Wednesday - 145th

Here's a truism for you: technology does not stand still. Everyone knows this, of course, yet we still proceed under the assumption that aspects of it will stay reliably in place. Especially those aspects which are important to you. Let progress move everything forward at a steady clip, but please, leave my little world intact. Preferably forever.

I was thinking of this as I once again tried out the new blogging interface that is being launched by Blogger, the host for Ocean. And once again I'm finding that Flickr, where I store my photos and Blogger are not on friendly terms. This means that in the months ahead, Blogger is going to pull the rug from under me and I will wake up one morning to find that I can no longer load photos here seamlessly from my storage place. At least not in the way that I've been loading them for the past 15 years.

If this happens (and I am fairly sure it will happen), I will have to make radical changes to the way I include photos here. I can only hope that past links to Flickr photos will be preserved or else I can't look forward to granny years (when I'm even more old than I am now!), where I can put my false teeth in a glass with water, prop up pillows, and look nostalgically at my blog posts of yore.

We will see where all this is heading, but for now, I have come to appreciate this other truism: relish what's before you today. Who the heck can tell where we'll be tomorrow.

From the amorphous, let's jump right into the minutia of the everyday. For us, this day was full of chicken capers.

The morning unfolded a little differently: we kept the cheepers under lock until 8 since we were to have one more push back misting of mosquito repellent. If all goes well, the blood suckers will all have left to seek their fortunes elsewhere. So, a quick garden clean up...





















And a quick breakfast inside...






And now Ed asks for my help: he has gotten fresh batteries for his tracking chips. The goal is to tie the chips to the chickens (who continue to lay their eggs in secret places). By tacking the hens, Ed thinks we can locate stashes of eggs. It's worked for one of the chickens. We're trying it on Peach and Java today. So, I catch each girl as she leaves the coop and Ed securely ties the tracking device to her neck.

This part sort of worked, if you ignore the fact that Peach pooped all over me during the procedure, forcing me to change clothes. But we did get the chips attached. And now the kids arrive and I'm off to be with them, while Ed more or less tracks the two chipped chickens. I say "more or less," because there is no way that Ed is going to run around the farmette lands all morning long keeping en eye out on two chickens. He takes pauses. Long pauses.

The kids and I play outside, which today means that Snowdrop is on a hunt for four leaf clovers. Never mind that I have yet to see a four leaf clover anywhere among the millions of clover plants I've pulled out on farmtter lands. She has youthful optimism. She hunts.

Sparrow, thinking we are on a leaf hunt, simply hunts for leaves. This is a much easier challenge.






(It's raining grass seeds)






(I would not let anyone step into any of my flower beds! Except for my grandchildren. They can go wherever they want...)






Eventually we go inside, but not for long. Ed is at the door asking Snowdrop to help him locate a chicken. She is so honored to be singled out for this assignment!






Sparrow and I follow, because the little guy cannot stand to have his sister leave the room, let alone leave the house without him.

And lo, with the help of the tracker, the two hunters find the chip! On the ground. Peach, who has a brain the size of a small pea, has managed to undo the string that held the chip around her neck. So, no Peach, no eggs. Just one chip, in some tall grasses.

They hunt for Java. We all hunt for Java.









And it's the same deal: the chip is found. Eventually, Java is found too, strutting around the courtyard. So much for our sleuthing efforts. Just goes to show you that even the newest technology may be of small use when you're up against chickens.

We will try again tomorrow.

There is an upside: I've been hoping the kids would spend more time outside. Today, we all spent a lot of time outside.


In the evening, Ed goes off on his bike ride. It's time for me to get moving too, but mine is an easy challenge -- a short walk down the road to the new development. If you look to the south, you can forget about the new streets, the construction, the neat and tidy houses. It's still prairie, scattered trees and the wetlands.  Always with the big sky, especially on a day like today.





A quiet little corner of south central Wisconsin. Except when the rooster crows. We have a very loud rooster.

Tuesday - 144th

A little warmer, a little sunnier, a little closer to the seasonal weather we come to expect in August.






The garden still requires work each morning, but not as much work. Fewer lilies, fewer flowers to stake.






Breakfast on the porch!






And the kids are willing to spend a few more minutes outside.
















Still, the lure of the farmhouse is so strong!

We spend a lot of time in the art room. Yeah!
















Why is it that this appeals to me so much? Because pictures always come with stories? So that the sensual experience is that much more potent? Because a child's picture is so earnest? After reading with them, painting and drawing are, hands down, my most favorite activities. So, forgetting about the one or two crumbled and discarded pics by Snowdrop ("I just don't like the way that wing looks!"), I'd consider this a morning well spent.

In the afternoon, we're all at my daughter's house. Ed is helping my son-in-law with a house repair project. Me, I sit back and enjoy the breeze coming in from the outside. And I think about how it really is very nice to be just sitting at a table where my daughter is trying to get some work done, while her son naps and her little girl is Zooming with her other grandmother, and doing nothing more grand than enjoying the breeze on my face.

Evening. Bright colors, a fading sun, crisp air. August sometimes gets a bum rap from me as being a month of fading gardens. This year, it feels so much richer than that. Every minute outside makes you grateful to be in this quiet small corner of this complicated world. Deep breath, let it out. Smile.

Monday - 143rd

How cold was it? So cold that I wore a sweater to clean the garden this morning.

(The heavy rains had come at night. The phlox spheres had tumbled under its impact. Time for stakes and clips.)











So cold that we ate breakfast in the kitchen.






So cold that I could not coax the kids to stay outside.











So I have to ask myself: how are going to fare come wintertime?? We are summer spoiled!






Well, here's a fine activity for indoor time: cut hair. Ed's beard -- off it goes! Sparrow's hair: make shorter! Snowdrop's bangs: snip snip! Honestly, I am on such a roll that I could really go scissor crazy, but the three victims resisted more drastic hair action. All but Sparrow, who thinks hair cuts are great fun.

In the afternoon, I had a check up of sorts -- an appointment I decided to actually keep. This will have been only my second step out of our isolation bubble (the first had been to see a dentist back in April) and I was very focused on doing it quickly and with minimum exposure to anybody. Since the visit was located in the small building of the sports clinic, I saw mostly young people with broken bones. In any case, everyone was properly masked and maintained social distance and I doubt the virus was present there though of course you never know. I touched nothing, sat nowhere and still decided to change clothes and take a nice hot shower when I got home.

Home. Safe, warm home. Blueberry Hibiscus tea and an Ed on the couch. The adventures for the day are behind us.


 


Now comes quiet time. Snail time. Time to look at the moon if the clouds part. It's the Full Sturgeon Moon. Do you see it where you are? Does it shine brightly over you tonight? Did you exhale in its silver light?

I hope so.

Sunday - 142nd

It's a quiet day. I keep telling Ed that it's going to rain and storm, but the day is passing without a sign of either. Whatever storms we'll have will be of our own making. And we surely are a stormy lot, us humans, no?

Ed and I were hugely productive today. He's cutting down some dead branches, I'm snipping lilies. We're both pulling weeds. He's mowing. I'm finding more weeds.

The flower fields are moving to that phase where you can't just expect to have beauty thrust upon you everywhere you look. It's not overwhelming. Rather, it's carefully presented. Oh, there still is that sense of abundance, but each day, something from the tableau is removed and the replacements are fewer and less dense.



















Of course, abundance is not necessarily the goal of every stage of gardening. There's something pleasant, for example, about walking down the path I'd put into the Big Bed this past spring. In July, it was overgrown with lily leaves. Now I can cut through the Bed with ease once more.

A few more flower photos for you:
























Breakfast. On the very late side.






We had another project for this day: find some of the cheeper eggs! Only Henny lays in the coop. Pepper lays on a hay bale. The rest? Who knows.

To help us in the search, Ed purchased these cheap trackers. The goal is to tie one around a hen's neck and to use a smart phone to locate her when she disappears sometime in the course of the day. I didn't quite believe it would work. I mean, how do you tie a chip around a chicken?

Ed does not give up. We corner Tomato. He ties the chip. We find the eggs! Seven of them, neatly laid out in a very thick clump of monarda flowers.

(Here's Java with her chip, tied with a string, hidden in the feathers of her neck. Unfortunately, the battery died. Ed is hopeful that with new batteries, we'll track the remaining offenders.)






Evening. We should have leftovers from last night's birthday meal, but I'm feeling the pressure to dig into the CSA box of veggies. We are swimming in corn and broccoli! So, leftovers are leftover for tomorrow and today I make a frittata.

Wishing quiet days would always be this way -- by choice, not by necessity. And of course, I'm thinking very good thoughts about the scientists who will bring us back into the world of inconsequential, impulsive, spirited movement, where doing something as simple as getting together with friends in a coffee shop harms no one at all.

For now, we are happy to do our part by staying put. Tending our garden, tying chips around cheeper necks, cutting through our meadow path in the old orchard, admiring the peaches that are ripening on our peach tree.
















Farmette summer days and nights are memorable even in their quietness. Oh, the sweet pleasure of living in the thick of nature! Even if you do exactly the same thing as the day before, take the same steps, walk the same paths, you wont be stuck in the same sensual orbit. Something will surprise you. Every single time you step outside, something will knock your socks off!

Saturday - 141st

Probably close to half of you have had a birthday since the pandemic became a threatening reality in the United States.  And it's likely that it felt a little weird, a lot different and perhaps more subdued than in years past. For me, the toughest family birthdays are those of isolated children.  Well, their parents too. And grandparents. Oh, hell-kite, it's tough for everyone!

Still, a lot of us have had good, if more quiet celebrations with at least some family members present and that's been wonderful. To this group I'd add my older daughter who turns almost but not quite 40 today. She is lucky: she has her kids, her husband, and she has us. And as we form a pod of isolation, we can gather.

And so the day is really mostly about getting ready for a family dinner at the farmhouse. Oh sure, there is the morning of garden work.













And Ed and I sit down to a relaxed breakfast on the porch...






But after that, I stay in the kitchen. To bake her favorite cake (orange and almond, nicknamed by me the Six Hour cake because that's how long it takes to make it)...






To prepare her best comfort food meal of crunchy chicken (and corn from the farm).

To tidy up and get ready for the arrival of the sweet Madison clan...






It's grand to do this for her. Like all working parents, my girl has had more than her share of stresses these last months. Still, even on this uniquely special day, you never forget about your other child and her family. You so want to set the table not for six, but for nine! That's my magic number now. Nine, there should be nine of us here for dinner tonight!

Oh, but you can't be greedy.

We pop a cork and drink to her health, our collective health and it is, in fact a joyous evening. August 1st. Her day.











My how she has changed since, well, those earlier years! Nearly three years old here...






With her own clan now...






Happy birthday, dearest one... happy happy birthday!

Friday - 140th

The day reminds me of scrambled eggs: shells cracked, thrown quickly together, whipped up to a sizzle, then finally plated and savored, at a calm pace.

It was an early day for both of us. We're running into problems feeding all the animals, given that one set of cats wants what the other gets and the chickens want basically what is in anyone else's dish over and above what's in their own. So now we both have to feed the animals together, moving swiftly between feeding stations.

And since we're both up, wouldn't this be a fine time to go get our corn from the corn farmers? Yes it would!

We take the motorbike up the road and it is such a pretty and refreshing ride! The wind is just cool enough to make me think of putting on a summer sweater and the sun is still gentle and soothing. As we make the turn into the driveway of the neatly tended farmstead, Ed comments on how good it is to be living so close to so much of what we love. I have to smile at that. It takes a while to form an attachment to a community, a neighborhood, or a set of rural roads, but once you do, that loyalty only grows stronger. My friends in Warsaw have a significant attachment to the neighborhoods of their childhood. In fact, some have moved right back to those set of blocks that were home early on. For Ed and me, a home base hasn't been as solid or stable. I told him today that he has a lot of New York still within him. Mannerisms and habits that stand out as being very un-Wisconsin. He did not disagree. Maybe that's why I'm hanging out with a fellow New Yorker, he laughed. Neither of us especially like that city and I have long given up on calling Warsaw home, but now, here, on the farmette, we're finding something likable about keeping to our "neighborhood" of farmers, vendors, parks, and in better times, coffee shops and eateries. If there is a place that's within a short drive, we'll always pick that over something even just a little farther.

So now we've fed the animals, picked up freshly harvested corn, but the lilies are untouched and I'm distracted by messages from my daughter about some snafus they have encountered in their scheduling decisions and so I am both snipping and texting and cutting up fruits for breakfast and giving Ed a tour of the old orchard where I wish he'd clear some dead tress and out of control brush and bramblers.

Not many garden photos emerge. There were too many eggs sizzling in the pan already. Still, these two are indicative: the colors are strong, the lilies are ending their best month with a strong finish.












Porch breakfast. Scrambled morning ends on a calm note.






The kids come then and once again we begin with some outdoor time. Ed has charged them with a chore: every time they are outside, they must go to the back of the barn and scare away any deer they may find there. Our exploding tomato crop is being destroyed by very un-shy deer who nibble, trample and retreat, several times each day. The kids love the idea of being guards of the tomato patch and although we find no deer the two times we venture out back, the chore is one they're happy to return to again and again!

In addition to deer, we're getting quite the surge in butterflies and humming birds. Snowdrop is enraptured. Even a common cabbage butterfly is nothing short of magical to her.






(the humming bird: it does sometimes take a pause.)











(the kids: outside.)

























(Sparrow is photographed far less frequently outside, because he is always asking to hold my hand. Well, it beats carrying the little load!)

In the afternoon, once the kids are gone, both Ed and I zonk out on the two couches in the farmhouse. We are that tired.

Evening. Animal chores. Snip the flowers I never snipped in the morning.


 


A check on the tomatoes. Oh dear...





Shoooo! (As if that will help!)


Dinner is leftovers. And fresh corn. A stellar combination!