Monday - 129th

In trying to do everything -- get up not insanely early, do a little of garden care, get things ready for the kids, eat a leisurely breakfast on the porch -- you inevitably falter and do an imperfect job at each turn. Nonetheless, somehow we manage to get through the first hours of the day without me swatting the bug zapper at everything and everyone in sight.

I did snip spent lilies at least in some of the beds...






















Ed finally did spray a little garlic oil along the driveway, so that you could walk from car to house without being driven crazy by the mosquito buzz, even though the deer flies are back and so the battle is only half won. Deer flies aren't repelled by the smell of garlic. Ah well, the garden, even in its partially cleaned up form, still looks pretty good.






And the lilies are magnificent! (view from porch)






And breakfast, while not leisurely, is very very nice.






The kids come running! One week's break and everything here is fresh and exciting once again.






And we do take a nature walk. Through the young orchard, past the little meadow...






... all the way to the floundering vineyard, where we also have a couple of mature blueberry bushes. And the blueberries are finally ripening!






Both Sparrow and Snowdrop love the job of picking out the blue fruits.










Sparrow even eats one! I mean, just one, but still, we're talking about the little guy who has decided to rebel against ingesting anything that grows out there on the farms of America (or elsewhere: he does not discriminate).

I'm mindful of the bugs, but we actually manage just fine! We don't have a full bucket of berries, or even a full cup of berries, but of course, that's not the point. Watching the berries grow, waiting for their golden moment -- all that matters far more than stocking the refrigerator with fruit, especially since Aggie, a local farmer, delivered a handful of containers of berries for us this morning. We are swimming in freshly picked fruit right now.










And it could be that in a few years, we'll be swimming in more fruit. Ed is giving serious thought to converting the weedy acre of land in back of the barn to a rather large orchard. Think: about 300 new fruit trees. Why? Well, we are zoned for agricultural ("rural residential") use. We tossed around a few ideas on how to live up to that designation and fruit trees seem like less maintenance than, say, growing an acre of produce. If we decide to plunge ahead with this, you'll be watching us do a lot of planting this autumn.

Inside again, the kids are happy to return to their favorites: books, story telling, art.





Lunch requires a trip to the basement, where we keep our oversize freezer. Such a small little thing, but the fact is, the kids love going down the rickety board steps, holding tight onto me and peering into the cavernous subterranean space of this hundred year old home. Well, actually Sparrow insists on being carried, so I hold onto him, clutch Snowdrop's hand and try to juggle the retrieved foods in the other, all the while making creeky scary noises to add drama to the trip.

Notable part of lunch? Ice cream, because, well, we have some heavenly chocolate chocolate chip ice cream and if they don't eat it, Ed and I will polish it off in a flash.





On the car trip home, I half hope to grill Snowdrop about her week by the lake, but she takes the conversation into her own hands by announcing -- gaga, did you know that humans come from monkeys? That my great great great, you know, many many greats, grandmother and grandfather were monkeys? And that birds come from dinosaurs? I know Ed always tells her that the cheepers are one step away from having dinosaur claws, but I hadn't heard her speculate about the evolution of the human form before. Once this topic has been put on the table we stick with it. It's rather remarkable what a five year old will come up with when you ask her what we've inherited from these very distant ancestors.

Evening. Reheated foods, quiet moments. Grateful thoughts.

With love.

Sunday -128th

I feel we did a full circle today. Yes, on the bicycles, there was that. In the afternoon. But I'm thinking more in terms of the great outdoors. The steaminess has receded, the storms have moved away, the mosquitoes are moderating, but the deer flies are back. I mean, really? Do we need your vicious bite right now?

I leave behind the paddle bug zapper and begin my garden work.






And then I regret being without it. Back it is, in my hand as I wave it furiously and probably very ineffectively. Ed tells me later that I tore into at least a half dozen deer flies. (He needs to change the zapper battery.. I've been using it that much.) A half dozen may seem like not a whole lot,  but honestly, once you zap the ones bugging you, you do get a few minutes of peace. And that's what you want in July, isn't it? Peace, to admire your lilies. (And everything else that fills the spaces of a flower bed.)






(lilies don't need to be staked... except when they do...)






(many lilies, one frog)






(hey, how about a photo of me, the proud rooster?)






It's Sunday and I'm trying to be very productive. I mow the paths that meander across the farmette lands. The kids will be coming back tomorrow. Maybe we'll manage a nature walk? Maybe.

All this takes time. Breakfast is... after noon.






(what? a guest for breakfast? hi, Tuxedo! we're social distancing, you know,,.)






I wasn't quite sure we'd be having dinner here today. The young family is back from their retreat by the lake, but in the cocoon that we all inhabit, one person was taken ill. The usual anxieties followed. The necessary testing. The wait. The results came today. All clear. Just one of those things you probably pick up from who knows where. So dinner is on!

But there is still time for some movement in the afternoon. Ed and I bike out to Lake Waubesa.

 


It's a nice little trip and we look out for a while on the little beach where kids are splashing and a parent is yelling every few seconds -- keep six feet away from the others, keep six feet away! They try, but it's a small swimming area and so they fail and the parent keeps yelling -- six feet away, please, give them some space! And I'm thinking -- is this what school will look like in places where it opens this fall? Voices through the megaphone -- keep six feet away, six feet away, six feet away!!

On the way there and back, we're passed by a car that looks to me like a flattened silver version of a Batmobile. It's a McLaren, Ed tells me. Figure a quarter of a million dollars for it. 

Is our world crazy, or what?

Evening. The young family is here at last. It seems like a decade has passed since they were last here. So many emotions, so many trips, for them, for me.










You need time to exhale. Dinner is such a time. We eat it on the porch, but I swear, you could eat it on your lap on the couch and it would still feel to me like the perfect way to let out all that pent up steam, all frustrations and ridiculousnesses. Take a bite, savor it, Exhale.





Chocolate ice cream.









And an end to one part of summer. Onward, toward the next!

Saturday - 127th

It's a sizzler. A charbroiled jalapeno pepper of a day. Hot hot hot.

There is a breeze in the morning. A sticky one. Not unlike putting yourself next to one of those hand drying machines in a public restroom. Still, it has the effect of dispersing some of the bugs outside. I work in the garden without the help of the paddle bug zapper.

I don't quite get to 1000 spent lilies, but it was close.

(The lily bed by the porch has all the challenges, successes, mistakes, and ultimately beauty of gardening right smack in its belly.)






(Flowers, everywhere...)





I pluck the last lily just as all hell breaks loose. Rain, lightening, thunder, you name it.

I want to eat breakfast on the porch. It's dry on the porch. Not even that hot, what with the rain outside.
Can we get struck by lightening out here? I should know better than to ask Ed.
Maybe, he says to taunt me. We might be that one person in the calendar year that gets hit by lightening in Wisconsin.

Fine. We eat on the porch.





But when a huge crash shakes the earth beneath us, I take my coffee inside.

And then I return to my writing project. I have this day and tomorrow before I resume childcare. I'm motivated. I lose myself in the text.

In the afternoon, Ed asks if I want to break for a walk. Of course I do. I need movement to keep me excited about sitting still for so long!

We get on his motorbike and head out to our park. You know the one -- with prairies and woods and a lake at its edge. We stick to the prairie to avoid mosquitoes. And mercifully, the deer ticks are finished for the season. It's a sticky hot and beautiful walk!

(monarda, everywhere...)





(What we pass, on our way home...)





And then it's more writing for me until finally, toward evening, I say to Ed -- I'm done with the next to last chapter. Two dozen more pages and I'm completely finished.  He shakes his head.
It's your white whale, he tells me. You're chasing something, obsessively, but you'll never get it.

I tell him that literary allusions, even to such obvious texts as Moby Dick, are a mean way to remind me for missing years of literature classes in both the US and Poland. In my adolescence, I bounced between the two countries and skipped several grades to boot and so you could say that somewhere along the way, I missed most literature and grammar schooling in both countries. I feel those gaps every time I sit down to write.
You have had many dozens of years to make up those gaps, he reminds me.

I so dislike it when he is right and it is my fault.

Fine, my white whale. It's nearing an end, even though, according to Ed, it will always be out of my reach.


(Late afternoon colors...)






(Evening pinks...)





I cook a frittata for dinner. I feel it's been a while, no? With a new CSA box, I really need to start pushing those veggies. This particular frittata, in addition to the eggs and cheeses, has string beans (both green and yellow), corn kernels, garlic scapes, garlic cloves, a potato, mushrooms and basil. The proportion of veggies to eggs (there are seven eggs in all) is... large.






A July night. We toy with the idea of opening the windows for the night, but it's still just too hot.

May your world be perfectly cool tonight. May you sleep well and stay healthy in the weeks to come!

Friday - 126th

It's going to be a hot weekend here, in south-central Wisconsin. Starting now. Or perhaps even before "now." I wasn't focused on the weather the past few days. It all just passed me by.


(Probably the best view of the Big Bed in its entirety is from the bathroom. Meaning as you sit on the toilet and contemplate life. And the four chickens sitting on the bench outside. Who knew chickens lounged on benches?)





I'm up to do my usual rounds. Animals and gardens, in that order. It's unfortunately very buggy in these early hours. The deer flies are gone (thank God), but the mosquitoes are having a good revival. And we are standing still with our spraying. Ed will ask -- should I spray with the garlic oils now?
I'll respond -- maybe not today. I've already done my work outside.
Tomorrow then?
Maybe we should wait until it gets even worse? It's not as bad as some years...
So no?
So yes! Maybe tomorrow?

And so we toss the decision back and forth and in the meantime I suffer. Not greatly, but moderately. Bzzzz, zap!

It is a given that I am going to clean up the lilies today. I've been away two mornings and this is their heaviest blooming month. Some spent flowers drop naturally, but most just dangle for a few days and they detract from the beauty of the flowers that are having their one day of splendor. So I am out snipping away, filling a bucket with spent lily flowers...





The photos, of course, are after I've made my way through a bed.

And how many lily heads did I snip off today? 1,040! Like the tax form, only different.






I'm sure it's a record, though it's not really a fair number, since some of the spent flowers are from yesterday or possibly the day before. Still, what a difference the removal of 1040 wilted lilies makes!






Sigh... I am lost in the happy world of day lilies. And that's a good thing, because so often these days, the head just swims with worry. The distraction is perfect. Snip and hum the lily songs that I always hum when I do this.






Breakfast, late, on the porch, with Ed, but he looks like he could use a beard trim and a haircut, so I leave him out of the photo and concentrate on the vase of lilies and monarda flowers.






And now for the drumroll: what will she do next on this day of comparative freedom? (The Madison young family is still at the lake today.) Yes, of course, grocery washing. Good. Do it and move on. To what?

To a return to my writing project (aka The Book). I haven't touched it for nearly two years!

You could say that I am on the edit of the final two chapters. It would be true, at least in theory. But the fact is that I always find new editing opportunities and so the thing is slated to never be finished.

I've come to the conclusion that there are two reasons for this constant need to do a rewrite. First, I think my goals have shifted. Initially, it was to be an impressionistic document (Is there such a thing?). I lived through interesting times, this is how they played out in my memory. Only after years of work on The Book did I decide to aim higher: it should be an interesting impressionistic document. I love reading memoirs, but I am too often bored by them. I read and edit them in my mind: this is too underdeveloped, this is too wordy, this is just plain dull. And if I'm going to be harsh with other people's writing, then I need to be even harsher with my own. So I edit. Again and again.

The second reason for the infinite reworkings is that were I to be done, I would have to do something with it. That, to me, is far less interesting than the writing of it. And here's a third problem: were I to be finished, I'd need to decide on the next writing project. I want to go back to short stories, though if you think it's hard to put out a book, try doing something with short stories! Send them to literary journals? Oh, what fun. (Not.) Cracking that box is even harder than cracking your knuckles. (I cannot crack my knuckles, much to Ed's dismay.)

As with everything in life right now, I shall take one day at a time. If and when I finish this 495th edit (it seems that it is at least that), I'll let you know and we can celebrate together. I have some sparklers left over from Snowdrop's five and a half year birthday celebration. True, they leave holes in the tablecloth, but I could sparkle them in safer places. I think. And then we can proceed to  champagne. Are we still allowed to drink champagne, or is it off limits, along with every other pleasurable thing in life right now? [The French have been known to laugh at our obsessive study and discussion of the health benefits, or lack thereof, of foods and beverages. Now of course they're laughing less. They just feel sorry for us. They're popping corks while we're stuck at home worrying that the next glass of wine is going to kill us. Imagine, we're worrying about that glass of wine, even as we can't be bothered with face masks and we find it literally impossible to give up visits to water parks or gyms. We are a strange people.]


In the late afternoon, I connect with my two good friends down south.






We talk for a while. Amazing how much can happen when you're just staying home and trying to keep your groceries clean.





Evening. It's quiet, it's beautiful, it's full of day lilies.

Thursday - 125th

What does it mean to be a hero in a crisis? There's no good answer for this. In a pandemic, front line workers are heroic in keeping us healthy and cared for. On the other hand, I've read enough to know that the label itself -- heroism -- can be a burden. If your mental state is weakened by life's circumstances, or by the pandemic, must you prove your heroism now? Isn't it equally heroic to retreat and take time to recover from the overwhelming burden of acting like a hero during your waking hours?

On the other end of the spectrum, we read about those who act selfishly, protecting their own political might or personal freedoms without sufficient concern for the good of the community. People are all over the place in their response to the pandemic. We anticipated this when there was first mention of a health menace: there would be heroes, but too, there would be those who would, intentionally or unintentionally, completely wreck the chances of getting through this for others. It was bound to happen. It did happen.

Then there's another group -- a set of people that has been on my mind lately. You don't read about them too much because they haven't the burden of contributing to the economy (nor do they slow it down by virtue of their unemployment).  I'm thinking of grandparents. Elderly grandparents. Those over 65 who are retired and who are nonetheless closely connected to their families.

It so happens that all my friends who are grandparents are intimately involved in the lives of their grandchildren. Maybe they can't quite devote the time to childcare that I can, but nonetheless they love their moments with their littlest ones -- over dinners, holidays, get-togethers. Longer weekend visits, school events, spontaneous drop-ins if they live nearby.

Everyone has had a terrible time of it with the pandemic, but I do think one should include in the rubric of the heroic, those many, many grandparents who have had their lives ravaged in profound ways by the pandemic. These people know they must remain under a lock-down. Their kids and grandkids who cannot maintain lock-down rigors have to keep their distance. The way things are going now, with rising rates of infection in most states, it's pretty clear that the isolation of most grandparents will have to continue for a long time.

Imagine this! All that's precious, taken away. And it happens in the years when you love your family more than ever. Years add love. Too, you don't take any of your sweet little guys for granted when you're older. You understand the value of your time with them. You thrive on it, you set your life's calendar by it. All this vanishes, while threats to your longer and more or less healthy life mount and the ease of retirement disappears and your social connectedness dwindles, especially if you're not facile with zoom or some such technologies.

Of course, I've been lucky. Because my kids could maintain jobs in isolation, I could keep on seeing them, even as they've had to be more rigorous in their social distancing toward the rest of the world than the average persons their age. But when schools and daycares become part of their lives once more, I will join the ranks of those grandparents who can do little more than wait for the day when it is again safe to rejoin the world again.

I say all this because I do realize that all my writings about grandkids right now may be especially tough to read if you're a grandparent who has been stranded since mid-March. You could argue that reading about a more normal life is reassuring, but, too, you could argue that it hurts. Or maybe it's a small mix of both. We all like to say "we're in this together," but the reality is that we are all in this in very different ways. I feel terribly sad for those who have lost loved ones. For those who are sick and struggling and will likely continue to struggle with the remnants of this virus for a long time. For those who have lost their jobs, their hope for a good life. For those on the front lines and especially for those who never imagined themselves to be threatened at work by a virus and suddenly they are, and they get few rewards for it -- just a small pay check that barely pays the bills. And for grandparents everywhere, but especially in countries where infection rates are not going down (the US comes to mind). Today, I'm thinking about you. A lot. Especially (but not only) because I, too, will be one of you soon, where being with my most precious little ones and their parents will be a dream and a memory and not part of my everyday.



To return to more lighthearted themes and notes -- today once more belongs to Primrose. (Thank you Snowdrop, for introducing me to the Penguin books by Salina Yoon: Primrose loved them all and surely has them memorized from all the times we read and reread them...)






Breakfast. With peaches. Well, mango too. Love that mango tango!






Tea, with Panda. I didn't even know she had this quintessentially girlie toy (even though Sparrow likes to pour himself a cup too, though I'm never sure if he's just doing it to appear older, like his sister) -- it was neatly tucked away somewhere, but she pulled it out and there we sat. The macarons were also her idea.






Tea, for grandma. All my grandkids know that I have this tea ritual going. Real tea. Every day.






Our good old timed-release selfie!





I suppose every intense set of days has, for me, a musical theme associated with it. Most definitely, the song clipped for you below will forever trigger memories of this visit. Primrose sings it beautifully and right now it's her favorite.

And toward evening, I leave the little girl and my daughter and the whole Chicago family. I need to get home before dark since I can't see a dark highway in the way I could once upon s time, in my long drives across the country.





There are a thousand ways in which I could maybe spend time with the Chicago family again somewhere in the next half year, but none of them are clearly spelled out right now. All I have is my bundle of hopes and my far reaching optimism that this will be possible sooner rather than later. Because the thought of "later" is too tough to stomach.

Leaving was very very hard.

But hey, see you soon little Primrose! Super soon my sweetest little one. Super super soon. I hope.




I pull in to the farmette driveway just as the sun has tucked in its last rays beneath the horizon. The bugs are out, but somehow I can't focus on them. Ed's been holding the fort with the animals. Hmm, the lilies need a trim. I have a couple of days to make progress there. I'll start tomorrow. Meanwhile, Ed -- can we have some popcorn?