Tuesday - 137th

We were up half the night, Ed and I. It happens. He says something and it sets me thinking. This time it was this -- I looked at the listing. It's not bad. He was referring to a house I saw listed for sale somewhere outside of Madison. I'd emailed him a link to it earlier that evening.

The thing is, we don't really want to move, even as the idea is gaining more traction.


*   *   *

It's a warm morning. There is a drizzle, but it doesn't last. Eventually the day will be full of sunshine. But in these early hours, groggy from too little sleep, we step outside and walk the farmette lands together. Ed is taking seriously my proclamation that I am overwhelmed by the weeds. Not flowerbed weeds, but all those other monster weeds that invade every uncultivated bit of land.


























(and the new orchard, with its fledgling meadow...)






It is overwhelming, he acknowledges. Can you just ignore them? He asks this knowing that I cannot. You know how I have always noted our tremendous differences? Put down "ignoring weeds" on the long list where we can't easily reach agreement because we are entirely different in our approach to our surroundings.

Ed retreats inside to contemplate it all (and to run away from the post-rain reemerging bugs), I snip lilies and clean up the beds a bit.


*   *   *

We eat breakfast. A long long breakfast. We talk about possibilities. Move, weed, get help, ignore, have a master plan.





Right now we have no master plan. We have little planlets that we implement as the mood strikes us. Of course, there is no resolution. That wont happen immediately. But our minds are on it now! (And no, we didn't look at the "for sale" house we both sort of liked: it had already sold.)


*   *   *

After breakfast, I pick up Snowdrop. Just the little girl again. We're still working through various bugs and scheduling issues.

In the car, she once again explains to me that she really does like learning about how things work.. Her parents had been interviewing babysitters and she was adamant that the new hire should have a healthy love of science.
And as if to illustrate -- Did you know, gaga, that buggers and mucus are important to keeping you healthy? It has to do with keeping your good germs in your body. But what I really want to know is what happens to the food inside your body: some of it stays, some comes out. How does that work?

I use the rest of the car ride to explain (and make wild guesses about) the workings of the human digestive system.


*   *   *

She spends the day here, at the farmhouse.


 


It is a really good day: we read, do some work sheets, she engages in a bit of creative play and then we plunge into a very lively hour of making small gifts for each other out of post-its.





And by evening I take her home.


*   *   *

As I fix dinner, I get a call from this little one:





I imagine that Primrose must have thought I was a bit nutty. I did not want to let go of the phone call -- it's too precious! At the same time, the beans had been steaming for the requisite handful of minutes, the new potatoes were threatening to be overdone, and the cubes of fish -- well, you know what happens to fish when you cook it even ten seconds too long. So she watches, possibly horrified, as I scan my cooing with the phone camera for her, including segments where I sample a string bean and swiggle it around like a lasso. Okay, you had to be there. It was wild.


*   *   *

After supper, Ed and I settle in to our wonderful low key evening. You know, the one with popcorn. Now is not the time to think about weeds or bugs -- the outdoor ones and the ones that strike you down unexpectedly. Now is the time to exhale and feel good about all that is okay in your life.  And feel grateful to those who have helped make it so.

With love.

Monday - 136th

The garden is wet when I step outside this morning. It feels a little humid, but maybe it's just that there is so much moisture all around me. We had a good rainfall overnight. The flowers are happy.






The early phlox has come and gone. But the late July phlox? It's gorgeous right now and in my view, it's a perfect companion to day lilies. See above, see below!












The sun is out, the landscape dries out. The air dries out. We're in for another stellar day! And as I look ahead, it seems we're going to get a string of perfect days! It's as if nature is apologizing for the whammy it dealt us this year!







The front bed is now dominated by the towering Strawberries and Cream Hydrangeas. Well, it should be "cream and strawberries," since they start out creamy white and slowly turn pink.






Breakfast.






(Looking out from the porch...)






We're still messing around with childcare schedules. We have some minor adjustments to make this week, as things got a little wacky the last few days. This morning, I drive over to my daughter's place to pick up just Snowdrop for another solo day at the farmhouse.












The girl is in an especially sweet and loving mood. She's feeling the seasonal progression, the slow movement toward fall, a fall where once again nothing will be as before.






But there's also that indubitable twinkle in her soul that leads her to be such a smiling child. And of course, there is her love of words. On the car ride to the farmette, we talk about numbers. She has a favorite (16). And a second favorite (11). And a third favorite (100). I ask her -- why eleven?
Oh, the sound of it, gaga! Say it -- eleven. Isn't that pretty?

She doesn't want to play outside. She wants to read and eat peaches. Well alright. It takes two cups of tea to get me through all that reading, but it's really a grand way to pass our time, right there on the orange couch, with pillows arranged just so...






I had gotten her a very cheap collection of fairies, thinking that she'd like adding them to her various setups in her play space, but she doesn't do that. She keeps them by the couch and spends a good half hour creating characters for them, spinning the next tale, one that you can hear if you try, but you sort of feel like perhaps you shouldn't, because this is her world, shared only through your witnessing her pleasure in losing herself in her own words.






Evening. A stunning one of cool breezes and brilliant light. A most perfect one, if you can just forget everyone's sad news, everyone's anxiety. I take a walk to the new orchard. Are there still blueberries to pick? Yes, a few.






And a meadow to admire...











Reheat the frittata, make a salad, look out at the garden. For this one brief minute, give yourself permission to smile.

Sunday - 135th

I am a cleaning machine. I suck dirt and remove debris. I attack the bathroom, I vacuum and polish the kitchen, the mud room, the living room. I pull off spent flowers and attack weeds. I mow paths. I trim porch flower pots and vacuum the mess. All day long I am creating order.































When I pause for a very very late breakfast, I speculate about caring for the yard going forward. I don't want to drag Ed into more outdoor work if he doesn't really like doing a great deal of it. In future years, should we scrounge up the funds and pay someone to come out and help me at times like this, when the whole three acres seem to be one relentless competition for which weed will grow the fastest, tallest, densest?
You could just stick with tending to your flowers and let the rest go, Ed tells me.
No, I really can't. I see the prickly weeds that will soon coat everything and everyone in sight and I know I must pull them out. Same for the million other things that fill in every corner of farmette land if I don't exercise some form of control.

He offers another breakfast table idea: we could move.






In many ways, the farmette is a disaster in the making. It has far too many trees and shrubs and they all crowd out each other and provide the dense foliage that mosquitoes love to call their own. And it's difficult to control the duff that covers so much of the shaded woodsy space. Do you mow it? Do you plant mushrooms? Woodland flowers? We've tried it all. And, of course, we live very close to wetlands. The bugs belong here. It's their territory. We are the invaders.

Still, there's so much to love here: space, privacy, a comfy little farmhouse, good internet (!), and a ten minute drive to the center of Madison, so that nothing is far and yes, a grocery store will deliver food to you! And of course, you don't really understand the benefits and drawbacks of any place until you've lived there for a while. We do get this place. We don't have so very many years to discover something new.

All this is idle talk: hiring help, moving, or maybe just cutting down about a dozen trees and calling it a day. And then planting two or three hundred little saplings to make better use of the northern most acre of the farmette. But these musings are a funny thing: toss them around often enough and suddenly you have a plan.

We will see what, over time, will percolate to the top. I'll let you know!

Our evening is a little different. We switched the family dinner night to later in the week and so today it's just Ed and me, watching the clouds form into a tempest outside. Good. We need the rain.

And isn't this a fine time to bake a frittata? With broccoli, mushrooms, garlic scapes... Yes it is!






It's the summer of many rainbows. Storms, followed by rainbows. One more thing to love.

Saturday - 134th

Flowers. Always, let there be flowers in your life. If not fresh, then artistically sketched. Let their audacious color, their brilliance and their sweet magic creep into your life. Pick your favorites and plant them, paint them, sew with them, or simply imagine them in their best moment.

For day lilies, the best moment is right now. Indeed, if numbers talk, I'd say that their best moment was yesterday or the day before. Today, in a very leisurely stroll through all the flower beds, I clipped just under 700 spent lilies. That's several hundred less than in my mad dashes during the week.

You will get a lot of flower photos today. It's inevitable -- my day is spent in their midst. The camera follows me and does the job of recording all that I love out there.




































I'm thrilled that the mosquitoes are down to a very manageable small number.  In places, I forget that they're even there. It's just me and the butterflies and the occasional dragon fly. Well, and the cats and cheepers and birds and bees.

Breakfast is very late. I'm still picking day lily stalks for the table, but I wont do that going forward. Whatever remains, deserves its moment in the garden. Ed hates chopping down trees and I'm the reluctant flower picker. Odd to have a full vase always on my table, even as the flowers are rarely from my own garden. But today, they are from my garden.






In the afternoon I pause just a little -- really, just to drink eighty cups of water (it's hot outside!) and to pick up our CSA box (more corn!) and then it's back to work. The bug repellent isn't very strong and within a few days, the bugs will come back for another annoying surge. I have a whole day. I must make inroads. I want to make inroads!











By evening, I am spent. And stiff. I weeded the courtyard and three beds, including the Big Bed and there are monstrous piles of pulled weeds that attest to my work. Was it worth it? Ed comments -- it's so much work... you must like doing it.

Do I? When you snip spent lilies, the improvement is pronounced. But when you pull weeds, you're doing your flowers a favor, but it's a secret favor -- between you and your flower friends. To the casual observer, the before and after photos are pretty much the same.

In working closely with the base of each plant I did notice that things are looking pretty dry out there. We need rain!

A quiet evening. I reheat soup and make a salad and I try not to worry about the state of the world, about the state of the health of yet another friend who has come down with a fever, about all that everyone else is worrying about as well.

Want to start a new British crime drama? -- I ask Ed.
He pops some popcorn, we turn on our evening distraction.

Friday - 133rd

We rode the motorbike to Olin Park to see the goats. An article in the local news source described how Madison had contracted with a goat de-weeding service whereby some forty goats are let loose in a space heavily infested with invasives. The goats chomp the stuff down.

It's a short drive to the park: less than ten minutes. I should know, I've driven this stretch hundreds of times in the past few years. Snowdrop and Sparrow attended a school just down the street.

It felt eerie doing it today. I haven't come this way since March when I last picked up the kids at school. A whole season came and went and now we're halfway into summer. And of course, I'm not likely to be picking up anyone from this school come fall. For one thing, Snowdrop will have aged out of her program. She is slated to attend in some fashion a public school in her neighborhood. If she stays home, Sparrow will stay home as well.

But I can't say that it was a sad ride or a sad reflection. For me, there are positives to having the kids in the morning: I get them fresh and eager as opposed to tired or excessively wound up. And we have had a summer of pretty good weather. Nice! Last time I was doing school pickups, I was carrying all that winter clothing, their backpacks, art work and, too, Sparrow, who was not yet very nimble on his own.


Earlier, in the morning, I checked off my usual farmette jobs. The bugs were horrible, but hey, we finally broke down and hired the mosquito pros to spray some "natural" stuff on our stomping grounds. We've used some such stuff the past two years and it does reduce the bug population by about 75%. It's good enough. The guys come after I've already snipped 850 lily heads this morning, but that's okay. I snipped them with a smile, knowing there will be a better tomorrow. You can put up with a lot if you know that any moment now the torture is going to end.

So, the garden first...





















Then breakfast...






Then I go to pick up Snowdrop for her Friday at the farmette.






(The young orchard meadow is doing well!)






(Her new beloved: peaches. They beat out even cherries.)












We sample a couple of new books and I have to smile, or shake my head, or both, at how this little girl can watch a whole Disney movie or listen to Harry Potter and not be terrified, but one scene in a realistic book where a child is frightened by an angry coyote and she doesn't want to finish it. She is super sensitive to child hurt -- by parent, by teacher, or by a wild coyote.

There is another predictable activity that we fall back on when Sparrow isn't here. She and I both sit down at the table to draw. She very quickly abandons her creation to sit on my lap and make a story out of my sketch, which is actually not mine anymore because she has so completely taken on the lead on what should unfold on this little canvas. It's especially sweet and poignant when a five year old climbs on your lap. That happens less and less as they get older. You get to really love those moments, knowing how quickly they disappear.


And then in the late afternoon, as you know, Ed and I ride out to look at the goats.






We didn't walk the trails too long. We've had enough of bugs.






Supper: cauliflower and corn with lots of basil. Fish. Salad with homegrown tomatoes.