Friday

Ed calls up from the kitchen. Wake up! It snowed! He is letting Isis in. Or out. Or both. But it's too early to go down and admire any white cover over our bare land.
Later.
No, take a picture.
Later.

But I am awake. I look out the kitchen window...






... and a few minutes later I am outside, feeling the crunch of snow as I walk to the back of the barn and then back again.






It's the second snowfall (or more aptly -- snow dusting) of this year and so you'd think the magic would be already waning, but it isn't. It still feels special.






Albeit cold. Upstairs, wanting to warm up, I take Ed's hand. Icy fingers on his warm palm. He resists, but I'm insistent. More importantly, we're both now wide awake.

And so breakfast is on the early side.






And then Ed takes off for his tasks, and I take off for mine, and the sun comes out, and by the time I return home, the snow is nearly a thing of the past.






And the robin sits on the willow and smirks, as if he knew all along.






But don't think we're in for a warm spell! Tomorrow night we'll dip to 8 degrees. That's 8 degrees Fahrenheit.
Should we brush the snow off the porch roof before it freezes into a solid piece of ice?
Do you really want to do that all winter long?
No... but we're only just beginning with the snow.

Still, we let it go. It's winter. No amount of clearing and sweeping will change this basic fact.

Best to put energies to soup making. Chowder again. Fish and all the veggies that I could pull out of hiding.

the last of the typical Fall semester Thursdays

This is the last Thursday that has me completely deflated from a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of work. (So much am I deflated, that it takes me forever to get to the kitchen table so that I can pick up work again.)

I mean, I do come for breakfast.






But then, instead of staying put, I go out and help clear a bit more of the strawberry bed.


 



(The goal is to bring it all the way down, from the flower beds to the sheep shed. We're not going to make it before winter, but we've come awfully close!)






And then we take another pause -- one that is dictated by necessity: in taking our muddy clothes down to the basement (where we keep the washing machine), I see that the sewage system is now properly and fully backed up. So we are without plumbing and Ed is on the phone calling for help. Too late to do it himself -- we need a fix asap!


(Later)

We learn that it's the curly willow by the farmhouse brick path that is sending roots into our sewage pipes. There are only two choices: chop the tree down or religiously clean the pipes of these tangled knots. I'm going to let you guess which one of us favors which option.

In the evening, we go down to our community center, where the winter farmers market takes place on Thursdays. We try to find something good at each of the stands. It's not hard. Veggies for another stew this week, cheeses too. And a few potatoes, from the happiest potato farmers ever.






It's a cloudy, cold November day. Not many more of those left. And maybe that's a good thing.

so quickly

It was, not so long ago, the beginning of the semester. And now it's November 20th  I am just two weeks away from end of classes! If you're busy, the days are like on speed. Does it change when you retire?

I've always thought November was sort of a downer. Bleak. No color, no snow, no hope of change for the better anytime soon.

But it's been beautiful this year! Or, is it that there is hope of change at the end of it? So that it's like March, only the pot of gold isn't spring, it's free time?

At seven in the morning, Ed and I were buried in laptops. Night emails had popped up for me, the NYTimes spurted new stories for him. The sun was delivering that radiant glow at the horizon...





... I thought --  such a day of promise!

And there was promise alright -- of work. Immediately after breakfast.





Ed hung around in the background and occasionally read clips about bargains at local bowling alleys: You can bowl for pennies if you go before noon!
Quit it! You're such a distraction!
He continued, knowing that I both want him to stop and want him to go on.
Isis curled up on the couch, liking the gentle pace of the morning.






Such a peaceful scene it is. What you can't see is my nervous glances at the clock. Or my quick step to get to school in time for office hours. And the total concentration that I muster up prior to start of class.

And then it's all over and done with and I'm heading home.

A thrown together dinner of quick-sauteed shrimp and brussel sprouts.





Followed by a game of volley ball for Ed, a more quiet time for Isis and me.

Two more weeks of classroom teaching, and 50 days until my official retirement. At this point, it is so close, that I'm not really counting anymore.

light

A brutal Tuesday. With the added drag of a meeting after teaching. I'm not home until after 8 which, honestly, seems way past my bedtime.

But it is a beautiful day out there. Or so it seems. Me, I am sequestered. Right after breakfast (ah, the sun...)










...I turn my back on the outside world.

Or I try to. An impending retirement is a huge distraction!

But, too, I intensify my lecture preparation. Whereas at the beginning of the semester I would average 15 pages of notes and questions for a two hour class, today I hit a record 28. It's like squeezing additional clothing into an already overstuffed suitcase. Everything, I need to bring everything!


In the evening, the moon climbs up from behind layers of misty cloud. I pull over to the side of the country road and watch this large ball of light dominate the fields to the east of us.






It's not a full moon. We're two days past that. But I'm not fussy: bright days and moonlit lights are a gift in late November. I'll take them any way they come. With a nod of thanks and a wish for a repeat performance tomorrow.

is this all I can give you?

Do you know that the phrase from the title line can be applied to any number of vignettes from your day?

For example: as I type my daily post here, on Ocean, on days that are swamped with work and the best of the best comes from breakfast, I wonder -- is this all I can give you?











Or, when I finalize travel plans for this winter and I watch Ed burrow his head in a book in mock disinterest -- I may well ask the same thing.

Too, when I throw together leftover chicken, spinach, frozen garden tomatoes (always with garlic, olive oil, parmesan) over pasta for dinner -- it's back to that question.






If we stare our limitations straight on, we can see where we could add a little more. Cups that could be topped. Conversations that could be improved upon.

Damn. Not good to review the day in this way. Better to focus on the stuff over which I had little control.

Like the emerging winter blooms:

The nasturtium, after being snipped from the outside in early fall:






The "Christmas Cactus" that's all screwed up and thinks Thanksgiving and Christmas are one and the same.






You've noticed that they're all indoor shots. Well yes, it was that kind of a day. Despite the sunshine, I was stuck at the kitchen table with work books. I hate to admit it, but the only, the only time I ventured outdoors was to empty the compost bucket.

But it was a grand (five minute) walk!

















The farmette always gives everything of herself. It's us mortals who struggle to get it right.

the storms move through

It is so very unusual to wake up and hear that you're under a tornado watch in November. And then to hear the winds outside, hitting the farmhouse with a whiplash of rain. And to see the basement foundation leak puddles of water. To turn on the lights during the day, to watch Isis absolutely refuse to go out.






Such an odd Sunday!

Breakfast -- that's fine. It's always fine.






After, I stack the table high with work books, but it's more for effect than for hard core work. My mind drifts. It's brutal to have a computer at your elbow when your mind drifts. Brutal and dangerous, too, to be told by your sweetie -- oh, do what you want with our trip! That and a computer -- well now, work progress is going to be slow.


Toward evening we are ready to haul ourselves outdoors. The winds are less intense, the rains have passed.

We have errands to do -- Farm and Fleet, where Ed buys his replacement winter jacket (no, it's not cool and quaint: more like stiffly practical and cheap). Woodman's supermarket, where we restock in  life's essentials. And then -- bowling. We go bowling.

It's Ed's idea:  we haven't moved at all since the bad weather set in. More importantly perhaps (from his perspective), the bowling alley is close to both Farm and Fleet and Woodman's and -- it offers bowling for three for $15, shoes included, so long as you come on a Sunday after 5. No, we're not three, we're two -- but they'll bend the rules.

Ed and I don't bowl often, but this game is electric! He wins all four rounds, but I am on his heels!





In truth, I'm not much of a bowler. No one bowls in Poland. Then, too, there's my speed (these days, in addition to your score, you get to know how powerful your throw is) -- Ed routinely shoots that ball at 17+ mph. I'm thrilled if I throw it at 10.





Stil, each of us has a strike here and there and the gutter balls are fewer than in the past.

And it is good to move again.

Even as the winds are picking up outside again, pushing autumn out, bringing winter closer and closer to the farmhouse doors.

digging in

At midnight last night I finally said -- enough! No more talk of airfares! No more speculating what wins the "boring trip of the year" award. No more talk of tents, no more talk of adventure, I am ready to shut down this entire discussion, because it has gone on too long!

Of course, for Ed, weighing the ins and outs of just about anything  -- from installing a porch roof to unplugging the septic system has to run its course. Nothing happens at a snap, nothing gets decided until it absolutely feels right.

And nothing yet feels right about our next escape together. Me, I feel we've already traveled there and back -- multiple times and to multiple destinations. I'm thinking we've talked this through so often that I'm ready to go elsewhere altogether -- and preferably a place that has only one airline, one airfare, one place to stay, one adventure to be had and then we turn around and come back home.

We are different that way. Who knew that I would get so stuck on a pattern of travel and that I would hate so much to deviate from it.? (I'll tell you who knew: the person who has been assiduously following Ocean, reading my daily accounts, where my breakfast of oatmeal and honey and kefir and fruits (from the yellow/red and blue families) along with a coffee has been the same, day in and day out, forever. Ed at least changes cereals!)






And, too, my less nomadic pal here at the farmhouse, has his habits and we are getting old and the habits and styles of living are getting to be as stiff as the bones and muscles after a day out with the shovel.

So, it is fair to say that we've decided nothing at all, or that our own ideas have not yet reached that sweet meeting point where we are both on board and happy to plunge. Not yet on board and not plunging anywhere -- not with cross country skiis through lovely villages far far away, not to a jungle hut in Central America, and not to Cyprus where Ed tells me we can rent both kayaks and bikes and skis, all from the same outfit!
In one day? -- I ask, somewhat dubiously.  
Yep! I'll send you the link.
And crossing to Greek Cyprus -- that border poses no problems?
People do it all the time!
Legally?
The discussion ends there.

In the meantime, it rains that drizzly dark clouded rain and all I can say is that I am grateful for the red sheep shed because stuck as I am at my computer at the kitchen table, I see no other color before me. Oh, sure, the twinkling prch lights. But they're programmed to go on and off and when they're off, it's like someone clicked "black&white" on Photoshop and the entire image drained of color and only the sheep shed was spared.

In the evening, the younger ones come over for a dinner of tandoori chicken.






They look serious in this photo, but they are only playfully so.





Ed and I -- we appear light and airy tonight, but we are only marginally so. Trips are serious business for me. And I'm thinking (therefore?) that they are serious business for him as well.

You wont go white water-kayaking, you wont backpack through the rainforest...

It's true. I wont.

Sigh...

weather

In winter (and let's face it -- we're close enough to that season that we can dispense with the Fall talk), weather matters to everyone. Summer is different that way. During summer, farmers care. Those who live in tornado belts care. Vacationers care. The rest of us take it as it comes and barely remember later which day was over the top lovely and which was just, you, know, summer-like.

In winter, eyes strain to watch for snow or sleet. We crave sunshine. It lifts us up and carries us forward toward April. Give me a sunny winter day and I'm okay with everything else.

Well now, today is just such a sunny day. And so I'm okay with everything else.

That includes breakfast alone, because Ed slept too late and was then late for a meeting.






And it includes the countless tasks and chores that comprise the better part of life for everyone.

And finally it includes reinventing travel plans because suddenly, airfares plunged for 2014, but they plunged only to one place and so perhaps predictably, Ed and I will be going to that one place.

In the evening, we bike to the library.





And once again I borrowe a book I desperately want to read and once again Ed will be the one reading it because, well, because I'm not retired yet.

But it is a glorious day. A beautiful, warm-ish, sunny day.

The moon shines brightly on the farmette tonight.





And on Berkeley too, I hope. Happy birthday, Mom! One more decade and you will be 100 and I will insist that you celebrate that one!

Thursday

Time. It's shocking how it can move quickly even as you're not doing anything that would warrant a significant usage of hours. It's like asking -- why did I need so much water, I wasn't that dirty? So, too, I'm genuinely puzzled -- why did I use so many hours, I have so little to show for it?

Typically, my semester Thursdays allow me to ease up a bit. But in that less taxing time frame, I stumble and in the end, I can only shake my head and wonder at how unfree that freer time feels.

So, following the delightfully late breakfast...






...and the those jobs I cannot now even remember doing, Ed and I go out to shovel out two truck loads of wood chips over the raspberry islands.






Yes, he's wearing shorts. Jubilant that the thermometer crawled upwards of forty, he decided it was warm enough for this.






In the evening, we eat dinner with the Fitchburg Fields people, giving our support to those incredibly hardworking types who are working to turn much of the land around us into small farming plots and community gardens.

This annual event is catered by Madison's best of the best -- the Underground Collective and so I am quite happy to shake off my beef abstenance and indulge. Give a non meat eater some meat and it's like tasting candy after not eating sugar for years.

I ate a lot of beef tonight. (On the plate, you can see the vegetables -- squash and kale; the beef is gone! Devoured!)





Yep, a lot of beef.

Late in the evening, Ed and I messed around with the details of our next (January) trip together. It has sticky points and it forces us to make peace with the other one's eccentricities.

We're getting there.

And I glance at the weather website and I see sunshine for tomorrow and I think -- oh, these days are so very very good!

Wednesday

On this second most busy day of the week, I sit in my office as the evening rolls in feeling not a little nostalgic. A student meeting reminded me of how much I care about these guys and how cool it has been to be involved in their educations.

And running parallel to this is a second stream of thoughts -- how in three weeks, my classroom days will be done and the stress of being ready and "on" for 150 students (I have that many this semester) will be a thing of the past. Being "on" for someone else is, to me, such a huge responsibility! As I move away from it, I can't help but feel the luxury of letting down my guard.

And still a third theme -- I was thinking of some travel that I have before me in the next six months and I was marveling at how different it is to hold back a little on the frantic scheduling of things. I don't have to make things fit anymore. I can decide now, decide later. I can mull it over a tad more.

All this, from my office chair, idling the last minutes of the day, before I head home to cook chili.


Earlier -- we woke to a somewhat warmer day. Though in my morning trek to the compost heap, I could see that our *new* raspberry patch still has a leftover dusting of snow.






Breakfast -- in the front room. We're just following the sun.






Campus time and Bascom Mall --  the belly of our university. The Law School is halfway up this hill.






And finally, the drive home. Coming up the back way, to see the sun set over the woods that stretch due north of the farmette.

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.