Friday

I was thinking that for people who don't have a lot going on their normal everyday, right now, Ed and I have a lot going on. Oh, there are the grandkids, of course. And other family members who need us now and then. I have my writing projects, Ed has his oversight over the machine manufacturing firm. Those are predictable and have been there forever for us both. But recently, we have had the spikes of the unusual. Small stuff, like attending to the park creation in the new development next to us. Trips to Chicago for me, sailing gigs for Ed.

In the summer, Ed moved a boat for a friend along the shores of the Great Lakes. That small adventure stirred his nautical fancy up a bit. His sailing trips were once huge and dwindled to nothing. He always talked of going sailing again, but Ed is big on imagining things happening in the future and then sleeping on such dreams for years on end.

Then along came the internet, offering connections between sailors: those who need crews and those who want to sail as crew. He'd been eyeing activity on the site and just this week, several trips popped up that stirred his curiosity. In the end, he chose a good one: a brand new fancy sailboat (Ed would so laugh at my characterization of this vessel -- a more accurate label would be Nautitech40 ) needs to be moved from one sailboat show in Annapolis to another in Fort Lauderdale. Now. Or in the coming week.

There were many calls, questions, logistical details, and scheduling issues to resolve. To me, it's all rather "of another world." A company that moves luxury boats (because in that price range, what else would you call them?) contracts with these super sailors, who themselves contract with crew to get this thing to its destination. Unscathed and untarnished. Ed finds it all interesting: a chance to sail different types of boats. To be out on the ocean again. To learn how the world of super sailing and new technology operates. Always to learn.

So is he heading out? Who knows. It appears that you make all the arrangements and then wait for the green light. Any day now. Maybe.

Breakfast is a bit rushed. Ed is between phone calls, while hurricane winds rage on the east coast and waves wash away entire communities. Fun times.






In the afternoon I pick up Snowdrop. She is so tired, so very tired, that I have trouble waking her from her school nap. I look around me -- a half dozen kids are also struggling with the wake up moment. Unusual. When I arrive, typically most are up and running.
The teacher shrugs. They all collapsed today, she tells me.

It's cloudy and cold. I carry her from school to car, from car to farmhouse. We spend a good hour reading books. Anna Hibiscus, the little girl from Africa who visits her grandma in Canada is a current favorite, most certainly because it so wonderfully describes the joy of finding yourself, for the first time ever, in the middle of a snowy Canadian winter. Snowdrop is really looking forward to winter!

And now her impish playfulness kicks in.






If we can't be in a field of snow, we will be at a fair, eating foods, having the best time!






Ice cream, cakes, popcorn -- the fair has it all!






There are rules, of course. She spells them out, one by one. The consequences of breaking them are severe. Dare I test the waters of rebellion? Let's just say that my role is always to dance at the edges of misbehavior. I do so now as she works hard to reign me in.





It's good to flip sides occasionally, so that she will be the one who is forced to take the high road and I can acknowledge the difficulties of being spunky and spirited.


In the evening, Ed and I are back in the limbo world of waiting. Will the ship sail? With him? Without him? I do not know.

Thursday

I'm going to post three youtubes that came my way today. If you aren't especially into alternative rock or indie pop (I'm using labels often applied to this musician), skip the first two and just give a click to the third, which is interesting for many reasons, the music itself being just one. I'll get to that one in a second.

My reason for linking to this stuff is because Ocean often takes you to Poland -- of course it does. I go there frequently and you tag along. But I worry sometimes that you get a fixed image of Poland here, as seen through the lens of my camera and it is an image that I have created for you out of a compilation of memories, returns, and rather sentimental, soporific ramblings through known to me corners of that country.

When in Poland, I connect mostly to my generation of Poles. (The exception here is my extraordinary architect and designer, Karolina, who is now my friend, at the same time that she belongs to the next generation of Polish people -- one my daughters would inhabit were they in Poland.) Ocean, for the most part, gives you an older person's perspective. These three youtubes (below) give you something else -- a slice of Poland as seen through the eyes of young people.

Let me describe the clips to you: they showcase the music of Poland's amazing young musician, Dawid Podsiadło. He's just 24 or 25 and his songs have been at the top of music charts in Poland for several years now. The first youtube is of his most recent hit "Nie Ma Fal." It's about a relationship, and the text at the beginning suggests there'll be a more sophisticated video for the song someday, but I'm not sure whether that comment is in jest, since the current one is pretty satisfying. I like it a lot, so here you have it -- music that young Poland is listening to:

The second youtube is also Podsiadło's work and I'm putting it up because the guy is actually fluent in English and his previous album had maybe a half dozen songs in English. Here's one of them:

But it's the third one that I think is especially poignant, because it brings together very many themes for me: the music is by Posiadlo, but this rendition is an instrumental adaptation of Dawid's song "small town" (or perhaps a better translation would be "small town boy"). It's played by two extremely talented cellists. One of them happened to be living in my apartment on Tamka when I purchased the place and though I let him stay there until the end of the university term, ultimately he had to leave. My sister helped him locate another place and they've been in close contact since. So much so that when it came time to film the video to their music, she let them use my grandparents' old house in the village where I lived in my early years (and where I vacationed nearly every summer of my childhood). And so this clip shows off the music of a new generation of talented Polish musicians, as seen against the backdrop of my grandparents' house and a rural Poland that is as familiar to me as the back of my hand.

Here it is:

It's lovely stuff. Give them a thumbs up if you agree.



It's a cold morning, a crisp morning, one where after breakfast...

... Ed tries to coax me into doing outdoor stuff, but I am rather stuck on enjoying the sunshine from inside the farmhouse, with only an occasional glance out the window at the prettiness of the day. I'm just getting used to the sudden change in the weather.

And in the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. And she picks up a ginger snap.






For the next several hours, she spins a story: when she grows up, she will be going to Antarctica, to be a scientist there. Studying what? Snow! And penguins.






She must prepare for the trip. She asks for a suitcase. She packs the essentials. Everything but the food. Gaga, I wont be going until I'm an adult. (which she imagines is imminent, but still...)  We will pack the food later.  But a few toys, a placemat, a flamingo, a music box, a wooden macaron so they can see down there what they're missing, an Eiffel Tower...






A book! She has to write a book about Antarctica and it must be packed!





All that goes into the suitcase. One more thing, gaga -- a box for the toy penguins.
It wont fit.
We can put it in this pocket! Oh! It sticks out! Can we cover it? There will be snow in Antarctica!

We're set.

At this point, Ed readies himself to go outside.
Suitcase abandoned, she is at his side. We're going to pick flowers! -- she tells me. I had mentioned that we're getting a deep frost tonight. After explaining the consequences of it (no more blooms tomorrow), she is delighted to go out and pick all that she otherwise cannot touch.






The harvest:
















Our day's not done. It's "go to school night" at Snowdrop's school: an evening where the kids show their families what they're up to during the day. When you watch a child show off her routines while away from home, you're inevitably impressed by how independent she can be.





At home, or even at the farmhouse, you're too quick to jump in and provide assistance. To get this, to get that. To pick up the toys. To fill that pitcher of water. At school, the child learns to cruise her own ship.

Sparrow is with us tonight, taking a back seat, as the younger kid always does, as the family admires the growth and astonishing cleverness of the older one in school.

("Where is Snowdrop?")






Eventually, of course, the tables will be switched and there will come a time when Sparrow will have the full attention of adoring parents, as the older one goes off to college or whatever life's ambition pulls her.  For now, he is busy straining to hear the sound of her voice, as she plunges into the production of her next book. Two in one day! I should be one hundredth that fast.

Wednesday

There comes a day when picking up the camera is the last thing that you want to do. It's as if you're so preoccupied/dismayed/stuck-in-one-place that you just can't see anything visually presentable before you.

Today was not such a day, but it came close!

True, when Ed and I sit down to breakfast, I am so mollified, so happy to be sipping that coffee and eating that bowl of you-know-what across the way from a guy who brings serenity to the table each and every morning, that I always want a picture of that moment, before things get crazy (because you never know what a day may bring). And so here we are: Mr. serenity and whatever flowers we happen to have on the table.






But after -- well, it rained and I had chores to do and life's details to attend to. I did look up appreciatively on my drive back to the farmette -- enough to get out the camera (just across the road from us)...





And then I put it aside once more.

In the afternoon, I picked up not Snowdrop, but my mom who had spent some days in the hospital recovering from a fall. There was a grocery store trip thrown into the mix but honestly, none of it is picture worthy. On the upside, my mom is doing well -- being of hearty stock and having taken good care of herself, so I left her to her own devices and headed home, to be greeted with more rain, more mud, more this more that...

And then, toward evening, the rain stopped and the sky cleared just long enough to coax a smile out of me. Out came the camera.





I tell myself that in the future, I'll rise to the challenge and take inspired photos in the rain. But photographing routine chores? Never. Do them, check them off your list and move on to finer things in life. A cup of coffee and a cookie. One flower. A child's laugh, a chicken's run. Anything is more lovely to look at than a person slogging through a bunch of chores.

Tuesday

Well, time to get stuff done outside. The weather is surely right for it: a high today of 81F (27C), with storms holding off, giving me enough time to get out there and clean things up.

I don't cut back all the flower beds. That would be a waste of time and not especially good for the garden which appreciates additional organic matter. But I do pull out major weeds and I trim things in a way that gives a winter shape to everything. Sticks poking out look unsightly. But many dried perennials are quite pretty, especially under a snow cover.

So after a quick look around...






...I bring in the orchid pots and the rosemary, all of which need to winter over indoors, and then Ed and I sit down to a beautiful breakfast on the porch. Last one out there until April for sure!






And after -- hours of outdoor work. I'd like to say I finished all that I wanted to do, but you're never really done when there is so much land to take care of. I still have fields of weeds I want to attack before the ground freezes. And of course, the beds will need another comb through once all the plants are dormant. But for now, I'm satisfied.

(Toward the farmhouse...)






(Toward the barn...)






It's so warm! But it may rain. Or storm. Or neither.

Snowdrop, do you want to go to the playground? (This is after school. For a moment, she is too hot for her dress.)






She swings, we play "family..."






All in the very warm air of an October afternoon.






At the farm, Ed is chopping up felled trees. He'd been out on my moped earlier. She finds it.  
Why is there a basket?
For the produce I bring home from a farmers market.
Do you like to ride it too, ahah?
I do!






Can I try it?






Here's a more age appropriate idea: how about blowing some bubbles?






Such a day! It should end with this light note of a girl catching a bubble, but no: Ed has roped me onto watching a crime drama (Bosch) on Amazon Prime and after a hurried dinner, we run through the remaining episodes of the season, late into the night, guaranteeing nightmares for months to come. But the popcorn was terrific!

Monday

As I take Sparrow out for a brief stroll along our rural road (wishing so much they would hurry up and put in sidewalks in the neighboring development so I wouldn't have to veer into the mud by the road every time a car passes -- a precaution on my part since I always assume drivers are especially distracted on empty roads), I pause to say hi to our one neighbor.
Weird weather... I comment.
We are in a monsoon climate!

Indeed. It stormed and rained all night and now it's warm and humid again. There will be more storms, more rains this week, more humid weather. Wet monsoon weather.

Sparrow is with us from early morning. I'll say this much -- the sudden return of warm weather allows us a little more time outside.

(The cheepers look at him curiously. He is a bit taken aback by their presence. Who are these strange looking beings??)






We eat breakfast, taking turns juggling the little guy as we down our oatmeal.











He is his morning cheerful self. Want to head out? Sure!






As I push Sparrow up the driveway, I give a quick look a the flower fields. I must say, the front bed looks the best these days. The strawberries and cream hydrangea is fabulous as it moves from creamy white, to deep pink, to bronze. The false sunflowers are still at it and the cosmos adds that needed punch of color.






Looking out across the road, to the south, I can finally take in the beauty of this season.






To the west, north and east of us, the development slogs on. A half a year of digging and moving around dirt and all we see is mud and puddles and ponds and more mud.






We turn in toward the farmette again. Oh, let me use this moment to throw out a thanks to my friend, who gifted this awesome purple double stroller that her own kids recently outgrew. Sparrow likes it and so do I!






In the afternoon, we pick up Snowdrop. And here, things get a little crazy. Oh, the little one is happy to see us alright...






And she is intensely happy to come back to the farmhouse with her brother...






But at the same time, I get a call that my mom has had a slight mishap. This introduces a bit of drama, or at least uncertainty. Still, she is okay for the moment and so I return to my focus on the kids, even as the weather outside turns just plain wacky. I mean, it's starting to feel like true summer. Bugs and all.

It's a good moment to bring out the watermelon! (The girl loves her perch on the garbage can, though even at this elevated position, she looks small next to the big guy.)






(Snowdrop finds a toy fish I had purchased for Sparrow. It becomes the focus of her story about feeding a pet fish. Sparrow goes along. He always goes along.)






We all sense the weather change. Snowdrop wants to be out. Well, okay. Sparrow, are you up for more stroller time?

(Ed goes to clean the coop, Snowdrop follows. With Sparrow.)






(Along the way, she picks flowers. Might as well. I understand by the end of the week, we'll have a killing frost.)






Can I feed the cheepers?
I love how she knows the ropes. The feed first, then the bin with the corn. Scattered. 






Where are you going, ahah? Sometimes he is grandpa Ed, mostly he is just Ed, sometimes he is still good old ahah.






They climb the wood chip pile. Total happiness.
Ahah, you are the queen, I am the princess! (In her mind, a princess has the rule of the land.)






Look! You can see the clouds everywhere!






Not done yet. She blows bubbles. And then she does what she claims is her "very favorite thing:" she works the hose.






At some point it spins around and soaks her solid. She feigns being upset...






But in fact, she is delighted to spend the rest of the afternoon playing in her undies. While Sparrow looks on. Sparrow is nearly always happy just to look on.


In the evening, the happy duo goes home, I talk to my mother. Things are looking good. She'll be out and home tomorrow. We'll take it from there.