Saturday

We had our frost.

When I let the cheepers out, I watched them puff out their feathers and I felt a tad sad for them: they will not feel that warmth of a heated space until next spring. I know, I know -- I'm projecting our frail human sensibilities onto down-covered birds, but surely they prefer a more moderate range of temperatures than what we're about to have.






Ed and I had carried the preferred pots of annuals to the sun room. It's not a brilliant solution -- there isn't enough sun in the room to really allow for a continued robust bloom, but there's enough light to give us a little color in the winter months. (Obviously the plants are at their best right now.)

And so breakfast is in the sun room, surrounded by the pots brimming with dainty flowers.







(... and with garden flowers in the vase as well.)






And then I am with Snowdrop.






Remember, fewer words this week. Just a few of my images of the little girl. I'm sure you could make up the captions -- and you wouldn't be far off. Except for the last one of her. Let me scroll right to it.






















This is it -- a photo from our walk. (With hood today!) Every day, we pass a house with a white picket fence. On top of the fence, the owners have put up a simple pinwheel. Snowdrop and I study it always, delighting in its spinning motions, loving the sparkle, the spontaneous movement.






It's just one high point of our walk.

(Today, you could say that the autumnal colors were also a high point, but Snowdrop seems less inclined to appreciate autumnal colors just yet.)






That's it for today!

Friday

I wonder what happened to October? This morning, I regretted just throwing on a fleece. It felt like November out there.

Again I am heading for a week of few photos and fewer words. Several events conspire to take away bits and pieces of time that I usually eek out of each day for Ocean writing: friends are coming to town and when we have farmhouse guests, I find it tough to focus on posts. Too, my daughter is away on a business trip and I do want to help Snowdrop's dad just a little over the weekend. Both parents have more work on their plate than I do at the moment (well, I actually have no work on my plate) and so any help I can give them with Snowdrop care is appreciated.

(Truthfully, it's hard to think of Snowdrop time as a favor to anyone but myself, but it is true that the girl is too active to allow for writing time on her watch.)

My thoughts, too, are straying to Warsaw, where I do have friends and they do have lives and some have taken a turn for the worse, so tracking that now is really keeping me up at night.

And finally, I'm leaving town next Thursday and there's some minimal predeparture stuff to take care of, so if there were idle minutes before all this, well -- they've disappeared.

Onto the day!

Breakfast! Back on the Ocean menu of important events!






And a fond look at the flowers before they fade into nothing tonight. Nasturtium -- you were gorgeous!











Then, at Snowdrop's home, I get right to it: bath, food, play -- all of it. (She's in post-bath recovery mode here!)






She and I spend a wonderful afternoon exploring each corner of her living space, because the girl seems to thrive on that level of detail. A tiny bit of dry leaf? A shoelace? A coaster? All exciting!

(And the baby favorite: helping fold clean laundry.)






(I'm on her side in the next photo duet. She was playing with the pumpkins. He got into her play space!)











(Here she is -- bursting with energy.)






(And here she is, reminding me that perhaps now's the time to roll out the winter cap. It's windy and cold out there!)







In the evening, I spend too much time on dinner. Cleaning and slicing raw artichokes has to be one of the more tedious vegetable preps on the planet. Still, over pasta, with pecorino cheese...






It's a soul warming dinner. And that's such a good thing.

Thursday

When the sun hides behind the clouds, the landscape looks undecided: green in part, with a dusty tone, but autumnal for sure.






We're to have a frost tomorrow and so anything that's blooming now is having its last hurrah. Oh, day lilies!






It's brisk when I go out to free the cheepers. But beautiful, too. The soy is not yet harvested. The sky is Midwest-magnificent.





We do eat breakfast this early morning, but it's hurried -- so much so that I forget to take that commemorative photo. Ed's sleepy, I'm a bit distracted.

In the middle of the night he and I chatted about girls who don't act like girls. I'd been reading the article in the NYTimes on tomboys, and as I spend time with Snowdrop, I think about the new twists and turns in the gendered world she inhabits. I myself was a tomboy -- loving my skateboard, wanting badly a pair of PF flyers so I could leap further and faster than those around me, feeling inclined to discuss politics loudly at recess, gravitating toward athleticism rather than what was then regarded as feminine.

I loved breaking "girlie" expectations and felt tough and strong in my roamings around New York City, or later -- the rural landscape of Poland.

The problem was that I also loved boys and being tough and strong seemed then not so desirable to, say, a high school or college guy. (That changes over time, of course, as some men like strong women, but surely I felt that in chasing boys, I had to tone down the strength and develop something akin to demureness. I was convinced that boys liked demureness.)

I think about this as I watch Snowdrop take on her own robust challenges. Who knows how she'll approach gender expectations. (They don't call girls who violate them tomboys anymore -- they're "gender non-conformists," but honestly -- that just doesn't sound very empowering to me and in any case, we are more accepting of girls who follow differing paths now, so who knows what it even means to be a non-conformist. Too, if you're a gender non-conformist-strong girl who wants to hold hands with boys, I don't know that you'll have an easy time of it, no matter how grounded and confident you are.)

So with this in the back of my head, I give you Snowdrop on this day. Sweetly confident, ferociously curious, strong and tall. Wouldn't it be grand if she always liked herself this way!

After her bath, waiting for breakfast.






Going right for the abacus.






Waiting for our next game.






And finally, a whole series on what I would call "being tempted by the apple."



standing up




sitting down




finally taking to the floor









way overrated!


Later, much later, I am home at the farmette. The wind is strong, the temperatures are falling. I tell Ed not cooking dinner tonight would be very nice. We eat take out Indian. I'm feeling very fortunate.

Wednesday

My granddaughter could easily seek employment as an inspector of the exactness of cleaning services. She crawls around and looks for specs of dust and if she finds something -- say a cat hair or a piece of dry leaf brought in from the outside, she examines it with utmost care.

Perhaps for this reason (and also because we have house guests coming this Friday), I felt compelled to vacuum early in the morning.

This is not a complaint. I regard this day as farmette perfection! Nonetheless, after a beautiful sun awakening...






... where the Gaura looks positively gold-touched...






... and the cheepers seem almost haloed by the morning rays...






... and the robins, oh the robins!






... they disturb the quiet and scream their daily run for crab apples...






... and before we sit down to breakfast...





... I vacuum.

In part because this week Wednesday is Snowdrop, the cleaning inspector, at the farmhouse day!

She is, as always, enthralled by the cheepers, enthralled by the tall grass, the weeping willow, the leaves, twigs, chips -- all of it.






And well she should be. It's a glorious day outside! Blue skies, the color of her eyes!






Such magic! All of it duly noted, smelled, touched...






And in the farmhouse, Snowdrop is dimply thrilled to come across her bearded grandpa Ed.






He's especially gentle and sweet with her today, as if somehow the farmette charm has taken over all of us.






She eats now like a pro...






... plays with stuffies, but also, as of today, with toy trucks and cars...





There is much more that I could photograph on this day -- of Snowdrop in our stroller walk, of her snuggly  moments, her stubborn climb up my treadmill. Of her jumparoo session (I think she'll never outgrow it: I can imagine her at 30, jumping up and down with glorious abandon),  and her evening here, because it isn't until p.j. time that she returns home. But I put away the camera early on. You don't need many photos to illustrate a beautiful day.

Tuesday

As someone said on the radio this morning -- today, for the first time this year, it feels like October!

I agree. I pull on Ed's bulky jacket to let the cheepers out and, returning to the farmhouse, I am exceptionally grateful for the few remaining flowers lining my path to the door -- I know that in a few days, they'll all be gone.






We eat breakfast in the front room. Ed is surprised that this morning I eeked out a small bouquet from the garden. I tell him it's likely to be the last one.






We talk about elements of the week ahead -- it will be a busy one. I see the look on his face -- too much detail, you're throwing too much detail at me! That's okay. He'll retreat to the sheep shed for the remainder of the day where he'll regain his peace.
Just don't forget to be here for the grocery delivery (yes, we need more fruit and I have no time to pick them up)! And you might want to throw some wood shavings into the coop and... 
Too much detail!
I smile and drive off, thinking -- well, juggling detail keeps the mind sharp. I'm keeping us cognitively healthy.


Snowdrop is a super late sleeper this morning. Finally. Up and bathed and ready to eat. She has that anxious look, as in -- are you going to feed me already?






She wears herself down after, practicing everything that's new and difficult.
No, you don't have to hold onto me, grandma... I don't think...







There, see grandma?






Oh, that girl! Sometimes she has me forget that she is just a tad more than nine months old. Consider this photo: doesn't it seem like she is participating in a debate and winning the round?






Snowdrop is only a babe when she is snuggling against you, sucking her thumb in that peculiarly Snowdrop fashion. At other times -- like here, when she is asking Virgil (in my interpretation) whether he is a Halloween cat...





...she seems like she a school aged child.


At the end of the day, my daughter comes back from work and she and I take off. We need a moment to catch up. We grab a drink at Gibs.






Such a good week! Time with both daughters, time with Snowdrop!

Wait, have I neglected Ed? Later, much later, I ask him that.
Shhh! He tells me. I'm listening to the debate.