Wednesday - 362nd

You know the old saying -- just because you can, doesn't mean you should. I thought of that today. A lot. 

We were to have rain, and so after breakfast...

... I settled in to work on my garden plans. For the moment, I simply sketched out the various flower fields (there are now10, with six "subfields") and listed all the new flowers that I will be planting. Here's how it looks.

I know I know I know! That's so old fashioned! Who even writes in long hand anymore! Well, I did. The Clairefontaine notebook makes me think of Paris every time I open it up.

I took a break to pick up my new glasses. I can see clearly now! The world is not a hazy fuzzy place after all! I can see, for example, that it did not rain and that it's not likely to rain today. The ground is wet, but that is understandable -- it's from the melted snow.  

So maybe it's time to start prepping the new flower beds and cleaning out the old ones?

It's a huge job, but I'm thinking -- if I work just one to two hours each day and every day, I'll have it all ready for the arrival of the new plants at the end of April.

I go outside, put on my gardening gloves and start in on the bed by the farmhouse path. That would be bed number 4, as per sketched plan. Ed comes out to see what all the noise is about. He offers to help. So let's use him for the big stuff: weeding the overgrown mess by the sheep shed that this year will be turned into bed number 10, both (a) and (b).

Ever the efficiency expert, he tells me that we are using too much energy for too little gain. He brings out the tiller. That helps a little, but still, the weeds are intense here. I shovel, he tills, I pull, he rakes. After one or two or was it ten hours, we are spent. This is when it hits me: maybe I've taken on too much? Maybe I can't plant a million seeds and a thousand flowers. And take care of all the flowers that are here already (requiring weeding, splitting, moving, pruning.

Well maybe. Maybe it is too much. Still, I see the first signs of the work I did last autumn in planting bulbs:

It's so satisfying, watching spring plants emerge! So deeply satisfying!

I remind myself that we are in day number 362 of isolation. No one comes here (except for the grandkids now). No one sees the gardens I create. 

And yet, it's so deeply satisfying to walk in a field of lilies and snip their spent heads so that new ones will be so very beautiful to behold. So for now, we clean the beds. One or two hours, every day, until planting time.

Tuesday - 361th

On this second day of spring-like beauty, Ed and I opt for an easy morning of reading and writing. After I look in on the cheeps.

 

 

 

And after breakfast of course. And by the way, for the record, I do not eat my usual oatmeal, but instead, I take the time to prepare the Swedish porridge served to me on my last visit to Chicago. Pearled barley, sunflower seeds, flax seeds. Crushed rye, bulgur. Soaked overnight, cooked in the morning. You're supposed to dab it with butter and jam, but some of my habits are just too ingrained and so I dump the usual kefir, fruit and honey on it instead.

But in the early afternoon, I nudge us to go out. We have a big gardening job that we need to do in the early spring and it seems that a sunny and unusually warm day is just right for it. Out come the clippers, out comes the pole saw. We need to trim the fruit trees in the young orchard.

This is perhaps the most important task in any orchard where you hope to have a successful harvest. Letting the branches grow inside the crown of the tree makes for an unhealthy crop of small fruits. Too little light, too heavy a load for the young branches to bear.

Ed claims we never do it correctly and he is right, to an extent: in the early years especially, we did not trim well and we did not protect the trees well enough from deer. Several trees developed an odd shape. And we weren't smart enough to buy only dwarfs so that a number of the trees are just too tall. Still, we work with what we have.

(The big girls and the rooster keep an eye on us. Garden work sometimes means digging and that means worms. Not today, cheepers, not today.)

Later, Ed and I do take a walk, because pruning trees just doesn't get those leg muscles working for you. My Fitbit would have been disappointed! Note how much of the snow has melted in the last handful of days!

(We are near a field of geese. And birds of an unknown to me species. Too, we hear the cranes in the distance. In other words, it's loud out there this evening!)

 

(Celebrating possibly the last "safe" day on the lake...)

A glorious day. Really, the weather was just fantastic. Tomorrow -- the first solid rain of the year.

Monday - 360th

We have two days of unusually warm weather. More like May stuff, really. On this day, however, my mind is elsewhere. My first task in the morning is to call the car dealer and schedule an appointment for Blue Moon. It has an unfortunate rattle somewhere in the front panel or possibly under the hood. But you know what the nice thing here is? Ed and I don't have to trouble shoot and locate the noise source. I'll leave it to the mechanics!

Breakfast, prepared quickly...

 

... because we need to be ready for the arrival of this awesome twosome.

They are spirited and high energy!

And full of ideas on how to play.

(And what to eat...)

Snowdrop does have to return to Zoom kindergarten in the first half of the week. That proved to be tricky when we were shuttling the girl back and forth between households back in December. But this time the demands seem to be fewer and no materials are needed (that I can figure out). Still, it can be tedious...

And by noon she is done and we return to... kicking around balloons.

A few hours later I drive the kids home. Ed goes out on his first bike ride of the year (it is that warm!) and I give serious consideration to taking a nap. But no. I cannot! It would be criminal not to take a solid walk in such fine weather. (We are near 60F, or 15C.) And so I take a solitary trek in our local park, and I think about the spring season, and how we lost so much of it to the pandemic last year! A day like this makes you believe that this spring will be different. Better for everyone. Really, that is my constant hope.

I cook up an easy supper. Ed and I both could do with something quick and dirty. Cheeper eggs! With local mushrooms, local spinach, and not so local smoked salmon.  I'm betting that we'll both doze off over that bowl of popcorn later tonight!

Sunday - 359th

My day is filled with scores of Latin words. Well, Latin sounding words. I'm not sure if true Botanical names are actually Latin or if we just give them names that have Latin-like endings.

Epimedium alpinum rubrum

It's a pretty day in a subdued sort of way. Chicks: there are the growing chicks...

 

 

 

We have a calm breakfast...

 

Ad then I sit down to the task at hand.

Symphyotrichum oblongifolium "Raydon's Favorite." Now that's a mouthful, followed by that Raydon twist.

Pyncnanthemum verticillatum var. pilosum or -- hairy mountain mint. The minty stuff is the common name -- way easier to pronounce than the Botanical one which in the first word alone has 13 letters, only 4 of which are vowels, even if you rank the Y as a vowel (according to the rules of grammar -- it is indeed a vowel in that particular word).

Of course, there are, too, the daylilies:

Hemerocallis scratch and sniff, Hemerocallis wild one, hemerocallis smoky mountain autumn.

These are all flowers I ordered for spring planting. I'm being systematic this year: I bought a spiffy notebook (a Clairefontaine, squared) and I wrote in today all that we purchased -- names, light requirements, size, bloom time.

It took forever.

In the next days I'll envision a new bed and I'll disperse the rest among existing flower fields.

 

In the afternoon, a guy called asking if he could take a look at my old car (which is currently for sale on Craigslist). "We're about to have a baby, she's in the hospital, and I desperately need to get my hands on a car that's big enough for the kid..."

We wait. He comes. He drives it. He likes it. "I'll give you $100 to hold it until tomorrow. Let me get to an ATM." He leaves. We wait, but only for a few minutes.

He wont be back. -- this from Ed. But he needs it for his new baby!

You believed him? He comes out to buy the car and he doesn't have $100 with him for a deposit? 

Why wouldn't he just leave and say no thanks?

The guy calls back. "My girlfriend is looking at another car. We'll choose between the two." Wait, I thought she was in the hospital having a baby?

Such is Craigslist. We go out for a hike in our local park. And it is slushy, but very pretty in the predusk light.

And on the drive back, we greet the returning Sandhill cranes. We'd heard them already last week, but this is the first sighting: it's a sure and welcome sign of spring. 

 

 

Saturday - 358th

Plentiful sunshine. Those are the words used by the weather bureau to describe this day. Even the sound of it is delicious!

It's Saturday, but it's more like Sunday because our schedules are flipped to accommodate various events. So, Sunday family dinner tonight!

But first, the usual, performed with the bounce that only this kind of weather could provide.

(There are still snow covered areas. But it's all very lovely nonetheless!)

Breakfast is ready!

Ed and I do a midday hike along a segment of the Ice Age trail, one that we don't return to often. And it's a shame, because it's pretty!

Though honestly, tell me what's *not* pretty outdoors today. Oh, I suppose the mud -- there's plenty of it at the farmette, but on the trail, we're mostly dealing with slushy snow.

And blue skies and sunshine.

The young family comes at the usual predinner time, but of course, we're approaching spring and so there is still plenty of light. The kids play, the grownups relax, we munch on roasted beets and cheese and crackers.With wine for those who can and sparkling cider for those who cannot.

There are some things that you never want to change...

 

 

 

Friday - 357th

This is the kind of Groundhogian repetition that I can live with: a wake up to yet another day of sunshine and the lengthening of each day, so that we are now at a 6:26 sunrise and a 5:52 sunset. We are rich with daylight!

With a melting snow cover, I can resume my morning walk across the farmette lands. My path takes me around the pines and back of the barn. This is one of the sunnier spots here, not yet shaded over by the ever encroaching trees. Will we plant a tomato field this year? Will we go ahead with expanding the new orchard?

Probably not. The deer routinely pass through this way every day and we'd have to install significant animal protections  (electric fence? Other?) to have a successful harvest. Right now the thought is to let it go to prairie, possibly mowing down paths. We've been able to control the honeysuckle invasives, but the thistle and the multiflora rose have won in significant parts of these fields. We may just let them be for now. I have too much work this year expanding flower fields south of the barn to focus my energies as well on this wilder northern section of the property.

Breakfast, sunny, delightful.

Soon after, Sparrow arrives for his first visit here in several months!

Unlike Snowdrop and Primrose, the young lad has not had any school time and indeed has literally not been anywhere outside of his home (and the farmhouse earlier on) for a year now. For him, the world has been a small place indeed. For now, at least he has a return to the farmette.

I was mindful of the fact that he may be shy about coming back without his sister. But I have chicks! 

In his time here, Sparrow makes many trips to visit with the chicks.

And, as Snowdrop during yesterday's return, he spends many hours returning to his favorite toys. So familiar, yet fresh too.

 

(Chickens are a high ticket item here these days. Even fake chickens.)

And then we do an afternoon switch: I return Sparrow to his parents and pick up Snowdrop at school. A happy girl indeed!

Did I mention that chickens these days are a source of delight here?

 

 

But not only. Snowdrop picks up again on her story telling aided by her dolls and she returns to her super pig book making. It's funny that she should do this with such love and enthusiasm here, because in the months that she has stayed away from the farmhouse, she did neither at home: no doll stories, no super pigs. It's a world that lives here and waits for her here.

 

Toward the end, she wants an outdoor adventure. By then, I have had my fill of the outdoors. It's not that warm once the sun disappears behind some clouds. Still, she is so determined that I cave. We take a few of her "dressed for winter" dolls, a snack, and her binoculars. 

I'm happy that this child, who can be quite exacting and fastidious, is delighted to make squishy sounds in the mud paths we have here now. (The farmette paths in March are one big squishy mess.

 

Evening. Kids are home, Ed and I are in our same old spots on the couch doing the same old stuff. It's rare these days to just stick with the "same old." But we do. At least in the evenings. Out comes the popcorn. We're set, until one or both of us falls asleep...

Thursday - 356th

A little bit cold, a little bit cautious, a little bit social, a little bit more of family. With plenty of sunshine to wrap this day in a cheerful blanket of delight.

I am up early. We both are. Ed is strategizing a potential sailing trip, I'm bouncing around ideas on how to do this efficiently and in a fun way, and before you know it, the day is up and running.

As are the animals -- they are buoyant when the day is sunny and (almost) springlike.

(Well, the little chicks are more suspicious than buoyant, but still, I force them out for an adventure: there is a wider world outside your box, little girls!)

My breakfast thoughts are with Primrose in Chicago. I got this baby primrose plant and it so reminds me of these delicate spring flowers blooming in the Luxembourg Gardens on the day she was born...

And then I get the house ready for the afternoon. (With a pause to do a Zoom checkin with my friends in Poland: when you get too wrapped up in the pandemic stories of this country, it's good to take a step back and consider what's going on elsewhere in this world.)

 On this day, we are resuming contact with my older daughter's family. We've done this following the recommendations of docs: the young family is still isolating but for Snowdrop's school attendance, and I've spaced my visits so that I wont bring anything from Chicago into the Madison household. And so, beginning today, I can help once more, beginning with Snowdrop school pick ups on the days she has inclass instruction.

It's surreal. I had picked this girl up from school every day since she began attending the Montessori preschool at the age of 1. And now here she is, coming out in full winter and pandemic gear at her new school, bursting out with a heavy dose of that Snowdrop enthusiasm.

Once again she is at the farmhouse.

Reaching for all her favorites: books, dolls, foods, legos, dress up clothes.

And chicks. Again and again, she comes back to the chicks.

As I drive her home in the evening and listen to her soft voice -- so soft that I can hardly hear it, even in this brand new quiet car -- I think how hard it has been on all grandparents who have lost so much family time this past year. And the cups of coffee not sipped with friends, the glass of wine not enjoyed with a big meal of close ones. So tough. So very tough.

I drop off Snowdrop and her school gear, I greet Sparrow, whom I'll see more of tomorrow, and I make my way home.

And to make my day almost too good, I have a dinner FaceTime with Primrose.

Families, friends, waiting. To see each other, to play together, to enjoy that sip of coffee or wine in the company of others. Oh, but it will be good news indeed to learn (soon, we hope) that this is okay now. That we can go back and enjoy all those hours together. With love...