for the love of bread

This afternoon I am to babysit Snowdrop and two of her friends over at the grandgirl's home. My first thought is this: what after school snack should I bring over for the girls to share? Grandmas thoughts always do run to food...

Fruits. Yes, mango because they are tasting so good these days! And strawberries. Also lovely right now. Special stuff. The kids have plenty of apples in their lunchboxes. What else? Let me go to the bakery and pick something out!

If ever there was a flimsy excuse to make a morning run to Madison Sourdough...

The thing is, I love poking into a bakery early in the morning. The smell, the packed shelves of breads and these days --croissants, pains au chocolat, cinnamon rolls. The line of people waiting, with their vision of maybe a morning treat with a milky coffee, or a good bread for lunch. 

I have loved bakeries since I was a kid. You'll know of course that postwar Poland experienced food shortages in the years I was a child there (if you don't know, you could read about it in my book, Like a Swallow!). But bread was ubiquitous and both bread bakeries and pastry shops never seemed to have the shortages that grocers and meat stores experienced. Warm breads and of cakes from the pastry shop around the corner. Mmmm! And this love of shopping for baked goods has stayed with me. When I'm in a new city, one of the first things I take note of is its bakeries. In Paris, I'll never pass a pastry shop without staring down at what's inside. 

True, I am myself a baker. I have made cakes at home since I was thirteen years old and I have baked continuously since then, trying my hand at restaurant baking as well for a number of years. So you could say I'm just in love with the product that comes out of the oven. Ed notes that I bake mostly to have sweet treats for when Snowdrop comes here after school. He tells me he himself loved to open up a cupboard at his grandma's house and reach for the special cookies she stored there for him. So maybe it is a grandma thing? 

No, it's more than that. Bakeries, coffee shops with pastries -- these institutions are up there for me, as magnificent as the great galleries of the world. As sensual, evocative and pleasurable to frequent as any monument or garden. And so today, I put in my order to Madison Sourdough and head out to pick it up.

(It's such a pretty drive to it, though I admit, having a shop like this within walking distance would be even better!)

All this happens after feeding the animals, of course. My it's nippy out there! Just a few degrees above freezing. Brrr!

Not in the bakery of course, where all is warm, fragrant, delectable and beautiful!

Breakfast, with a split croissant and pain au chocolat and one last posy of dahlias from the garden.

Yeah, the garden. That box filled with a great deal from one of my favorite gardening centers (51 bare root lilies and 100 daffodils and 50 crocuses) is staring at me each time I go in and out of the farmhouse. The lilies need to go in. The bulbs too, but the lilies need to establish themselves now, before a heavy freeze sets in. I'm really pushing it by putting them in this late.

Sigh. It's cold. It's windy. The cheepers are digging up the weeded space in the newly extended sunny bed. And I have to be careful with my eye. Nothing is easy about this job today.

I take out an old cushion Ed once picked up at the curb. He uses it for sitting outside when working on a motor. I throw it down in the middle of the bed hoping that it will keep me from bending down too much (a no-no for my eye) and get to work.

Yesss!! 51 lilies, in the ground. My eye lets me know it's doing just fine. 

In the afternoon, I pick up the girls at school (happiness is bringing friends home!)...

... and transport them back to the house. After making sure there's a snack on the table, I hang back, because this isn't my playdate, its theirs.

(joining in on the snack)

Eventually parents take charge and I return to the farmhouse. 

It's still not dark outside. Out comes the cushion, the spade. In go the daffodils. Just 25, but it's a good start.

Evening. I bake a fish, roast some cauliflower and toss a salad. Candle burns, cats sleep. Good days, quiet nights. A wonderful combination.

the next day

Well that was one weepy evening! I felt like someone had dumped half the Sahara Desert into my eye. Every time the lid went down, it heaved shreds of glass and sand particles across the eye ball, releasing the next torrent of teary nonsense. All the meds in the world were not going to end that for me so I finally gave up and went to sleep, sealing my eyelid shut with tape handily provided by the surgical center.

And in the morning, the skies had cleared. The sands had shifted. The shreds of glass had cleared. I opened my eyes and they felt close to normal! And I thought how unpredictable this world is! The surgery on my first eye had been difficult, but the recovery was quick and easy. The second eye? Breezy surgery, tougher recovery! 

Resuming a more or less normal routine, I'm out of bed and out with the animals at not too late an hour.

It is unfortunate that my fall bulbs and plants arrived yesterday and they really should go into the ground very quickly, even as I am reading all these post surgical instructions about the need to not bend, lift, or steal (well, not steal) for the next few weeks. I will find a way to plant! But not today.

I am, however, up for baking and since I have bragged endlessly about how I can make blueberry muffin with eyes closed, I set to it. With eyes mostly open.

Breakfast, with Ed and with muffins.

Afterwards I embark on my new and exciting life without glasses. Sort of. My doc tried to give me both worlds: one eye that can read and one that can see distances. In trying for both, I probably wind up a little short on having a great result on either. First on my list of new acquisitions is a pair of reading glasses. Ed, who needed readers too after his cataract surgery nudges me toward his choice: a pack of six for $10. Use one from my batch!  You have never seen less attractive glasses. Still, to his point, you dont have to spend a lot on these things! Even fancy readers are going to be one twentieth the cost of bifocals. I am in a new, much less expensive world of glasses.

My surgeon inspected her work this afternoon. She is one who usually gives a good spin on anything coming out of her eye clinic, and this time I really have to agree -- the eye, despite its issues, seems to be functioning decently! 

I cant believe you did twelve surgeries yesterday -- I say to her with not a small amount of admiration.

Actually fourteen. My kids tell me they dont want to be doctors because I work too hard. But honestly, you can work as hard as you want to. For example, I get Monday mornings off. To do paperwork...

From the clinic, I scoot over to pick up Snowdrop. 

We note the cold. "I borrowed a friend's gloves today!" 

She notes my absence of glasses and tells me she likes me with them on. 

Oh, but I have better ones now! For reading! Reading? I want to try them!

I have to think someday soon she'll need them. Her mom was already wearing glasses in second grade. Maybe earlier. How good it is that we have these tools to help us navigate very tiny letters!

Much later, as I drop the girl at her brothers' school (where their mommy will be claiming all three), I see Sandpiper in the playground. I go over to say hello, but then of course, this makes him eager to go home. Except I really should not be carrying him today...

Don't worry, gaga, I can carry him!

Evening. Eye is healing, and, too, I am nearing the post-oral surgery time when I can eat popcorn again! Well, maybe not just yet. But soon! The week is ending so well for us here, in our little corner of south-central Wisconsin...

With gratitude and so much love...

the second eye

I've heard it all -- people who have had superb vision after cataract surgery, people who felt worse off, and still others who were horrified after the first eye, but cheered after the second was fixed. Me, I had my first eye cut up months ago and it wasn't exactly a winning surgery. In many ways I was worse off than before. But, you can't just rush to blame the doc with the scalpel. My eyes have issues, making them poor candidates for restorative lenses. I can see okay, just not exactly with great clarity. 

Now comes the second eye. Where I will land after the surgery is anyone's guess. It's exciting! Sure, I could fare poorly. But, I could fare well! And in any case, I most definitely will say goodbye to my glasses. (Even though I may need other glasses for any number of activities. We shall see! Ha!) 

Today is the day when I am slated to find out. 

But first, there are the animals to attend to. And I do a spot check of the farmette lands. We had quite the storm last night (I told you it was a strange 24 hours!) and though it's good for the plant life, those kinds of winds and downpours can really put a dent in an Autumnal garden, especially one that's in its last days of standing upright. 

Despite the night's chaos, things look fine!

Can't eat breakfast. Not before surgery. Ed drops me off and I am once again walking through the steps of getting an eye lens replaced and cataracts removed. And three hours later, I am home.

Breakfast at 2 pm! With Ed, sort of: he stays on the couch, I snuggle in on the loveseat as soon as I get the cat to move over.

Still later things go a little nutty. Neither eye is working well and as the meds wear away, I'm thinking t am now worse off than I have ever been. BUT, I know it's just a passing thing. By tomorrow, I should be on the road to two good eyes. For now, I type blindly. (For example, in an answer to my daughter's text I wrote: Do I’d it feel hrr er mogul for him?) 

Ed, sweetly solicitous, puts endless drops in my nonfunctional eyes, and we binge watch Longmire. Me with my eyes mostly closed.

Okay, it took some effort type this. Until tomorrow then.

With love...

Tuesday

You know the definition of eerie: strange, uncanny, sinister, ghostly. It's when the cats creep, low to the ground, rather than walk. Stealthily rather than briskly. When you find a couple of food tins on the path to the barn, so you know that someone had gotten into the sheep shed. A thief. An animal thief. It's when the weather is too warm for October 11th, and you check the weather forecast and you see that storms are heading our way. Cracking popping storms. Maybe. It's when one of the barn cats that never ever comes our way, to the porch, let alone into the farmhouse, makes his way to the porch, and into the farmhouse. And the winds howl and the lilies defy you at every turn, blooming once again, ignoring the coming of winter.

Eerie.

Even as the landscape around us looks so normal and innocent, unthreatened and calm.

Breakfast. I wait for Ed. He sleeps, doesn't sleep, says he wants to sleep, in the end comes down and joins me.

I will myself to finish up at least a basic weeding of the beds. I work up a good sweat. It's that warm outside. 

Ed asks -- want to do one last kayak trip?

No, I can't. No time. Besides, I'm spent. Weeding in this dry clay soil is tough work. You go.

He wont. He wants do something together. I'm hearing this theme a lot lately. 

We go for a walk. A beautiful walk, because, well, it's mid October in south central Wisconsin. 

But half way into it, the weather shifts -- from partly cloudy to drizzly and wet.

Weird. It was supposed to stay dry until evening. Hahaha! Caught you by surprise, eh? 

We don't care.

(this will definitely be the last photo you'll see of me with my trusty glasses)

I pick up Snowdrop at school. She's wearing pajamas because it's school spirit week and for some reason the schools consider pajama wearing to be a perfect act of solidarity. The kids love it. Snowdrop loves it. 

But we are in a hurry. Barely enough time at the farmhouse to make progress with a book she desperately wants to finish. Can't do it. It's ballet day. And things get twisted here. Her tights get muddied. We need to do a clean up and redress and then there's that mandatory bun! But, Snowdrop stays on task.

I can't believe we make it to class on time, but we do. I am so proud of us!  

(her school friend is also in this class -- reason enough to always come into the studio with the biggest grin)

Class ends, she goes with mom, I head home where the cats are vigilant (why?) and the chickens are hiding and, well, it's eerily still. I can imagine an owl somewhere in those tall pines watching over us all, waiting for her moment.  

I walk briskly into the farmhouse and turn on a bunch of lights. Ed looks up, looks down again. Day is winding down. I take out the big yellow soup pot and get to work on supper.

week of overdue cutups

How else can I describe this week -- one of cutups and fixes? Medical interventions? Bothersome annoyances? All of the above. One after the next. Two jaw implants today, eye lens change on Wednesday. Plenty of prescribed pills to pop for pain, though I never pop them because I think they're either for sissies or people who have real problems. I don't consider implants and my eye surgery real problems, unless one of them gets messed up yet again and I wont be able to see at all out one eye, and even then, arguably I will be fine. One functional eye will qualify me to drive!

In other words, this is a day of jaw pain and tiredness. But, the animals are oblivious to my (inconsequential) suffering and so I feed them and then tell them to enjoy the good weather because it is about to change.

(the pinks of Salvia and Gaura)

(the purple of Asters, Phlox, and Calaminta)

(one of the Bresse girls always lands in the corn bin when I open it...)

(I was wrong: that was't the last lily standing...)

Breakfast, after the surgery, of the light kind. I think I'm supposed to eat just mush today, but I'm never good at following such silly instructions, thinking of course that I know better. 

I'm not allowed to drive in the morning so Ed shuttles me back and forth for the predawn appointment, but by afternoon I'm deemed safe for the roads so I go and pick up Snowdrop as usual, though secretly I am hoping she will be on the self sufficient side, because feelings of playfulness are incompatible with morning cutups. In other words, I'm a little zonked.

We do read some of her favorite books together and then I feel that guilt: how can we not be outside on what has to be the last of our warmer autumn days? A completely gorgeous day, with plenty of sunshine?

Neither of us have boundless energy. Nonetheless, we drive over to the Arboretum. It's not peak season for the leaves (yet), but it's close enough and, too, it's certainly peak season for the weather. 

Snowdrop and I have come here in October since she was a babe. For the trees. For the grateful nod to the colors of Fall. [Only later do I discover that she and I were here six years ago also on October 10th, also with the cow from the Dairy Expo. Coincidentally, this cow is with her today as well, albeit waiting in the car.]

(Back then, just one and a half years old...)

(Today)

An incredible moment of beauty. All around us.

I want to do a selfie, of the two of us, but my camera is bulky and I can't get a good pic. I feel the girl's pitying glance. Just use your iPhone, gaga. Now why didn't I think of that... 

Both Ed and I zonked out way earlier than what I would consider normal. I'm still woozy after the jaw cracking surgery, he's still sleepy after being in woken what had to be the middle of the night for him (to be my designated driver). 

A sweet sleep, beginning on the couch, in the middle of a movie, to be continued upstairs, under the light of the Hunter's Moon. Well, a day old by now, but still bright and so very beautiful.

Sunday

I expect to be tired the day after a vaccine booster and I am indeed tired today. Ed asks if I want to go out to the Brooklyn Wildlife Area and help collect seeds from the prairie. I want to say -- only if it involves sitting down. 

In the end neither Ed nor I go anywhere. He says it's a boring outing without me. I'm glad I add excitement to prairie seed picking, but honestly, we have plenty to do at the farmette. House cleaning. Laundry. Weeds. Repotting the rosemary. Thrilling stuff, right at home!

(Is this the very last lily of the year? Maybe...)

All this activity comes after breakfast of course.

And after attending to these essential details of daily life, I am spent. Couch time never looked so good!

(looking out at our crab apple: soon it will be golden...)

And in the evening the young family comes here for dinner. 

(Loyal to her tree...)

("A fenced off area? What, don't you trust me?")

(Sweet moment of playing the xylophone; a few minutes later, he manages to disassemble the keys and eat one of the screw pads...)

It'll be the last time the seven of us have a meal together for many many weeks! In the coming month, one of us will always be gone, so we'll have to plan around these comings and goings. But today, we are at the kitchen table all in a complete set and of course it is wonderful.

Late evening: under the quilt, on the couch. Beautiful time to exhale and set the mind onto the week before us. 

With hope and love...

remembering

Well, that's it for me: last market of the year today. Oh, it will continue for another three weeks or so, but I'm not going to be here. Besides, the flowers will be gone. What's a market without flowers!

I'm bundled up almost as much as the sellers. We didn't freeze over last night, but we came pretty darn close and I feel that morning nip in the air as I cut through the square to get to my favorite vendors.

$15 buys me lots of flowers. Excessive amounts! Going forward I'll have to pick out grocery store blooms for the kitchen table. Until April, when local daffodils will show their spring faces once again.

Remarkably, there is still a stand with corn. In October! I'm glad, but it doesn't feel right. I buy my baker's dozen anyway. We have had a lot of corn this year!

(other things I did buy)

(and more flowers)

(things I did not buy!)

Breakfast. Bakery items, from here:

With flowers... 

... and with Ed.

Today is the first day that I am allowed to get the new Covid booster and we are both wanting it exactly now. Ed's going to be out and about and I'm going to be out and about at the end of the month and we welcome the added protection. But it was hard to find a pharmacy with any available slots for this day. In the end, a small drug store out in a nearby small town agreed to take walk-ins if we came during what had to be their lunch hour. And here's a coincidence -- it is the exact same pharmacy where we got our very first Covid vaccination back on January 25th 2021. Back then, too, I was so grateful! Excited even! Thrilled! It was a turning point for us. 

Of course, millions continued to be very sick with Covid, to die from the virus, but so many were saved by those vaccines! Ed and I never got Covid (to the best of our knowledge), despite our contact with school kids and despite all my travels during lulls in the pandemic. Yes, after that first half year, we had access to great masks. But the vaccinations were our protectors as well. And, importantly, they lifted a good chunk of fear from my shoulders. I felt myself to be responsible for protecting Ed. I still do, since in our DOL (division of labor), I am the one who follows all the literature on Covid. With that vaccination, my relief soared. We weren't totally safe, but we were a hell of a lot safer than before entering that little drug store on that very cold winter day.  

Pandemic milestones: us getting vaccines, kids getting vaccines, surges abating, and here's a big one: learning that I do not have to wash all the groceries after all. That one was huge!

In the afternoon, though it's still on the cool side, I get plenty heated up by working on the weeds. It's great to be outside on this gorgeously crisp day, though digging up weeds from fields that are dry from lack of rain is tough going. In the past, I'd clean the beds with greater care. I remember when putting the flower fields to rest for the winter was a big deal. These days, I shrug my shoulders and weed a little here and think about snipping stuff there, maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, maybe come spring.

Our dinner tonight is odd, but it has a sentimental tone to it: we were driving back from the little town with the small drug store and we happened to pass Fraboni's -- an older Italian deli that was certainly part of my young family's history and, too, was frequented by Ed when he lived alone. Want to pick up some stuff there for dinner? Like what? Maybe sandwiches? Some deli salads? Anything!

For Ed, a sub sandwich is as much a dinner as any other food, and though I'm not exactly on board with that on most days, it's fun to stray occasionally and do something just a touch weird. We get an antipasto salad with meat in it. Meat! We never eat red meat! He picks out a turkey sandwich and I go all out with roast beef. (Last time I had roast beef? Decades ago!) 

Such a beautiful month we are having! Following a beautiful September and a beautiful August. Surely not perfect -- I could have done without the days in the hospital! -- but perfectly beautiful.