Chicago

Some time at a dawn-ish hour a text came in from my daughter telling me that Juniper was Covid negative. This is good news of course. I stayed in bed marveling at how the lab worked round the clock to get these results to parents. But this spot of good news didn't erase the sleepless night the little girl had, nor did it free her to go to school today. And so I pack my bag and go up to the empty hotel lobby (this hotel has its lobby on the upper level) and check out, casting one glance at the spectacular view they have of the Chicago skyline.

(I ignore the free breakfast which, as in most chain hotels, is really there to keep you from overeating. Absolutely nothing tempts you. My daughter's granola and fruit later in the morning will be way better.)

I tug my case and trudge up one commercial street...

... turning into the leafy residential area where my girl lives.

And now I truly can be helpful, though not in the way we had imagined it. With me here, my daughter can get some work done. I start off with taking Primrose to school...

(ready!)

... with Juniper along for the ride. I am trying to keep the babe awake so that I can nap her later. Primrose is a great help here.

Okay, school girl, have a great day and we'll see you at pickup!

Now Juniper, please stay awake!

She does.

At home I cycle through the routines: nap, feed, bathe, play, nap, feed, play, walk. A baby's life. Oh, sure, what you do in the waking hours changes. Juniper is playful, upright and raring to go.

Still, there is a schedule and it helps her and me if we more or less stick with it.

(quick post bath hug)

The day is beautiful -- really gorgeous. A walk is brilliant. In fact, I don't know many babes who do not relish outdoor time, even in less perfect weather. The stimulation of sounds and sights, the movement, the dappled sunlight -- it's all one great adventure. And Juniper is one who loves adventure.

And we have a terrific destination goal: just a couple of days ago, a new place opened in the neighborhood: Dolci Amori, with lots of fresh, beautiful, delicious Italian cookies.

Dessert for today and a big box of cookies for Ed!

Eventually I head out to pick up Primrose. Juniper is not up for another walk so it's just us two. 

And guess what! I spot a daylily!

It's been a full day and my daughter is going on far too little sleep so we call it quits early tonight. Still, there was time for lunch together and now there is time for a spritz of wine and just a little reflection. About all the good that the day has brought us. About the sweet moments and delightful smiles. Half full indeed!

With so much love...

to Chicago

I've long planned to be in Chicago this week. My son in law is out of town and my daughter could you a second pair of hands. Too, it's time for my monthly visit! Kids grow fast. I don't want to lose the thread of that rapid development.

So my morning farmette routines are ones that I typically fit in before I leave. Water the pots, inside and out, clean up the garden as best as I can, knowing that I will have my work cut out for me with the lilies when I come back at the end of the weekend. All those unsnapped flowers! Ah well, Ed wont even notice! My obsessions are not his obsessions nor are his mine. We may share a love of this land, but what exactly fills our hearts here is very specific to who we are and what we bring to it.

Okay, my morning walk. Last chance to admire the early July flowers! (We are still at least a week behind last year in terms of blooms. This is a good thing -- the peak of blossoming will happen after I come back.)

(froggie on the outside today...)

Breakfast, on the porch. 

Pack, check on Ed's food supply, one last look at the garden and I'm off!

I expect it to be a singularly wonderful visit. Many evenings with my daughter, many play hours with the girls. But halfway down to Chicago, in my zoned out highway mindset, I get the call from my daughter: Juniper is under the weather. She is being sent home from school.

No one thinks it's Covid. No one knows for sure it's not Covid. Until we have a negative test, me being with her, playing with her, laughing with her is not a good idea.

We recalibrate. 

I drive to a nearby hotel and book a room, then I ditch the car and, while my daughter takes Juniper to the doc, I go to pick up Primrose at school. And this part is as it should be: playful, joyful, lovely. And we continue to do our stuff back at her house (coloring the city book!)

Eventually Juniper comes back from the doc and I put on my mask and watch her from a distance.

It's not the best way to visit with a baby and especially a granddaughter, but it will have to do until her test results come back. 

In the meantime, I play with Primrose and linger while she eats her supper (and discusses dessert with her mom)...

... but that's all we can squeeze in on this rather messy day. Let's hope tomorrow this all will blow over and we'll be able to get back to our planned days together.

I walk to the hotel, stopping by at Uni's to pick up some take out Japanese food. The name of the place reminds me of our own Uni back home and momentarily, I reel back in thought to the farmette and the chickens. Ed is riding his bike tonight. He'll be home late. When he does this, I put away the cheepers because waiting until he returns is not the safest strategy. Tonight he'll make do. And my daughter will make do without my help if things go awry at her place. Meanwhile, I'm sitting in my hotel room eating raw salmon (is that really what I ordered? I guess so, I was distracted...) and munching on edamame and looking out the window. Not quite the view I thought I'd have with me tonight.

Still, if I look to the right, I can almost see the rooftop of the building where my two grandgirls are, I hope, sleeping.

Goodnight all you kids out there who have had to put up with so much shuffling, and change of plans, and reimagining because of Covid. 

With so much love...

Tuesday

Somehow a poem by Mary Oliver ended up on the screen this morning. One of those things where the internet sends me stuff it thinks suits my whims and predilections. It's frightening how accurate they can be! Here's the poem:

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers

flow in the right direction, with the earth turn

as it was taught, and if not how shall

I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,

can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows

can do it and I am, well,

hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,

am I going to get rheumatism,

lockjaw, dementia?

Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And gave it up. And took my old body

and went out into the morning,

and sang.

Many picked up on this particular poem when the pandemic struck and indeed, Mary Oliver became more of a household name in the last couple of years. Maybe interest was stoked by our rather desperate search for calm. Or maybe her death three years ago put her in a flash of limelight. And surely we need her now more than in years of greater contentment. 

I discovered her in a weird way that today seems quaintly of a bygone era: I used to go to my local Borders Bookstore on a regular basis. And I would browse and pick up a stack of books and then sit down, perhaps at the coffee shop, and I would read a passage here, a poem there. Somehow I had pulled Oliver from the shelf and I was hooked. And then I read about her as a person and I was hooked even more. 

For me, Oliver was one of the few poets (indeed writers) who could link emotion to nature seamlessly and present it as one. She liked solitude (though she lived with her partner for some four decades) and took long walks that gave her so much material for her poems!  And what was significant on those walks for her is just the stuff that I may have thought to be significant. Of course, she had exactly the right words for it. We the readers could coast, along for the ride. And it was always a ride worth taking.

It's rare for me to love poetry. Sure, I have absorbed all of Szymborska and most of Neruda, and I have a book of Wordsworth that I refuse to ever give up, but on a daily basis, I prefer prose. Still, Oliver is forever in my pocket and I am so happy that some genius metric put that poem on my computer screen this morning.

I woke early and worked hard outside. Four hours, nonstop. Snip, clip, dig, water. I'm taking a break from outdoor work in the next few days so I have to get my fields in shape to withstand my purposeful neglect.  The day is sunny, beautiful and everything about my work is grand. Here are today's favorite photos from the farmette flower fields:

Breakfast? After noon. On the porch. With a screen before us on account of the hearings.

And soon after, I pick up Snowdrop from Invention Camp. They have these camp spirit games, hence the cap. 

We come to the farmhouse. Two things to note here: first, there are a few fraises des bois ripe and ready for picking in my two fraises des bois pots on the picnic table. They're covered by a net so that the cheepers or other berry loving animals wont get to them. We untangle the little berries and Snowdrop has her first taste of what is a common enough fruit in Europe, but is never ever sold in an American market.

Too, I show her where some ripe raspberries have popped out. 

She tells me -- you're lucky to live on a farm. I smile at that. Without Ed's presence and help, I'd give up on the farmette projects in two minutes. 

Toward evening I take her home and linger there for a while, chatting to my daughter while the kids play. What kids? Well, yes, this guy...

But too the older ones, along with some neighborhood children that inevitably stop by in the course of a summer eve. 

And eventually I am home again, cooking chili. I know -- that is one weird dish to cook for a warm summer eve, but I want to fix a few meals that are good to have on hand in the fridge and, too, we need to work through the rest of last year's tomatoes.

We eat on the porch. Why? Because at 8:30 (which seems to be our summer dinner hour these days) the light outside is so beautiful! This beautiful!

A canvas of warm and gentle color: a dab here, a fleck there. 

golden path

You have to keep up the fight against bad news. Or at least you have to find that golden path that lets you keep the spirit despite the small and large punches. Your health, your friends' health, admired people's health -- those punches are constant. Then there's that smaller smorgasbord of hits: punches landing right in your garden. Today, for example, Ed found the first tell tale signs of a tomato blight. He lost a crop to it last year. We moved the planting area, we took precautions. The plants are robust and thriving. Millions of tomatoes, ready to grow and ripen. And then boom! The spotted leaf shows up, at first just one, and before long, I expect they will all wither and the plants will keel over. So you get these knocks, and you hear other people's sad stories, really sad stories and you want to do something but of course all you can do is stay on a golden path of gratitude for all that's not wrong with your loved ones, your friends, your gardens.

My golden path this morning is through the flower fields. Maybe its magic will rub off here, on Ocean. Want to give it a try? Tag along!

(Ah, this really is a path -- a "secret" one that the kids use to get to the farmhouse door)

(Almost all the lilies here were planted a year ago so this is their first year of full bloom)

Another place of lily magic -- the Big Bed. With a big true lily stealing the spotlight right now.

Yet another -- the bed near the parking spaces. Again, true lily to the left, day lily to the right. Clematis in the back, tying it all together.

When I first moved here, there were many, many raspberry bushes, growing everywhere. Once the shade of the big trees took hold, they stopped producing and so I mowed them down. Still, pockets of raspberries remain and we always get a few handfuls of the lovely fruit.

Breakfast, with peaches from our favorite peach farm (Dickey's).

Oh, here's another calming device: bake the Best Ever blueberry muffins! It's the season for blueberries and ours, here in Wisconsin, are fabulous! Really fabulous. So, out comes the mixing bowl and within a short hour I have these:

In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop from Invention Camp. We know nothing about this program except that one of her school friends wanted to do it with her and so excitedly, she set off. Her report this afternoon? It was great. (This has been her report from every program she has attended this summer.)

(car snack between activities)

I have her eat something and then we go to her tennis lesson -- it was on hold because of various trips and holidays, but now she's hitting those balls again. (Well, first she insists on a few minutes on the nearby playground. We're early.)

And after? Softball. All under beautiful summer skies.

As for her two brothers -- I see Sandpiper fleetingly, but honestly, it's not a week where I will see much of them at all. Our schedules are complicated! It's a good thing we haven't yet totally forgotten who picks up whom at what time and where. Well, maybe we did that once. Everyone survived!

With love...

peace and quiet

It's so darn quiet without the swallows! Oh, other birds do engage in conversations, but swallows had their own voice and, too, their movement -- quick, graceful -- filled the space with energy. We scratch our heads and puzzle over this: how did they all decide to leave at once? Dozens of them! Packed their little swallow suitcases, set the alarm clock and took off. Such a well coordinated exodus! Only their nests remain. 

[If you stare at the sky long enough, you will see that at least one swallow stayed behind. Dozens have left, but one dug in her heels and refused. Why? or, is she the mom of a little bird who, halfway through the day announced that she cannot find her teddy bear? Did the mom come back to look for the lost stuffy? Clearly we have no knowledge of what goes on in a swallow's head.]

It's quiet too because the development that sprung to the north and to the west does not provide much lawn space and indeed, many of the homeowners have opted for prairie patches over lawn. So we don't have the usual suburban sounds of lawnmowers. Ed thought they might have rules about when or even if you can mow, but regardless, none are audible on this Sunday morning. Which makes it all the more embarrassing that we should be the ones making noises. Or at least Ed is. The 60 year old tractor is now running thanks to his tinkering and he is aiming to try tilling the lands out back. It will not be quiet!

But that's for another hour. In the morning, I walk through the flower beds, snipping, pulling and admiring and I revel in the peace of that moment, where nothing matters except for the count of spent lilies falling into the green bucket. Between 200 and 300 today. 

(This clematis fills the tripod with purple blooms right about... now!)

(I planted the day lily before a seed from the crab planted itself behind it and grew into a rather large tree!)

(How I love this meadow in the new orchard!)

(Bold Beatrice gets to the corn before I throw my morning handful out onto the dirt.)

(Bossy Cherry and Unfriendly One, or is it Two? -- finding comfort in shade and water)

Over breakfast, we talk about the swallows in the way that you keep talking about your kids after they've packed up and moved. You try to switch gears, but it doesn't happen right away. 

Eventually we turn to reflecting about our "neighbors." The ones across the road that are botching an "urban farming" operation. And the ones who have moved into the new neighborhood. The median strips there have mini prairies planted (instead of grass) and I'm curious about one of the flowers. It's beautiful and I cannot readily identify it.Ed and I walk over to inspect it.  Is it Ironweed? Want to help me out here?

(close up!)

As we walk in the warm sun, we see a bird hovering -- one that's bigger than our beloved swallows. It's a beautiful reminder of the richness of diversity. You miss one bird, but hey, you have another -- different, with different habits, but magnificent to watch nonetheless.

We cut through the prairie to the north of the farmette...

And now we're back, working at our chosen tasks.

In the evening, the young family is here for dinner. It's a little bit tricky because all kids were exposed to a case of Covid last week, but they appear healthy and all tests come back negative. Dodged that bullet! 

It's warm, but clouds help keep the heat down. A dinner on the porch is worth it in any case. 

I watch these swallow-like little ones and I think -- it's never dull with kids at the table.

(the dish says "peach," the mouth says "chocolate!" How can that be?)

Evening. I think how quickly summer days go by. They should be longer, what with all those daylight hours and yet they zip like a child on a zipline. One minute I'm cutting fruits for breakfast, the next -- I'm putting away supper dishes and Ed is asking me if I'd like some popcorn. 

No matter. Summer evenings are beautiful. Cool enough for opening the windows. And you know that soon, very soon, a new morning will bring its bounty of flowers and fruits and birds and kids and hope. As wise people tell us -- life is good so long as you can get up in the morning with the belief that there will be joyful elements to the day. And we do. And I hope you do as well. [Here's my reading suggestion for those of you who start the day with a scouring of the news, only to feel like slowly any joie de vivre is being sucked out of you. At least this author will tell you -- quit poring over the news with diligent attention to every detail. Your mental health deserves a better beginning to the day.]

To a happy and peaceful morning tomorrow! With lots of joie looming before you.