Saturday

A Fall has never felt so intense, so brilliant and heady -- there's no meekness to it, it's glorious, it's strong, it hits you straight up!

I blame the weather.

We wake to yet another crisp and clear morning. Too crisp. I bring up my weather page and note in shock that our village is registering a reading of 30F. That's below freezing, to all you non Americans!

Ed!

I had left all the pots outside. Forecasters had predicted a low of 35. I was not ready for this. At the very least, my potted flowering tree should be inside.

Ed!  I get spoiled by his willingness to lug things around for me, even at the earliest hours.

In the end, I can tell by all my sprawling nasturtiums that it must have been nano-hundredths of a degree above freezing. Those plants just lose it at 32. They turn to mush instantly and there's no going back. And this morning, they were still perky, in a struggling sort of way.


We have breakfast in the glory of the sun room...






...and then I head out to meet my daughter, you know, that one!






...for our walk to the downtown Farmers Market, where I actually have a rather large list of purchases to make: the last beautiful corn, exquisite heads of broccoli, many pounds of spinach, arugula, the last of the local raspberries, oyster mushrooms (oh, I missed those in the last month!), cheese curds (for Ed), goat cheese (for Ed), macaroons (for Ed).

It's a beautiful day to be at the market. It could not be more splendid. Even as I offer no photos. Well, one. Of someone else going for the shot. We have a lot of photo enthusiasts here.






At the farmette, Ed and I return to the rose removal project. I cannot tell you what a relief it is to dig up and clean out the invasives on this property. Last year, it was the raspberries. This year, obviously the rose spikes got us going. Once again, the cheepers join us... 






...and Oreo gets his plum rewards for not lunging anymore. Ed says -- you are, to him, every other person. If he doesn't lunge at you, he wont lunge at others. You have to admit that the man is guided by eternal faith in the animal spirit.


The light is so generous now. It gives us the gold even as we would settle for less. 






And finally, the evening comes. Quickly. And still, we make room for tennis. Yes, sure, it's all  coming to a seasonal end. But we don't finish with a whimper. On the courts, we put our souls into the game.



(path to our secret, hidden tennis court)


Alright. Time to go home. To the farmette.

These have to be the last images of our blooming annuals. The growing season will end any day now, but we can't complain: it's been a stunning run.

Friday

It's still very dark at 5 a.m., but I'm awake. I hear the scratching sound. It's a critter. Mouse, probably. But where? I pick up the bedside flashlight and shine it around the room. Ed sleeps. Isie, perched at my feet on the bed, watches. Nothing. Quiet. I turn out the light. Scratch, scurry, scratch. Light on -- nothing.

I turn to Isie: are your mouser days really over, pal? Isie is getting old. He looks at me, looks out at the corner of the room, then waits.

There's nothing to be done. The critter is probably inside the wall somewhere and the entry points are too numerous to contemplate. Ed plasters spots and fixes old boards all the time, but in a house this age, you cannot ever hope to seal it.

It's time to bring out the traps. A ritual for us. Every Fall, out they come, staying with us until the last sign of frost in May.

Last year, by springtime, the generation of mice learned how to enter and exit the traps without closing them. I think it's physically impossible to do this, but somehow, come morning, the peanut butter would be gone and the trap would have no mouse in it. Still, we caught and released a good dozen in the course of the winter. This year, since Ed isn't traveling, we're hoping for an even higher success rate. And a dumber mouse family.

Ed goes to the basement and brings up a favorite little plastic contraption. What's this -- he looks at it curiously. It's got stuff inside!
What, a decomposed mouse?
No no, stuff!
It seems that a mouse has been building a nest. Inside the trap. Now that's a new one!

In the meantime, the skies are once more beautiful and blue, even as we start off the day with a brisk 33.3 degrees. One degree less and I would have lost my annuals. Now they're safe for another week outside. After, I'll have to decide which I want to try to winter over.

Friday is a tech meeting day for Ed and typically I grocery shop, but I am a little off schedule, having shopped after my return, so I decide to go into town and have my laptop checked. It was making very loud noises all last night during the government board meeting on the future of the development to the east and north of us (I got quoted in the local paper, so I must have chosen my soundbites well!).

And so, after breakfast...






(and a quick look out at pockets of the yard...)






...on the way to the Apple Store, I make two stops - both wistful, but in very different ways.

First, I go to the Underground Butcher. I have an errand there, of a non-meat variety. They sell other stuff there as well. For example:






But honestly, when I'm there, I just a tiny bit regret that we don't eat red meat. These people do meat so well that you want to reconsider your position on being a reluctant meat eater. At least I do. Ah well. Must not succumb to temptation.

The second stop is one where I can indulge, because the feast is entirely visual. It's one of my favorite spots for Autumnal walks in the city -- Owen Woods.







And I notice that Fall is actually late this year. The typically vibrant gold of the forest has a ways to go yet.






Still, it's a beautiful place, even now.






A good half hour spin is almost medicinal in what it does to your heart and soul.






And now comes the dreadful mall, offset in its awfulness by the greatness of the Apple store, where the tech crew is always so fantastic and so helpful that it makes my heart sing, albeit in different ways than in the forest.


Finally, I'm home. The light is so different at the farmette now. The front north facing flower bed is nearly always in shade. The path to the shed, too, receives little sunlight. (It's better on the other side of December: the days are still short, the angle of the sun is the same, but without leaves on our numerous trees, the days are actually much brighter.) The cheepers hardly forage and the hens lay eggs sporadically (Scotch -- not at all). You really feel the pulse of the day slowing down.

And that may not be such a bad thing.

I dig a little, by myself. (Ed is still at his meetings.) No, not entirely by myself. The cheepers rouse themselves and join me and I feed Oreo worms from the shovel, to remind him that we're friends. The light fades, the cheepers rest under a cart loaded with pulled rose bushes. I coax them out for a pre-bedtime seed snack.






And for Ed and me, what dinner? Time to make chili. It surely is the season for it.

the way things are

How sweet the memory of those spring days, when Ed and I worked so hard to bring the farmette to her full potential! When the cheepers would follow us everywhere we worked, because with all that digging, we were bringing up a bounty of worms for them! I'd come up with a shovelful and distribute the poor worms to Scotch and Butter, Whitney and Oreo.

Such good days they were!

This morning dawned clear and blue again and we were a tad late in getting out to let the cheepers out. I, of course, said -- you go. He said -- come with me. So, reluctantly, I wrapped myself in the sleeping bag and we trudged out. It really is pretty in these earliest hours of the morning.


















( a tiny daylily! in October!)



Oreo wont care, he'll leave you alone -- famous last words. True, Oreo ignored me coming out, but as we passed the gang on our way back to the farmhouse, he lunged and had a very ineffective battle with my sleeping bag.

Sigh...

And yet, at breakfast...






...I felt less disturbed by this. You could say -- ah, she's getting used to violence. No! But I sort of get what's going on. And yes, I know that this is an uphill struggle -- to get him to calm down again, in the way that he had calmed down for all of the summer, toward me, toward everyone. It's become obvious that Oreo can't really hurt me. And sure, perhaps in the future, I wont be able to trust him with others (little others, for example) and so if he doesn't calm down, he'll have to go. But even though he is not a little irritating right now, I'm thinking -- if I can give him a few moments (months? years?) of life, then that's a good thing, no?



(the brown tones of late Fall)


I worked on my various writing projects inside most of the day, despite the sunshine, the brilliant weather -- I had inside stuff to do.

But toward the end of the day, Ed and I went out to tackle the multiflora roses that grow to the side of the courtyard. I'd always disliked them -- they grow like a prairie fire and they spread, invade and destroy everything in their path, including the person who tries to remove them. But, with Ed, the best strategy is containment rather than removal and so I'd worked to trim rather than dig. But in my absence, Ed did volunteer work on prairie restoration on some trail or other and he learned there the viciousness of this particular plant and so now he is on board: these guys have to go.

It was a tough set of minutes. Even our anti-brambler protective clothing can't fully shield us from the vicious thorns. And the roots! Oh, the roots!

We dig, clip, heave and of course, in the process, move much soil. And the cheepers see the commotion and they come to where we are working and honestly, it is like old times. All four of them settle into scratching the loosened soil for worms and other goodies. And Oreo, satisfied with just a few plump worms, sits back and watches us all work and I think -- yes, he deserves his happy time of watching over the hens. They're all in it together. This is what they are. (Even as I know that tomorrow, I'll still feel the frustration of needing the protective sleeping bag and it will take more than a day or two to get him to fully relax... if indeed, he can ever relax again.)






In the evening, Ed and I are at the public hearing again, where I speak in favor of marshlands over development. It strikes me, as I bring up the plight of the disappearing gentian flower, the muddy waters of the springs feeding into our lake, how much easier it is to just ignore these small losses. A flower. A super annoying rooster. And yet... Yeah, there's the 'and yet.'

windy

Oreo, the rooster was the topic of conversation from the earliest hours of the morning. I should note that until some form of peace is restored, I am not participating in chicken care. So Ed does morning duty (when he wakes up -- an unpredictable event). And cleans the coop. And does the evening lock up.

Our morning chat started us off on the wrong track. Ed made the unfortunate comparison of teaching Oreo to behave with time we invest in teaching children to be productive members of the community (...so why would you object to taking just a few days to work with Oreo? Because he is a rooster!). After lots of exclamation marks in nearly everything I said on the subject, I calmed down and we again tried to put ourselves into a rooster's head so that we could understand what thought process might have lead Oreo down this newly belligerent path.

And this morning, I again went out in my protective gear (sleeping bag, gloves) and Oreo jabbed at the sleeping bag and of course got nowhere, looking rather foolish in front of the hens and eventually he cockadoodledooed some and stomped off.






Ed and I sat down to a tranquil breakfast.






I want to work outside today. Oh, is it beautiful out there! The winds are blowing strong gusts of leaves and seeds and all that wonderful Fall stuff, and the skies -- so blue! Even a couch potato would not be able to resist the call of the outdoors.

Outside again, I slowly shed the  sleeping bag and stay out of Oreo's path and as I pass closer and closer to him,  he stops flapping wildly and by the end of the morning, he is herding his flock and I am pulling my weeds and quiet is restored at the farmette again. Oh, it may not last. Perhaps I'll have to wear a sleeping bag a few more times. But for now, peace reigns again.

Tell your readers how calm he is now! Tell them! -- my sweet Oreo defender says, as I go inside to take a break from our work outdoors.






Late in the afternoon I take a walk with my older girl. It's been nearly a month since I'd seen her and sure enough, I can tell by her belly that we're getting closer to a birth date.






The day is so glorious, the forest so filled with all the aromas of Fall!






And it does not end there: in the evening, Ed and I play tennis. The courts are littered with spent pine needles, but we don't mind. The game is windy and a bit wild. Fitting for this brilliant Autumnal day.

changes

I've gone away before. Of course I have. Even when Ed still was willing to travel with me, there had been plenty of solo trips. And yes, things are always a little different when you return. Typically, everything seems gentler, softer. Comfortable and comforting.

Not so this time.

It's not surprising that Autumn has taken hold. I went away at the cusp of Fall and now it's moving swiftly toward its zenith and within a few weeks, we'll still have Fall, but in name only. More like pre-winter. Or some such state of dark fields and brown grasses, bare limbs and short days. November stuff.

So the seasonal shift doesn't surprise me when I return.

The big change -- and it is a completely unexpected change -- is in the cheepers. Ed had warned me that Scotch had stopped laying again. We thought maybe she's hiding her eggs. I told him to follow her around and he did, to an extent. No eggs. Alright. She's a summer girl. I accept that. But last night - my first night back, for the first time since we got the cheepers, she did not return to the coop at night. Ed finally gave up searching for her. Until the middle of the night, when he went out again, found her this time on the fence and put her where she belongs -- locked up, protected from any number of predators.

So Scotch is in some bubble that we do not fully understand. Not a problem. Maybe it's the way she greets Autumn.

Nor is the problem with the white girls. They eat, scratch and lay. Pretty much as always.

The problem is Oreo. In the three weeks that I was away, he completely turned against me and now, if I am anywhere within his sight, he lunges at me in a straight on rooster attack. He'll hurl forward as best as he can, half limping half flying at me. Frontal attack, so that I have to either chase him off with a stick or call Ed for reinforcement.

The rooster has lost his marbles.

Of course, he's always had that little protective drive within him. He's chased children. He's chased the wedding planner. Once, he even chased my younger girl. He lived here on borrowed time, because if he continued down that path, his days surely would be numbered. But, toward the end of June he settled down, in peaceful harmony with all at the farmette. Only Isie boy tiptoed around the rooster, never quite trusting him. Smart Isie.

And now, I can't be within his visual range, or he'll attack. And that makes me just want him to go away.

Of course, life at the farmette is never that simple. Oreo adores Ed and Ed adores Oreo. Yes, I could say: it's either me or Oreo, you decide! But that would be rather dramatic. I think, after moments of great contemplation and deliberation, Ed would give in and I would stay and the rooster would go. I think. But it would make Ed terribly miserable to let go of the animal without even trying to make things work.  Ed is so patient with troubled animals that he held on to a feral cat for years (sweet but scarred Larry), even though the cat had the disconcerting habit of peeing on anything new that was ever brought into the sheep shed. I remember my first visit there, some nine years ago. As I entered the shed, Ed said -- don't put your purse down. Here, let's wrap it in a big plastic bag. Sure enough, Larry marked it. Ed never gave up on the cat and eventually the cat calmed down, but it took years.

Still, it is not fun for me to venture outside right now. The rooster is ready to lunge.


The other components to the day have been far less stressful. With a few interruptions, I log in ten hours of sleep. That happens maybe once in a blue moon for me.

Then breakfast. In the sun room.







And work on my writing project. Grocery shopping for the week. Tennis! In a court dusted with fallen pine needles! Oh, I missed that!

On our way home, we talk about Oreo. If it were up to me, I'd say au revoir, monsieur le coq! But I know Ed's sensitivities and I want to at least consider other solutions.

He suggests that I let him attack me.
Nothing will happen, he'll see it's futile, he'll stop.
I don't want to be mauled to death so that the rooster's light bulb will go off!
You wont get hurt -- he's a rooster!

We go around this a bit. I remain apprehensive. He suggests -- wear protective clothing if you're truly concerned.
I don't have protective clothing,
Jeans. Boots.
I don't have jeans or boots. I only have soft, girl-like pants.
Okay, what if you wrapped that old ratty sleeping bag from the garage around yourself?

So this is how I spend the early evening: like a bull fighter, baiting the animal to charge, only the goal here is for "the animal" to eventually just walk away from it all.






And it did happen exactly like that: Oreo charged me several times and, finding it to be rather daunting, what with the sleeping bag swirling around my legs, he gave up.
For now, I say to Ed. He'll be back.


So this is my reentry day: I'm fighting with a lame rooster.

On the upside, there is my stay at home guy, eager to engage in all our rituals again. And there are the flowers. Still crazy pretty, even after a three week slide into Autumn.

coming home

Traveling to and from Madison requires an extra slug of patience. Typically, after the end of a nine hour flight from Europe to a major Midwestern city, there is yet another wait and then another flight for me. Only many hours later am I truly home.

But on this return, after my haul over the ocean, I was done for the day. Ready to soak in a wonderful visit with my little girl in Minneapolis.

Of course, those first nights after a shift in time are tricky. Last night I fell asleep in midsentence on their couch, woke up to take myself to bed, fell asleep immediately after that, woke up a few hours later wondering why it was still dark outside.

In other words, jet lag.

The best advice I have for all this is to ignore it.

I did just that this morning as I set my internal alarm (I have one! It's magic and it always works!) for 6 a.m. No problem! My little girl came down to say good bye and then I tiptoed out of their apartment house to meet up with my friend, the one who is in the Twin Cities just for a short while, coincidentally on these very days when I, too, am passing through.

We go out to an early treat. I can't believe these places really open for breakfast at 6:30 on a weekday morning, but they do and we are there, at French Meadow, ordering our poached eggs and scones and sitting down for a lovely long talk. (With a little camera play thrown in!)






This, then, is my reentry to the Midwest.

After all those lovely hours with my girl and her husband and my friend, too, I turn now toward the very cold but very bright and beautiful return to Madison.




(flight out of Minneapolis)


From the Madison airport, it's just a short hop and skip over to the farmette.






Ed is right: the season has really shifted now. The leaves are falling rapidly. No more vegetable harvests. And yet, there are still flowers! We have not yet had a hard frost. The garden is not yet dormant!






Oh, it's lovely to see Ed's shaggy head! I wont post a photo - there will be so many in the days to come! And of course, it's great to be back at the farmhouse.

Even though my clock is messing with me still. It's four o'clock. Shouldn't I be going to sleep soon?

to the Midwest

If you go at it long enough, you're going to come across every bump imaginable on the travel path. I thought I'd already used up all possible quirks and permutations: bad weather cancellations, unexpected landings for every imaginable reason: mechanical problems, sick passengers, even tired crew! Really, I've seen it all.

Except today I got a new one!

It began yesterday when I tried to pick up my boarding passes at the airport and the agent could only issue the first out of three. But, he had an explanation and I believed him. Never mind, I'll do it Sunday, day of travel.

It means an even earlier start to my already early day. No time for a Parisian breakfast. Dark skies still. 7 a.m. in October is not exactly a chipper moment, but I slog on, up the hill to the Luxembourg Gardens train stop.



(The Odeon)



And for the first time since I've arrived in Europe, the weather turns unpleasant. Drizzly and cold. I take out my jacket. Hi, jacket! Glad I have you! Some precautions are worth taking.






I pass the gardens..



(closed park, autumnal chestnuts, dark and damp skies)



...I throw a glance at the magnificent (if dark) buildings, I catch the train to the airport.

And I stand in line again and ask for my boarding passes.

Madame is flying only to Amsterdam?
Heck no, Madame is flying then to Minneapolis and tomorrow to Madison.
Madame has made a separate reservation for those other flights?
Wrongo bongo on that one too! I take out my printed itinerary. Again, some precautions (printing out your flight itinerary) are worth taking.

The agent plugs in the numbers.
Ah! I see that. But the rest of your trip has been cancelled, no?
Wow! Three wrong guesses!

So here I stand at Paris's CDG airport with a ticket to Amsterdam. End of journey.

These days, I would not fret. These things get ironed out. I am retired. I have time. Costly airline mistakes are typically payed out by the airline. But I have a dinner date with my daughter, her husband and my friend in Minneapolis tonight! Not in bloody hell do I want to miss that!

So I'm sent to the Air France lounge to wait it out while they convene with Delta to work out the "what nows" and I am given a little box of chocolates to help tide my mood over, but I prefer to eat breakfast -- that one that I missed in Paris because, thank God, I decided to come to the airport early.






Words of advice to travelers out there: always take a jacket with you when traveling in Europe in October and always print out your flight itinerary. 


Later:

Well, it all came together in the end. Of course it did. I wont even tell you about the funny moments, the cold moments, the hopeful moments. It's enough that it all worked out.

...So that I could come to my daughter and her husband's place and settle in...






This is what homecoming should be like. This feeling of joy at finally seeing the people you think about when you're away.

We go to The Third Bird for supper, and here's a pleasant surprise -- my Florida friend is in town just now and so she joins us.








(the -not really- serious duo!)


I'm on some other clock right now, barely aware of anything beyond what is in front of my nose. By my clock, it's 4:30 a.m., but that European clock is fading rapidly for me. I am, after all, back  in the Midwest.

And that's a good thing.

coming home

I wont be at the farmette until Monday, but I am, as of today, on my way home.

As I pack my light back pack, I shake my head with a smile: my fleece jacket remains with me, slung over an arm, unneeded. This is how good the weather has been these past three weeks in Europe: not once have I used anything other than, at most, a sweater. And not a thick sweater at that.

And I leave Warsaw in beautiful weather, too. While snow showers are passing over the farmette and a frost advisory is posted for Wisconsin, I look out of my sister's apartment and see this:





I keep telling everyone how much I have enjoyed this brief but intense visit to Warsaw. I think there are many reasons for it, but I have been told quite bluntly that perhaps I should learn something from it: in the last dozen years, I have always traveled to Poland in winters. Seeing Warsaw during a splendid set of autumnal days is...well, more cheerful!

I never know when I will return. But for now, as I sit at my sister's kitchen table sipping jasmine tea, I think how deeply happy I am to have been here.



My flight is to Paris. Remember? I left a suitcase there! It all seems so long ago, even though I just passed through this way three days back.

I have a rare taste of luxury in Paris. I'm staying at my old reliable little hotel near the Luxembourg Gardens, except it's not so reliable anymore as, after a total revamping,  I doubt that the prices will ever be attractive to me again. (They're offering a "welcome back!" discount rate right now.) Perhaps this is a nostalgic good bye to my "Parisian home." I did well here when it was still in its scruffy state. Ah well.

I go for a walk.

My head is processing everything, so I walk. I mean, there were the weeks of solo travel. There is the book project. And then there was Warsaw. So I walk and think. Walk, walk, walk.

You know the buildings of Paris. Let's look at the people.



 
(in the park)





(back to selfies)





(what's the line for? Hermes pastries for the weekend)





(cafe life)





(ice cream weather)





(pastry store, family, dog)





(cafe life)





(have a taste!)



Finally, the tail end of this trip -- the last dinner. I make my way to Pouic Pouic.






The menu, simple and very short, adapts to the seasons, but I know I will always be happy with it.





So, I'm in Paris, in transit, and tomorrow I make my way to Minneapolis, to stop and say hi to my daughter there. My next post will be, therefore, from across the ocean.