back to winter routines

It's beastly hot outside. Summer sweaty hot. Muggy steamy hot. I know early on that I wont want to weed. I wont want to walk. I wont want to cavort outside. Hey, I wont even want to eat breakfast on the porch!

Of course, animals need to be fed, so I do my usual morning rounds.

 

I see the froggies are climbing up the tall lily stalks, so I don't finish snipping spent flowers. Best to leave them alone. Who cares about spent flowers anyway!

This is my attitude about many aspect of the garden -- who cares if it needs work. I'm not going to do it. It will survive. (Nothing unusual there: it's my August dog days attitude toward exertion of any kind.)

Breakfast, inside. Hey, I did bake muffins early in the morning! We have the blueberries for them and they are such a good breakfast treat.

All that indoor time gives me too much reading time. I read, for instance, about the benefits of walking, just to feel that guilt from taking to the couch. 

And I read about how I should feel free to ask my service provider (dental, hair, you name it) if they have been vaccinated. So I try that. And of course, I get a refusal to reveal. And yes, I do cancel appointments where the provider refuses to reveal.

And then I read about the cancellation policies pertaining to various aspects of my forthcoming trip. I blew past some deadlines already. Am I going to collect even more vouchers (if I'm lucky) this Fall??

So after all that reading, I decide that at the very least, I should do what I did this winter: walk the farmette property. From corner to corner. Every day. It's not a demanding hike, but it does clear my head and add steps. I have to keep my Fitbit happy!

In doing this, I get that wonderful feeling of peace that comes from taking in wisps of pine scented air and from watching the fields of goldenrod sway with the breeze. Too, I get to pause by the new orchard and take in the beauty of the meadow flowers. 

Okay, I feel ready for the arrival of this spirited girl:

It's way to sticky to do anything at all outside. An indoor day for sure... 

 

 

 

... of books and puzzles and fairies and art. Snowdrop continues to work on her Super Pig pictures, but to me she delegates other subject matter. Draw the family of five, Gaga, she'll tell me. I'll balk. I do not like drawing human types. But she'll coax and prod and eventually she will take over. Today, I did all of a handful of ovals on a piece of paper and she filled in the rest -- the family of five the snow scene, all the stuff that make these such happy pieces of art. (Oh! She'll tell you Gaga also drew the braids. She thinks I'm really good at drawing braids.)

 And toward evening we have the threat of real storms once more. A very quick farmette walk...

 

 

 

And then I drive her home, just in the nick of time. I linger only for a second.

And I return just as the first flashes and crashes fill the hot bath humid air. Many people in Madison lost power after fallen trees knocked down power lines. We are lucky to be not among them. 

 

I think we can say here that the drought is behind us!

Monday

I'm not sure which came first -- the bang or the flash, but something must have caused me to look up and out to the big maples by the road. They seemed to have been struck by a meteor, or maybe a laser gun, or could it be lightening? Not possible. There was no storm near us. Inside the farmhouse, the power flickered but clung to life. Then it gave up the fight and went out.

My immediate thought was that the house is completely useless without power. No water, no stove, no fridge, no computer. No WiFi, no TV, no recharge to any of my devices. No AC either, but we're not using it much right now. My second thought was -- now we can finally go back to that old fashioned activity of reading real books that you hold in your hands while sprawled out on the couch. Like the olden days.

And we did that. But, we live in incredible times. A germy sneeze can kill us, but an electrical generator blowing up on you will have the electric company guys out here in the middle of nowhere within minutes and half an hour later, the offending branch will have been trimmed and the necessary fixes accomplished. Power back on. I barely read two brief chapters of my mystery novel!

The night was wet. The morning was wet. We got another two inches of rain, as measured in our cup. Perhaps more -- our little cup may well have splashed out the remaining water. Ed thinks we should put out a bigger cup, but I remind him we're not in it for accurate meteorological data from the the farmette. The world does not care how much it rained here. We merely need to know if the baby trees out back are getting their required inch each week.

The garden is weedy but nice.

And here's the thing: I love the farmette landscape in ten out of the twelve months of the year!  I think it's completely silly to fixate on July as the month of great beauty and to regard the rest as some kind of lesser alternatives. That's not being a naturalist, it's being wedded to a glossy magazine's idea of beauty. April here is magnificent with its buds, its daffodils, its constant surprises! September is enchanting as the crab turns golden and the apples blush with color. February skies are beautiful and when it snows, the landscape is magical. So no, it's not all about July here. And sure enough, I find this kind of August scene to be equally sensual.

(You ask which two months are my challenge? November and March. It's hard for me to love the great outdoors in Wisconsin in November and March.)

Breakfast, in between rain showers, on the porch.

Much of the rest of the day is spent thinking about how to reconfigure my September trip given the Delta issues (cancellation is the easiest option, but it's still too early to go that route) and, too, on selecting pillow covers for the couch pillows here. Remember? That's the project I took on to distract me from trip stresses. We wont build a new barn, so instead I picked new pillow covers on Etsy. 

One has to make do with what's possible.

Sunday

I think we should rebuild the barn. I say this to Ed over breakfast.

Why?

Because one of the corner posts is rotted through and I'm sure the structure will topple once that's gone.

It's been that way for years. It will outlive us.

In the alternative, we could finish building the writers shed.

Why?

So that we could offer it to guests who come to stay here.

How often would that be?

Often enough.

Anything else?

Well, we could get going on that planned greenhouse and of course, there are trees we could take down...

The conversation ends there. We will, of course, do none of those things. Ed's veto power is exercised often and without hesitation. (Me, I go along with most proposed projects, so he never gets to feel the sting of defeat.) I retreat to the couch and pick up my Etsy search of throw pillow covers. At least eventually I will find pillow covers that I like and the farmhouse living space will feel refreshed. I hope.

All this is, of course, the product of the disappointment we all feel with the slowed vaccination effort and the resultant Delta surge. You want to throw yourself into projects so that you can distract yourself from the reality of new pandemic numbers. After reading too many articles about how one's inner rage (which is unproductive) should be replaced with empathy and compassion (equally unproductive, I might add), you dial down your level of frustration and look to places where you can work on releasing your creative energies. I thought designing a new barn (have you ever seen our wreck of a barn? It's terrible!) would be a great project. Of course, Ed is not one to have inner frustration or rage, nor is he looking for new farmette projects. Planting 67 trees this spring was hard enough. I'm sure he feels a ten or maybe twenty year break from great idea implementation is warranted.  Breakfast ends, predictably, on an impasse. 

We had another rainy night and so I could turn toward the weeds that are enormous and ever present in all the flower beds. And I do a little bit of spot weeding early in the day, but honestly, I have that August ennui that sets in right about now. I don't care that there are weeds. I don't care that there are spent stalks. It all looks good enough!

In the afternoon I lose myself in dinner preparation. This is a good thing. Music plays in the background, the sauces simmer, the table is set. And the young family comes and they are an even better distraction than raising a new barn!

(Sandpiper needed a change of shirts... I have something! this was his brother's last summer!)

("bothering Ed" -- enjoyed by the older kids and by Ed)

Another day of clouds, high humidity, the occasional shower. We have four more of those ahead of us! It's proving to be a very interesting and not altogether predictable summer! Most of all, through it all, we remain grateful. So very grateful: for the vaccines, for staying healthy thus far.

With love....

smell

Of the countless flowers that grow here at the farmette, many can be and have been described as having a "delightful light fragrance."  Lilies, phloxes, lavenders, sweet peas, roses -- each one can emit a singularly beautiful aroma. But because I tend not to plant in clumps, choosing instead to scatter plants for more of a cottage look, most of the fragrance is gentle enough to blend into the entirety (well, except for the lilium which can be quite powerful!). As you walk through the garden, what you get is the incredibly beautiful fragrance of ... a field in bloom. I have no better way to describe it.

After a rain, however, everything changes. The leaves of trees, the soil, the grasses -- they add their own fragrance to the stockpile. And oh did it rain last night! 2.25 inches of wetness came down on farmette lands and we all let out a sigh of relief. And stepping out into the yard this morning was, well, heavenly! A wet garden smells so good!

Though of course, a heavy rain is going to knock off some fading blooms and stalks. That's inevitable. I don't mind. We're moving toward a late summer look, where small and perky are replaced by something that's abundant, heavy, and just a little weary from all that summer work.

 

 

 

This is one of the really good things about living in the country: the smells around you are so noticeable that they really can trigger all those warm feelings of peace and contentment. But I wasn't necessarily thinking of farmette fragrances this morning as I scooted from one task (clearing the garden, feeding animals) to the next (going downtown to the market, fixing breakfast for us, etc)

(at the market: it's all about the zinnias, the dahlias, the glads.)

(breakfast: yesterday's corn bread with cherry jam)

 

 

I had read an article in the NYT about a guy who lives, breathes and manufactures the fragrances of northeastern Catalonia. This is the corner of Spain that abuts the sea and the hills of the Pyrenee mountain range. It's where Ed and I spent all those Junes as we made our way from Barcelona to Sorede. This is the oft forgotten aspect of travel: the pleasure of smelling another landscape. You can read about other cultures. You can watch films that give a fantastic image of a place far away. You can listen to its music, even taste some approximation of its food. You can do that from your own backyard. But you can't indulge your olfactory senses from home. You have to be there to smell it. And oh, did that one small article in the paper today have me pining for the fragrances of Catalonia!

[You can, of course, purchase aromas. The guy in Spain sells the herb and flower and woodsy essentials in little containers. But it's funny about fragrance: it works best in its own natural surrounding. Food -- you can eat a great seafood right in your landlocked dining room in the Midwest and enjoy the hell out of it. But bringing Catalan aromas to your Wisconsin farmhouse is perhaps quaintly nostalgic, but it is also a mismatch. Better to stick with your lilies and phloxes and fruit orchards at home.]

In the afternoon, the little girl comes here to play. And read. And eat peaches. We have a lot of peaches! 

 

 

 

It rained hard all day long and yes, that's a good thing of course, but still, it does keep us tightly indoors. But with open windows!

(Going home before the big storms)

(Brothers at home...)

The storms come back for another round of rain and thunder. Our measuring cup overflows with water! Inside, there's plenty of cornbread to toast and leftover chili to dish out. Kitchen smells on a wet, wet day.

to go...

I admit it: I have cabin fever. Not because I am restless with what I see outside, but because the prospect of resuming travel diminishes as infection rates stubbornly refuse to reverse themselves. Miracles can happen, but the way we're going, I don't expect them anytime soon. The prospect of going someplace far in September has just moved from being at 50 - 50 to hovering at 49 - 51 and the nays have the upper hand.

Given that, I've been coaxing Ed to venture out with me to some distant place in... Wisconsin. The problem is, of course, the animals. He tells me -- you know that farmers can't leave their livestock for a single day out of the year?

Yes, but we are not farmers. Not even close. Can we settle on three nights? No one will starve if we're gone three nights.

We didn't settle on three nights. Ed talked me down to maybe one, maybe two. And from a remote corner of the state, we moved to a place not at all far away. Still, it's not here, not in the farmhouse, not entrenched in our summer routines, it's away!

In the meantime, I'm up in the morning doing the same old walk and enjoying it actually because the burden of clipping has been lifted -- only the tall lilies are still producing heavily...

And so it's the wee burden of weeding, which I don't take very seriously because, well, we are nearing the end of summer. (But I am hugely annoyed that the rains totally passed us by last night. Can we please target the farmette tonight? Okay?)

Breakfast on the porch, but it's sticky hot, so immediately after we all move inside. Cat included. Spoiled cat.

And then I work hard at coming up with our get-away location. Ed claims that I love doing this more than anything else in the world. That's ridiculous. I enjoy being with my family and with him and with friends, heck there's lots of things that I like better than roaming over an AirBnB map of Wisconsin. But I do have that drive to "find a good place." It can take many hours. I did take many hours. Finally, toward late afternoon, all was settled. Peace once again reigns at the farmette!

Any cooking highlights? How about chili with cornbread? Anything with corn sounds good to me on this warm summer evening. 

Thursday

We waited for rain. Looking up at a graying sky, we expected rain. It surely looked like rain.

But no rain came.

Once you have the mindset that tells you -- it will rain, you plan your day accordingly. You spend a lot of time on first the Adirondack chair, typing away, and then you move indoors and do the same from the couch. You glance outside, you sniff the air, you wait for the patter of drops on the glass roof and then, when no rain comes, you feel the disappointment. As in -- I could have walked. I could have biked. I should have watered parts of the garden. Instead, my Fitbit kept telling me to get up and I did not get up. I sat and waited for it to rain.

In other news -- well, there was the early farmette walk. Ed joined me for parts of it, claiming that he was in the mood for a peachy morning. Right now we have a ton of peaches ripening on our two productive peach trees, and they are very good peaches -- freestone, juicy, sweet. But they have a puckery thick skin and Ed doesn't mind it, but I do. I'll eat the peaches pealed, but not straight off the tree. So, he eats, while I take care of animals and garden snipping.

So long as we're out together, we may as well check on the new orchard. We have two pear trees that are promising a great pear crop this year. We admire those and, too, we admire the beautiful meadow that's sprouting lots of prairie flowers, despite the absence of rain.

My little camera springs into action.

We spend some time removing Queen Anne's Lace (aka wild carrot). It's the kind of weed that you might actually like -- its lacy white face is pretty in a wildflower garden. But it is also an invasive and if you leave it alone, it wont leave your space alone. It will dominate. So we pull at least a portion of it out. Well, we do a best effort. The ground is solid dry clay right now. 

Queen Anne's Lace looks awfully much like Poison Hemlock, but I've heard that the latter smells disgusting and Queen Anne's Lace smells carroty so I'm fairly sure we're stuck with the former and not the latter. In any case, the meadow is now a lot less white and feathery.

(walk back, past the Big Bed...)

(In the lily bed, the Olympic froggie aims for the gold!)

Breakfast, together, on the porch.

Later, much later, we hop on Ed's motorcycle and take two dozen eggs over to Farmer John at the Farmers Market. We are now really swimming in eggs and he gladly takes them home to his family (in exchange for cheese). Ed threw in a bag of peaches for good measure. 

We noticed that even though the market is outside, people were wearing masks. We live in a sensible county that does not want either to get sick or transmit viruses to others. I was thinking how we could be living through a cataclysmic crisis with bombs dropping and grenades exploding and we would be forced to do superhuman things to protect our families and now, all we are asked to do is get vaccinated and wear a mask. Such small things in the scheme of things. Tiny, tiny efforts to save ourselves, our families, your families. May we do them with enthusiasm and humility. Rarely has so little been required to accomplish so much.

Our CSA box had so much corn! So much corn! I'm freezing the kernels for soups and such, only tell me, why should I steam the corn first? I've always put the kernels in the freezer raw. Sort of like you get in a frozen bag of corn, no? But our farmers sent a message -- steam it first! Anyone have any idea as to why? 

For supper, we're eating vegetable corn soup. That stock made from corn cobs is just too delicious. I cannot have enough of it! An August delicacy for sure.

And if we are lucky, sometime after midnight, it will rain.