Wednesday

I have come to really like the arrival of the UPS truck. We don't get many deliveries, but when one comes, and the weather is superb (this would describe today), the delivery guy virtually bounces it over to our back door and he always has a nice word to say about life, about sunshine, and today about my flowers. Think how energetic you have to be to carry boxes over to people's doorsteps with a sprightly step! And then to mentally focus on your surroundings. And engage the recipient who is sitting comfortably on the porch in some pleasantry. Very energetic.

He's young and looks sort of bookish what with those eyeglass frames that you'd normally find in a movie parodying geeks and nerds. And he has kindness in his heart.

But, but, why was I sitting comfortably on the porch in the first place, instead of working in the fields or hiking with Ed in our local county park? 

Well now, I had work to do. The kind of work that makes me wonder how this would get done by those who actually have a real job, to say nothing of a family and a real job. The "work" consisted of sending my camera and my lens in for repair. It's full time work.

I've had enough cameras under warranty and in need of repair in my life that I know how tough it is to get them off to the shop. A once a year ordeal for me. You have to work through many phone calls and get many approvals and then of course you have to print out the paperwork, pack it up, realize that you left out one crucial piece of paper, repack the whole thing and ship it off. And today I had to do this twice: one shipment with the camera and another with the lens, purchased at a different time, so it is still under a different warranty.

I try to be very gentle with my cameras. To baby them. But the fact is, when I step out in the morning to snip lilies and feed the animals, that heavy camera is always, always dangling from a cross strap over my shoulder. So it gets to bounce and see quite a lot of the world. Every single day. And the time always comes when the shutter release sticks or the screen stops functioning or I hear grit in the lens or some such nonsense, requiring the long and tedious process of sending it in for repair. 

I was going to gripe about all this to Ed, especially when one of the insurance agents started giving me a rough time about model numbers that dont really exist, but then I thought my day could be a lot worse than sitting on the porch, looking out at the flower fields, and eventually greeting the very congenial UPS delivery person. 

But honestly, if you ask me about today, I have to say it was rather limited in scope: animals, flowers, the camera, the lens, and the UPS person.

I do have photos of the flower fields and I'm signaling this now: they are like Wisconsin blueberries -- nearing the end of their ripening season. Though my snipped lily count today was a pretty high 588 still, I see that this day's flowers are still majestic, but some of the stalks have nearly run through all of their unopened buds. They are done. So, we have had our grand peak lily week. In a few days we'll have settled down to simply having nice flowers scattered here and there but certainly not everywhere.

Okay, but today's show is still so very grand:

(Bold Beatrice is getting bolder: she's here on the secret path to remind me I should be throwing out the corn for them, not snipping spent lily heads.)

(I like planting lilies against a backdrop of phloxes, though this year the phloxes have really gotten to  be really, really tall!)

(Nymphs and shepherds, still going strong!)

(From the porch, looking out)

I have two anchor lilies in the corners of the big bed. These are nearly their last days of flowering.

(One to the north east...)

(One to the north west...)

Okay, okay cheepers! Your grub. (A rare sight where all nine are together...)

(And breakfast. Unusually big today. Pretty much the last really delightful thing I had on the books for this day!)

Oh, but I am done with camera mailing (and using my backup little guy for a good while going forward). And that is such a good thing!

Tuesday

Wow, it's been a long time since Ed and I went overseas together. It's easy to mark the date of our last trip: a year before Snowdrop was born. So eight years ago. I should put a marker on the Ocean sidebar. A commemorative plaque: travels with Ed, 2005 - 2014. But here's what's really funny or awful, depending how easily irritated you tend to get by such stuff: I asked him today -- do you remember going to Morocco? I raised this because a friend is planning a trip to Morocco and I got awfully jealous, or at least nostalgic for that place, for any place that is culturally half a planet away from how I live. 

Ed responded -- yeah, I was there briefly. In just one corner of the country. I looked up from my wistful look at Ocean pictures of our trip there together (in fact, I'd been to Morocco once with my daughter and then, a few years later, briefly with him). 

I ask now -- how did you get there? 

He answers -- oh, I took a ferry.

I stare at him. Intensely. He is a little ruffled by that. What? 

We went there together you know.

The fact is, he had forgotten. What stuck was a solo trip he took long long ago. What did not stick was the trip there with me.

In the end, since he hates living under the umbrella of forgetfulness, he looked to Ocean to joggle his memory and stuff came flooding back in great detail. But the point is -- successful trips, ones without great incident, do fade. You remember the ones where the plane was diverted, the weather was awful, the hotel had bedbugs and you got sick from food poisoning. Don't you think that's a mean trick that nature plays on us? Vivid if negative, faded if sublime.

It's at times like this that I think -- thank god for Ocean! I have proof, Ed! We were in Tanger together!

In other news -- I clipped 570 lily heads today. That's big drop from yesterday and I expect that this trend will continue. The peak, as measured by the quantity of blooms, was thus the day before yesterday. Another sidebar notation needed: farmette lily blooming peak, 2022: July 24th. (Last year I see that it was on July 19, leading to a next day cut of 655. This year I knocked off 725, so -- more. See how memories can be deceptive! I was sure last year had had a larger peak total! But Ocean never lies.)

My garden walk today:

Our breakfast:

Somewhere in the middle of the day we discuss once again what we might do with the acre of land to the north of the barn. Yes, we have a veggie patch there. And now a lavender patch. And some five dozen newly planted trees. But in between, there is a field of weeds. For many reasons, Ed has resisted establishing a prairie there (chief among them -- you'd have to poison the weeds first and that would poison our newly planted trees too). And though he is tempting me with the idea of expanding the lavender field, I do not see myself putting in the effort needed to transform weedy clay soil into an organically robust, weed-free lavender patch. Way too much work. So what else is possible? The discussion continues.

And speaking of discussions, these guys were having a full throttle conversation in the prairie field to the east of us. Perhaps they were weighing on on what constitutes good agricultural use of fallow land.

All these July flowers! So where again are the young ones? Why not romping through the flower fields or farmette meadows? Well, it's complicated! Some are in Michigan. Some are going through umpteen stages of Covid transmission and thus isolation. I watch from a distance. Of the nine kids and grandkids, only two have not yet ever tested for Covid. Which is not to say they are protected going forward. I think back to the guy on one of my last flights who had shouted to the rest of the cabin -- Covid is a thing of the past already! People, we're done with it! Really? Tell that to the families isolating for weeks on end (consecutive positive results do that to households). Tell that to the grandparents who miss long planned vacations with grandkids because of Covid.

Still, everyone is vaccinated and therefore, no surprise -- everyone is feeling okay. We are grateful.

With so much love...

Monday

Sometimes I wonder if contentment pushes you to a staid and adventure-less existence. Say you figured out the best hassle free travel. The best connection, with the best airline, reserving the best possible seat on the plane, giving yourself plenty of time to get to your favorite city. All to minimize stress and foster contentment. Don't you miss out on the thrill of the unknown? And say you've settled into a summer of quiet hours in your garden. Doesn't it get awfully calm after a while? Like, too calm?

On the one hand, you have contentment nailed. But without the spice of crazy turmoil, can you really appreciate contentment?

I'm of two minds about this. I like adventure, I like change, I like new places to explore. But I do work hard to minimize the craziness. Maybe this balanced approach is a good one, but, too, I have to say, you, Ocean readers, have a lot of flower photos to process as a result! No crazy scaling of summits with a backpack this month, no wacky nights sleeping under the stars, no trips with lost luggage and missed connections (knock on wood on that one!). Just flowers.

Today I snipped 725 lilies. Peacefully, methodically, contentedly.

I picked up some croissants and a baguette for breakfast (okay, so it was a little late in the morning)...

... which has to be just about my favorite morning meal. With summer fruits. What could be better?

And then Ed and I drove out to Brooklyn Wildlife Area. For a hike. We know these trails better than the backs of our hands, but today we were oh so bold and we detoured on offshoots that were less familiar. And it was lovely -- both the old and the new. 

We had the perfect weather for it: partly cloudy, a delicious breeze and the total quiet of a landscape that stretches for miles before us.

One of our detours took us past a new for us segment of a prairie. Goldenrod is in full bloom here and we could not get enough of its golden color! 

Corn to the left, goldenrod to the right. Are we in Wisconsin or what??

And finally, to this lovely day I add a Zoom chat with my two sweet and lovely friends who are just the best at rising to the occasion when my heart aches for a face to face talk.

This then was my day. Pretty good, don't you think? The adventure was in finding calm in these chaotic and turbulent times. The craziness is all around us. But we side-stepped it and found our spot of peace. And that's a good thing.

(g)rumble

The evening storms, predicted to be part of a strong system of dangerous lightening strikes and possible tornadoes, moved through yesterday with a light wiper and a few rain showers. But the nighttime storms, coming in around 2 or 3 in the morning, were something else! Ed was still downstairs and I came down to sleep on the couch next to him rather than staying up alone in the bedroom in the chaos of the thunderous night . (Yes, we can fit on that slim couch together. But it takes some squirming and adjusting!) The power did go off for a while, but not for long. And looking at the damage outside the next morning, I'd say we got off lightly once again. A few fallen phlox in the garden, a few downed limbs from the front yard maples and that's it. But my oh my, was that a vicious storm! I think our silo must have taken a hit a couple of times. It was that close and that loud.

In the morning, I had to do a motivational speech to myself to get going. All those lilies to snip! Groan... Made even heavier because they're soaked with rainwater. And there you have it: we have passed the midpoint of summer. It happens when I switch from feeling meditative and in love with my flower field work, to feeling for the first time that it is a lot of work! Really a lot. (I know I surpassed the number of snipped lily heads today, but I got distracted by a Bresse girl trapping herself in an animal cage and I lost count. Once you forget if it was 147 or 234 at last count, you may as well give up counting for the day.)

Lily snipping isn't easy. You're gently snapping off a head from a stalk filled with delicate buds. Do the snap motion incorrectly and you'll take down the whole system of buds. Each day I make a bad snap that at least once, kicking myself afterwards for being so indelicate. But I continue to clean the beds in this way every single day. Let me show you why:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

It's a transformative change in the beds! It's also an almost two hour effort in the peak weeks, but I do believe it's worth it. And afterwards, when I clean out a field, I take a photo and I smile a genuine ear to ear smile. For the rest of the day, the farmette looks well tended and loved. (Of course, by tomorrow, all the blooms you see below will be history!)

Done. Breakfast:

In other farmette news -- we think, indeed, we know that Happy is not himself. He can't crow. He stumbles. His tail is down. 

It's time to examine him for signs of trouble: bumble foot? Flu? Mouth infection? I hold the poor guy, Ed pokes around, flashlight in hand. Poultry doctors in training! We find nothing. Let down, Happy proceeds to eat voraciously, stumbling around as he seeks out the best kernels of corn.  No need to separate him from the rest now -- they've been snuggling with him every night, to no ill effect. We'll watch him. Maybe it's just age? 

"Just age" explains lots these days. I suppose since the onset of the pandemic, age has taken a front and center position in daily life. So typical for us to steer clear of activities readily resumed these days by others: oh, go ahead and do that. But without us. We shouldn't, you know, because we're ancient. If in the past you looked to your capabilities not your age in deciding what you can and cannot take on, these days we're back to marking birthdays. Ah well: July days are for us the same, pandemic or not:  we work outside. 

(Speaking of work, it's time for me to tractor-mow some paths on farmette lands. Oh! Look at the meadow in the new orchard! It's beautiful, isn't it?)

With love...