Saturday in photos

Early morning walk: yellow day lilies and sedum, mauve veronicas and delphinium. I smile appreciatively. The colors of early summer. 

















It's going to be a hot day. The spring tail end planting (because it still is spring, technically anyway) will have to wait. Tomorrow morning maybe? I take stock and hurry ahead with other tasks relegated to this morning.






Breakfast: the last meal with my visiting friends.






They're off, returning to their southern home. Will it be even hotter there?


I do the usual weekend stuff: clean, wash, prune, tidy, organize. And then I hurry to Snowdrop's home. She and her mom are waiting. We're to walk to the big downtown farmers market. Where the colors again are of early summer.






After we're done strolling/buying/sampling, Snowdrop is rewarded with time on the grass: to run, romp, play. To push the stroller, of course.





Today is the day of the annual naked bikers' ride. Perhaps a hundred or so clothesless bicyclists spin around the Capitol Square. A young girl looks on and asks her mom-- what are they doing? The mom answers -- they're riding their bikes without clothes. Don't you ever do that!  I grin.





Snowdrop is completely indifferent to the whole thing. She runs on the grass, looking for cooler shady spots.






Her mom lifts her high in the sky and I notice how the little one has completely turned into a golden haired girl. A summer child.






They walk this way, she runs that way...





We finish our market excursion. I grocery shop. Late in the afternoon, Ed and I tidy the buckwheat patch  and then I water some of this year's new planting. Did I mention it is a hot hot day?

Tomorrow? Hot again. I don't mind. I want to take in that emergent summer air. Because these colors, scents, warm air -- they're a fleeting thing. A beautiful few moments before we plunge into the thick riot of the summer season.

Friday in photos

The sun rises, then disappears. Every day. I get up with it. And in the summer, I start itching to retire soon after it's completely dark outside. They say there's a name for that kind of a person -- one who is tied to the sun's rhythms, but I don't know what it is. A "sun person?" (My grandma was that kind of a person so perhaps I'm simply mimicking her patterns?)






(I do love that early golden light...)






(What's blooming? Take a look at what's about to take off! Each bud is a day's blossom of course...)






The cheepers, like me, are up early. (Or is it that I'm up early because of them?) Today, Ed joins us in these young minutes of the day. Truthfully, he was so engrossed in his work that he did not go to sleep until after sunrise and then only for a couple of hours. He would be the opposite of a "sun person." He sleeps when he has the inclination for it and not when the sun tells him it's time.

The girls walk together in the morning. I don't know why.






I always think they look so cool -- like a pack of best friends out to see the world (or the front yard as the case may be).






We're back to warm weather and a bit of a tighter schedule for Ed and myself (because it's Friday). Still, my friends join us for breakfast. It's not a farmhouse rule, but it is a tradition. You go along if you like it. Most people passing through here like it.






And then I am with Snowdrop. It's a hot day again and I do not wait long to go out with her.

She spots my motorcycle and shows some interest in it. Okay Snowdrop -- meet rosie.






We walk to the distant coffee shop... (Find the high chair, Snowdrop! Kids so love repetition...)






And then, as always, she chooses to stay out of the stroller. Here's a classic Snowdrop wave:






An easy way to keep that smile on her face: let her push the stroller.






I suggest the small local park by the lesser lake (a boat plows the weeds so that recreational lake people can make use of the waters...)


 



... and Snowdrop's happy enough -- runs right down into the water...






Enjoys being barefoot...






Enjoys the swing...





But I think the heat is just a little too intense, because she does not insist that we stay. A few minutes later, we're on our way home again.


In the afternoon, my friend Diane and I head out for a walk. Just the two of us -- to the shady Arboretum.






I've been to this place maybe fifty times and out of all these visits, only about half a dozen have been without incident. Today was not one of those without incident. Oh, we started strong! But within an hour, we were lost and it was my fault. Here's my forgiving friend, on the porch, many hours later...






Dinner? Oh, Thai take out. On the porch.





Late into the night. And this, of course, is super late for someone who thinks herself to be a sun person.

Thursday in photos

I think I ought to set a word limit for these days: no more than ten words per photo. I'm capable of ten. But not a whole lot more. Though perhaps that would lead to the posting of unnecessary photos just so that I could get my eleventh in! Never mind then, let me do the best that I can, given that the day is almost over and I am just now sitting down to Ocean.

Morning walk. It's dawn, but the clouds haven't fully dispersed. You'll perhaps notice the gray overtones to the photo. Here you have a mixture of the annuals and the perennials:






Let's take a look at that sky, that great great great Midwestern sky, over the fields to the north of us. Now that's what you call a promising day!






The venerable farmhouse.






The adored (by me) and indulged (by everyone else) breakfast.






And now to Snowdrop's! Hi little one, hi cats!






A book morning. I read about a dozen to her, then she "rereads them" on her own.






A few more...






And then we go out. (Finally, grandma! About time!) Coffee shop. (Cup is empty, grandma!)






Pushing the stroller home.






In the evening, I cook supper. My daughter, who has known my friend Diane almost from my girl's own toddlerhood, comes over with Snowdrop. (Snowdrop explains to Diane what's what in her play space.)






I finish spreading strained apricot preserves over the strawberry tart...






We eat.






Do I taste fresh oregano on my shrimp, grandma?





Oh, thank you for replicating my Parisian strawberry tart experience, grandma! No, I don't think you'd get best Paris tart award, but you might get best Fitchburg tart award!





I have to show you this, grandpa Ed!
Okay, but do you see that you can also put them in upside down?
Always the upside down guy...





Beautiful day. Perhaps you don't see it -- the acts are so small -- a walk, a kid book, a meal. But to me, they're what made a day move from lovely to sublime. Yep, sublime.

Wednesday in photos

It rained during the night. Pounding rain -- the kind the fells your flowers. Still, I'm glad. In the long run, the flower fields were made better for it.

In the morning, the clouds lingered. I surveyed the beds -- not too bad. Here's a purple on purple photo. If you garden, you'll recognize the phlox and the spiderwort (what a name!).






And here's a different spiderwort -- a more contained one that looks regal and lovely, especially with bits of rain still clinging to its graceful leaves.






The rabbit reminded me that, in addition to the trampling chickens, the groundhogs, the deer, the chipmunks, we have another powerful set of teeth at work in my flower beds. We're surrounded by fields of vegetables, market flowers, fruits -- why are you here, instead of elsewhere?






Here's a very drenched lupine and four hens going through their morning beautification rituals.






Breakfast. At first, just with these two, eventually to be joined by my friend's husband.






And then I leave them all and take the old rose-ah-roo to Snowdrop's home.

And here's a surprise! Let this be the day that I first see her displaying a strong interest in a doll. It was a first birthday gift and she has ignored it completely from the moment she laid eyes on it (well, except that she really enjoyed taking the baby's fake bottle and chewing on it). No one cared. The doll got pushed aside. Snowdrop focused on outer space. She really loves things having to do with rockets and astronauts.

But today, the little astronaut (see p.j.'s) decided to display ferocious nurturing instincts. No one could quite understand the wheres and whys of it, but suddenly, Snowdrop is into this piece of plastic that she affectionately calls "baby."






After her bath, she and I walk over to the distant coffee shop. It's beastly hot, but she doesn't mind. We are, after all, going out!

I tell her we will see my friend there (Diane has work to do and she is doing a bit of it at this same coffee shop). Snowdrop has never met her and she is a bit surprised in a pleasant sort of way by the unexpected encounter. She does her most genial hand wave and high five.






That's it for cookie crumbs, grandma?
Yep.






We leave my friend to her stuff and now, perhaps fortified by the raisins from the cookie, Snowdrop wants to do her most favorite bit: push that darn stroller. In the heat. (I'd forgotten her sunhat. She has now turned into a summer blond.)






At home, it's a sweet, sweet combination of rockets and baby doll.






And then it's time for me to scoot home. This is the best kind of day for a moped ride. The air is warm and the breeze of zipping fast creates a tunnel of coolness for you. I take the longer route, coming in on the back of the farmers' fields. Are these the same strips of land that just two months ago lay bare and lifeless? It's so lovely here now!






In the evening, Ed goes off for his weekly bike ride. I pan fry Wisconsin trout and steam Michigan asparagus. I bring out the farmette rhubarb cake, and serve a prize winning Wisconsin cheese with it all. Remember your Midwestern roots, my friends!






As the light fades, the bats and fireflies come out to give us their version of a spring dance. Remember this season, they seem to say. Remember all that it gives us each year.