slow travel

I read a piece today about the beauty of field sketching: taking the time to sit down and draw details of something you see before you. It's a way of forcing yourself to notice the small details, to slow down in you observational goals, to take note. And you can do it even if you are not good at art.

I suppose I would include myself in the vast majority out there who can produce a decent drawing when forced by a grandchild to do so, but I haven't a particular talent for it and most of what I draw leaves me deeply dissatisfied. So why be intrigued by this article? I already use my camera and Ocean writing to "take note." And I do plenty of observational travel when I head out alone. (When you are with fellow travelers you always pay attention to your interaction with them and so you miss a huge amount of small stuff in your navigation, to say nothing of conversations that take place around you, among strangers.) 

What this article did for me was to remind me that we always have a filter on, when we walk through a new or interesting place. And I have one too: I look at a Parisian street as if I were a camera, which is better than not looking at all, but it still places limits. Maybe I should take out a sketch pad next time and draw instead? Or, better yet, take field notes! Describe in words the lines that I cannot draw!

The article nudged me to get off my perch from behind a camera lens. Maybe I'll even remember to do that when next I am, say, in Paris.

This morning, it's rather cool, rather wet and rather Fall-ish. When I went out to feed the animals, I hadn't yet read anything yet and my camera was hanging down my side, as always. Nonetheless, I did pause to take in the purple and gold colors that are so much a part of our September.

Ed slept while I did Saturday stuff. A trip to the bakery for the breads and croissants, and to the market for the flowers and veggies. I note that the older vendors are already sporting woolen caps!

I'm not quite at that level of cold yet, but then, I'm not standing for six hours in that rather cool and rather wet air. I did a quick dash around half of the square...

... and hurried home. 

Ed was still asleep and as between waking him or eating alone, I chose the latter. He needs his rest more than I needed him to munch a croissant across the table from me.

I read a lot this afternoon. With a candle burning next to me. Sometimes it felt like I was inside the story, right there among the characters, feeling their small joys in their very plain and unadorned settings. [For instance, in my latest novel -- it takes place in Brittany, France -- the protagonist loves and very much needs his wakeup coffee and croissant. His hunger for this is so palpable that it became my hunger. I swear, the next time I am in France, the very first thing I will do is find a scrappy neighborhood cafe and go in for that first morning coffee and croissant. In public, among others who are in need of the same.] Many people have said to me me many times that you don't have to travel far to accurately feel the mood of a distant place. Most of the times I push back on that argument. Today I came closer to agreeing with them.

An easy day. A breather before a whirlwind of a month! To reflect and take note, but from the comfort of our (heated!) living room. With a candle at my side.

caught up

Between travels, visits, garden planting, between baby sitting, schmoozing with folks, cooking, cleaning, writing, publishing Like a Swallow, between all those things and so many more, I ran out of time this past half-year. For instance, I did not put together photo books of trips taken. I did not start in on my new book project. I did not do a whole lot of things that I needed to finish up this summer. 

But today I plunged into most if not all that. I worked like an energizer bunny churning out pages of photo book material until all that was put to rest. Done.

One may well ask -- why bother with photo books? Ocean is like a photo book! Anyone who wants to look back on a trip where I would have been present with my camera need only flip back to those blog pages.

Well yes and no and maybe. The books are mostly for the kids, though I admit to liking them as well. They tell a very limited story and they keep things in order: there is a beginning, there is an end. Ocean is harder to read. Too, Ocean may not last. I've done nothing to assure its longevity. At some point blogger will fizzle, Flickr will disintegrate. The internet will have moved on. The books, on the other hand, will stay. Or at least my own copies will be there on the shelf to leaf through on a cool autumnal day.

Speaking of cool autumnal days, we are having one right now!

Yep, breakfast at the kitchen table!

Apart from finishing up photo book projects, I spend a while (on Zoom) with my two friends who live in warmer climes. I tell them my furnace is on. They shiver vicariously. We have a grand afternoon catching up!

There's more! I have an evening dinner out with the young family. This is something that Sparrow has especially wanted -- more gogs time. 

Sure, it's just one evening meal, but still, it's at the Thirsty Goat -- a place they love, and we have a wonderful time eating, and being happy that it's Friday, and that we have another week in our pockets, and everyone is feeling just fine!

(she borrows my scarf and immediately looks ten years older)

(He's drawing!)

(food, of the pub type: they eat it all, I eat it all...)

It's too cold to eat outside, but we do hang out for a few minutes after dinner, at the fire pit.

The rainbow kids, ready for whatever season comes next! 

(On the way out, those tempting machines...)

I drive home deeply satisfied. A day of accomplishments. Of happy moments around the table, of love.

the heat's on!

I know people like to brag about how late they start the furnace: not until November 1st! Not until after Thanksgiving! No, Christmas! Not until it's time to turn it off in March! They pump the AC until it's bone chilling cold indoors (all my European friends complain about American AC levels and I'm so with them on that one) and then they keep that furnace off. Not necessarily to save on fuel, but to show our ability to live with a cold nose.

And of course, at one level, I agree that a cold nose is healthier than a sweaty palm, but I like moderation: not too hot not too cold. Just, well, normal. And normal for the farmhouse required a testing of the heating system today, for the first time this Fall. And yes, it is officially Fall.

[I interrupt this Autumnal Rhapsody to wish my older girl and her husband a very happy tenth anniversary! My girls were gracious enough to get married on the first day of the next season, giving even forgetful types a chance to nudge themselves into remembering. Ten years, many cats and three kids later and here you are, still laughing! How awesome is that! With so much love...]

And of course, there was a furnace glitch. Ed's on it. But it confirmed all that you and I already know: we need to test our stuff before we actually need to use it. 

The walk to the barn was... brisk, but pleasant.

But breakfast is in the kitchen. We certainly could have managed a 55F (12C) meal outside, but for us, this morning pause is all about lingering. Though I'd forgotten how much the cats like to see us at the kitchen table. Guys, leave!

Sigh... Cats are like people: a package of good and not so good traits. Yes, I love love love the fact that Dance (our matriarch cat) is a grand mouser and chipmunk-er. She (and a few of the others) catches them with such skill that we have been mouse free here, at the farmhouse, for several years now. 

However...

She also likes to bring in her catch and play with it for a while. Today, she did that with a chipmunk. Out on the porch. When I opened the door, she gladly ran in with her catch to play some more on the living room carpet. I chased both her and her "victim" out. She then ate it. Too much protein I guess, because within minutes she was regurgitating the whole mess. This is typical cat behavior. Great and gross, all in one fell swoop.

And so, the furnace is working, the garlic is planted, the tomatoes, the ones that did not succumb to disease, are harvested. We are very ready for the season that begins today: Fall.

Snowdrop is ready as well.

(yes, the girl does sometime run out without a smile on her face... I think...)

Though the sweater comes off quickly what with all that sunshine!

(the last fraises de bois haul...)

Evening. A fishy dinner, which hypes up the cats who love fishy leftovers. You know, those cats with their good and bad habits... 

And to finish on the theme of good and bad sides -- Ed and I finish watching the US and the Holocaust. I thought afterwards about my book, Like a Swallow. In writing it, I had hoped that the reader would understand how much even partial knowledge of what happened during World War II affected all of us living in postwar Europe. Back then, I felt certain that simply knowing about the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany would be enough to stop any such movements going forward. I suppose if I've learned anything since then it's that people committing such crimes against humanity were, well, ordinary people, like you or me. They were not exceptional, we are not exceptional. Straying into the dark side -- we, most of us, are capable of doing that. Resisting the impulse to expel, expunge, or even remain indifferent to those who are not like us, those who have done nothing to harm us, those who merely want, themselves, to survive -- that has to be at the forefront of what we think about. Let's hope we can do that. 

With love...

not so fast

No good byes to summer just yet! It's lovely outside! True, I'm wearing a hoodie, but I love my hoodie! I've missed it!

(summer, redux)

(fall arrivals)

(is she feeding us or is she just looking at her flower fields?)

My fears that yesterday was the last porch breakfast? Unfounded. We ate out, and I baked, and it was like that moment when you wake up to the wrong season and it feels like such a pleasant surprise. 

But I kept my hoodie on all day.

And I did indoor stuff that I'd put off since April. A photo book that needed work. Taking a few minutes to visit with a friend we hadn't seen for ages. And thinking about recipes for new dinner foods. We'd been in a summer food rut. Thinking ahead now to Fall!

(annuals, belonging to both seasons)

Picking up Snowdrop is also a mix of seasonal and temporal ambiguities. She's in shorts, I'm not. She wants to read inside with me, and play with me (she has one foot in the big girls' world, one still left in her little girl habits) and we we do just that, munching all the while on warm muffins and fall fruits, at the same time that the doors and windows are wide open, even as the air outside is starting to feel maybe a little bit crisper.

All this to say that we're in that beautiful month where we get to experience the best of both worlds: the summer work is done, but the the autumn cold is still to the north of where we are. Wisconsin right now is having a mighty fine time of it weather-wise. And we are grateful.

markers

Seasonal changes are marked by firsts and lasts. This week is packed full of both.

First calendar day of fall, coming up! (That's an obvious one.)

Last day of wearing shorts -- my go-to outfit all summer long -- is today. (Ed will continue at least until Thanksgiving, or later.)

Is it the last day of breakfast on the porch? It may well be that. With cooler days come cooler mornings. The meditative moment is totally lost on you if you're shivering. Such gratitude I have for a season of porch breakfasts with Ed...

It's probably not the last day of brilliant warm sunshine -- we get our share of fall warmth here and there. Still, it really feels like today is a parting hand wave toward summer. 

Where is the color outside? Right now it's in the tubs, where the annuals will keep on going...

... until the first day of frost. When does that come? This is as speculative as the last day of a spring deep freeze (in May). A killing frost could hit us in early October. Or not. In any case, decisions will have to be made soon: should I overwinter a couple of plants in the farmhouse? It's never a total success. There is not enough sunlight and the plants get spindly and unattractive. But they survive, so that if you can put up with their winter awfulness, you'll get rewarded with an instant rebound come next spring. But which ones should come inside?? To be determined.

There is still the matter of light to think about. If the brightest days of the year are behind us, do we switch to our own hygge practices to cheer up our darkened interiors? Ed doesn't like a lot of light in the house. Predictably, I'm the opposite. I use candles and those are my friends from early fall until spring. This year, I'm considering investing in a lamp that treats seasonal affective disorders. I dont really have a seasonal affective disorder, but I do miss longer days of bright light and the science seems to support the use of these lamps in places like Wisconsin, where the days are way too short for anyone's liking (well, except for Ed, who just doesn't care). But this isn't today's project. Right now, we are reveling in the warmth of this last summer-ish day. A beautiful and fragrant end of a season day.

(a walk in our local park)

In the afternoon  I pick up Snowdrop at school. 

We are in a new fall routine where I get her to the farmhouse, I feed her, and pretty quickly have her get ready for her ballet class (she is back with her Storybook Ballet School -- interrupted for two years because of Covid). 

In the world of dance and especially ballet, the attire rules grow stricter as you move up the class rungs. Oh how well I know this from when my younger daughter danced! For Snowdrop this is a new world of no more frilly tutus or pony tails. It's all about uniform leotards and buns and yes, I get it -- there is value in conforming to this regimen. But it does mean that we have to get started on the task of getting ready earlier... 

... making sure, too, that she arrives in class on time. That as well is a biggie: lateness is frowned upon. 

Attending dance is surely a marker of a receding pandemic, no? One can hope.  

And of course, the evening comes quickly. 

I take out my candle (tomato for today!) and heat up a homemade veggie soup. Markers of the next season. Anticipated, enjoyed.

End of The Reunion

Good morning, world!

(this one is for my friend Regan, who loves Gauras as much as I do!)

And it is a good morning. A beautiful morning in south-central Wisconsin! 

(Tuxie, in the barn, taking in the sun...)

First order of business: check in with my docs at the clinic. Lovely people, all of them, though I have to smile at the tennis game that we are playing here: it was a bacterial explosion! No, it was a viral menace! Maybe even Covid! Though maybe not! Well, I'm okay with any of these, because so long as the ball stays within the court and doesn't land in some stratosphere of scary places, it doesn't really matter to me whether it's on this side of the line or the other. I'm well at the moment and that week of feeling ill is getting to be but a memory. 

Next, I meet up with the Polish group downtown. Gosia, Piotr, Inga, Jacek. There, on the last day of their American visit, I decided to put names to the faces that you will have seen here the last day or two and then before. We are old enough now that total anonymity wanes in importance. What matters more to me is that I love my friends, I grew up with them, and more were added and they deserve something other than a pronoun in an Ocean post. (One of them did say that visiting the farmette was like stepping into a movie set -- so much of my days here have been played out over the years in Ocean writings, that it's all so familiar, even as none of these friends have ever been to Wisconsin, let alone to the farmette.)

We start off by doing "lite shopping" at Little Luxuries. This small, esoteric gift shop on State Street had been my go-to shopping place for when I needed wee gifts for important to me people for a very long time, but I haven't been there in years! It was sentimentally sweet to be with Polish friends there today.

From there, it's a hop skip to the Capitol. 

(we wait for the other shoppers to catch up with us... my friend is enamored with all the flowers that grow in our city center...)

Here they are -- the traveling foursome, together.

They'd poked around inside the Capitol on their own. Our goal today is to do something else -- have breakfast. For this we go to Marigold Kitchen...

My head has been swimming with ideas on what "typical American" food I want to introduce to these people. How about blueberry pancakes with maple syrup? A hit!

It really is time for them to drive off to O'Hare. Their return flight to Poland leaves in just a handful of hours. But we make one more stop and because of the weather, the flowers, the occasion, the significance of it all, it is a beautiful stop -- at Frank Lloyd Wright's Monona Terrace.

("the girls")

You can't help but be reflective.

("I met you in your Warsaw apartment on Aleja Roz, more than fifty years ago...")

The span of years, the decisions made, the wide gully between their lives over there and mine over here... and yet, despite everything, we remain friends. This is the stable element through it all, against all odds, despite our profound differences in lives lived, paths followed.

And then after many many hugs, they turn toward their return trip and I turn toward the farmhouse. And I think how at the end of trips, visits, events, after incredibly packed and beautiful days you return home and you either feel a let down or you feel quite the opposite -- uplifted by the memories, and for me it's always the latter, perhaps because I love my memories, but I also love, love, love my home.

Hi Ed...

Afternoon? It's with Snowdrop who is out of school today because there's some reason why schools are closed and so she comes here and now we are back in our life of routine and that's just fine too!

(Loves to pluck fruit from the trees; right now we're flushing out decent apples and okay pears...)

(She was curious today about how much rubies cost... I have no idea what brought that on. Ed took it upon himself to teach her how precious stones are priced. Basic math quickly convinced her that her allowance would not permit for a purchase of anything that even looked like a ruby. Ah well. Kids switch focus with lightening speed. Rubies are so yesterday!)

Evening: I hear my friends got on their plane without fuss or issue. They're halfway across the Atlantic already. 

The moon shines brightly over the farmette lands today. I hope it shines brightly over you as well, wherever you are.

With so much love...

Sunday

You could say that the day is a culmination of everyone and everything, of a summer of swings and swirls, of interesting possibilities and incredible rewards. And that probably doesn't fully describe it all.

(Venerable farmhouse and the Big Bed...)

(Some lilies are so-called repeat bloomers, but here up north, that second bloom is modest. Still, you love every secondary bloom, because, well, it's September!)

(Breakfast greetings from the farmette!)

The plan is for me to meet up with everyone. The two young families, and with the Polish gang if the timing is right, all together at the Union Terrace.

At first I'm with just the kids and their parents.

But just as the Chicago young family was getting ready to head back home...

Just as we managed to sit the cousins down for one last photo...

... the Polish group arrived. And we had a chance to meet. All together... (well, a few of the men are parking cars, or getting cars, or taking photos!)

Still, the timing is right. We had that lovely moment together. 

And now the young families leave and the Polish group remains.

Since my pals are here only for 24 hours, I decided that we should calm down the sightseeing and concentrate on something else -- take in a whiff of Wisconsin as I know it from this wee corner of the state. It's all well and good to climb to the top of skyscrapers and to visit the musts of San Francisco. But if you step out of that tailspin and look around you, there's a bit of interesting America right here, on the Wisconsin campus...

 ... and on farmette lands. 

And so after the Union, and the campus, and after they check into their hotel, we come out to where I live.

Ultimately, we settle into an evening around the kitchen table...

And a wonderful dinner on the porch, with the song of crickets adding music to our evening. 

And it is all so grand...

Ed tells me I laughed a lot tonight. Yes, that would be right. We were feeling celebratory. And grateful for all these years of friendship.

With so much love...