"two" is more forceful than "one"

If asked where I got my love of beautiful gardens, I'd say two things in my life happened almost at once: I spent a summer in England (pregnant with the younger one and holding the little hand of my older girl) and soon after, I visited Giverny -- the place where Monet planted his garden. Either trip would have spurred me to look differently at my own garden, but the two, within years of each other pushed me over the cliff. I've been planting herbaceous (perennial) borders and beds ever since. I consider a patch with some sunlight and decent dirt to be a gift, to be used wisely. You have have the ability to turn it into something beneficial and sensual.

April gives us the thrill of first flowers here in south central Wisconsin. May -- well that's a garden in full swing. Whichever way you look, there will be something to awe you.

I'm up early. There are animals to feed. This, too, is an opportunity to take that morning walk. The colors are beautiful then!

Our friends linger for breakfast before they take off. Too cold for the porch, especially for these two (they just came from Hawaii).

But even from the inside, the eye is drawn to the garden. The lilac is coming into bloom and the crab is not yet dropping petals. This, too, is a confluence of two powerful garden beauties. Early spring anchors: apple and lilac!

I do spend time planting -- but I only have a couple of hours for it.  By early afternoon it's time to pick up Snowdrop. 

 

 

 

She had been learning about famous painters in her school art class and I thought this may be a good moment to introduce her to a book that was extremely influential for me, for my kids when they were school aged -- Linea in Monet's Garden. Kid books are supposed to open their young eyes to the intricate wonders of our planet, but the very best books are as important to us readers as they are to the intended audience. Over the decades, I learned a lot about Monet's work, but none of the new information was as eye opening to me as what I'd picked up from this young person's book. 

Will Snowdrop (or Primrose or Sparrow) feel the pull toward these late nineteenth century painters? Toward the gardens that became Monet's obsession and now mine? 

It's a cool day and we'll have a cool weekend too. There's even a danger of light frost, though I'm not too worried. It doesn't feel threatening. It feels crisp and lovely and hopeful. 

 

(with the young chicks)

 

 

 

Much much later I consider what to make for supper. Leftovers win. It's just the two of us. Both tired, but happy to have had so many good days of productive work outside.

new paths

For someone who seems to be stuck in familiar repetitive patterns, I have to say, to me it feels like I am forever tweaking things and making adjustments. Life demands adjustments. Gardens demand adjustments. Grandkids and especially parents of grandkids and babysitters of kids -- they all have schedules that demand adjustments. So today feels to me very different even if you're thinking -- oh, she's doing the same stuff.

The day starts off cool and cloudy. We had rain showers overnight and the world smells damp and wonderful.

There's no going back: the beauty of this month will not recede. 

But breakfast is definitely in the kitchen.

 

Immediately after, Sparrow comes over. This is the new pre-vacation normal. Thursday mornings belong to him, here. 

He is agreeable. I want at least a few minutes outside. He's up for it.

But not too long. The bulk of our time is spent inside the cozy warm farmhouse.

The afternoon? I'm back in the garden. Just for a handful of hours and no, it's not the same old digging in new flowers. Now that the flower beds are filling in, I see where I really need to make adjustments. Paper plans just do not fully explain how gardens grow. And so I try out some new designs. I create a Virginia bluebell patch. I put in some lilium bulbs in bare spots. Tweaks. New stuff. Some of it wont even grow this year. I'm planting for next year and the year after.

But toward mid afternoon I stop. Here's something really new for us: Ed's college friend and his wife are in town and fully vaccinated. It feels strange and a little unreal, but they in fact do come over and do eat dinner with us and do spend the night here -- just as they did before the pandemic.

 

 

 

You'll tell me  -- ah, you're slowly returning to the old life. This would be untrue. There is no going back. My Polish friends asked me if I will be traveling to Warsaw this summer. In the old life, I would think -- well now, that's a good idea. I should do that! This time I responded -- no, I'm not feeling it's right to travel right now. And with our friends -- we're not going out to dinner and indeed, it very much feels like we are navigating a new landscape. 

Still, a pretty landscape. It's May and life for us is a heck of a lot more normal now than it was a year ago. A new normal, but still, not a crazy isolated pandemic times normal. And for that we are so grateful.

 

tiny white blossoms

A garden is like a book -- you can never finish writing it. There is always another edit, a correction, a change of words. (Don't I know it! Ask me why I'm sitting on the last ten pages of my book and refusing to push it all out the door!) Still, getting everything into the ground is like sending off the first draft. And slowly but quite surely I am getting it all into the ground. Sure, there are the loose ends: eight more perennials today, some of them targeted for my "meadows in progress" -- these aren't really flower beds but spaces in the young orchard and the wedding field (because there was once a wedding tent here) where I want to encourage wild flowers and natives to compete with the quack grass and creeping charlie. And a few more stragglers came with the post, but nothing that a few hours over the weekend wont fix. Too, I have seeds -- I'm late with those, considering the good weather this year. I'll put those in by Sunday for sure.

And so by Mother's Day (this coming Sunday!), I expect to be mainly done with planting. 

 

If you think I've been too wrapped in garden thoughts lately, wait til you see today's photos. Only two of them have nothing to do with the (blooming!) crab apple. But this is what you do when you grow and love flowers: you lose yourself completely in nature's offerings of the day. And today, and perhaps still tomorrow, and if we are lucky then the next day as well nature is spotlighting for us the magnificent blooming crab.

What of my life outside the garden? Well, there was breakfast (lilies of the valley are exploding right now!)...

And in the afternoon I Zoomed with my Polish friends. It's good to know that they are moving ahead with the vaccination regiment. All of them (their children too) have had at least one shot.

Still later I drove out to the greenhouses up the road to pick up some filler for a few of my pots. Oh, sorry. That's a gardening topic. I promised a pause with that. So let me move straight up to the beautiful and calm evening. Ed is out biking, I am on Face Time with Primrose.

I don't think I went back to my garden after that, but I really don't remember. Head up in the clouds all day, filled with tiny white blossoms.

hoodie weather

Time to bundle up again. The rains satisfied all my plants and then some. (The weeds, too, are wild with joy.) The heat wave moved elsewhere, cool air settled in. Time for the sweatpants and hoodie once more.

And we need warm wraps for the morning walk. Ed joins me today. We kept the chicks in the coop overnight. We'll be setting them free once again so that they can live their free range lives. Last week, we had let them out and the cats the cats looked like they might pounce on them so we locked the chicks up again. The hope is that the they grew enough since then so that the cats will have second thoughts. There seems to be a magic line out there and once they cross it, they become chickens rather than birds in the eyes of the six cats that live here. You may chase birds, but they don't mess with chickens.

And indeed, there is a passing feline interest in the three young girls, but nothing more than that. 

The chicks accept the cats without worry and the cats keep their distance (chasing each other up ladders and trees and leaving the chicks to their free ranging bliss).

That is not the only worry, of course. The three newbies don't yet know to be afraid of certain predators. They also don't seem to know that there is safety in numbers. The big hens and Happy go one way, the three little ones go off in a different direction. 

So how will they manage to return to the coop tonight? Well that's a good question! Right now they seem pretty clueless about everything. Let's hope that by evening they'll pick up some understanding of the lay of the land. [Spoiler: we will corner them and chase them inside the coop.]

 

In the meantime, the clouds stay put and the hoodie stays zipped and I have little desire to spend all the morning hours outside. (There's  plenty of mom paperwork to keep me busy indoors.) Breakfast inside, obviously.

 

 

 

I do have some leftover prairie perennials that still need to be planted and I have about two dozen more plants arriving later in the week. But that's all peanuts. A handful gets put in today, but the heavy load of spring planting is behind me. As of this day, I have 214 new perennials, in the ground!

What's blooming right now? Oh, the crab apple of course...

But, too, the lilac is just about ready to begin its week of fragrant glory.

 

 

 

Afternoon is Snowdrop pick up time.

I wish I could offer her warm sunshine and playtime outside. It's just not that kind of a day. But we cover the outdoor essentials: she wants to check if the little chicks are in the coop.

And I want to show her the blooming (out of control as usual) lilies of the valley. I love these flowers, though keeping them out of the flower beds is a challenge!

And she wants to climb her tree, which right now is nothing short of enchanting.

And then we speed inside, where it's cozy and warm and more importantly -- there are mango slices and strawberries and cheddar bunnies to snack on.

Evening: there are breaks in the clouds. We'll have hoodie weather on and off this week. And that's just fine. May is always beautiful. Cold, warm, dry, wet -- we get all of it this month and it's all just magnificent.

the storms roll through

There is a lot of weather watching today: hourly forecasts to tell me when there may be rain, and when the heavy storms are likely to roll through. The morning is warm, sultry, portending of a meteorological menace. Still, the rains hold off and we do not waste the morning. After breakfast...

... we hit the farmette lands: Ed goes down to our future forest site and continues to remove brush and bramble. Me, I go back to planting, though not only: I am in less of a hurry now, so I take the time to transplant as well. To move things around as the gardens evolve. And I take the time to admire what's there now.

Irises have entered the show! Nevertheless, it is unquestionably the week of the crab apple. I'm thinking it wont even be a full week of blossoms. The hot spell rushed the flowers and the pink buds are now fully opened to their white magnificence.

It's a beautiful time to be in the garden!

In the afternoon, somewhat apprehensively, I pick up Snowdrop. I see the storms approaching, but they hold off just for a little and I get the girl safely to the farmhouse before all hell breaks loose.

Then of course we have to wait it out. We never get the threatening thunderstorm, but the rain comes down in sheets and torrents. We read, she plays. Distractions until things settle down outside.

The rains continue late into the evening At times heavy, at times light. We'll take it in any fashion. My garden breathes a sigh of relief. And so do I.

let's just stay with a gentle rain...

A hot day. I wouldn't be surprised if we broke records. I put on sun screen and shorts. That says it all, doesn't it?

We have no rain, but tonight this may change. Like much of the central states, Wisconsin will likely be hit with storms. I get it: hot weather often brings a trail of storms. And yes, I want those rains so much! But can't we just get an English shower plain and simple? You know, the light patter of a steady drizzle, say for one day. Can't we forget the storms and keep things quiet? 

No use asking: I do not have any special rapport with the weather gods. Snowdrop claims she can talk to the wind and I believe her (though it may be a one-sided conversation), but I have no such talents.

Hot days here in Wisconsin often come with perfect mornings and today fits that pattern beautifully. My morning walk to tend to the animals is heavenly...

(what's blooming?)

 

 

And breakfast on the porch? It could not be more beautiful. Indeed, I tell Ed that this perhaps is the prettiest of all the porch mornings of the year. And so we linger.

But not for terribly long. I need to return to my planting. And I do, working nonstop, putting in a total of  38 new plants. It takes many hours. With the drought, the soil is hard and unrelenting. Too, I start feeling sorry for plants that are already in the ground and I keep pausing to give this one a little water and then that one, and its neighbor. 

 

(I work, Dance sleeps)

 

And this is all I do, all day long. No reading, no lounging, no resting, no special writing. I work in the flower fields. 

Suppertime. The young family is not here today. (They're at some baseball game. Amazing how your kids can develop interests that are uniquely theirs. You could not get me to a stadium on a hot day even with a promise of a sizeable reward!) I bake a frittata and sit down on the couch with Ed and I do believe it will be very hard to get up again.

But what a day! What a stunning, scented, sublime second day of May.

apples and oranges

I'm thinking that if I water the garden thoroughly, maybe it will rain. Doesn't it always work that way? You see the effect a drought has on plant life, you finally give in and work the hose over the flower fields, and then when you're done it rains. Either that or do a rain dance. Because, oh, do we need that rain! All of April goes by -- you know, the month of showers, and we get almost no rain.

And now, here we are, starting in on May, that stunning month that belongs in paintings that line museum walls, except that it doesn't feel like May at all. It is hot. A high of 86F, or 30C! Oh, not right away: the morning is still cool enough for a light sweater, but by noon the heat is on.

I'm up early. Animals to feed, chicks to take out, garden plants to inspect.

Breakfast, on the porch, just with Ed.

And then I go with the two young families to Eugster's farms. It's just about ten minutes up the road from the farmette and it is beloved by kids, especially in these last days of the lambing and kidding season. But here's something we didn't bargain for: it is a windy day! Really windy, with gusts up to to 40mph. Wind that blows hair in your face and sand in your eyes. Wind that disturbs every photo, every quiet moment with the young animals.

Surely it poses some challenges, but wee do not let the gusts of wind stand in the way of our fun. At Eugster's you can  feed, pet, admire, and even hold the animals. We do it all. Here's a mini album of our Eugster's farm adventure:

(Primrose meets a goat...)

(Sparrow is shy about lots of strange things, but when it comes to animals he is right there, with all hands on board.)

(this mama preferred to feed her own...)

(this is the last weekend where you can come and hold some of the baby animals, including the goats. They are getting to be large and wiggly!)

(goats with goats; you'd get this if you knew the nicknames that are tossed around between my two daughters...)

Lunch time. Where to eat? We head back to downtown Madison. The young family picks up pelmeni (Russian dumplings) at Paul's. It's a great day to have a picnic on the Capitol Square. Another mini album, this time of our last meal en famille. 

(the wind is so strong that we can easily and safely remove masks for a few minutes...)

(and this is when it starts to feel really warm... summer warm.)

And these are my last minutes with Primrose and her parents. They're returning home to Chicago and honestly, it's a good thing that I have to rush now to the "apples" part, because otherwise the sadness of missing them would creep in and take over the rest of the day.

 

So those were the "oranges." Now the apples: a while back I got an email from the Cider Farm guys with an invitation to visit their orchards. It's a promo thing they do each year: they offer you a tour of their beautiful hills of apple trees (when at least some of them are in bloom) and they talk a little about their business -- which is getting quite the reputation, at least in our neck of the woods. 

They grow apples for quality cider -- the kind that you'll find in Normandy or Brittany in France. Dry, with wonderful aromas of a variety of cider apples (I suppose I should refer to it as hard cider as it is alcoholic, except that the more appropriate term would be wine cider, as the apples are carefully selected and cultivated in much the same way that grapes are grown for fine wine). Too, they manufacture a Calvados-like apple brandy. I'm less interested in the brandy, but both Ed and I do love good ciders. We rarely drink them, but when we do, we're always happy to have done so.

And so I have for you a third mini album -- of our trip to the southernmost region of Wisconsin, where on the extremely wind slapped hills, Ed and I spend some time among apple trees, picnicking afterwards with a box of breads, cheeses and salamis provided by the Cider Farm people.

(Pink blossoms for pink apples for rose cider. Or is it cider rose?)

(picnic)

(Ed took this selfie and in his grasp of the camera, he pressed some color balance setting, creating a rather pink toned picture. I don't mind!)

And now we're home and it is so very quiet. Weirdly so. Except for the sound of that wind sending gusts up the farmette hill, stirring up trouble on parched, dusty fields around us, as the dry air stubbornly refuses to allow for any rain to come our way.

(Doesn't the landscape -- all blossomy and bonny and still a touch pink -- lead you to hum English folk tunes as you take in the heady scene of a blooming apple or pear tree? It does for me!)

Tomorrow -- water and dance for rains. And of course, pick up the planting again.