in the moment

I know the buzz words -- strive to "live in the moment." Who hasn't heard that sage advice! But I'm no master at intentionally putting it into practice. Like with most everything, I don't train for stuff that doesn't really bother me. (This is unfortunate, I know. We'll talk about it another time.) I move along without reminding myself that I need to "pay attention to my surroundings." Or that I need to "focus on the small stuff and feel gratitude." Perhaps it's because farmette days are already full of that: I spend hours paying attention to my surroundings and I write endless posts about small stuff. And ask me when was the last time I did not feel gratitude! I could improve: anxiety and stress are there, waiting all the time to invade my space, but for the most part, I haven't felt their threat strongly enough to hurry up and get good at practicing mindfulness and living in the moment. The day will likely come when I will need that skill set, but thus far I've coasted on a lot of luck and a love of hobbies (gardening comes to mind) that force me to stare beauty right in the face for hours on end. Good enough!

Not knowing much about mindfulness, I was, therefore, shocked today when, in the middle of the parking lot of Bill's Food Center in Oregon Wisconsin, standing next to Ed's motorcycle, I had a feeling of such profound happiness that I wondered if I still had the leftovers of whatever they pumped into my veins at the clinic yesterday.

Why? And why there, of all places? Too, why were we even at Bill's Food Center in Oregon Wisconsin? All good questions. Let me try to deconstruct the moment:

I had spent an unreasonably long time this morning cleaning the lily stems. Two and a half hours! At the end of July! That's just too long! I thought we were on the downhill path, but clearly the lilies proved me wrong. Was it a record? I don't know. I did not count the snipped heads because I'm getting to that place in the game where knowing how much I still have to do is discouraging. Best to just proceed and hum various songs in my head. Like "Nymphs and Shepherds" (Purcell) while working these girls:

Or "One lovely summer evening" (it's a Finnish song I learned back at the UN School -- "Ol' Kaunis Kesäilta") while working in this field:

What? You cant find the song or the lyrics? Ask a Finnish friend to sing it for you. Here's an English translation of the lyrics:

One lovely summer evening while strolling down the hill (repeat)

I met a lovely maiden the memory linger still (repeat)

The kantele she played and her song was sweet and clear (repeat)

That song I'll always cherish and in my heart hold dear (repeat).

Okay, I got sidetracked here. It happens when songs and poems waft through your head on a garden walk.

I took photos of course, because, well, the blooming season is so short, and the beauty is so profound.

(Not to be forgotten: the nasturtium that always remind me of Monet's Garden in a pot that to me is straight from Garden Majorelle in Marrakech)

(oh, those colors!)

(Big Bed)

Breakfast was at 11. Pretty late, even for us.

I already feel the depth of serenity during a breakfast on the porch, so you might say I'm primed for contentment every time I dig into a bowl of fruits and oatmeal or granola across the table from Ed, but then, I seem to have taken it a step further today. I suggested we head out to Stoneman's Farm to start buying our summer corn. We drove by yesterday and the sign said they'll be selling it on Friday. Today is Friday. 

We get on the motorbike and ride the four minutes to Stoneman's.

The family is there, the kids are running around in their ever cute yellow t-shirts sporting the family logo (Stoneman's Famous Sweet Corn), but there is no corn.

We sold out already today. This from one of the family members shooting' the breeze in the driveway.

The sign in your driveway now says "soon." When is soon?

We're hoping to start on the bi-color next week. Once that gets going, we should be selling pretty regularly.

Oh, the bi-color! It's worth waiting for, even if their season is off to a late start (like my flowers!). The Stoneman family (which really is the Oppermann family, as the Stonemans have passed on and the farm is now run by a grandson and his sibs, with the help of their spouses and parents and in-laws) get up every morning at 6 and start picking. By 8 they are done for the day and most go off to their regular jobs while a couple remain to sell the corn. It really is a family affair! 

And the corn? Oh, the corn! It's heaven. They plant Honey 'n Pearl -- a variety that's harder to grow and has a lower yield than what you'll find elsewhere, but the taste is simply sublime.

Still, we wont be eating it today. I check my phone to see if there's a farmer's market nearby. Madison has so many of these markets in the summertime, but I guess Friday is not a popular day for it because I come up empty. This is when Ed says -- call Bill's Food Center in Oregon (some ten minutes up the road from the farmette). They sometimes have local stuff in their produce. Maybe they'll have someone's corn.

They do. Eugster's corn. I mean, it's not going to be Stoneman's, but it will be local and very fresh. With corn, eating it within a day or two of picking changes the experience from simply "good" to "exquisite."

So we motor our way to Oregon and it is such a pretty country road!

Since I don't have my mask with me (and Ed always has one in his pants pocket), I leave him to do the purchasing as I wait by the bike. And feel happy.

We ride back and the feeling lingers. The air is just perfect. Ed routinely reaches over with his hand and gives my leg a gentle rub (I think this is a biker's thing, but he has always done it and it always feels loving and kind) and I bury my face in the back of his shirt and I think -- we have corn, the sun is out, the flowers are blooming and I'm with this sweet guy who is so different yet, despite everything, he and I both find contentment and yes, happiness in our small life in this tiny corner of our beautiful planet. Small stuff, deeply felt. Is that what living in the moment is all about? It must be.

All this and a visit from the UPS man too. What a day!

In gratitude, I spend the afternoon clearing out stuff from the farmhouse -- a favor to myself, but especially to Ed.

With so much love...

Thursday

And what do you do every ten years, without fail? Attend a family reunion? Paint your home? Buy a new car? Go to Disney World? Wash the curtains? We do none of that. What we do sign up for, every ten years, is a colonoscopy. Mine was scheduled for today.

Anyone who has had this procedure, will immediately sympathize with me on the days leading up to it. Except if you live in Florida. It's totally not fair because people in Florida don't have to drink gallons of crap, they can just pop pills. Almost reason enough to move to that state, don't you think? Drinking gallons of crap is just no fun. Each time, I try to make it tolerable if not delightful by thinking up new ways of diluting the bottles upon bottles of ominous looking powder in interesting beverages. Each time, I fail. The powder  seems to thicken everything to the consistency of watered down jello. This year I went for peach water (organic!) and apple juice and at the last minute I added cucumber lime smart water. 

I will never again drink peach water (organic!), apple juice, or cucumber lime smart water with any amount of pleasure.

I had put off purchasing all these containers of powder, though I did splurge and get from Amazon some mango-flavored gatorade. It looked so gross, that I immediately put the whole carton of bottles in the mudroom. We'll give it away with free rhubarb this weekend. So out came the peach water (organic!), apple juice, and cucumber lime smart water.

When I did dash over to Walgreens to get the last of the needed prep stuff, I was told that it had just been recalled. Nationwide. But, no problem, the docs tell me. Just double the amount of other crap you're to drink. So, more cucumber lime smart water went into my basket.

All that was yesterday. This morning I was good to go and Ed and I set out for the clinic.

The people in the UW Digestive Health Sciences are really pleasant and very chipper. They make great small talk: I had a spirited conversation with one of the nurses as to whether or not it's good idea to keep your married name when you get a divorce. She also wanted me to help her with her basil-growing project (it was a bust this year), but I found this to be too challenging for bedside conversation. Still, she was delightful.

As was my doc. From what I remember. You tend to blank on much of what happens after the procedure. That's okay, Ed was there and he listened carefully for me, at least he listened when he was not having a Zoom call with his machinist engineer colleague in the bathroom so as not to disturb the docs and nurses coming in and out of my room. Every time he got up to move back to my room the toilet flushed automatically. I wondered what his engineer colleague must have been thinking.

We had a bit of a wait before the procedure because my doc found a problem in someone else's gut. I heard the word cancer, so of course, I wasn't going to complain about lying in my own little room (with Ed in the bathroom) under a warm blanket, pretending I was already sedated and enjoying the beep from the machine next to me that informed the world when my heart beat much too fast or far too slow. It seemed to do one or the other fairly regularly. I was given a very plausible explanation for this -- machines beep when you move. Okay. I tested that theory by snuggling comfortably under a toasty warm blankie. The machine settled down.

And finally it was my turn for the procedure. I always love the moment they start pumping you with relaxing sedatives. It's a good thing I never was into drugs. The stuff is positively intoxication, though I can see how you wouldn't get much done in life if you were constantly floating through the heavens admiring rainbows and soaring with swallow. Reality is much more prosaic, but at least it allows you to get on with things.

So all this took up maybe three or four hours of the day, but believe it or not, I managed to put in a solid two hours before heading to the clinic for lily snipping. Sure, it was on a very empty stomach, but lilies don't mind. They'll take your gentle touch no matter what the state of your insides.

Oh and lest I thought we were on a downward plunge in terms of flower count, today proved me wrong: 643 lily heads in the bucket, which is the second highest of the year. I don't really get why we had this uptick, but I snipped away and took some photos with my lesser camera because, you know, my main one is off off and away, hopefully in New Jersey by now. (Have you noticed how just about all camera repair places are in New Jersey? It's the kind of thing I puzzle over when I snip lilies.)

Today's beauties:

(Bold Beatrice cleans herself on the stump. Hmmm... come to think of it, I only think it's Bold Beatrice because this hen is bold. But, might another one be also bold? I cannot tell these girls apart!!)

(not all my lies are pink or orange or yellow...)

(though many are... and they all work so well together!)

Of course, there was no early breakfast. I'm no martyr: if I can't eat or drink, Ed can fix his own meal (though last night he dutifully sipped mushroom broth with me in the evening rather than looking for something to make for himself). 

And in the afternoon? When we finally get home? Ah! I'm told that we then ate a morning meal. But I have no recollection of it, nor did I remember to take a photo.

Because it is a most stunning day (cool, sunny, perfect), I stay out in the porch. Mainly I doze, enjoying the after glow of whatever they had given me to transform my brain into delightful mush.

But by 3:30 I am awake and Ed and I set out for out local farmers market.  Me for the flowers and the last of the blueberries. 

(Take a photo? If it's with the motorcycle... Okay!)

Ed's here for the cheese from Farmer John and the tortillas from... the tortilla guy!

I was a little concerned that I might topple off of Ed's motorbike going there and back, what with my wobbly limbs and mushy brain, but leaning into him on this most gorgeous July day was so wonderful that I soon forgot to worry. 

At home, I can once again eat anything I want. Well, they warn you that alcohol will make you drowsy (what's wrong with that, I want to know?), and fried food may make you feel sick (this would be true at any time of the day or year), but I have mushrooms and cheeper eggs and asparagus and cheeses saved up for my reentry into the world of regular supper food. And salad fixings. And they all taste wonderful, all the more so because we once again eat outside. 

And the flowers keep on blooming and the sun shines like it's making up for lost (spring) time!

It's a good day to be here at the farmette! A really good day.

Evening: Ed, that cat on the couch? Yeah... It's not one of ours, is it? No....

Well now... Okay... So who is he?

I don't know.

With love...

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.