Tuesday

Sometimes, a day can be so sunny, so utterly perfect feeling. I thought today was quite like this.

We had a beautiful breakfast on a beautiful morning on the porch.






This isn't the time of year where you're going to rave about your flowers, and still, I thought the beds outside were looking good. There's much to admire!





I had another string of details to attend to -- most having to do with some issues that arose with the work on my Warsaw apartment. I barely made it on time to pick up Snowdrop at school.

Relieved that I have all the paper messes behind me, I take the little one back to the farmette.

I unbuckle the girl and set her free.

The cheepers rush to her, expecting bread. Here, she seems to be telling Butter -- I have nothing for you!






She sets out -- you guessed it -- toward the tomatoes. The cheepers, undeterred, follow.






Knowing how anxious the chickens are to share in her treats, Snowdrop takes her harvest inside the house.

Once all tomatoes are consumed and juice drippings are wiped (more or less) clean, Snowdrop goes to her play area. Ed comes in. Nothing pleases her more than having a bunch of people to play with.

Read book! -- she pleads.











These are her most tired minutes -- those just before her nap -- but I have no doubt that the girl is happy. Very happy.






After her nap, she eats. She has a new way of appreciating raspberries...






I'm agreeable. Anything to distract her from the presence of the cookies we had baked together yesterday.

In the afternoon, the sun is bright, the humidity isn't too high. I'm thinking -- this may be the last of the truly summer-like days. We ought to seize it and do something special.

I tell Snowdrop we'll be going to the local park. To climb towers and play in the playground.

We drive to our nearby Lake Farm County Park.

What a bust! Pulling in, I see immediately that the silo tower with the good views is closed. Why? I cannot tell you. The playground at the side seems poorly maintained and not geared for toddlers. I don't give up. I know that there are two more playgrounds further down the drive.

I come to the second one. Not much there. Plus, it is completely overrun with wild geese. You may find that charming. Not me. Geese in parks are a nuisance. I would not plop a toddler in their midst, no matter how desperate I was for outdoor playtime.

We drive to the third play area. Snowdrop is doubting my sincerity. Where are the towers? Why aren't we playing?

It's not great here either. There are swings, but none of them are suitable for a tiny one. There is a climbing structure. She rushes to it, but it's like a highway leading to nowhere: once she gets up, there's not much that she can do. I try to get her into the pipe tunnels and she looks at me amused and disinterested. 






Finally, she locates a slide that is rather steep but manageable.






She goes down again (and nearly lands on her butt on the ground, but I catch her)...





And again, and again and again. And I suppose I would have stayed with her there, letting her slide like this over and over again, but the mosquitoes were out and I could not subject her to their nasty presence.


Snowdrop is a girl who loves the promise of adventure and I felt that this didn't quite measure up to what anyone would call "grand." And so I tell her that once we return home, I'll dig out her little wading pool for one last summer splash.





She is happy. Very happy.

But once again, I have to lure her away from her fun. The mosquitoes, though not as fierce as in the park, are hovering.

Ed comes out, the little girl is delighted...





But I have to drag her away from it all.

I offer her a bath inside the house and she sweetly goes along.

I do not cut into that one. She sits in the tub and pours water from one cup to the next and I am so relieved that she can have her time of uninterrupted play. Only when her parents are about to show up do I wrap a towel around her. I am loathe to reward anything with a sweet treat, but I do think that Snowdrop deserves a piece of an oatmeal raisin cookie for all her interrupted play. A cookie that she herself baked the day before.

Monday

Breakfast before the storms.






Then Ed settles in to his work calls and emails and I attend to the irksome details of daily life that tend to surface on Monday mornings.

Snowdrop comes to the farmette after school. Not interested in staying outside. Bike! -- she says. Then runs inside and looks for it.






Helmet on. Tentative about bike, but who cares! She knows it's here. She eyes it, touches it. That's enough for today.






Then she asks for music. Dance!

Her feet fly!






I have been with Ed nearly eleven years and I have never ever gotten him to dance with me. I tell her -- ah ah does not dance.

The next minute, Snowdrop and ah ah are dancing.






After her nap, I tell her we need to make cookies again.

She is on it!






Licking the beaters is the baker's sweet reward.






One last mix...






Cookies are baking. Snowdrop runs from one room to the next, full of energy and  laughter. Ed comments -- she sure is happy today...






And now the storms come. There is rain. Thunder. Hail. Lots of hail.

Look, Snowdrop! 






Of course she wants to go outside.

Let's wait until the rains quiet down. 

We go out at the tail end of the storm. I don't have rain garb for her here, but I find my camping hat and I put it on her -- this will protect you from the worst of it.






Whoa! The sun is throwing some beams to the west! There should be rainbow! Snowdrop, come run with me! We might catch it!

Oh, do we catch it!






I'd like to believe that she is overwhelmed. Because I surely am. Red, orange, yellow, green,
 blue, purple...

Pose for a photo, Snowdrop! 
Okay...






The rains leave big puddles in the driveway.






The hat has served its purpose. Go ahead, Snowdrop. Play.
Rocks, ga ga.
Yes, rocks.






She is wet, she is drippy. I run a hot bath for her. She loves it. I can hardly get her out.

We read books, beginning with the one about weather. And rainbows.






A day may be beautiful for any number of reasons, but this one belongs to Snowdrop: she made the irksome little tidbits of the early hours slide into oblivion. Her energy was our energy. Her grins were ours as well.

Sunday

It's minutes before midnight. Where did the hours go? Surely not to a leisurely breakfast. That's a fifteen minute affair.






To garden work? Nah... It's too warm and too buggy still.






Some part of the day went to a hike. Ed and I returned to our favorite nearby trail (Ice Age, near Brooklyn). Oh, we enjoyed it, but we were surprised at how buggy it was. So we did hike...






... but we did not linger. At least not beyond the minutes I spent admiring the monarchs.






At the peak point, we do a selfie.






Here's the view:






Back in the forest...






Looking out over the prairie. Whoa, this could be Tuscany!





The evening was complicated. Ed and I went over to the young family's home. He'll be throwing an eye on the water accumulation in their basement. I would be chasing Snowdrop.

In the end, he and Snowdrop's dad replaced a sump pump and Snowdrop and her mom came to the farmhouse where I finished up dinner preparations. With a lot of snacking on the part of the hungry girl.






... and helping gaga cook.






When the men return from the pump job, Snowdrop is delighted.   
Ah-ah read!
Snowdrop, say please.  
Pleeeeese!






Good job, little one!






By the time we eat it's plenty dark. Snowdrop moves from highchair to big people chair.






She is happy. And yes, we are as well.  Big grins, deep sighs of relief. And a fine meal, outside still. Happy. For sure.

Saturday

It's a beautiful Saturday in south central Wisconsin!

Morning glance:





There isn't a breakfast to speak of. I'm not unreasonable -- Ed is exhausted and asleep. I have a market date with Snowdrop and her mom. But unexpectedly, a good friend shows up, someone whom we haven't seen in a long long time and so I pull Ed out of bed and as long as he's up, I may as well bring out a few of the breakfast accoutrements.





And then I take out the old rose-ah-roo and I moped my way to Snowdrop's home. From there, we walk with her mom to the market.

It is our habit to first stop at Graze for a bakery snack. Snowdrop always gets a croissant. Baguette, croissant -- important words in a young child's vocabulary! (It is also her reward for putting up with the very slow moving walk around the square: Saturday markets are always very crowded.)






Marketing done. We go out onto the green for a romp.






Snowdrop loves these minutes. Run, walk, push stroller -- they're all her favorites.





And when she's happy, she doesn't hold back. The world knows it. There's a reason why her school teachers call her "happy girl."






After the market, I moped home. The soy fields across the road from the farmette look very autumnal now. Are we that close to the cold season?





In the later afternoon (and possibly because we had such a good time a week ago at the Jefferson Sheep and Wool Festival), Ed and I go to a more distant but promising by the sounds of it Monroe Cheese Days Festival.

Not to take credit for being farsighted, but as we pull into town, I have a feeling that this is going to be different and not necessarily in a good way. In this small village of 10,800, there is no parking to be found within many, many blocks of the town square.  Eventually, we snag a half legal spot (you could argue how much of your tail can poke into the yellow strip) and we follow the stream of pedestrian traffic to the noise at the village green.

There are many blocks leading into the square where I could have taken a similar photo. The conclusion? There are very many people here today.





And we hear the complaints from locals who are on the retreat: too many people! What, says another -- do you want them to expand the village green?

I myself wouldn't go that far. But it is awfully hard to warm up to a cheese festival where the excitement seems to be about things other than good cheese. It is, for example, far easier to grab hold of countless beers and fried foods and whatever other junk stuff you associate with local fairs than to get your hands on local cheese.

Here's a pleasant respite: old tractors, as displayed by proud farmers.





















And here's one more rather sweet moment: watching three men play modest melodies on the alphorn.






The one bit of cheese we sampled came at this place -- where the woman was carving a cow head on a slab of what turned out to be very good cheese. I know, because she picked up the reject slivers and handed them to whoever was nearby (me). Yum.






The more typical consumption at the festival looked like this (he's dabbing his fries in what I assume is melted cheese of sorts, while in line to buy a fried cookie dough sundae, or some such good stuff):





Oh, I suppose I'm a touch unfair. There was a tent in which some cheesemakers (I have no idea as to which ones and how good they were) displayed their stuff and allowed you to sample some of what they produced. That tent had a line that was at least an hour's wait. You bought your beer, added another, then another, and eventually you were inside, sampling.  Well now, as I told Ed -- you could ask any of the cheese vendors at the Madison market for a sample of their cheeses and you'd get it on the spot. No fuss, no wait. Most stores in town selling Wisconsin cheeses would do the same. Why wait the hour or more to get in the tent, not knowing if it was worth the wait to begin with?

We left not exactly disappointed (the tractors, the horn blowers, the people-watching), but glad nonetheless to be out in the quiet countryside again.






(Pumpkin stand on the way home.)






Evening photo: much like the first one in this post only different. Subtly so. But that's what's so grand about it. Not in your face, just gentle and pretty.




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