Saturday sleepover

We'd been talking about it for weeks: a sleepover at the farmhouse, with Snowdrop's mommy joining us for a double feature movie! Snowdrop will share with me her favorite (Moana) and I get to share with her a favorite from my childhood.

We could not have picked a better day and evening for it. It continues to be cold and there is no pleasure in doing anything outdoors. I know we will have great improvement in the weather in weeks to come, but we're still chugging along through early spring misery here (I don't consider a high of 40f, or 4c to be reasonable for mid April). Forget about prepping flower beds. Forget about sitting on the picnic bench and watching spring unfold. A double feature in the living room of the farmhouse sounds just great to me.

But of course, there are the morning chores.

(well well, look who has coming calling, looking for breakfast! Hi Jacket, hi Dance!)






(at least we have morning sunshine!)






(sigh... a rabbit, right there on the path. Possibly the culprit in the butchering of tulips out front.)






It's the first day of the farmers market downtown. The hardy and the tourists are there for it. And Ed! He scoots down on my moped to deliver four dozen eggs to a farmer and returns with cheese curds. It's a fair exchange!

Breakfast. Fruits, flowers...






... and cheese curds and Ed.






And in the afternoon, the girl and her mom come over.





It's not a smooth beginning: I asked Ed to test the ancient DVD player he dragged over from the sheep shed (to replace my almost as ancient one which indeed is broken) and sure enough, unless you enjoy hiccups and pauses throughout your viewing experience, you may as well give up. Consider it broken. I send Ed out to get a new player just as the girls arrive.

No matter. There are books to read in the interim!





Finally. The movie theater is open for business.

We start with Moana. [In case you're not familiar with it, it has to do with a girl venturing across the waters, away from her island, to find and return the missing heart to its rightful place.] She has seen it several times and she has coaxed me into improvising the Moana story, with our own unique twists and turns added to it, on numerous car rides to and from her house. But for me, it is a totally new viewing.

I think -- how different are her movie adventures as compared to my own childhood stuff! True, I remember liking "101 Dalmations," but otherwise, I did not watch cartoons and I rarely saw animation on the big screen. My own daughters were the transition: they endured some of my favorites from the "olden days" (I was a huge Hayley Mills fan), but they also loved the new Disney hits. You know the stuff -- Lion King, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast. Snowdrop is a total fan of film and so one has to meter out things slowly and only in bad weather! Where will her tastes fall? We will see.

(munching predinner veggies and watching Moana)






(dancing to Moana)






First film, with all its ocean storms, pirate greed, and fire and fury behind us, we sit down to pizza. With asparagus on the side, because I said so. It's a running joke that Gogs pushes vegetables on the side with pizza dinners.





Movie number two is to be from my childhood. What to pick for this freshly four year old, who tends to be sensitive to hurt and drama in stories or movies?

Mary Poppins! I mean, where might you find fearful stuff in this lovely film of flying nannies and dancing penguins?





Watching Mary Poppins after Moana (by a girl who has only seen a handful of movies in her life, all of them animated) is like riding a camel after getting off the Polar Express.

Her eyes never leave the screen. (Popcorn!)






For all 139 minutes of it.






(Ed, on the other hand, gave up the ship halfway through...)





I hadn't quite realized how long the movie is!

There are many things to discuss, talk about, explain. We'll save it. The girl is up two hours past her bedtime already.

What a thrilling day! Volcanic lava, chimney sweeps, twopence for birds, flying kites and all!

Friday

Yesterday, someone mentioned something to me about our past history of letter writing. Of course, no one I know writes letters anymore. Few people even write emails -- of the personal nature, to friends. Phone calls aren't commonplace either. You want to exchange information? You text. You want a more personal contact, say with a child? You Facetime (or do some such version of a video call). So are we worse off than we were in the past? Do you miss the paper trail of your most intimate exchanges?

In terms of keeping in touch -- I don't miss letter writing at all. In my experience, letters were never as fantastic as we now think they were. People are not good letter writers, or at least, they rarely connect well with the letter recipient through their written message. I should know. Living far away from family and friends all my life put me at the mercy of letters early on. It wasn't a great way to stay close. When sitting down to write someone a letter, you have to imagine what the friend or lover or cousin really wants to hear. Me, I loved personal content. I still love personal content. Observations, frustrations, whimsical musings, thoughts on what brings pleasure, or worries about ones place on this planet, recounts of delightful encounters, of love -- reading this, to me, is sublime. But few people are up for writing this stuff down. I have received too many letters in my life that are as dry as a sock that's spun too long in the drying machine.

(Not to say I was any better at hitting it right: my letters were always too hastily written, as if I was already thinking about how long I'd have to wait for a response if I didn't send something off right away!)

Are emails better? Yes, they are. You can counter! Ask for a clarification, and press for the thoughts, musings that you are so hungry for. And of course, you don't have to wait. At least not in the same way you did before. Oh, the disappointment when day after day the mail delivered nothing of value -- no personal envelope, nothing at all beyond the ubiquitous junk mail. I no longer expect letters in the (physical)  mail box. Waiting for an email response is far less tortuous. And it can come at any time! Mail delivery person no longer required!

Text messages? Useful stuff! I have no complaints about those either! With emojis to help infuse a mood into a message, you can really hit a person's soft spot pretty nicely. Getting a sweet daughter message is thrilling, for example! (Ed doesn't text. Ed also doesn't lay out his feelings in an email. Unless I send despairing reminders that I need to see emotion. He has, at least, gotten in the habit of capitalizing all the letters in love when he signs off. I like that.)

All this to say that I don't miss letters. And the more modern proliferation of communication tools is, for me, extraordinarily wonderful.

You could say, of course, that Ocean is a communication tool as well. The caveat here is that I have to step gingerly. This isn't a letter to a best friend across the ocean. It's a letter to a reader I often may not even know. Like a pen pal (remember those?) whom I'll never meet and who will never respond. And in guarding myself too much here, the possibility that Ocean content will become dry, like that endlessly spinning sock in the machine, is very real. Every day I work with conflicting thoughts: "make it personal!" and "not that personal!"

In many ways, what I put down here is what I wish I knew about other people's days. I wish I knew how you braved the cold spell, the storms. What your kids or grandkids blurted out on a car ride home. What you cooked for dinner that made you proud. I wish I could see the changes in your faces over the years. Or what you did when your doc told you to do more strenuous exercise. Or what game you played and whose soft skin you liked to bury your face into when the world felt rotten. Every once in a while, a commenter will send a thought or recall something from their lives and that just brings out the smile in me. But even if I don't hear from you, I imagine that your day is not that much different from mine. What's here on Ocean is not unique. Merely a summary of our common experience.


Well I might think about such stuff as writing, communicating, taking note. I'm trying to ignore the mean weather outside. Better to focus for once on what's inside the head than on the wind that blows around cold air with no intention of letting up.


Again, a morning walk...
















Again a breakfast in the kitchen...






Again a morning of grocery shopping.


And again, in the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop.

She considers visiting with the cheepers. She really does. But in the end, the farmhouse has to win. She turns around and runs to the front door.





At some late point in the day, she goes back to my stack of French kid books. I typically pick up one or two when I am in Paris, but I never quite know how to introduce them and so they sit to the side, until Snowdrop just can't resist asking what they're about.

Today, she reached for two. The second one, La Plus Belle Maman du Monde (the most beautiful mother in the world) is actually based on an old Russian folk tale, where a girl loses her mother in a busy place and, in trying to describe her, uses words that are accurate for her, given her great love for her mom.
















Snowdrop is mesmerized by this tale. Being used to chapter books that have sequel upon sequel, she asks -- is there one after this? About the little girl and her mother?

Oh, the sweet feeling of sadness when a good book comes to an end!

Dinner. I picked up a lovely piece of fish at the store today. Now I pamper it, marinate it briefly, sautee it and marvel at how lucky we are to have so much good food within reach each day.

stormy Thursday

It could have been so much worse. In fact, it was so much worse elsewhere. We had the hail, the winds, the rain. The thunder, the dark skies, the cold temperatures. But, the snow is gone. And in all that wet rage that fell from the skies, there were pauses. Long enough, for example, for me to feed the cats and for Ed to feed the cheepers (buffeted here by the fierce winds!).






(buds closed tight, waiting for better times...)






Breakfast indoors and with the furnace running!






Of course, Snowdrop finds greatness even in the dismal, wet weather. A chance to bring out the pink umbrella!






I bring her home. She is in top form. Hail? Winds? That's over there. Here -- we have our imaginations to make something beautiful of this afternoon.






A pretend phone call. Did I really hear her say this? -- "It dignifies something when you shake it a little." I keep quiet. She continues her conversation...






Spinning, spinning...






Evening. I never even step outside. Ed takes care of the cheepers. Me, I use their eggs as a base for supper. I have to. We're flooded with eggs!

We wont be warming up for a while, but today's near freezing temps have moved on. And that's really a good thing!

Wednesday

My contact with the outdoor world is limited on a day like this: I need to feed the cats, pick up Snowdrop, take her to dance, drive her and mom home, step out for a second with mom, then return to the farmhouse. If I tallied all the minutes of actual time outside, it can't be more than 10 or 15 minutes and half of those are early, when skies are plenty gray but there's nothing falling from them yet.

So I consider myself lucky. The farmhouse is warm. We are safe from a spring snow/rain storm's rampage.

But, it's surely not pretty out there! That is, after the morning walk to deal with the cats, which is at least a little pretty! Even the northern lily/daffodil bed has a pop up yellow bloom all ready to unfurl! And the southern front bed has plenty of gold in it!










Breakfast. We talk about... guess what! The weather.






I tell Ed we wont be seeing much snow -- not until evening and only for a short while then. Madison is right at the edge of the great changeover from snow to rain, so I remind him that we're slated to see more water than white stuff.

I am wrong.






Let's just hope the quantities will be small. I don't worry about flowers like the scilla siberica. With a name like that, you better be plenty tough!






But the daffodils will slump if the snow gets too heavy.






That's two spring seasons in a row with April snows! 2020 better deliver a sweeter outcome!


I pick up Snowdrop just as she is finishing  an art project. Well, more like an art habit: give her a pink marker and a piece of paper and she'll go at it -- create her unique version of a picture story book.






Done? Can you show it off, little one?






Outside, she takes note of the snow. Despite her professed love of spring, she is excessively happy!






I tell her she is like Ed who, upon hearing me groan, retorted -- but it's so pretty!






Maybe. Just not this month.



It's dance day and so we rush through Snowdrop's favorite routine at the farmhouse -- eat n' read.

We make it to class just on time!






(today's story -- Alice in Wonderland)






Tonight, I'm the designated driver and so I take the girl home, lingering for a while to say hello to her brother...






(while in the background, the parents break into a spontaneous dance...)






The snow isn't huge. Madison has significant more of a cover than we do, even though it's just a couple miles to the north.  Still, it feels very wrong.





It will melt within a day. But it is a crazy contrast to yesterday's green sprouts and warm sunshine. Spring in Wisconsin can be... complicated!

stellar Tuesday

We were gifted a pair of beautiful days! Today, June-like weather stayed with us, to the joy of all who just can't wait to see their garden grow!
















It cannot be said that Ed and I took it easy this morning. Shortly after breakfast (still indoors, because, you know, mornings are an iffy proposition in April)...






... armed with clippers big and small, we attacked the trees in the young orchard. Perhaps a handful of you will remember that we got ambitious some half dozen years ago and planted more than a dozen new fruit trees. They had a rocky start. Deer attacked them, beetles devoured them -- it was a brutal awakening to the hazards of life for a cherry, plum, apple or pear.

But the trees survived (though many have a very "nontraditional" shape!) and we learned to protect them and clip them. We have still to harvest fruit -- maybe a handful of cherries, an occasional apple. Birds and animals beat us to it and what is left on the branch, the beetle will happily finish off. Still, we keep at it. As the trees grow and mature, we're hoping they'll produce enough fruit for everyone. And in the meantime, their blooms in spring are gorgeous and of course, bees love them!

(clipping branches)






We grow grapes in back of the orchard. Their yield, too, is miserable. Another beetle favorite! By summer's end, there are too many mosquitoes out there for us to care! Still, we try: enough to clip them now into proper shape.

(by late morning, all sweaters and jackets are tossed aside!)





Afterwards, Ed mends the coop and I set to work on the Big Flower Field. Some plants have to be controlled (I'm lookin' at you, beebalm!), some merely need a quick weed and a tidying hand.

As the time to pick up Snowdrop draws near, I take a quick walk through the remaining flower fields and tick off in my head all that I need to do there. Not today though. And not the rest of this week either: we're getting quite the downturn in the weather. But I'm not complaining: we have had a remarkable pair of days!

(what's blooming at the farmette...)







And now I'm ready for Snowdrop!

As we drive from school to the farmette, I ask her about her day.
Good -- she tells me. Then -- gaga, did you know humpback whales used to be extinct?  Now they just take your breath away! Interesting observations, albeit not about school.
I press her -- did you spend a lot of time outside?
Yes. Indeed. She seems to have had her fill. Now, after a brief conversation with the cheepers, she runs inside the house.






Books, pretend play.






They fill her time.






She is not ready to stop, even though the clock says it's time for me to take her home.





Clocks have a way of ordering our lives. Sometimes that's good. Other times -- it ruins a fun play.

Still, Snowdrop is a girl who does not like to stay on the rebellious side of the line for long. She asks if I will give her a time out for resisting the need to clean up and get going.
No little one. No time outs from Gaga. That's a job for teachers and parents. You and me -- we'll just talk.


Evening. I'm not cooking again. We eat Chipotle bowls and watch Finding Your Roots on television (we're both terrific fans of it) and try not to think about the winter storm forecast for tomorrow.