Saturday

I'll start with yesterday's sunset. Ed was out locking up the cheepers and he called me over to admire it, even though you can't really see a full setting sun from the farmette land. Too many trees in the way. Still, the colors were magnificent! (I did not post it yesterday because I'd already published my post for the day by the time I stepped out. Besides, you don't want to see our breakfast tableau at the beginning of every single Ocean post, right? So here you go, flowers and a setting sun. Behind the willow.)






This morning -- well, it's cold! I test the furnace for the first time. Just for a minute, to make sure it still remembers how to heat this place.

And I feed the animals. And admire the incredible power of the September garden.






Early fall (before the first frost when it all wilts to a great heap of nothing) is a great time for trailing nasturtium. They're all over the garden and this year, in addition to the orange blooms, we have ruby, pale lemon, and nearly white ones.






Okay, breakfast.






Saturday is, of course, the big, downtown farmers market day...

 (Do you see how high the lakes are? I click this on my drive downtown. The bike path is being licked by the waves of Lake Monona...)






...and I meet up with my daughter and both kids for our walk around the crowded square. Ah, but the foods and flowers are so pretty!

(Door County fruits of the season!)






No downtown trip is good for Snowdrop unless it includes a visit to the Capitol and a climb up the steps to the upper balconies. I wait with Sparrow outside while they complete their mini excursion.


And here's a pleasant surprise: the young family proposes an after the market brunch at Sardine! We hustle down, with kids packed into the stroller...






Our leisurely meal together gives us a chance to talk about the year ahead. We always have grand schemes churning!

Well, Sparrow is just short of three months. He doesn't have complicated schemes in his head yet.






Snowdrop? Oh, you never know with Snowdrop!







In the evening, the little girl comes over for pizza and a sleepover at the farmhouse. Her overnight visits are always special for all of us. Undoubtedly the highlight for her is to take the flashlight and go out to the coop at night with Ed.






(I suppose a close second is watching a video clip and munching on ahah's popcorn.)





Nighttime. Clear skies, quiet moments. Many books later, Snowdrop is asleep. Ed dozes on the couch, I linger, enjoying the utter stillness of the moment.

Friday

It's as if suddenly we landed in autumn. The temperatures took a dip and a dive.

We eat breakfast inside.






You, Ocean readers, you know how my Fridays look: terribly chore loaded. Today is no different.

So anxious am I to move on, away from online shopping (for my mother, and for myself -- those needed replacements of broken and tattered things that should have been replaced a long time ago), away from all of the tedious stuff we all, even Ed must do (yes, even him, the guy who is so terrific at not replacing anything that can be taped together one more time)  -- so terribly dull and time sucking is it that when the UPS man delivers a new travel backpack and I think it's way uglier than I had hoped, I shrug my shoulders and toss it into the closet, thinking I'll take "not what I had in mind" over having to look yet again for something better.

At least it's not expensive... I mutter to myself. I ask Ed -- do you think it's ugly? It's so... square!
If it's not expensive, it's not ugly -- is his predictable response.

(Looking out, but not going out...)






When I pick up Snowdrop, she asks to go to the playground.
It's cold! -- I protest, feeling a little ashamed that I'm wilting already and it's actually somewhere in the mid-sixties F (so about fifteen C). To my credit, I'm in shorts. She's wearing leggings.

We compromise by driving to the playground (I promise I'll do better going forward!). There, she unleashes her inner joy!

This is when you really remember the sweetness of the changing seasons. If summer was grand, fall, free of sweltering heat and overheated playground equipment, is equally beguiling. We spend a beautiful hour raking it all in.











Yes, of course: Snowdrop inevitably rolls into her story telling mode.






There is drama.






But, all's well that ends well.






I so agree, Snowdrop. I so agree.

Thursday

Sunny sunny day, busy busy busy busy day!

But is there ever a time when I wont pause to love and appreciate the bounty of the farmette gardens? Even in this late season? No there isn't.

I spend an early morning hour (or two) tiding things up a little.






Breakfast. A bit hurried.






A look at the brilliant September blooms...






And then we're off to spend the day with my Mom, who has been patiently waiting for us to help her with the rest of her apartment/account/life set up.






We work with her until it is time for me to pick up Snowdrop.

Don't tell me that weather has no impact on a mood. The girl is playful and joyous today. True, she is often playful and joyous, but today there is extra zip to her stride.






(I am so amused when little Snowdrop tells big Ed what to do...)






Ed and I have a few errands (very pleasant errands!) to run and we take her along for the ride. The first is one of our final trips to Stoneman's for their freshly picked corn. There are several working tractors in the Stoneman barn and the farmers are cool about letting kids "ride" them. I was told that Snowdrop enjoyed sitting on a John Deere at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. I tell her today -- that museum tractor? that's for city kids who can't sit on a real working tractor like you!






Pick out our corn, Snowdrop!
This one?






The Stonemans keep a goat. Just for the fun of it. Snowdrop is cautious around animals that can move quickly.






But she loves them with her whole being anyway!






She wants to check out the Stoneman cattle too. In fact, it's hard to lure her away from the farm....






But we do move on: to the Fitchburg Farmers Market, where each year, farmer Natalie lets Snowdrop climb onto her truck and select the tomatoes for our winter freezing.






It's a job Snowdrop loves all too much.






Sunny days, sunny faces, ripe tomatoes, sweet corn. These are the gifts of early September.

the end of a wet chapter

It's pouring rain outside. A steady, thick, noisy rain.

(As seen from the porch)






A Wisconsinite might get discouraged. Enough already! We're slushing in wetness! Everything is soaked. Roads remain closed. Stop!

But here's the incredible gift: looking at the weather going forward, it appears that sunshine will be with us for most of the mid September days. Everyone in our neck of the woods can at last breathe a sigh of relief.

But not today.

Breakfast, on the porch.






Ed has a meeting and so we're up and moving at very early hours. This is a good thing. It means that I have a long morning before me. It means that I can write. And I do. For the first time since my spring grandchildren were born, I'm back slugging away at my text.


In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. Who insists it is hoodie day.












Our play is brief...
... Because today, we resume Storybook Ballet classes.

She wants to wear her pinkest tutu.

Why not...






In class, the smile never leaves her face.






(Today's story: the Princess and the Pea)






Acting out a story: this is Snowdrop's love right now.






Her mom comes toward the end of class to pick her up. Sparrow is with her.

"Is that my sister?"






When Snowdrop comes out of the class and sees her brother, she rushes to him with total joy.






Outside, the rains come down and we all huddle under an umbrella.

But of course, all rains do eventually go away. You just have to hang in there and wait. 

first day of school

Since starting school in Warsaw, Poland in 1959, until I retired from teaching in 2014, there has always been for me a memorable first day of school. But the players have shifted! It used to be all about my school, my university days, my school supplies and class assignments. That changed when the kids were born and, too when I joined a university faculty. And when the grandkids were born -- it brought me around to childhood school days once again.

I love the mark of importance given to this day. Maybe we lost faith in institutions, but many of us still see hope in education and our enthusiastic focus on the beginning of a new school year reaffirms and recommits us to the schooling of our kids and grandkids.

For once, the weather cooperates. I step out to a lovely early morning.






It'll be a tad warm, but first days of school often are a tad warm.

(The fading yet still glorious Big Bed)






As before, I am invited to join on the ritual of ushering a young one off to school. I meet Snowdrop and her mom outside and we take our turn (because so many families are doing exactly the same thing!) at taking a photo of this excited and happy little girl.






And only then do I return to the farmhouse and prepare breakfast for Ed and myself.






In September, I no longer am duty bound to work in the garden. I think about its appearance a little, but it's not like I run a Giverny here: I do not need to please an audience of onlookers until November 1st. And so I dare to think about other things. Like asking a friend out to lunch. Today I had a leisurely midday meal with a former colleague. It was wonderful. The garden shrugged with indifference. Like the adolescent child who tells you -- go on and have fun, I don't need you right now.


In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. I think her day was a good one. Her teacher said as much. But her focus was on the now and she was in no mood to review the past.

Her "now" does include (by her request) new books and I have the total joy of reading one that was a favorite of mine when my daughters were growing up. It's called Miss Rumphius and it is the story of a little girl who traces the life of her adventurous great aunt who sets out to do three things: explore the world, live by the sea, and do something beautiful for the world. I loved the book every time I read it thirty years back and I loved it today. And Snowdrop was spellbound.






It didn't take long for her to launch her own story...






Ed is roped into it, of course ...






She has a knack for roping us all in -- and we're all the better for it.







Sure, there will be first dayers out there who will be disappointed. To them I say -- each day is a first day! If it's a tough beginning, you can really come back flying tomorrow. That's the thing about first days: you can always say that today was just a trial run.

Labor Day

Anyone living in Madison will remember these days as wet. Heavy storms, flooded city streets. And so it continues. We wake up to more rain. The recurring Groundhog Day of thunderstorms and pounding rainfalls.

Ed and I were awake and mulling the possibility of getting up just after six (well, I was mulling, he was tossing). We have mosquitoes popping up again and so we had scheduled a spraying of garlic and peppermint (it really does help), but the rains make this impossible. I get up to feed the animals...






I look at the wet, drippy everything...





... and go back to bed, waking up several hours later. I don't think I've done that in decades.

Breakfast is, therefore, late.  I'm putting up a photo that's mostly about Ed because he wants one for a profile he's submitting for a future sailing expedition. You'd take him as part of your crew, wouldn't you?






It's a catch-up day for me. Catch up with emails. With finding a replacement handbag online because the one I have has four holes, one in each bottom corner and I'm worried something may escape. Tidy this, straighten that.

And in the evening, the young family comes over for dinner. No, it's not Sunday, but it is a holiday and for us, a holiday means family eating together.

Snowdrop wants to know why we're not eating on the porch.


 


Sweet child! I don't have a good answer for her. After all, it's not exactly raining on the porch. It's just that you're that much closer to the damp landscape. Inside seems snug and friendly.

(Snowdrop and her dad are in a race for the roasted beets!)






She says to me -- you made so many beets! Why? I tell her that Ed likes to have them around. She runs over with slices for him.

And Sparrow? He just listens for the voice of his sister in the room.






Where did she go??






And now we are all at the table. Snowdrop doesn't have to be the center of all conversational flow, but when a space is made for her to enter into the discussion, she seizes it!






Her input is never dull!






There's a wisp of nostalgia as I take out a carton of Jeni's ice cream. I do always miss the youngest family on our Sunday meals. But, the memories are good and strong and the next meet up will take place later this month. For now, I leave you with a snapshot of a girl enchanted with her bowl of cherries and her dish of Jeni's Splendid ice cream.