Friday

What would you do if the day promised sunshine and warmth even as next week is slated to be cold and wet?

You'd throw everything into the cart and get outdoors from the break of dawn.

So I did that. Early, very early.

Breakfast was hurried -- Ed has his Friday meetings and I'm anxious to get the cart rolling.






Yes, I admire the light, the daffodils, the blue skies, the willows bursting with new growth...





...but mostly, I want to get to my tasks.

The asparagus bed. I try to clear it -- no. I need some help here. Okay, back to the raspberry patch then. I dig, I pull, I dig, oh! There's that twitch in the lower back! Maybe it's a passing thing.

It isn't a passing thing. By evening, I can't move.

But on the upside, before I succumb to lower back distress, I have some wonderful hours noting the rapidly changing world outside. The buds, the early blooms, the first leaves on tree branches -- we've been waiting for all this for such a long time and now it's finally here -- the start of the growth season.








And there were other highlights. An evening date downtown puts me on Rosie (the moped) for the first time since October. It was grand to be riding her again.

And the chickens: let me remember on those days when they're destroying some magnificent flower or plant in my garden that for most of our waking hours, they are the sweetest birds this side of the Mississippi.











So yes, it was a beautiful day.






Now, let's see if I can flip a magic switch and force my lower back to return to its predigging state. I promise I wont rush things the next time around. I'll be the champion of slow digging. With many pauses to smell the roses (or whatever else is in bloom).

rainy days

In the eyes of a chicken, you are an agent of change. For the worse (they know you can swoop them up and carry them of to some frightening place), for the better (you open their gate, you bring them food). Being chickens, they can't fully appreciate the range of your powers. They don't know that there are things that are out of your control.

So that when I got up ever so reluctantly on this cool and wet morning to open up their coop and pen, I took note that the chickens moved more slowly, hesitating, looking at me as if asking for an explanation as to why today just doesn't feel as wonderful as, say, yesterday.

I'm sure they feel it is my fault.

I agree with the chickens -- the weather today leaves much to be desired. Unlike them, I blame no one. It is April, there are wet and cool days in April. Not your fault or mine. Not the fault of gas emissions or the result of climate change. An act of nature, nothing more.

Still, I felt that the daffodils said it well with their drooping faces: this day is just not worthy of our bright countenance.






After breakfast (French toast for Ed -- to use up stale bread and fresh eggs)...






...I should have sat down to my indoor tasks, but I am carrying now an outdoor disposition and so it is hard to think in terms of a whole day in a sitting position. I keep getting up. To check on the chickens! -- I tell Ed, who then responds -- were you like this with your children too?






When there is a pause in the rain, I should use it to amble out and work on the new asparagus patch. (There is a dysfunctional old patch that is buried under weed and shade and, too, there is a wild one out in the prairie that occasionally throws single stalks of asparagus to random places. Like right next to a new apple tree. Weird, no?) But I didn't do that. If you don't get the motor into high gear early on in the day, it's nearly impossible to do so after noon. Or at least it is that way for me. The only compelling reason I had to go out was when the hawk came back and I felt a need to wave my arms at him so that he'd come back less often. The chickens, thanks to an Oreo alert, were hovering safely in the tiny space between the house and the air conditioning unit. But I waved my arms anyway. Another one of those motherly instincts.





Finally, finally, in the late afternoon, I agree to go with Ed on errands. To Farm and Fleet to buy a summer container (no electric hook up needed) for chicken water. And a belt for the broken Zero-turn. And a new hose distribution system. Yawn, right? Not for us. Farm and Fleet feels, these days, like the store that has everything you may need to get from one day to the next.

A recount of today would not be complete without mention of a milestone: last night, Ed's car of choice, a '93 Geo finally developed an issue that he is unwilling to fix. This is the same car that has more rust on it than it has car. It's one he has loved to keep going because it is small and insignificant. It is also the car in which he came to pick me up, back on October 20th of 2005 when we decided we were worth a shot to the other (on paper, remember, we had nothing in common).

I remember coming down from my apartment and seeing Ed, walking the railway tracks just to the back of the parking lot. Then I saw his car: red, rusted, with pink stripes running across the sides. It struck me that a guy who drove that car really knew how to sift out and ignore life's unimportant details.

Since then, I've disliked the Geo because it truly feels like it will fall apart from underneath as you're driving along a rural road or worse, on a highway. Held together by sheer Ed stubbornness. And still, I have now this reminder of time passing. Of nearly ten years with Ed and his inconsequential Geo. You wont mind if I post a most unattractive photo of this most unattractive car, right? Just so I can remember how irrelevant pink stripes and rust can be.






The car, selling at $200 on Craigslist, had a dozen inquiries within a couple of hours. That's two things that will remain forever a mystery to me: why old cars get people excited and why chickens aren't scared of Ed.






Supper? Gotta use up those free range eggs. With a plethora of beloved veggies.

...and the next

And so it continues. Dawn -- up to release the chickens and clean the coop...



(good morning, Scotch!)


... then breakfast.



(zebra stripes!)


I feel like an entrenched farmer. The routines cannot vary. So long as there are chickens at the farmette, they must be tended in this way.

To some, it may seem like a brutal imposition. But of course, if you have a dog, you must walk her. Clean up after her. Feed her. Play with her. Chickens require less of you, but it is imperative that you are there to release them and lock them up again. Small jobs, but jobs they are.




(Oreo, doing his cockadoodledoo)


As Ed continues to work on the poor old disabled Zero-turn mower, I return to the raspberry patch. You will hear a lot of this: work on the raspberry patch. It's probably our biggest project. We've been at it for more than a year and it still has many many weeks of digging, weeding, ripping, chipping to go. The hope is that it wont be a terribly high maintenance area once we have finished our work there.



(the hens in their afternoon snooze mode)


There are, each day, new items that we squeeze in between the big projects: yesterday I sowed the arugula and endive beds. Today we planned the new asparagus patch and began work there. Every day is like this and I have to warn you that we haven't even hit May yet which, for me, is the most intense gardening month of the year.






So what about my writing? Is it on hold?

Not exactly. The beauty of outdoor work is that clears the mind and it requires little effort to come in, sit down and do a review or addition to an ongoing project (for example The Book). Teaching left me depleted at the end of the day. Outdoor work frees my thoughts and dehumidifies my mind. It's very (intellectually) refreshing.

Still, I am a bit stalled on The Book, as I have an interim writing project before me (more on that in mid-May) and so most often I take that out and spend some time musing over the direction it should take.

It's all very leisurely and stress-free and this, of course, is the most beautiful part of retirement. The world around me is a very calm place indeed.





Calm, but not without excitement. Of the type where the chickens have learned to fly out of the pen, for example. But that's tomorrow's issue. Today, as the rain clouds drift in, the world is a quiet place.

the next day

First and foremost -- you, Ocean friends, you make me smile and smile! Thank you so very much for all your generous comments and birthday messages. You are a very kind bunch, really you are!

Now, let's get on with the "day after."

After you've scaled the giddy heights of a birthday, it's time to come down and face the more bothersome elements of existence. At least that is what I tell myself the next morning.

True, I wake up to a gorgeous sunny day (though a tad cool in the morning).






And it is so tempting just to blow it away in some other pleasant outdoor fashion. After all, the list of spring jobs and pleasures is so long!

And at breakfast, we discuss what should be done next (Ed's list is even longer because there are many construction-type things that only he can do).





I tell him that there are two chores that I dislike immensely and therefore, after such a carefree weekend, I should take on one of them. Sort of like switching to salty foods after you've gorged on sweetness.

The two odious (in my book) chores include using the Zero-turn mower to bring down the prairie grasses and weeds out back and secondly -- cleaning out the old barn. It's obvious why cleaning an old barn is dreadful. Let me tell you why mowing the back prairies is even worse.

First of all, it's not entirely a prairie. In addition to butterfly plants (nice!), there is a dense underground network of quack grasses and brambler vines. Animals have dug trenches and burrowed homes over the years, so the terrain is sloped and lumpy. There are stumps from old honeysuckle that we laboriously took out last year and the year before that. It really is a mess back there and still, I want to clear it. Yes, in anticipation of my daughter's big day, but really, I just feel we could do better than to let nearly an acre of land look so... unproductive. (Long term goal: perhaps grow some clover to attract bees. Or something.)

And did I tell you that riding that Zero-turn mower over lumpy terrain makes me sea-sick?

Let me try to not mind. I want to start clearing some of those grasses and weeds. I had started doing that last year, but the bulk of it is still an overgrown mess.

Ed starts the big tractor-machine. I'm off.

The one (and only) good thing I'll say for this job is that it offers a nice view past the farmette prairie, towards the fields to the north of us.





Otherwise, it's a hellish piece of work.

I can't go too fast. There are obstacles that must be avoided. A skull of a deer, or some other large animal, for example. Or the dead body of a possum. Or slightly more prosaic obstacles -- honeysuckle stumps.

I avoid most of them, but, unfortunately, not all of them. I am so intent on not flipping the tractor over on top of myself on the hills and bumps that I don't see it: a big tree stump. I barrel right into it. And break the mower. I mean, I totally tear up and dent the mower deck and the blades can't spin and there you have it -- job half done, machine in ruins.

Ed!

He takes it apart, sees the damage, looks up the cost of replacement parts, sighs and begins to remove all the bent, twisted, torn pieces of metal. True, he is a guy who can work with metals, but I think he would favor designing interesting tools and widgets over untwisting and welding old tractor mower pieces.

Ed's day is now spent on repair work. I am determined to at least tidy up my half finished mowing job and so I take down those grasses with a regular old mower and I can't tell you which I dislike more -- bumping around on that Zero-turn or pushing a stubborn little machine over a field of stumps and two foot dried grasses.

Never mind. Job is now done (albeit sloppily) and it wont need to be done again for another month, by which time I hope to have forgetten about how much I do not like mowing.


In other news -- we are delighted, truly delighted to see the chickens now finally reach some degree of harmonious camaraderie.



(a favorite gathering place)





(favorite resting place)


Ed is like a proud grandpa. If the chicken will let him, he'll pick her or him up and this is when you'll see the widest grin of contentment on his face.






Needless to say, the chickens follow us everywhere.  It is truly fun now to have them around. And so far, the yard destruction is minimal. (Though I may be eating my words here. I threw them a few old strawberries and both Oreo and Butter went after them with great zest. Lest you think all chickens are the same -- not so. Whitney and Scotch are fairly indifferent to strawberries. At least those grown in California.)

And again, the evening is full of beauty and promise. Yes, tomorrow it will still be spring. Yes, the best days are still before us. Yes, the daffodils will still be there when we wake up the next morning.

birthdays

We're standing in line at the grocery store. A quick trip -- to tide us over until my soon to be resumed weekly (Friday) shopping routine. I show Ed the rack of cards behind the cashier.
That's where you would pick up a birthday card, were you buying one for someone. (Well, probably Whole Foods would be the last place I'd send him to buy a card. You can buy groceries for a family of five for what they charge for cards there. Still, it's a hint. Why I do this to him is beyond me. I guess it's because Ed is the least card-buying person on the planet and so to get a card from him would be ...significant.)

Do you really want a card? -- he asks me now.
Only if you want to give one.
He hesitates.
I reassure -- I wont be mad if you don't.
He knows I will love it if he does. And so as I put out the groceries on the conveyor belt, he flips through cards. They're not very emotive. You pay a fortune for a card that basically says Happy Birthday. I see the absurdity of this and I tell him -- no, forget it. But thank you anyway!

He perseveres.





And this is how I have a very special card and I can't believe that it matters to me -- you can laugh your head off, I wouldn't blame you, but, like the celebrations with my girls, like wishes that appear in an email, comment or in a card, it all feels so incredibly sweet and so very special!


The day began as a chicken day must begin -- with letting them out, with cleaning the coop, with watching the sun mount above the horizon.






It is a warm day. A very warm day! Close to 70F again. And it comes with showers. On and off, in a very April showers way, but warm. As if we were beginning summer.






And so, for the first time this year, we take our breakfast to the porch. That warm moist air, the blooming daffodils -- how can you not feel happy?






When the showers pause, Ed and I haul our newly purchased quince trees and plant them near the end of the old orchard, just as the driveway meets the road.



(Ed: next time, go about your business and I'll take a better shot)


The chickens help.



(skinny when wet from the rain; Ed says they have dinosaur claws)


The relations between the hens are improving, or at least settling with every hour. Still, sometimes I look at Scotch and think -- you want to preen and puff with the girls, don't you?






I pick her up, give her a cuddle and tell her that someday, she'll be queen and the world will be pandering to her whims. I feel then like a parent who hangs every piece of her kid's art on the refrigerator and says Monet could not do better.





Quince is an unusual fruit to put into your garden, but I am quite taken with the idea of quince preserves and, too, a quince infusion (an old family recipe that I tasted when in Poland this last month). And, too, quince blossoms will compete with any of the fruit trees. Now, we've been so unsuccessful in our new orchard expansion (we just don't protect the apple, pear and cherry trees enough and so the deer inevitably destroy a good portion of them) that you'd think I'd give up on fruit trees. Nope, not giving up yet. In went the quince trees.

And then it is time for the errands. Trivial ones (library). Fun ones (chocolatier, so that Ed can also hand me these chocolates, which we promptly open and try while still in the car. Yum.)






Standard ones (grocery store).  Exciting ones (Jung Greenhouse, to check out their annuals). Boring ones (Home Depot to return steel rods,  gas station).

The chickens wait patently for us at the farmette. And yes, they attack the flowers I brought out today.






And I do not freak out. I'm hoping it's a passing phase. That once the garden blooms, they lose interest in the vast bulk of my growing things.

Evening. The sun comes out now from behind the clouds. It always seems to come out on late April days. We are to go out to dinner, but can't quite tear ourselves away from being outdoors. I finish a conversation with a daughter, with my other one, with my mom. And still the sun lingers.






We load flower pots with soil and bring them to the courtyard. I begin filling them with spring annuals -- ones that wont get hysterical on me if the temperature dips below freezing some spring night.






And finally, it becomes too late to do much of anything. The chickens are slowly retreating toward the pen. Ed and I leave our various tasks and, without fuss or change of attire, we go out to get a meal at our local Italian place. It lacks intimacy. It lacks subtlety. But it's nearby and it feels somehow right to go local. Simple foods. Wonderful evening. Wonderful day.

Some days, I wish I didn't love my birthday this much. It seems so.. well, selfish to celebrate your own birth. And still, each year it brings out in me a whole string of smiles. Maybe it's the season. Maybe it's the affirmed connection to everything that's important. Maybe it's the yellow tulips....





Yeah, that's it. Spring. Tulips. Nothing more than that.

Easter Sunday

Listen! The rooster calls!  (So so early!)

Let the chickens out. It's Easter.





Eggs still warm from the coop, gathered for breakfast.






Wait: Scotch's Sunday egg is missing. Let's give her a few minutes.





Okay. Thank you! Easter breakfast at the farmhouse.






But Easter midday dinner at my older girl's home.

I watch my girls in the kitchen. They are both tremendously talented with food.





Today, I do no cooking at all. My older girl fixes the entire complicated meal and it is superb. We hang back and let her put it all together.
















Here we are, all of us, in various combinations:































I feel myself to be so incredibly lucky.

We leave the post dinner mess to my girl and her husband (thank you!) and my little one and her fiancee drive north and Ed and I drive south, only their drive is close to five hours and ours is close to fifteen minutes. Life is unfair that way.


The chickens are excited to see us return. They hover in the courtyard as Ed and I transplant tomato seedlings (and put in our cucumbers seeds). Last count: 115 thriving tomato plants.






Today the temperature topped 70F for the first time since early October.

A beautiful Easter Sunday. Truly beautiful. Full of hugs, sweet words, great foods. So very, very lucky...