Monday

It's going to be a beautiful, sunny, warm day! Our wildflower seeds have arrived. Wouldn't this be a fine time to plant the various meadows and beds, so that they will deliver the flowers we crave next spring?

It is an overwhelming job. Not because of the work of planting, but because we don't really know the best way to do this. So, after feeding the kitties, I go back to bed and I stay there. (In my defense, I'm nursing sniffles...)

By mid morning, a great desire to eat a good breakfast on the porch pushes us up and out.






And then I survey the gardens and still I have no good plan. The problem is that the places I want to seed have a mix of weeds and good flowers in them. But to take out the weeds by hand is daunting. It would take weeks to clear the spaces. Should we be half-assed about it as usual and just sow the seeds and hope for a miracle? Should we mow down everything? Till the whole area? I just don't know...

(Flower beds, from the perspective of fall... these don't require care right now; perennials fend for themselves in the dormant periods.)






(everything is so... September!)






(meadow in the young orchard...)






In the meantime, a friend contacted me and asked if she could take in one of the kittens. Well of course! Ed prompts -- two would be even better, they're so bonded! My friend and her family are, in our minds, ideal. They're great animal and nature lovers, they know their way around pets. But should we keep our favorites? Or conversely, should we hand over the friendliest one, because she (or he) has the greatest chance of feeling joy in a nurturing environment?

I feel like we're sending off a kid to college. Or worse, into the arms of a loved one in her new home!

I remind myself we will have ten left. Well, maybe nine. Plus the elusive Stop Sign. Still, there is a twinge of angst. Will the little guy(s) behave? Will they thrive and prosper?


In the afternoon, Snowdrop is here to play. And play we do!






She is full of spirit today (she cajoles Ed to join us here...)!






Toward evening, my friend comes over to meet the kitties. Snowdrop is quite excited to introduce the little ones to her, but of course, none of the cats here are used to a lot of commotion. It takes a bit of coaxing to bring them out of hiding.






In an effort to shift some of that Snowdrop energy away from the picnic table, I suggest that she and I go feed the cheepers. Okay!






It is quite likely that my friend will come back in a few days for some subset of the littlest ones. I miss them already!






(I catch up with my friend; Snowdrop keeps us company!)






The day ends, the seasons shift, the kitties will move on. Farmette life does not stand still.

Sunday

We are, in Wisconsin, at the cusp of the great Monarch migration. The beautiful butterflies that we're seeing now are the offspring of ones that came up from Mexico last spring. And they're slowly getting ready to head south to their ancestral homes. By the end of October, they'll be gone.

It's been a good year for Monarchs and, indeed, we've seen more than the usual number here, at the farmette. And it doesn't take a lot of effort to see even more: after breakfast (two out of the four of us are ready to eat!)...






... Ed and I take the motorbike to Lake Farm Park up the road. The prairie flowers, now heavy with goldenrod, attract a good number of these winged creatures. A few photos for you from our walk...

































Afterwards, we linger with our weekend visitors in the farmette courtyard. We try to convince them that taking two little kittens home is a terrific idea, but their drive back to Washington state is long and these guys would have a tough time of it.






(Happy looks on...)






Eventually our friends leave. The cats stay. Ah well... that may be their fate for now.


I think a little about the flower fields. There is still a lot of gold in them! (The occasional day lily!)






And the nasturtium are really having a wild ride!






But soon, I'll have to turn my attention to preparing the fields for winter and spring. I have bulbs to plant. Some perennial seeds could go in now. Maybe this week. But not today.

When Ed tries to coax me to drive over with him to the Sunday farmers market on Monroe Street, I balk. I need a nap! Still, we do go. There is a vendor who sells authentic corn tortillas and we want some for dinner.






We linger for a bit, checking out some of the other stalls. I buy some cheese pastries  ("geese feet") from this Russian baker...






And when we return home, I fall asleep on the couch. It's been an incredibly busy week!


In the evening, the young family is here for dinner.






(Dessert: someone has a sweet tooth!)






(someone loves an evening walk outside...)






A full day, following a full week and a fuller month!

Good night, harvest gold, good night butterflies, good night children everywhere...

Saturday

Good morning, cats... Wait, you're not a cat!






Hello, deer!






Breakfast. It's chilly in the morning.






I meet my daughter and Snowdrop downtown.






We visit my mom.






And shop at the farmers market. (And pick acorns and pretend the ribbon is a snake...)






So many things to buy today!  Green beans. Fingerling potatoes and heirloom tomatoes. Full grown arugula, shallots. Dahlias. Corn! There are farmers who still can harvest it, so lots of corn. Door County peaches. Broccoli and squash for next week. Uff!






I have help chopping, steaming, mashing, stirring.






Done.






Still need to cook the seafood. And corn. Everything else -- ready.

Time for a break. Outing to Willie Street Fair. Lots of booths selling funky stuff, if you're in the mood for funky stuff. No photos.

Dinner! With friends that Ed has known for.... decades! And now I have known for.... just a little over a decade.






As the evening creeps in, the light fades. If you look up from the table on the porch, you'll see a reflection of our table in the glass panels of the roof...






And now it's night time after a full, lovely day.

Friday

Call it a mini whirlwind. The air is crisper, the storms have moved on, fall is inching our way. All predictable, all expected. We do, however, have a few spikes of activity in the next month and this weekend brings one of them: Ed's college roommate + spouse are coming for a visit, which means that I'll be pressing Ed to do stuff I've wanted him to do a little more urgently. That pile of papers by the couch! Washed away wood chips by the path that need to be replaced. Again, small stuff. I'm not even hoping for biggies like mowing the lawn or cleaning the stove. He resists the idea that we should make an effort just because friends are about to descend on us.

Ed, I'll mow the shoulders of the driveway.
Gorgeous, don't bother.

I do it anyway.

But first, there is, of course, breakfast. We're back on the porch! Cool, but very pleasant.







(view from porch...)





And grocery shopping and yes, tidying.

The second consequence of having visitors is that my time on the computer plummets. Expect short posts. Which, perhaps, is a good thing!

Snowdrop still does come over in the afternoon...

(Rushing, because there's a Lego set waiting for her inside...)






(I spend a handful of minutes trying to take a photo of Snowdrop for a needed new passport. Here's one that I like, even as it's not a candidate for the document!)







And in the evening, I turn my focus to the arrival of the two friends.

Tonight we eat out (at Sardine, because Ed and I have no imagination).






But for the next two days, I'll be cooking. I'll check in with you between market shopping and chopping up the usual stuff that needs to be chopped up in preparation for a big meal.


(Harvest Moon, over Lake Monona...)

Thursday

We are sitting at Finca Cafe enjoying a decadent breakfast of pain au chocolat and El Salvadoran quesadillas.





The background music is lovely. The pastries are delicious. The coffee I'm drinking is superb. It's perhaps unfair to compare it to yesterday's in Janesville, but I will: there was no pleasure in sipping yesterday's. Visually, it was a disaster. The taste was unimpressive. (On the upside, the flour sack dish cloths I bought there, to replace our rags, are impressive.)

But I'm thinking that part of my pleasure today is due to the joy of having a tough period now behind us. We've come out of the tunnel!

It was the last day of an early wake up so that we could make it to Janesville in time for a super early post-surgical appointment for Ed. And the verdict is good: the doc now thinks Ed will heal well on his own (for a while, this was not assured). My repeated drives with him there, which started less than 12 hours after returning from Europe, are now done.

The storms held off for the drive once again and though it's dark, dank and dismal, I know that our more typical autumnal fare will return tomorrow. And so we are finally in a good place!


Afternoon.





I have warned Snowdrop that, in her time here after school, we are to have a "clean up" day. Things are not exactly messy in her play room, but we have a problem: Snowdrop's favorite way to play is to take any object and pretend that it is something else, relevant to whatever story she is spinning. Her most common segue into the new reality is to say "How about we pretend that this (here, she takes out anything: a toy, a pillow, a book, a pot, a plastic banana, anything!) is a..." -- whatever her game requires. A book can be a suitcase. A pillow can be a bridge. She says this a hundred times each day and all these items become part of her story setup. And they cannot be touched because the story is never ending. A hundred items, laid carefully all over the playroom and they cannot be disturbed.

Today, I aim to disturb them. We are to have house guests this weekend and though they are Ed's oldtime friends, and they have stayed here numerous times, and more importantly, they are used to Ed's inattention to matters of neatness, still, I have my standards, and they include having a floor you can walk on.







Do I succeed? Of course not. But we have a plan! By tomorrow, we will apply ourselves and things will look good once more!

Today? Well, there isn't time. Because, you know, there's reading, and playing, and dance.






Sometimes, I am mush to my children and grandchildren. And that's a good thing.

Wednesday

What can I say -- the weather is messin' with us. Humid, unpredictable, stormy -- and hold on to your horses and hats, Hannah, 'cause it's only gonna get worse.

Delightful.

We are up early. I mean, really early. Ed has eye surgery (yes, in Janesville!) at 6:45 and we have to give ourselves extra time for the drive because of the unpredictability of the weather. Stumble out of bed, feed the cats, hit the road.

Normally, it's not an unpleasant drive, but it's dark when we get going and if you know anything about the small rural communities that surround Madison, you'll understand that the people who live in them most often work in our state's capital. Even at this ungodly hour, there is a steady stream of traffic into town. Now, we are going in the opposite direction. So, no traffic in our lane, right? Yes, true, but there is a constant stream of bright headlights right in your face. I'm driving and I don't have impaired vision like my sweetie by my side, but, still, it's a strain. Luckily, we dodged a band of storms and so at least we were without the hazard of blinding rain and flashing skies.

Since Ed's surgery and recovery are to take about three to four hours, I search out a place to park myself for the duration in Janesville. I pick a newly opened (in a restored old building) coffee shop on Main Street. Just across Rock River.






The river is wide here and it's worthwhile to take a pause and consider its course.






It's a tributary of the Mississippi and though it does not pass through Madison, it does pick up the waters from my city's Yahara River. There was a time Ed and I talked about paddling from Madison, all the way down to the Mississippi and beyond, but a day's run on that mega waterway convinced me that it would be anything but fun to fight big boats and strong currents of America's second longest river (the Missouri is longer).

Janesville's Bodacious Brew (my cafe of choice) is on Main Street. I'll support any eatery that tries to bring life to America's Main Streets.






Still, I don't quite get the right breakfast. Everybody but me would know that an Acai Bowl is actually a frozen smoothie. Sort of like having ice cream for breakfast, while your heart is craving something decadent like a croissant or at least something warm, like oatmeal.






At 8 am I walk over to the Firehouse Park (just up the street). There is a small gathering of police, of firefighters, of city workers and presumably their families to commemorate what is so firmly etched in our minds -- this is, after all, 9/11.






A young man makes a brief speech. He was just eleven on the day of the attacks -- old enough to have a memory of that day. I don't know anyone in this country who isn't in some way scarred by what happened then and thereafter. It's hard to find good words now to express emotion, with wisdom and with respect, but our speaker today hits on some good notes, reminding us that wars have been fought since then, more lives have been lost and yet, here we are in this little park in Janesville. Perhaps looking after each other and reaching out to people who are outside our inner circle is one way to go forward, he tells us. Perhaps.






I return to my outside table at the coffee shop and I feel the temperatures rising. The sun, poking through for a short while, is in my eyes. Time to move on.

A brief walk up and down the rest of Janesville's Main Street...






It is what it is: the commercial heart of the city surely can't be found in these few blocks. Consignment shops, a bar, a music instrument rental place. Nothing that brings daily traffic here.






Janesville (with a pop. of some 65,000) suffered an economic downturn after the GM assembly plant closed in 2008 (it had been a key employer here since 1919; at its peak in the 1970s, it employed upwards of 7000 workers). The SUVs and trucks manufactured here were no longer in demand. Currently, hospitals and schools seem to lead the list of top employers in the city.

And now I get the call from the hospital that Ed is ready to be discharged. I pick him up and we return home.











In the afternoon, Snowdrop is at the farmhouse once more.

(Continue with story based on art work, or pick grandma's flowers? Hmmm..)






(Flowers win.)






Later, when I take her home, I encounter Sparrow...






What's this? Someone got t-shirts celebrating the accomplishments of a famous tennis player...





And now it's evening and the storms are upon us once more. Tomorrow morning, we're back in Janesville again, driving against whatever weather phenomenon comes our way.