Thursday

Well now, wasn't this a busy, lovely day! Still, not so busy that I would need sticky notes plastered on the bathroom mirror to remind me what needs to be done. It all remains in my head. I'm training myself to be mentally nimble. (Or, you could say that nothing that I do is so important that it matters much if I forget it.)

Much of my time right now is spent on coordinating a friend visit -- one that actually isn't in the books until for early fall. Ridiculously far away! I have a whole blooming season before we get to those weeks. Nonetheless, it's a complicated visit because many people are involved and we all have ideas on how it should proceed. Coordination requires work. Now, I thought this would be a great day for it. Rain! Can't plant anything in a wet landscape.

But there was no rain. Indeed, it was a lovely, warmish day. 

 

There is a high cloud cover, which is wonderful for work in the garden. So every reason to go outside! Which we do. Eventually. Very eventually.

(Breakfast)

After our morning computer work.

 

We do succeed in finishing the planting of our lavender field. I'm not happy with the health of some of the baby plants, but maybe they'll perk up in a few days. I'm hoping.

And all this sucked up the last shreds of the early day. 

 

Pick up Snowdrop time came very quickly! How good it is to bring her here when the weather is so... pleasant!

Really, really pleasant.

She reads, does homework, exhales. And I exhale with her. Ed comments -- she;s getting to be such an older child already! 

He is correct.

And then I take her home where her hardworking dad and active little brother and tired older little brother await.

And once more I cannot think about cooking at home. I reheat take out pizza for us, Ed dozes. (To my credit, I do make large and bountiful salads when I get lazy with cooking.) And spring continues to move forward, unveiling its beauty each and every day. Makes you smile, doesn't it?

With love...

Wednesday

Here, in Wisconsin, it's the kind of day where you say to yourself -- isn't the world a most beautiful place? A rhetorical question. It is a beautiful place.

I'm told that the town we live in dipped down to 33F, so nearly freezing last night, but I didn't see it. At its coldest moment (6 a.m.) our thermometer registered 36F. In any case, our annuals grumbled and grimaced among themselves, but they survived.

And Sandpiper survived his crash number 326 as well. Blood's wiped up, and only a fat lip remains. But Wednesday is not a grandkids day for me this spring. Wednesday is work-my-butt-off-in-the-garden day, especially since we are finally starting the uphill climb in temperatures. And the sunshine! Yes, there is plenty of it. Ed even complained that he wasn't prepared!

Breakfast, still inside, but hopefully not for long!

Our project for today is to start in on the lavender field. 

Ed had put down a tough black plastic last fall and though that strategy is never fully effective (we have some killer weeds out back!), it does cut down on the thick-rooted devils. Today, I take out my baby plants and arrange them on the chip-covered tarp and with Ed's help, I get to work.

I plant twenty, he plants ten -- that's most of them! 

The next two days will give us rain (again!) but after that we should have good working weather. We are on track to finish this job, just about the time the replacement trees for our "New Forest" arrive. Another two dozen saplings to plant out back. 

But that's not all: in the late afternoon, I finish adding some perennials in the established fields and I do some weeding as well -- this, of course, is now a staple activity for me: weeding is something that I will do daily until right around August 5th, when I will throw down my shovel and give up for the rest of the season.

Oh and I do this: Ed gets the tractor mower working and I take on the task of giving the whole property a selective trim. I do this about three or four times in the growing season, just to cut back some of the high grasses and to create paths throughout the property. Ed will likely take over maintaining the paths. It's a fairly easy job, since we are not obsessive mowers. Just enough to keep things healthy and navigable out there. 

My sweet helper tells me -- you really worked hard today! But the fact is, I dont feel it. The farmette lands are at their most thrilling point right now, when all your work planting perennials last year and for years before that, is starting to show promise. And you still think you know what you're doing. Your mistakes aren't evident -- it all looks wonderful!

So I work, but I also look and enjoy the progression that is before us. A perennial parade that starts now and doesn't end until September.

(Here's something I planted in the fall. It has a pretty name: Fritillary meleagris. I remember thinking -- wow, this plant is interesting! And it is. It's not a tulip but a lily. It's small and gets a little lost in the spring patch, right in front of the virginia bluebells (which are almost flowering!), so I thought I'd highlight it here, on Ocean. Hello, flower!)

Evening? After working almost nonstop from 10 onward, I am in no mood to cook. Pizza delivery! Windows open, the spring air mixing with farmhouse smells of roasted garlic and mushrooms on mine (and a gazillion veggies on Ed's because at Mods, the price is the same no matter how many toppings you order).

Yeah, it's a really beautiful place we inhabit. For sure.

Tuesday

Well, it's going to be close: 34F tonight. That's 1C. None of my flowers will like it. But they will survive, unless the forecasters are off by one degree in the wrong direction!

One more day of rain. Of wet branches that spray you with water if you brush against them. Of puddles in the driveway. Of the sound of drips, everywhere drips, gently feeding roots, but keeping us mortals wet too, so that we stay indoors. 

Turn on the oven, bake muffins. Eat breakfast.

I'm working on the Great Writing Project once again. We are down to making decisions about the cover and in this project I involve the young families. I know what I don't like but I don't know how to fix it. They, on the other hand, are full of ideas. And this leads me to wonder -- do younger people churn out ideas faster and in greater numbers? Are they better at stretching, at reaching past the obvious? I think so. And I admire them for it! So good to have them on my side as I get older, don't you think?

 

In the afternoon I pick up Snowdrop. She is this week the assistant parent (as her mommy is out of town for a few days) and she takes on that job with great seriousness and determination. And she's good at it! But here, in the farmhouse, she has the freedom today to just do what feels good for her. 

The famous farmette trilogy: she reads (with or without me), she eats, she plays. 

(Today, the play part involves Ed...)

 

In the evening I make an unexpected trip to the young family's place. Sandpiper, the child who, I predict, will be the first to break his arm or bang up his knees and require stitches doing active-kid things as he navigates childhood, had a bit of a bang-up, requiring an immediate trip to the doc, just as mommy was boarding a plane somewhere at some connecting airport and daddy was feeding the bunch a special daddy-prepared dinner. So I spent an evening calming the older two grandkids and reading endless stories about Piggie and Bad Kitty, with the goal of getting the kids focused on bedtime. They've heard them all, but it was a good evening for reading stories that they know almost by heart.

 

Night time. I check on the outside temperatures again and again. They're holding to predicted levels. Hang in there, flowers! This is the last moment of peril for you! Smooth sailing follows! I'm sure of it! Well, pretty sure.

Monday

In went the seeds today: nasturtium, alcea, alyssum. Sugar snap peas! And in went the last of the tub flowers. I had to do damage control. These monsters ate up all of the little white flowers on the full grown alyssum and they are working their way through the gaura leaves as well!

Honestly! There's not enough green stuff for you in the garden? You have to eat my flowers?

In the meantime, the lavender still waits. And it will wait some more through a wet tomorrow. And we wait too, for the fruit trees to start blooming, for the tulips to emerge, for the progression of May pinks and blues and yellows. We're gettin' there, but it's a slow crawl this year!

The rest of the day? I worked on some travel ideas for friends. It's not an unpleasant activity, but it took time. Lots of time. I did have a most wonderful break. Primrose called and I got to see her sweet roses -- a gift for her very first dance recital this past weekend. Oh, how fast they grow!

And there you have it -- a still cold May 2nd, a busy Ocean author and a very short Ocean post! 

Sunday

I never thought that the farmette land, where I plant gazillion perennials and another gazillion annuals, where I scatter seeds, sometimes very deliberately, sometimes almost randomly, where I break my back weeding and twist my knee planting, where I spend too many hours thinking what needs to be changed or redone next year -- I never thought this was a garden and that I was engaged in gardening. I am, in my mind, tending the land, filling spaces with something that is beautiful and beneficial, mostly because the land is there and without my efforts, it would become a jungle of weeds and saplings.

Yes, I will always love flowers, but I've long given up on thinking like, say, a gardener would think while planning a border in Giverny or in one of those exquisite British gardens. My flowers are in fields that at the periphery merge into unkempt grasses and creeping charlie. They are massive, true, but they aren't planned. I just fudge the edge and push it back with new or divided plantings, but there are always the raspberry canes and countless common blue violets that threaten to take charge if I let my guard down too much. 

I thought about all this today as I worked many, many hours, giving an all out effort to get the flower fields in order this year. If I learned anything from my countless visits to Giverny it's that the farmette isn't a garden waiting to be developed. One of my Ocean readers hinted at this a couple of years ago when she gently suggested that I not mind all that is wild here. She is correct: there will always be spaces that will have none of our intervention (the old orchard comes to mind). They are there to remind me that we cannot and should not control everything that grows here. And so I work in partnership with what is already growing, and sometimes I am more ambitious (last spring) and at other times I'm a little more realistic (this year), and in the end, I love it all. 

Weather report for this May Day? Well, a bit cool again and cloudy. So I keep my jacket on and get to work. After breakfast.

(The path to the farmhouse door is picking up color from the pots...)

The weather will still be messing with us for the next several days, with dips and lows that aren't a farmer's best friend at this late date, but at least I'm relatively confident that we'll stay above freezing at night. Last year, we had a beautiful and early spring, but we dipped into a frost all the way in mid May -- that's a horrible event that does more damage than this cooler, slower growing season.

In the evening, the young family is here for dinner. Snowdrop wants to pick some flowers for her teacher (this is actually an assignment: the school is celebrating teachers this week and on Monday, the kids are to bring a real or drawn flower). I steer her to the daffodils. Honestly, that's all that's pickable right now. 

The stems this year are solid. Last year, the early warm air pushed the flowers up before they were ready. This year, they took their sweet time to get strong and stand tall.

Inside: Sparrow is the most reliably committed French cheese eater. Just to take the edge off of total starvation!

(Happy to share with his brother...)

(Sandpiper opts for a bamboo spoon instead)

Dinner.

In the evening, I clear the kitchen and sit back with Ed on the couch, with that deep satisfaction of having had a very productive day.  May is off to such a good start for us! We are lucky. And grateful.

With love...

Saturday

You know, on this last day of April, with mostly cloudy skies and occasional rain, indeed, with storms and even a threat of severe storms, it really is very pretty out there! How can you not feel grand when the tree buds are so plump, when day after day, color saturates the landscape, when night frost is kicked out and the soil warms and the perennials push through and the daffodils? Definitely out in full force, scattered in nearly every farmette flower field.

It is a busy day here for me. I have a baked goods craving, and I consider whipping something up for breakfast munching, but time is a little precious, so instead, I drive over to the bakery and come back with an assortment of croissants and morning buns and chocolate babkas.

The kids come over then...

And we stay indoors because there is that threat of rain and besides, each child has a story to tell (Sparrow isn't always in a story mood, but quite often, I hear two parallel voices spinning tales out there in the playroom). And there's lunch to eat and there are books to read. We go for a common denominator -- not hard at all, as there are a number of books both kids enjoy.

(In leaving, she says -- "I'll race you!' This is a recipe for a total Sparrow upset. I tell him that in a few years, the upset may well be hers.)

In the afternoon, I chase the good weather. When it's not raining, I fix a couple of more pots and tubs and stick in the penstemon I had purchased for one of the beds.

(Ed takes out the trays of tomatoes and fusses with them outside.)

When the rain does come down, I unpack the lavender that arrived and is, for now, waiting in the mudroom. I am not 100% sure how to plant it (or rather how to protect the field from horrific weeds that grow behind the barn), which, I know, is a bit crazy, given that I have some 50 plants that are ready and waiting to go in, but I'm putting all this off until tomorrow. Today I'm still pulling weeds (everywhere!) and putting in annuals.

And when the rain continues to pelt the roof (such a lovely, rhythmic sound, don't you think?) I give in to the sleepiness of the moment and take that wonderful retired person's pleasure -- a late afternoon nap. 

Sure, we're really behind in our gardening. But everything is moving along nicely now and hey, we really are on the cusp of May already,  with its bounty of pinks and blues and yellows. Do you even remember how monochromatic my photos were from just a couple of weeks ago? Well now, not any more!

No, not any more.

Friday

Our CSA farmers sent us a message -- things are growing very slowly this year. My eye doc, whom I saw in the wee hours of the morning, tells me that's all anyone ever talks to her about -- the weather. The flower growing farmers tut tut tut as they close doors to their greenhouses to keep the cold wind out. The shoppers aren't coming yet. We who dare face off with the weather, zip up our jackets and clench the jaw and hope for the best.

It's a very challenging early growing season.

On the flip side, the Wisconsin maple sugar tappers are rejoicing. The cold spring has made for a longer sap flow and a more intense syrup flavor. The money is definitely in maple syrup this year! In our home, Ed is the maple syrup guy. I'm the honey person. (He is the only one I know who routinely drizzles syrup over his oatmeal in the morning.)

And it is getting warmer. Very slowly but very surely.

I finish up my plant purchasing at Natalie's and Kopke's (both are local growers just up the road from us), realizing that now I have to actually go outside, cloudy skies not withstanding, and plant the stuff! Uff! 

Nine tubs filled, some umpteen more to go! 

(Oh great. The cheepers have discovered my white alyssum -- their favorite flower to munch on!)

I break for Snowdrop, who comes running out of school to show me her art class paper mache bug. Do you remember paper mache from school? I do! Long strips of torn newspaper, dipped in some mixture of flour and water. We called it rabbit snot! -- she tells me. Kids these days!

A meditative pause before we come into the farmhouse...

Once inside, we get lost in a book we read together. Cover to cover. All chapters. Can't put it down. It never ceases to amaze me how good children's fiction can be. Honestly, I think it just gets better and better. There are times when I want to dabble in writing stories for young ones. Then I hit another great one and I back off. It's a little like all your life you wanted to be a baker and then you go to Paris and visit a few pastry shops and say to yourself -- maybe not!

Evening. The cats are on the porch. It's warm enough for them to want to be outside and of course, it's dry where they are. Beyond their sheltered space it's raining. We'll have four days of this -- just warm enough to call it a full blown spring, but with periods of rain. Planting is put on hold once again. Well, I got a start in April. The new day lilies are in, a few of the tubs are planted. May will be a very busy catch up month!

Thursday

On the upside, this is it: the day that annuals can be planted. I have mild trepidation, because of course, before mid-May, anything can still happen. A mean wind from the north could destroy a crop of flowers. But looking ahead at the forecast, I think it's not likely. And so I take out all that I lugged into the kitchen and I put on my agenda for the day the purchasing of tub blooms. Yes! Finally. Instant color, by this weekend.

On the downside, we're not getting that string of sunny days that would give a boost to everything that's already in the ground. Cloudy, with a chance of rain. Like Scotland, only less variable. 

But this isn't what starts my day: first, I have to take a picture of myself. I need it for my Great Writing Project. Now, any of my kids, or even some of my grandkids, to say nothing of Ed, would happily, happily do this for me, but I don't want to tax anyone's patience with my fussiness and so I do it myself. In the kitchen, with the self timer. It is a funny handful of minutes. Lots of running back and forth. Lots of retakes. Finally, something that "will do." And no, you don't get to see it. Unless you buy the book. I'll let you know when!

The walk to the barn? Oh, fine. Still not exactly a crowd, a host of daffodils (...) fluttering dancing in the breeze (Wordsworth), but enough now to give some color to the landscape.

Breakfast? Well, I'm trying to reinterpret it here at the farmhouse. Ed has fallen into a schedule that just does not work for me. He's up too late. Yes, I can wake him for breakfast, but it seems unnecessary and unkind. So I eat alone.

And then he complains that I didn't call him down for it. You can't win!

I have a lot of small and large details to attend to. A call with my Polish friends to finalize a meet up this early fall. An appointment to check off one of those things you regularly need to check off. A delivery of some treats for the young family kids. And then, finally, a trip to pick up some annuals.

This is both exciting and frustrating. The garden center is empty because no one (except for me) wants to pick out annuals when it is just 47F (8C) outside. Still, I need to do several trips (my car cant hold everything I need) and so I may as well start today. Planting will move full steam ahead starting tomorrow.  Gazillions of seeds, a whole lavender patch, and the dozen (more?) tubs -- all getting their season's stock, late and in borderline weather, but in they will go. I am determined!

 

 

In the late afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. Not at school today and we did have a cut in our farmhouse time, but she insisted that short is better than nothing at all, so here she is... 

 

 

 

... settling into her usual!

And boom! Day is done.

Honestly, I don't know how a day can have so few hours. I should be strolling mindlessly through the garden, or reading my book, and working on my next project. Instead, I'm zipping from one task to the next, like someone who is about to take off on a year long trip and needs to get her house and life in order before heading out.

All this is just fine, of course. We go about our business, doing stuff we love, in peace and tranquility. How good is that!

With love...

Wednesday

Why do we have such a strong attachments to trivial habits? Why, for instance, am I incapable of buying flowers in even numbers? In Poland, it was absolutely essential to always purchase an odd number. Three roses, seven tulips, 1 carnation. But why have I carried this habit over here, so that I cannot imagine buying an even number of blooms for my daughter's table? It has to be odd, or else! (Or else what?)

(Breakfast with Primrose...)

(hey, how about me? I can't eat granola, but I sure like to keep you company!)

I'm in Chicago just for the half day. The mom is back at work, the dad is taking the older girl in for a check up, I'm with the babe. And of course, it's a school day, so after her check up, this big girl will be heading out to school.

Two sisters, each following her path on this beautiful if a bit chilly spring day.

Oh, and speaking of habits, is there ever a visit where I do not take this timed release selfie with the big girl?

How full of smiles and giggles she is! I have grandchildren whose default expression is one of joy, at the smallest thing.

(Me too! You should see me laugh when mom or dad blow soft puffs of air on my forehead!)

Yes, a happy babe with a sweet and gentle disposition. 

(Mom breaks for lunch with me and for a fleeting check-in with Juniper)

It's a short visit for me this time, but a longer one is coming up in a few weeks, when both parents will have resumed work and the day care has not yet started for Juniper. Like her sister, she'll start "school" when she is just shy of six months. How fortunate these kids are to have it all -- great parents, good schools, and all the joys of each season right there before them!

(Or, am I the one who is endlessly fortunate? Like the woman in Japan who lived until her 117 birthday, celebrating her small passions every day -- in her case, a love of chocolate and coca-cola. I have my share of wee passions, that's for sure, though some of them are growing up to be big kids pretty fast!)

Home again tonight. Plants are still indoors, safe from tonight's hovering temperatures, right near the freezing point. So, instead of gardening thoughts, I have grandkid thoughts. Beautiful and warm grandkid thoughts.

With so much love...