Saturday

We need to rain ourselves out of this drought -- I thought to myself as I worked the flower fields this morning. Tonight, tomorrow, Monday. We're likely to have rain and that's a good thing. But of course, I cannot say that I haven't liked this summer of warm and sunny days. No mosquitoes, lots of delightfully comfortable mornings and a cheerful glow over the farmette lands -- who wouldn't want this in July and August!

All the hours of the morning were spent on typical Saturday summer tasks: the flowers, yes of course, the flowers.

Then a run to the farmers market for.... well, the flowers! (I bought two large bunches plus additional sunflowers. All together -- under $20.)

And I had a chat with Kay, the farmer from JenEhr Farms. I used to pick up produce and poultry from her in my restaurant days and I asked her why she no longer sells broilers. 

Covid. It depleted the work force. They have nowhere to butcher them reliably. So they gave up on poultry and are concentrating on veggies.

Oh don't I know the tales of woe from those who want to butcher their chickens! Well, no matter. We no longer even talk about our Bresse hens as broilers. We expect that they'll start laying soon. In the meantime -- they're just part of the pack.

From the market, I move on to Madison Sourdough for the breads and breakfast pastries.

And finally home, for a very late morning meal. (Is it morning still? Just barely.)

Because it is hot outside, I concentrate on catching up with emails. I have two sets of Polish friends traveling soon and I do some research for both to help with their planning process. Both groups are experiencing horrendous flight cancellation problems. It seems unavoidable this year. Oh, the misery of getting from point A to point B. (Or the adventure of it! Maybe.)

Very late in the afternoon Ed and I take a hike in Lake Kegonsa State Park. He wants to see if the lake water there is swimmable. I have zero interest in that, but I go along for the walk. 

Looks pretty soupy to both of us (even as the dog appears to like it!).

There are trails in the park that circle a prairie and we're curious about those too. 

The prairie is nice, but our county park prairies are denser, with greater floral diversity. Still, there is a breeze and we enjoy the newness of a trail (and the fact that it is only 21 minutes away from the farmette, so reasonably close). 

And here's something rare: afterwards, we veer toward the lakeside pub, Springer's, for an outdoor supper. It's pretty standard American pub grub, but in between the burgers, we do find a pizza on the menu which, again, is good enough, especially when accompanied with a cold Spotted Cow beer.

I noted to Ed that each component of the outing was good if not spectacular, but the sum total was utterly magnificent. Funny how that works! You throw together many small tidbits and you have yourself a feast. A splendid summer feast.

With love...

Friday

 Good morning, world!

Can I just note this one tiny little thing: I am okay with being done with lilies, snipping and all. I'm okay with moving on to pre-fall golds and phloxy purples. I'm okay with starting the day differently. Clearing spent flowers is peaceful, meditative, pleasant, but by August it also feels like I ought to be done. 

But this year, more than any other year, we have ourselves a prolonged bloom. Not only a July of lilies, but a summer of lilies. Every day, I am still picking up a bucket of spent flowers. And every day beautiful new ones come onto the scene,

It's incredible that the nymphs and shepherds are still going strong. Oh, sure -- I can count. In a few days all the buds will have bloomed, but still, in August? So many upright lilies? Amazing.

And really beautiful.

But such relentless beauty comes at a price. Every day I begin my morning with several hours in the flower fields.

Followed by an exhale, at the breakfast table.

And afterwards? Well, I was remembering what my doc had said to me yesterday: when you have a medical issue, say a prolonged cough or some such complaint, there's usually more than one cause behind it. And if you want to get rid of whatever it is that's offending you, then you have to work at all the causes.

Closing the rings on my watch (meaning being consistent with brisk movement) is something that is vital to good health and so at noon, even though it's pretty toasty out there, I suggest to Ed that we take a walk in our local county park. I didn't have time to do this later in the day. Now or never.

And it is, in fact, a lovely time to be in the park. Without many mosquitoes this year, we can take the time admiring the prairie flowers...

... and the mighty oaks...

I always photograph this bit of path when we ski here in the winter. What a difference a few months makes!

So, so pretty!

And immediately after, I rush to Snowdrop's Theater Camp. The kids are putting on mini demonstrations of what they had been working on...

Oh, this puts me back to years of watching my own two do their various artsy performances -- acting, singing, dancing, playing instruments -- they did it all and now, her I am, that grandma in the audience that just cant get enough of her grandkids!'

From there, we come back to the farmette.

(She claims the scent of true lilies is powerful! She is correct in this.)

... where she asks me to read out loud to her And I do -- a whole book, and I'm reminded that people who lecture in their youth and read out loud for hours on end in their senior years do indeed benefit from getting voice therapy. In the alternative, they drink lots of hot tea. 

Back home  -- the brothers.

How does a day pass by so quickly? And how is it that cherries take so long to dry in the sun? Imponderable questions! Deliciously inconsequential.

With love...

Thursday

A small, really tiny voice inside me says -- you know, you could be working to market your book rather than snipping lilies every morning. I ignore it and snip away.

It grows louder -- you know, writing it is only half the battle. You need to do more than just one TV appearance and one scheduled book event. In January no less. I still ignore it. Snip, snip, clip, clear.

But, but, but snipping lilies is good for my health, right?! Snip, snip, clip, clear.

Breakfast, also good for my health!

And speaking of health, I have another one of those appointments today where your doc is supposed to monitor something, except that my doc for this particular organ (you understand -- no one just goes to a doctor anymore, you go to one for this inch of your body and another for the next, etc.) has been deployed and so I got a substitute doctor. And this substitute doctor said two most amazing things to me, that were so totally unexpected that they blew my mind. First, he said "before coming in here, I studied your chart for about half an hour..."

Can you believe that? This guy spent his lunch break pouring over the not so fascinating tidbits of my chart! And he had conclusions, which, in itself was stunning.

The second thing he said was "while we're studying everything, take a look at this picture of your lungs -- they look like those of a twenty year old." I said "Aw, you're just being nice..." But he insisted that among my few medical virtues, the shape of my lungs was right up there. Now, is that a nice guy or what??

In any case, the visit went well and once again I was told to go to PT, this time for voice training, in addition to the PT I am already neglecting for knee workout, back strengthening, and toe alignment. 

I'm learning that to be 69 requires a full engagement with the Physical Therapy industry. Which I am at the moment neglecting, because I have to snip lilies, and after that I have to sell my book.

Before my visit with this phenomenally wonderful doc, I took a walk by the lesser lake. And it was beautiful!

My doc had asked me if I close my rings each day (that's techie talk for doing enough exercise to make my smart watch happy) and I had to admit that sometimes I do not. Snipping lilies closes no rings. But today's walk counted for a lot! 

(On the other hand, I was dismayed to see this at Bernie's Beach, which I passed on my stroll:

There's no way that the swimming area is healthy and safe with so many geese using it as a bathroom stop on their way to Canada, or, more likely to the next lake and the one after.)

In the late afternoon, after a wonderful Zoom call with someone important to me across the ocean, I motorbiked with Ed to our local market. For the flowers. And for a chat with Angel and Lutecia, the Mexican couple who will be planting stuff at the farmette later this month. Oh, oops! That's a late August story!

For supper I make corn fritters. I have to work the corn more into our menus. Tipi, our CSA farmers, snuck in another 9 ears into our produce box today and so now we are swimming in corn. They suggested a corn fritter recipe and I was happy to go down that path, though I ended up making more than a dozen of them. Possibly too much for a two people meal.

It's a beautiful, warm, summer evening. I hope you had that too. Well, unless you live in Australia. I hear acacias are now blooming there, with the coming of spring. My goodness! The spring acacia in Poland put forth flowers a mere two and a half months ago. How wonderfully diverse our planet is!

With Wisconsin summer love...

storms and TV

Rain. Please, may there be some rain. And let me not regret this wish: we don't want heavy storms. We just need rain. Drizzle drizzle, pitter patter. Okay?

Eh, we have no say in these things. 

I continue to work outside in the morning, today in a steamy blanket of very humid air. I clip, snip, take a few photos...

And it's nice, it's calming, it's rewarding, except when I come across a big, very furry and very dead animal in one of the lily fields. Our best guess is that it's a groundhog. Sure looks like a groundhog. But why dead? It's not butchered by predators. It's not susceptible to lily toxins. One of those unsolved mysteries! I call Ed, who takes out the shovel and buries the poor guy in the old orchard.

And then we go out to Stoneman's Farm for their sweet corn. Their pearl 'n honey, beloved by so many of us, Wisconsin corn. It's the first day of the season for them (unless you count the sprinkling of early corn they had a week ago) and they are hopping! Their loyal customers have been waiting for this day all year long.

We buy a baker's dozen. That should keep us happy for half a week. We could come out every day for a freshly picked bunch of ears, but honestly, the difference between day old and three day old corn is so small to the average person (we are that average person), that we settle for a dozen. Wisconsin's treasure. Right up there with our cheeses!

Only after that burst of activity do we sit down to breakfast.

And then come the storms, giving us, well, not even an inch of rain. It stops by mid afternoon, which is a good thing because I have a Zoom call where background matters and I dont like any of our backgrounds at the farmhouse. I take it on the porch.

I dress carefully: a navy, gently flowered silky-looking top which I hope looks like a professional shirt, though it's really a dress, and a navy jersey blazer that honestly, you could scrunch up and put in a backpack, but it looks way more serene on camera. With a bee pin stuck in the lapel. As I come down, Ed looks at me with a pronounced frown. 

Gorgeous, you don't look like that! Are you sure you want to wear that?

Okay buster, I'm going to hurl one right back at you: I do look like that when I travel to Europe, but you wouldn't know because you never go with me.

But, but, you don't really look like that!

I'm thinking I've been hanging around the farmhouse too long. Shorts and t-shirt, all summer long. No, I am not going to wear a t-shirt advertising produce and prairie flowers! Forget it! I walk off, resisting the temptation to comment on his torn t-shirt. With Ed, the less you say, the less he digs into whatever stubborn point of view he wants to bring to the table. (To his credit, the second time I come down, after adding lipstick -- lipstick, of all things! something I haven't worn since my daughter's wedding!-- he does offer some "you look gorgeous, gorgeous" sweet words.)

What Zoom call is this anyway? It's a TV interview for my book (Like a Swallow) and I am of two minds about it: yes I know I need to talk up my book, no I don't like spending time on this. Besides, it's a live show on our local CBS News program, and I have to wonder who watches TV at 4 o'clock in the afternoon anyway. No one I know. But, the interviewing team is very cheerful, very pleasant and the questions are fine, and the whole thing passes by without a major calamity, which to me is about as much as I can hope for.

In the evening we eat leftover chicken and corn. I mean, is this a classic summer supper, or what? With tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden. This season offers such a wealth of good things! 

We are grateful.