Monday preparations

Nothing about this week is ordinary. Nothing. As I noted earlier, I am to have my second week of house guests, or rather just one house guest, starting tomorrow and I want to prepare well for her. And so I am up at 5 and right after opening the coop (and chasing Henny out -- Henny, who has perched on Java's egg as if it were her own), I admire the way the garden is starting to unfold...

(Only in nature does deep orange work well next to deep pink.)






(A summer iris arguably even more beautiful than a spring iris.)






(The extraordinary day lily.)







And then I fix, I clip, I transplant, plant, and finally I water the beds that I hadn't had time for yesterday.

All this takes me up until 10. I am very tempted to go back to bed and get up maybe tomorrow, but I push aside such indulgent thoughts and get our breakfast out on the porch rather quickly...





... because I am due at Snowdrop's home in a few minutes.

And this, of course, is not ordinary, since on Mondays, the little girl typically comes to the farmette, but here's the deal: she is going to go on a vacation starting early tomorrow, thereby justifying a different routine for today.

But within that, we do the usual. The walk. The coffee shop. The pushing of the stroller. Still, I know that this is the last time we'll be stomping through her neighborhood for a while and so I hand you a few photos that will seem awfully familiar, even as for me, each one is so very unique...

(Playing hide and seek in the coffee shop...)






(Pushing the stroller...)






(Back home, studying the trucks and cars book...)






Is this it then? No more Snowdrop on Ocean for a week? Oh, quite the contrary! Her parents are sending her on a vacation to the farmette! Just because I live close by, doesn't mean she can't sleep over at grandma's house for a fistful of days!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll have to continue my preparations: menus to plan, activities to schedule...

I'll leave you with a solstice full moon tonight. I see that it is the first solstice full moon in more than 50 years. Strawberry moon. Beautiful over the fields to the east of us.

Goodnight, moon... goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere (from the beloved book by Margaret Wise Brown).

Sunday

On a day like this, a brilliant gardener retires to the hammock and reads a book, sipping lemonade. It's not wise to plant in the strong sun on a hot hot day. It's not wise to water then either: you lose so much to evaporation.

But I am not a brilliant gardener and since Ed again retired from his work just as the sun was rising (thereby offering to let the cheepers out), I do not get up to take advantage of the early morning to do yard work and so I decide to throw caution to the gentle breeze of a summer-like day and get going with my outdoor work. I plant, weed and trim and, too, I water. Some of the mature beds haven't needed watering this year at all. The rains did the work for me. But we're in for a dry spell and I have this one day when I can do my meditative hose spraying (I do aim at the roots) and so this is in fact how I spend my day.

(Planting in the big front road garden...)






(Watering the day lilies. Photo by Ed.)





When I come inside to get a cold drink (lemon sparkling water never tasted so good!), I confer again and again with Ed in the matter of Henny, our green egg laying young hen.

In the last two or three days, she has holed up in the roost, sitting sometimes on the eggs of the other hens, sometimes on nothing at all. All day long.

Ed claims she has turned broody. (This is when a chicken wants to hatch the eggs.) You cannot tell her that no amount of sitting on unfertilized eggs will produce a young one. You have to chase her down and make her rejoin the pack.

But I have a different view on this: I think she is terrorized by Scotch, the self proclaimed top hen (once herself terrorized by the white Butter, who in her older years has turned mellow, as if to say -- listen, I've seen it all... chasing power is not worth it...). Scotch chases Henny relentlessly whenever the little one wants to share in the goodies I spread for them. It seems to me Henny is hiding.

We talk about our chickens all day long: during our late morning breakfast...






... during dinner too.

And in between, I tend to the garden. Oh, the bright lights and promises of nearly summer!






(Phlox Carolina Miss Lingard, often called the "wedding phlox"  is the star in a solstice garden.)






Of course, because it's Sunday, the young family comes over for supper.

(Snowdrop casts an eye to see if grandpa Ed is paying attention...)






(I could just stand here and drink from my cup and watch the sun go down...)






(Ed hurries in from watering the tomatoes. Snowdrop is already halfway through her corn. She will have eaten her ear and most of mine before the dinner's end.)






(Playing games with her daddy...)






Ah, but that all children could have the joy of looking up to their dads in the way that Snowdrop looks up to hers! Happy Father's Day indeed!





Big week ahead. In good ways!

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.