photo of our kitchen, as I fix breakfast, with an eye to the light outside and the carpet that's about to go back...





...unless Ed shaves down the door and installs a door sill. Which he is very reluctant to do. To him -- a rug has to accommodate the house, not the other way around.

I talk about my deepening love for the carpet over breakfast (in the front room, facing south, catching the sun there...)





And sweet guy that he is, eventually he agrees to make the proper adjustments to the entrance-way. The carpet can stay.


Strawberry patch, Raspberry Rows, Raspberry Islands

Well now, it is another beautiful November day.

If today is lovely, tomorrow promises to be tough to love. Sunny and upper forties today, snow-showers and a promise of an utterly freezing 17 degrees F at night tomorrow.

So the push is on to Get Things Done!

I know you cannot possibly care to hear more details of the various planting beds at the farmette, but I do want to say that I have (finally!) a vision of where I think we should be with respect to all the weeded-over patches and beds and fields. Including the old raspberry beds (until we attacked it this year, it was a mass of shrubs, weeds and the occasional cane that barely bears fruit; the redone spaces are neatly topped with wood chips and have more or less even rows, ready to deliver). And the strawberry fields. And perennial beds. And so on.

Today we work on moving closer to the goal of having it all hang together: first, we extend the strawberry fields toward the sheep-shed...






...and then Ed poops out on me and I continue, creating additional raspberry islands in places where the old canes sent runners. Very neat, very lovely, very accessible.





But it is grueling work. I dig up shrubs and vines and weeds, working without pause from before noon, to after the sun has already set.






Paris, the Last Few Hours


Ed wakes up from his nap and comes out to find out what I could possibly be still doing outside. Huffing, I say -- it's the last chance to get things in order  for spring!

And truly, it feels exactly as if I were in Paris and I had only a few hours left before stores closed: surely I should use this opportunity, run through all the possibilities -- because time is running out!





Yes, quickly so. I yank at another invasive and another... I really feel it -- the last chance syndrome. This is it. Now or never.

By evening, my back feels out of sorts and I am strongly looking forward to dinner.


The Celebratory Meal

When I saw lobster tails on sale last week at two for $10, I was thrilled! And when Sunday turns out to be this physically intense, I know that it's a good day for lobster omelets. Possibly with a bottle of poor-man's champagne (Spanish Cava, one fifth the price) on the side.

I stumble in, only to see Ed stumbling out. His annual bike club meeting is tonight. I'd forgotten this and now here I am, eating a lobster tail alone.

Or, am I really eating alone? As I reach for the camera to commemorate this meal, Isis jumps on the table (he otherwise never does this). Oh no you don't! Oh fine... let me get you your dish...

And so Isis and I share a lobster tail (luck has it that he usually gets tired of anything, even lobster, after a few bites).

And Ed calls  -- sure you don't want to come down to the meeting? They're showing slides of bike trips through Cuba and New Zealand.

Last year, we watched a presentation on a bike trip to Slovenia and were inspired enough to spend a week there a few months later. And though I don't think either Cuba or New Zealand are in the works for us this year, I rarely pass up a chance to watch someone's slide show on their happy travels far away.

I tell Isis to be good and keep tabs on the Amazing Race on TV for me, but he hardly pays attention. Must be the spike form having a bite of lobster. Aching with every move, I get in the old Ford and head out into the night.

shovel

If I were paid for my labors by the hour today, at the end of it all, I would not be rich. If I were paid by the effort put into it, I'd be a millionaire.

It was a beautiful November day. I mean, I cannot oversell it -- mostly sunny, windy, not too cold.

Morning -- well, that was given over to breakfast...





... and then, unfortunately, to school work.

But afternoon? We are out  digging and hauling...





...and digging and hauling.


We have made significant progress this year in rebuilding the land around the farmette structures. Ed wonders about the future maintenance of it all, but I remind him that we're front-loading the work. Maintenance should be nothing, by comparison to what we're doing now.





In the late evening, all I can do is to hack away at anything that is still visible in the fading light. We will leave undisturbed clumps of berries (without replanting them in rows). But invasive vines and stumps have to be removed. I strain my eyes and then finally, I throw down the shovel and retreat.

And when I sit down, believe me, it will take a lot to get me to move again.

Friday

When Ed suggests a game and a dinner for tonight (UW women's volleyball --  free tickets, but still...) -- I say sure! The day is starting to look fine indeed.






And then the usual happens: long hours of reading and  an afternoon of hefty digging up shrubs and weeds in the raspberry fields, and evening comes and I get tired.











And I have to wonder how it is that people regularly go out at night for social functions.When the sun sets, I like to retreat home.

Still, on this night, we mobilize our energies and head out. To sit at the bar of Brasserie V and eat moulles frites (mussels and fries). The waiter comments that the last time we were here we sat in the same place and ordered the same thing...





Well now. We're predictable.

Then onto the game.

It's the third time that Ed and I have sat on the hard benches and watched Badger volley ball. And each time, Ed cares only about good plays and I care deeply about our home team winning and this time it is far far too close and so we walk out before we can witness someone lose.






...and the band plays on.





Beautiful. (Even if I do read later that our team lost.)

the high road

We almost didn't go. Sure, the sun eventually broke through the clouds -- not forcefully, but daintily, enough to add that layer of gold that you love so much toward the end of fall.






But it was cold. And when you sit all morning long at a table piled high with texts, you get even colder. Your internal heat generating mechanisms doze off. Or something.

So in the afternoon, when I remind Ed that we had talked of biking over to Eplegaarden -- our local orchard with a Norwegian twist -- so as to stock up on honeycrisp apples, he hesitates.
Not for long. Okay, let's go, he says.
But then I hesitate. Maybe we should work on the raspberry plot? No cold bike ride involved in that...
No, let's go. 
Sure? No not sure.

Finally we put on warm jackets and gloves and pretend that it is really much warmer than the 38 degrees we see registered on the thermometer.

One goal is to pedal hard. None of this sissy stuff. Give the lungs a workout. Of course, that means that on the inclines, Ed soars ahead of me. And so it happens that he pushes forward and crosses a road and waits, and in the meanwhile, I turn up a road, thinking surely that this is correct and that he will soon backtrack and follow me.

But he doesn't backtrack. Not noticing my turn, he looks back and not seeing me, concludes that something must have happened. And so he pedals toward home. 

If ever there is an example of why we should all carry cell phones -- this is it! He's biking home, I realize what happened and chase him, shouting, shouting, but the wind is against me.

Many miles later he pauses and borrows someone's phone to call me and we reconnect. But what was to be a 15 mile roundtrip ride turns out to be almost twice that.

And still, I have no regrets. Once we turn away from the main roads, every inch of landscape is beautiful.





As we pause to watch a herd of cows...





...they spot us and come over hoping for ... what, food? love?

One could speculate. But we don't. We bike onwards and upwards and we find Eplegaarden and our beloved honeycrisp apples and we walk the orchard and pat a horse and admire a pair of goats and taste a grape or two left over from the autumn harvest...










The ride home is even colder, but we stop halfway, at the local community center where they are hosting the Thursday farmers market. Indoors. We buy a lot of vegetables.





And quirky other things. Who knew, for example, that we had amongst us at the Fitchburg winter market a Greek guy selling olive oil from his family's grove near Sparta.






It is very much evening when we turn our bikes into our driveway. Dinnertime. Ed suggests I make fish stew. We bought the veggies for it -- onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots, broccoli. And I have a chunk of frozen salmon.

Oh, how good it is to be at the farmhouse, eating fish stew on this cold November evening! Let me not ever say an unkind word about this month again.

rerun

It's hard not to see a day sometimes as a rerun of another. A repetition of acts taken, meals eaten -- yes, the beloved breakfast...





...of anxious times with a clock ticking away as you rush to get that lecture polished before class. Of glances outdoors, leading to exclamations of delight because there will be the robins in the tree...






...and robins on the ground, too: these guys are still hoping for the worm:






Repetitions all. Peanut butter and apple jam for lunch, cold winds scattering new leaves on roofs, including glass roofs.


Later: looking out my office window, I see that usual quiet between class hours. One student passing by. Nothing more.





Were I to look out during the minutes between classes, the walkway would be packed. It's been this way forever and ever.


At home, reheating soup, chopping greens for a salad -- I've done it a thousand times before. We eat, Ed goes off for his volley ball game. I pick up the laptop. Nothing new there!

So why write about it? Because repetitions can be so good! Great, in fact! You wake up and everything is as it should be. Words exchanged, steps taken. Shower on, that wonderful soap lathered. Later, downstairs, honey drizzled over the bowl of oatmeal, stories told (or sometimes retold), plans made for the evening, for tomorrow, for the farmhouse front door, for the raspberry field, for anything and everything.

And that's just a fraction of all that thrives on repetition.

A day of total reruns and repetitions -- how good is that!

raining

It's raining work hours on me today. We wanted to do an early run for apples this morning (to the nearby orchard). Didn't do it. I couldn't spare the time.

Early, very early the phone woke us. A raspy male voice comes on: can we deliver wood chips now? We're on the list of one tree trimming company, and one utilities company for deliveries of their  chipped trees and branches. Both called today promising truckloads of chips. Two huge truckloads???

If I said we were done with rebuilding the raspberry field (it's no longer just a patch) I was wrong. With all those chips, we have weeks of work ahead of us.

Oh! Here's the first truckload. (By the way, if you can accommodate a truckload, this is the best way to get free chips -- put yourself on the lists of companies that are in the business of pruning trees.)






Yes, there'll be a lot hauling in the days ahead. 

But not today. We follow the more ordinary pattern of a Tuesday:

Breakfast...

 
Then work. There is a brief shudder of sunlight and I am so thrilled to see it take hold of the thorn-apple tree that I run out, only to watch it disappear. Last bits of it here:












And now it's back to a dense cloud cover.

And so long as we're reflecting on the last bits of anything, let me one more time (a last time, for sure) give a nod to the last of the show offs. Blooming away, in November.






But let's get back to the reality of a rainy (in the end) day. No rosie ride to work. Car time. WIth a walk through the city streets just to campus and then, after long lecture hours, back to the garage. Oh! It's raining and dark now? Uff...


 


A run to pick up take-out, then home. What a gift to be home now! To forget about the wet night outside. It's raining sweet drops of pleasure! Home. Farmhouse home. Mmmmmm....

swirling leaves, twinkling lights

How windy is it, you ask?

...So windy that the bedside window, opened just a half inch, lets in gusts strong enough to make me yank the quilt from under Isis and push it firmly against my chin. (Ed rightly points out that keeping a window open, even a tiny crack at times when you're either running the heat or the air conditioning makes no sense at all. He is correct. Except that I love fresh air that much, especially when it gusts inside and makes you feel like you are out in a forest. Of course, in the heat of July or the dead of winter, my infatuation with fresh air bows to sanity and the window is shut until March or April, when the temptation to crack it just a little hits again.)

...So windy that we spend the breakfast minutes staring at leaves, branches, spent flowers, swaying, moving, flying about outside.






...So windy that I abandon any idea of biking anywhere today. Good weather to stay rooted at the table with my work.





So windy and yet...

...this is the day that I decide to go out on the porch roof to sweep off the leaves. Why? Well now, that's a hard question to answer. Ed suggests that I wait until all the leaves have fallen (or not bother with any of it), but I want to develop a feel for the project: I am only allowed to step on the strips of wood (which are clamped over beams). How does that feel?  Will it be easy to sweep off snow? And so I step out. Through the bathroom window.

My, it's windy up here!






...But good! And there's a reason to clear and clean those glass panes -- Ed finishes putting up our chain of lights.





You want them year round, don't you?
Uh huh!

Our farmhouse is ready for the long winter.

In other news, well, you know the scoop on a Monday (or Tuesday, or Wednesday) -- there is no other news. Plenty of work instead.

...and a supper of cabbage/potato/kohlrabi soup.






And after dinner, I head for a talk at our local library -- interesting, sure, that, but what I want to show off here is the utter deliciousness of the finished porch project. Built, painted and now twinkling away forever and ever...

differently

Within the usual, a dose of the unusual.

Misty morning. Cold. Faintly sunny for once.






Later in the morning: so bright! You still think November is a drag?






I have a rather different midday Sunday: a lunch with colleagues. By the lake.






It's unusual for me to eat lunch and with colleagues and on Sunday. But, today has the unusual up and down its face and so here I am. What, can't see me or us? Well, I have long assumed that colleagues don't like random photos and so I keep my camera tucked away. But I can always photograph myself. And when there's a mirror, I get tempted!






After, I work, despite the gloriousness of the day.  Here, look how golden the farmhouse looks -- from out front (a view I rarely photograph).






In the late afternoon, which surely these days feels like early evening, I suggest we do something hugely energetic. Like bike full speed to the tennis courts, play a hefty game there and then bike like crazy back home.

We do it, but I offer several comments on this: first, my "bike like crazy" is like Ed's "pedal and yawn." So the only one who panted was me.

Then, at the hidden tennis courts, we came across a group of young people at one of the courts. They have a rubber ball, the size of a basketball and they use both hands or feet to help it across the net. Incredible fun. Where were these people when I was that age?

Ed and I play a good tennis game, considering my abilities (or lack thereof). Solid. I'm proud of solid.

And we bike home. I work some more and we eat a quiet supper alone. My daughter has a Sunday working dinner. No, nothing about this day follows a pattern.

Darkness comes early. That at least is very November-like. The shadowy month, promising nothing at all, except a colder season ahead of us.