how does your garden grow?

A friend of ours has been volunteering at Olbrich Gardens for a number of years now. Do you know the place? It's Madison's extensive (sixteen acre) botanical space. And it is evolving. I hear these days it's less flashy and exotic, more local and sustainable. I haven't been there for a couple of years (no surprise: I haven't done anything for a couple of years), so when the friend invited us for a tour of the place, we jumped.

It's a remarkably pleasant day: not too hot, still sunny unfortunately, but there is a breeze and so outdoor activities are, dare I say it -- pleasurable! 

(On my morning walk, I have a close encounter with the Virginia Ctenuch -- a black moth, with an orange head and a metallic blue-green body -- that loves the Phlox as much as I do!)

(Also on my morning walk: I note the expanding sweet pea...)

(Phlox is a color rock star in the garden, even in its June green stage)

 

And we have breakfast once again on the porch.

Afterwards, we're off to see the gardens.

I'm curious about a lot of things: the overlap in plantings between Olbrich and the farmette flower fields. About their approach to watering in this period of droughts. And I'm interested in how they maintain an eye-catching perennial bed in mid June, when summer flowers are not yet blooming even as the spring ones have faded. Mostly though, I'm interested in how a bunch of talented gardeners tackle the project of creating beautiful pathways through shady and sunny outdoor spaces.

Every garden has favorite corners in it. Places in which you feel happiest, secure, at peace. And I certainly found those in Olbrich. 

I also looked with envy at what can be accomplished with many many pairs of hands (they have quite a staff of both horticulturalists and helpers). 

(shady paths...)

(sunny paths)

And with water. I do like gardens that incorporate water into their design. 

Mostly though I was surprised at our overlap. Nearly everything that I grow here can be found there (though not everything that they grow there can be found here). Yes, the proportions are very different. They have lilies, but I have more! I have ferns, clematis vines, and poppies, but they have more! But I couldn't help recognizing the overlap.

And the breeze rustled leaves and cooled our walk and it was such a pleasant way to spend a morning.

We ended with a lunch together. At a cafe! Outside, but still, it was a first for me since the pandemic shut down eating out for us.

We lingered as only retired people enjoying a sunny June day can linger.

And the flowers stayed in my head and the summer seemed promising; a day well spent.

(driving home: hello cranes...)

 

 

In the afternoon, I once again returned to a more typical pandemic social exchange -- with my friends on Zoom.

I'm not tired of that -- not at all! It's only bothersome when there is nothing else and you wish there was someone every now and then sitting across the table from where you are.

And so ends a day of not gardening, but garden gazing. You need those to maintain your own enthusiasm for what you're doing in your own back yard. I had a lovely fill today. Tomorrow, I return to my own weeds, watering needs, and planting adventures. 

(Evening walk across farmette lands: through the newly planted "forest")

(Evening walk, continued: looking north -- a school, plots for new houses, two sandhills and lots of birds)

(Evening walk, continued: this is what our meadow looks like)

(Evening walk, continued: the delphinium is starting to bloom)

And still later, as the sun nearly disappeared for the day, I took out the scooter and guided it along the rural roads just eat of the farmette. As usual, I had a companion.

 

For a while we just look at each other, but eventually it goes to the west and I go to the east. 

And the sun sets and the day is done.

butterfly

This morning I again took out the hose and the watering can and went out to the meadow and to some of the more distant fields to water a fragment of the garden. Another hot and sunny day means that anything I watered last week is drying up again. The meadow sprouts need a boost, the new plantings need a boost, heck, everything needs a boost. 

Too, I really wanted to do a basic clean up of the front bed. I told Ed I'd be out just for an hour, but that quickly changed to two hours, and then three, and it was nearly noon before we sat down to breakfast.

All this is unremarkable, right? The description of the morning resembles most mornings from the past week, right? Well yes, I would agree with that, except that each working morning is very different in that you're seeing a garden evolve, and you're watching lily buds emerge, and the tune your humming in your head is different than yesterday's tune, and your thoughts are most certainly different as well.

And in the middle of this watering - tidying project, a butterfly comes over and lands on my leg. I'm not really paying attention and I almost swat it instinctively, thinking it's surely one of those deer flies -- a lingering pest that hasn't quite bitten the dust yet. But I stop just in time and the butterfly takes off but then comes back and again rests on my leg. So I'm thinking -- this is a sign!

But of what?

As I come in for a drink of water, I check my email and I notice that I have a message from Patrizia from Parma. She asks if I'll be coming for a visit soon. I really want to see her and talk about what she went through this past year (it was tough) and I want to check out her new rooms -- she tells me that she revamped them some. Mainly I want to sit out on a terrace with her and eat a plate full of Parma's tortelli. So if her email comes right at the time of the landed butterfly, is it a sign for me to think about packing my suitcase again?

I look at the vaccination rates in Europe: they're getting there, but they're not great yet. How long should I wait? Part of me wants to go tomorrow, part of me wants to go never. 

In the evening, the young family is here for dinner.  Snowdrop is game for a little pre-meal adventure and I've got one for her.

The cherry trees. One of them has a few ripe fruits within reach. Ladder not necessary.

The girl is thrilled with fruit trees, thrilled with the cherries, thrilled with being able to eat stuff right off the tree.

As for Sparrow -- his interest in the great outdoors today is low. He prefers to climb up on the trash can and check out the cheese and cracker board.

Sandpiper doesn't even get that far.

Dinner.

And play.

And a little bit of both.

Time to go home. Can I pick just one more cherry??

 

 

Now if we could just pause with the beautiful sunshine and give over a day to rain...

nostalgie

In this last year, I've let myself go back to some favorite destinations, to wander in my mind's eye along familiar paths, to sit on a terrace cafe maybe with a croissant on my plate and a steaming grand creme to sip slowly, just so it can last. And I imagined a ride to the beach, or to a seaside village, with the radio set to the station called, appropriately, Nostalgie, as it plays les plus grandes chansons -- classic pop music, mostly from France but not only. I wondered if I would feel content doing such a trip now, or if that kind of a return to something familiar and loved is like rereading a favorite novel -- it's good, but not as good as it was the first time.

I had a whiff of this kind of nostalgic return today, though certainly not as adventurous as a trip to the other side of the ocean. Still, it was a return to a familiar space and I have to say, it felt even better than the other times from other years.

It happened on another hot and sunny day. The rains had totally passed us by and I know I'll have to take up watering again, rotating with a hose over to the front bed, which right now looks like a neglected space right out of a movie where everything has gone to seed and the owners or caretakers have abandoned ship and moved to far off lands, and only the occasional blooming flower will recall a past splendor that definitely is no more.

But the watering will have to wait until later in the day. This morning, after a run through the usual farmette chores...

And a breakfast in the cool, emphasize very pleasantly cool kitchen...

I go over to Madison's city pool. It opened just yesterday and on a whim, I bought a season's pass.

I don't really intend to go there for lap swim (though if this weather continues, I might be tempted), but I noticed that they've introduced a weekend morning swim for young kids (under age 10) and their parents and caregivers, to keep things calm for them. I liked that idea. Older kids are loud and they cannonball into the water and they splash each other and therefore you because you're always in their path, and I fully believe they should have their fun, but this set up for just young kids is so much kinder and gentler for those who love a tamer water experience.

I was told that Snowdrop and Sparrow were enjoying their neighborhood pool tremendously and I wondered if they'd like to go back to the city pool on one of these weekend mornings. The answer was a resounding yes and so today, the first day of this "quiet" pool time, we met up for a family morning in the pool.

I know this pool very well. It's just a couple of blocks from Snowdrop's old school and she and I had spent many, many afternoons going over to it right after a summer school day. Not last year. Covid kept us all away from public spaces last year (was it even open?), but we went the year before and one before that as well.

The remarkable thing about this pool is that it has an unusually large shallow area. It's really ideal for young kids -- they can cavort easily, without crashing into each other or reaching the deep end right away.

It turns out that Sparrow is a little shy about pools. No surprise. Covid hit at such a young age for him that he remembers nothing from pre-Covid times. We'd brought him to this pool as a baby, but not since then.

But, what's there not to love! The air is so warm and the pool is so refreshing and it's not at all crowded!

At one point, Snowdrop engaged me in some pretend play with some characters we'd brought with us and she got really sentimental about the sheer pleasure of lying in that shallow water, and I thought this was not unlike the cafe moment with that lingering cafe creme: we're going back to how it once was, only today, after tumultuous times, it is all so much better, because you know how easy it was to lose it all, and yet we were lucky, and we made it, and the family's grown and still, here we are, in that pool, lingering, like over a meal on that terrace, feeling content at just being there.

Perhaps wanting herself to prolong the feeling of nostalgie, Snowdrop asked to come home with me to the farmhouse. Sure! Lunch, lots of books, snippets of conversation about how the summer is going. And then I take her home. Yes, in a sweater. Yes, it's hot. Long story.

In the late afternoon, I do return to the front flower bed, hose in hand. I notice I'm wearing a dress Ed bought for me on one of our train trips to Perpignan (in the south of France; these were Sorede days for those who remember Sorede). And this is the important annotation to any such memories of lingering moments over a cafe creme or a splash in a shallow pool -- it's not the perfection of the place (though that cafe terrace, or that extended shallow pool on a hot morning are awfully nice) that has you going back to it with nostalgie, but it's the memory of a shared experience, where all were made happy by it. 

still hot, still dry

If I keep on watering, maybe it will rain. Last time I lugged many cans of water to the meadow we had an unexpected shower. Perhaps if I do the same for the back beds (where the hose wont reach), maybe we'll get lucky with rain tonight. There is that tantalizing possibility! 

And so early on, before the heat sets in, I water and Ed plants potatoes. A funny thing about those potatoes: I had about a half dozen leftover from my autumnal CSA: in the end they'd started to sprout (I really do not use potatoes much in my cooking) and so I tossed them into the compost. Within a couple of months, we had beautiful potato plants growing. They needed a better home than our compost pile and so today Ed transferred them to our tomato patch. And by the way, let me give you an update on those tomatoes. Here they are:

A fabulous year for them thus far. Spraying them with habanero peppers seems to have kept the deer and groundhogs away. Might we finally have a bumper crop? It's been several years since we beat the pests, animals and weather demons.

So long as we're touting potential success stories, I noticed that our cherry tree is producing as well!

Peaches, too, are heavy on the peach tree limb. So it's not all bad out there in the hot gardens of the farmette!

 

 

 

But breakfast is definitely inside. Too hot and too loud on the porch. The trucks are leveling the land to the east of us, preparing it for community gardens (we think). We retreat to the quiet of our farmhouse.

(During my garden work, I always have the company of the animals.)

 

(Cherry, the youngest girl)

(Peach, the oldest girl)

 

I do take a pause with watering and weeding in the afternoon to go over to my daughter's house, just to check in with any child that is available for a quick hello and, too for a chat with their mom. It's too easy to stick with the minutia of daily life and forget about more leisurely exchanges.

(A few moments with the kids...)

(Mommy sings, Sandpiper sings...)

(Well, it was a good first effort...)

 

I leave them all in this new configuration...

In the evening I suggest to Ed that we do take-out for dinner. It's been many weeks since we had one. And so we are back to tossing around ideas as to what constitutes a take-out worth driving for. Oh, I remember those times from before the pandemic! Should we go out? Should we pick something up and bring it home? I haven't missed those ridiculously indulgent discussions. When you just stick with daily cooking, you plan your menu, buy your foods and you cook. No discussion, no dilemmas. Tonight, we toss around many unsatisfactory ideas and in the end, I make a frittata. Returning to normal habits is proving to be quite hard!