Thursday

Today, one of those people who is near and dear to me but lives far away came to town. I'm lucky -- she has family here, so she has many excuses to visit frequently. But this day was special: it happens to be her birthday and so we spent a morning together celebrating.

Well, I don't know that we were celebrating just her birthday all day long. We do have gorgeous weather (what a summer it has been!) and here we are, alive and well, enjoying a morning on the Capitol Square. 

(On Monona Terrace. Her husband joins us today).

My friend used to live in Madison. (Of course she did! That's how we became friends!) This morning I used her sage insights and observations to help with my weekend of visitors, given the fact that it may very well rain from the minute they arrive to the day of their departure. Bummer, but what are you going to do... 

We checked out some stuff that we would do, rain or no rain.

Monona Terrace, which understandably looks from this point of view like the Guggenheim Museum in NY. Same designing genius!

The Capitol (so quiet on a non-market day)...

Indeed, we climbed up to the tippy top to see if it's worth the trek for others. It is!

All this was fun, but of course, the special part was just having this morning to be with her.

I'd already cleaned the garden before our meetup.

Unfortunately, the cleanup of the farmhouse still has to take place. I got to it in the afternoon. Cleaning the  bathroom drain has to be one of the more disgusting jobs around, but, Ed and I do it -- a twice a year job, done!

And much later, Ed and I went to the local market, which I consider to be a pleasant break from the scrubbing and dusting. We'd let a lot of small cleaning jobs slide over the months. I'm paying the price for it today.

Evening: house clean, more or less. I'm ready for visitors. Starting tomorrow.

Wednesday

Don't you admire people who can spin between many sets of good friends nimbly, all in the course of a few hours? I know people like that! They seamlessly flow from one person to the next, always keeping a concerned and attentive ear to the other's life stories, always happy to be in the thick of any social orbit.

I'm less adept at this. My idea of solid friendship is to keep meetings down to never more than one in a day, with the remaining hours being spent on mulling over what they said, what I said, how it all plays out in our lives, and what I learned about myself in the process. I'll think about an upcoming meeting while clipping flowers in the morning...

(I could do without the grasshoppers...)

(Do you see why I love phlox? When the lilies end their run, the phlox sticks around for several more weeks!)

(one of the last groups, by the secret path...)

I may discuss it with Ed over breakfast...

And I stay with it even after I left the friend's home (stopping maybe at a nearby bakery for bread for Ed)...

Still, I am in a week that belongs to others. Heck, I'm in a day that belongs to others! I'm minding the travels of Polish friends who are slowly meandering toward Madison. I am helping plan a trip of other friends coming here soon. I am paying close attention to a person who has a family funeral this week. And, I spent the morning with a friend, a long retired colleague who reached out after reading Like a Swallow. He has not a small amount of drama in his life right now and we spent a very beautiful several hours on his front porch reflecting on the directions life has taken us. 

I don't have pics of this because, well, you don't take out your camera when your friend has drama in his life. But I did think that there was something very lovely about sipping a milky coffee, perfectly made and paired with a scone out there on his front porch. People who have porches or front steps don't use them often enough. To me these places are like a cafe -- a window onto the world, a buffer against the cruelties of life, because as you talk, or listen, you realize that we are all in our own way struggling against strong tides and currents and it's nice to remember that your insane issues most likely pale when compared, say, to that person's over there, the one who just walked by with a deep frown on her lovely face.

And now the day is nearly done and Ed and I are working out in the back fields of the farmette and I clear my head, getting ready for another day of... friends. It is the month for them. And honestly, I'm good with that. So long as it's spaced. With quiet moments in between.

With love...

Tuesday

Do you have friends who live far away? Like, more than a thousand miles away? If you're an American, chances are you'll have answered yes. Perhaps you're like me -- most (though not all, thank goodness) of my close friends live more than a thousand miles away. They moved, I moved, we all separated. So how do you maintain a close connections at a distance, where a cup of coffee or a glass of wine are never (or rarely) shared across the table? 

My daughters have been somewhat of role models for me here: they both have very very close friends who also live more than a thousand miles away. Texting has helped in terms of throwing out details as they rapidly unfold. I know both my daughters text with some of their closest pals constantly. Then there are visits. All their friends have spent money and time coming to see them. They have also traveled, rather regularly. Having small kids makes this tough, nonetheless, they take the time to do this and these visits give meat, so to speak to that bond.

But not all long distance friendships survive. Some people are just not cut out for this form of closeness. They can't do it. The contact fizzles. To almost nothing. A memory maybe. If that.

Is it worth it to do the work that distance friendship requires? For me -- it is. But it's a never ending delicate dance. Ocean puts my life out there for all to see. You want to check in to see what Nina is up to? Just a click away. I've paid a price for this availability. The need for detail is always greater on my part than it is for the person who wants a quick fix of friendship material. They have Ocean, I have to ask. (The good ones actually pick up on a detail from my public writing and pursue it further in a private communication. Most don't.) 

I think about this often. If I lived in Warsaw, or Paris, my friends would be a metro ride away. Not so here. Daughters are close by. Most friends are not. The dance of keeping close continues, with a few trips and  stumbles along the way, but it continues. 

Morning flower snipping...

Breakfast eating...

Granddaughter frolicking, peach picking, and fraises de bois plucking...

And in the afternoon, Ed and I do something we haven't done for a while -- we take a couple of kayaks over to Lake Waubesa. That's less than two miles from the farmette, so it's an easy peasy excursion.

Neither of us loves lake paddling. It's boring. No change in scenery. Wait: not totally boring! We watch the swallows dart and swoop over the waters... Surely the summer of the swallows!

And if you hug the shore and veer south, you can find springs and creeks that feed the lake and you can meander here for a while before you hit a wetland dead end.

The weather today is perfect for this! He and I have not paddled together for too long (this is mostly my fault). It's a glorious little trip!

Evening.

Isn't this a perfect moment to pan cook some brats and steam up some Stoneman's corn? It is!

August can have some awfully good moments!

With love...

Monday

Why is it that kids can never get excited by big projects like cleaning up the playroom? I use my most enthusiastic voice. I offer incentives (the doll house will look amazing once the furniture is properly inside instead of scattered hither and yon!). None of it inspires energetic enthusiasm. I get, instead -- can I watch TV? 

It's easy to clamp down and say -- no way can you watch TV while I clean up your play space! But that takes it away from a game, to a battle of wills, and guess who is likely to win that one! (Hint: the kid whose nose is stuck in the next in a long series of Captain Underpants.)

We make a deal: she straightens up the chaotic doll house and gets ten minutes of big screen time. As always, when she cleans up, she rediscovers how much she loves a toy from her past.  For a chunk of time, she is lost in stories of her own telling.

Oh how quickly they grow!

And speaking of growing, yes, I did do garden clean up this morning and I mowed the farmette paths with the tractor mower too, so things are looking pretty spiffy for late August (if you don't look down at the weeds).

(It's not the last lily standing, but it is the last nymphs and shepherds bloom, which, for me, is significant.)

(the rare clump of late bloomers)

(tall and a magnet for giant grasshoppers -- I always knock off a good handful)

(short and pretty)

(single)

(not single)

(a whole bunch)

(the now subdued lily field)

(the small meadow in the new peach orchard)

The morning is cool, but not nearly cool enough to give up on a porch breakfast! (I must sheepishly admit that we eat breakfast awfully late, so it's a good ten degrees warmer than when I first step out.)

And then I pick up Snowdrop and after a bounce around the farmette lands...

... she loses herself in her books. Not the tempting stuff I leave out for her, but in her favs. When did kids learn to voice such strong preferences anyway??

In the evening, I'm mowing those paths and Ed is working on some aspect of his machining project/invention that I just barely understand and we eat leftovers because, you know, it's Monday! The reheat-whatever-is-in-that-plastic-tub day!

And the play room? It looks very very neat. You would not recognize it!

With love...

Sunday

It began in a slow fashion: light garden work -- maybe an hour, not more, and animal feeding of course --  that sort of thing.

And breakfast -- we defrosted the pastries from Chicago and they were delicious and despite the cool morning, we ate outside.

But then the day stopped in mid track. I had a Zoom call with a friend who shared at least part of my childhood history. She had just finished Like a Swallow and she wanted very much to reflect a little on that past. 

It turned into a three, or was it four hour Zoom conversation.

I'd been thinking about this before we began and I knew she held some missing pieces for me -- what happened to X after I left Poland, and what happened to Y... And today I found out and it pushed me into further thought about how incomplete our stories are, and how they always need a prologue and an epilogue. On the other hand, since we do inevitably live our lives with incomplete stories, maybe it doesn't matter? Maybe we're happier not knowing everything? 

In any case, I listened. 

And then I was in a mad rush to get dinner on the table, because, yes, it's Sunday and the young family is here for dinner. 

The usual: Snowdrop tries to lure Ed away from his reading, Sparrow builds, Sandpiper hovers. And then we eat.

A lovely ending to an interesting day -- provocative, full of thoughtful nuance. 

I learned a lot.

With love...