Friday

I think it's cool how one photo, one story, one event will inspire different reactions among those who see it, read about it, experience it, recall it. One reason I so enjoy your comments is that they are uniquely your own and the collage of thoughts is never predictable, never static.

I thought about this as I went through a rather predictable set of tasks today. It could have been a low photo day for that reason alone. Add to it a rather gray sky and you'd think I wouldn't be inspired to snap pictures. Wrong. I look at my day's tally and I'm surprised at how much there is. For me, there is a small (and I mean really small) story behind each one. And it strikes me that you might find equally small, curious things to smile about in them. So, here's my rather typical Friday, with those few details that made it a sweetly special day.


I go out before breakfast. We didn't get the rain that I expected and my new plantings needed a hose down. I can't help but turn my head again and again toward the crab apple.  Oreo looks positively regal in the frame of the tree blooms!






But there's a new visual draw for me now.The perennials are starting their show! It will last until October. Expect each day to have a photo of at least one emergent bloom. Today, you get two! The iris is a new addition, but the Icelandic poppy, so fragile in appearance, is coming back for a return performance, with a strong showing this year!












Breakfast. We're entering a week of intense fragrance, as the purple lilac -- the most typical of farmstead flowers (my grandma had lilacs by her house back in Poland!) -- bursts into bloom. Possibly even more noticeable in the photo is Ed, who hasn't asked for a haircut for many many months. This morning he asked. Beard trim too.






There's so much to look out at when we eat our morning meal on the porch! Today, the girls, working the new flower field grab our attention.






This is the time of that beautiful confluence: when the crab apple hasn't yet lost its petals and the lilac has started its full swing of purple extravaganza.





I leave you with that last one from my quick strolls through the yard.

There follows a photographically blank morning of grocery shopping.

And then I go to spend time with Snowdrop. She is double pleasure for me today -- an afternoon visit at her home and later, in the evening, she'll come to the farmhouse, as her parents attend to their various social obligations.

A few photos from my visit at her home -- and forgive me here, I'm overindulging my camera, but that's because she overindulged my senses!

First of all, what's new in terms of her quest for the next challenge? Well, she's ready to try out her jumper seat (her doc says -- it'll  really strengthen her (already strong) trunk!). Does she love it instantly? Let's just say she's tentatively giving it a chance!






I give her some tummy time, but she's not interested in flipping. She tries to scoot forward and finding herself to be moving at below the speed of a caterpillar, she tells me she's had enough!






So, what does the little one like on this day?  Stretching her arms up high!  Up up, grandma!






And here's another new favorite: practicing different vowel sounds! Does she coo? Yep! With a perfectly adorable pucker!






We pause in our play to take a walk. Not around the lake, just in the neighborhood.






It's cloudy, but warm. The little one dozes off as I admire the blooms in some of the yards.






And at home, she is ready for more play.





No, Snowdrop, gotta go. But I'll see you this evening!


Snowdrop comes over in the evening with the best of her moods pinned right to her (short) sleeve. Typically, my photos with her are selfies, but when Ed's around, I sometimes hand the camera to him. Here he's in a comfortable position on the couch and getting up seems unnecessary...






For a good hour, Snowdrop amuses herself with two new toys here. This is one of them.






And here's the other.






Ha! You're thinking Ed's the toy? Well, you could say that, I suppose. But I was referring to the soft ball with the loopy things all around it.






I suppose I'm giving you a Snowdrop overload today. Let me end with this one, where she is, in my view, showing me all her might.





 I stopped taking photos after that. You wont see her arching her back, or kicking up a storm with those strong legs, or dozing off late late late into the evening with a thousand smiles and giggles. But really, if a camera is to show off the best parts of your day, then I can only say that there isn't enough room on the photocard to take in all that a May day such as this one can deliver.

the farmette

Today I divided and moved hostas, yarrow, ferns and anemonie.  I planted probably three dozen perennials, some purchased just this morning from the two perennial ladies in Verona. I dug up 5.8 ton of weeds and quack grasses (rough estimate). We cleared the grape garden and put in the cucumbers. Ed built support structures for two of my biggest flowers. I clipped spent daffodils and I pruned back (severely) any and all lavender, giving it a chance to establish new branches. I moved many loads of wood chips. Ed picked asparagus from the wild clumps that grow, well, in many strange places (our planned asparagus bed is in its second year, so we must let the asparagus there go to seed). I dug up invasive vines. I promised myself that I am done, done, done with the flower field that abuts the brick path leading to the farmhouse door. I pulled out maybe 500 seedlings from underneath the crab (birds eat the apples and leave the seeds behind...), listening to the buzz of 600 bees working the blooms. We found a frog in the car and had to tote it on our shopping trip, then back again, to the yard. It hid in my newly purchased iris. I cut some white lilac for the kitchen and late, very late, I rode with Ed on his motorbike to the first of the season local farmers market, where we exchanged our eggs for cheese curd and bought more asparagus.

I thought, during that ride, how much I love the farmette and the work that it requires. The warm, really warm air blew in strong, beautiful gusts past us and I wondered if it's possible to be more at peace with a day.




Scotch comes early to ask -- are you up yet?





the man and his rooster





breakfast on the porch!





Are you digging? Worms! We're on our way!





Our crabs have exploded with blooms!





In the old orchard, at this time of the year, even the violets and dandelions look great!





working along the brick path





waiting (as always) for me to pick out my perennials





the frog that traveled with us





one of my favorite end of day tasks: surveying the day's work

Wednesday

A humid day -- first cool and drizzly then hazy and warm.

We aren't deterred. The bindweed has to be forked out of the ground, the tomatoes have to go in. The young orchard (apples, pears, cherries), surviving (for the first time!) a winter and spring of deer (Ed built sturdy cages), needs to be mulched, the melon, pea and bean seeds must be planted.

And so again we work in the rain.






We pause for breakfast...






... and then we return to it. (The cheepers are munching on their breakfast treat of a stale doughnut.)





I have to stop to meet my baby sitting commitments and this is a good thing, because it gives me a chance to take a few deep breaths and refocus. Yard-work can propel you from one task to the next and before you know it, you are dead to the world. Snowdrop requires a different set of skills, most of them Sherlock Holmesian: let me try to deduce what the baby wants now!

Snowdrop runs through her "exercises."  She sits. (Yep, she's blowing a bubble!)






She tries to crawl.






And when she has had enough of it all, I bounce her around and show her the thrill of being agile and strong. (A series of selfies follows.)






And she is that.






With occasional breaks of a restorative kind.






Because Snowdrop and her parents have an appointment this afternoon and because the three of them are heading out together tomorrow for a day away from home and work, I say goodbye to the little girl earlier than usual and for a longer period than usual (I'll see her again Friday).






But the fact is, my pause in Snowdrop care comes at an okay time. I have my yard work list to guide me through an intense period of farmette chores. I'm psyched for it.

Today, I weed, I mow, I transplant. There is that heady scent of lilac in the air. The crab apple is in its most glorious point right now. It's an intensely beautiful moment here!

















(one more view of the daffodils)


By evening I am ready to sit down. Ed is out biking tonight. I reheat chili and take out my laptop to write.

scooting forward

We work in the rain. I had started a list of farmette outdoor must-dos and the list grew and grew and so we could not turn our back on the yard merely because of the showers that came down off and on, all day long. If yesterday was sunny and very warm, today is just the opposite. (Though you could argue no less beautiful.)






Immediately after breakfast...





...we head for the new orchard.

I think to myself -- it's the kind of day where a dram of scotch whisky would fit in nicely. (I had watched a report yesterday on 60 Minutes about the Isle of Islay.  I had to smile when I recalled that I bought back several bottles of the finest of Islay scotches last June, thinking they'd fit in nicely into a cold winter evening. In fact, I had a sip only on two occasions this entire year and they felt strangely out of context -- as if I need just the right Islay atmosphere to appreciate this powerfully warming drink.)

Finally, by noon, the rain has soaked through my jacket and I feel cold enough to call it quits. We had pulled up weeds around six of the seventeen new fruit trees and we are spent. In the evening we'll have cleared three more. It will not warrant a cross out of a full line on my must-do list, but nonetheless, I'm happy with our progress.


In other news, my acrobatic granddaughter spends the afternoon at the farmhouse. Here she is, practicing her siting skills.






But do you think she'd roll for me today? No! She's onto bigger and better things! When I place her on her tummy, I can almost sense her grinning at me with impish pleasure!  No rolling around today, grandma, I'm interested in moving forward!








And scoot she does. After her toy, off the quilt, hunching, squirming, heaving forward!






Let it not be said that this four month old (she is that today!) chooses to be still and wait for the magic to happen!






I look at the time: it's her lunch hour. On goes the bandana bib.








Soon, grandma? I'm hungry!




Maybe I should eat rabbit...




Bad idea...




Where's the good stuff, grandma?!


In the evening, when Snowdrop leaves, we are at it again outside, until I throw in the spade and retire home to cook supper. I've cut a few sprigs of white lilac to bring inside.






As I place it in a jar on the kitchen table, I glance out the window. Ed is spending a few minutes with Oreo. The other hens, shy as anything, move in closer nonetheless. The chicken whisperer, I think to myself. Give him a cheeper and he'll quietly make friends.






A few minutes later, he walks down to get the coop ready for the brood. It's still wet outside, still gray, but just a touch warmer now.