Thursday

You know the saying -- never do your grocery shopping on an empty stomach. I'll add to it -- never do online grocery shopping when you wake up at 4 in the morning and think it would be cool to have bake-yourself-croissants delivered to your door by 9. Why? Because that is a lazy way of assuring that you have fresh baked goods for breakfast. You want to spoil yourself with buttery and flakey Viennoiserie pastries? Get up and get going to your local bakery (if there is one within a handful of miles). Skip the frozen stuff from your market.

So now you know how my morning began: very early, very hungrily, with visions of good stuff for the breakfast table. I swear, I'll never take that short cut again. The croissants came. I baked them. They were... indifferent.

Ed was kind: they're not bad! They have a Midwest taste to them.

How so?

Lots of butter and indifferent flour.

*     *     *

Outside, we have one more day where I can admire sprouting daffodil stems!

Why only one more day? Well, because of what follows in the afternoon and evening -- a sizable snowstorm. 

I don't mind March snow, really I don't. It's really satisfying to see it melt a few days after it piles up on your flower beds. It never harms what little is growing out there. Nonetheless, this year I am mindful that flowers will be arriving within a day or two from the Nursery. Last night I got another email telling me that my strawberry plants are on the way! What the heck am I going to do with strawberry plants in March?

*     *     *

In the afternoon, I talk to Snowdrop about a particular mean girl in her class. I'm tossing around ideas on how one might shut down a bully, but none of these strategies appeal to Snowdrop, who is adamant that one does not respond to meanness with meanness. To her, even a slight critical stance is mean. So what's left?

Her mom reminds me that the absolute best response to irrelevant criticism is to be like Ed and not care. To give your attention to more important things in life. To be resilient. To know how to pivot in light of adversity.

Yep, this guy can be an effective role model to a kid with a bully in class. 

(In tussling with him, she sometimes forgets what she's up against here...)

*     *     *

And the snow comes down hard. I drop Snowdrop off at her brothers' school and slowly come back to the farmhouse. Slowly because it is so enjoyable to drive through these last snows of the season. 

At home, I unpack the first box of perennials (arrived today) and I have to smile. Ridiculous timing! But somehow magical too. Snow and flowers to plant -- a truly amusing combination.

Wednesday

March 8th is International Women's Day. I have this lodged in my mind firmly, since as a child, growing up in Poland, I witnessed this annual recognition of women every year. The sale of red carnations boomed. Chocolate sales as well. And there it stopped. We didn't really talk about the contributions women made and hardships they faced. Women were unique and they deserved a flower -- that was the message I got from March 8th.

Then I moved to the U.S. and this holiday was unknown and unrecognized for the decades when I was a young mother, a newly minted lawyer, a household coordinator, a volunteer in my kids' schools, a vacation planner, a gardener, a cook, etc etc. [These days, I laugh at the category "vacation planner" since so little is required now as compared to say twenty or thirty years ago, where you had to write letters, wait for responses, secure travelers checks, visit travel agents for flight information, on and on -- none of this is necessary now.] In those decades I understood why we might want to give women a break on March 8th. Sometimes, as a joke, I would buy myself a carnation.

These days the holiday pops up on one's radar screen even in the west and indeed, I got an news-lettery email from a woman who runs a cooking school in Paris reflecting on her own development as a cook and entrepreneur and attributing much of her love of this stuff to her role models -- her mom and grandmother. And what was interesting to me was the fact that the half dozen chefs working with her in her school, male and female, all linked their love of their craft to mothers or grandmothers in their family, recalling poignant episodes of watching women knead, stir, dice, and slice, with heady aromas and bubbling pots and sweet treats coming out of that sacred place -- the kitchen. 

I could not really join in on that bandwagon of female (or male!) cooking inspiration. My mother disliked cooking and never baked. My grandma did both, but she hated to have people underfoot in her kitchen and, too, you could probably describe her foods as on the bland side. Fresh and honest, to be sure, but she was a self taught cook (her own mother died when she was just a girl) and I think it was impressive that she could accomplish so much in a kitchen with a coal burning stove and scant access to ingredients, especially outside of the growing season. But not inspiring, in that I wasn't yearning to recreate her foods. They were comfy, they were healthy (no processed foods in Poland in those years), but I learned nothing from them.

Despite my utter dumbness in cooking, I was intensely interested in food preparation and flavors and textures and the minute I was on my own, I started clipping recipes. I'd been baking since I was a child (somebody had to do it!),  but it wasn't until I moved to Chicago as a grad student that I attacked real food with a real determination that I would do right by it. Where did I turn to? Magazines, which I suppose is a very girlish approach to it! I quickly learned that Ladies Home Journal and McCalls weren't cutting it, so I picked up Gourmet and Bon Appetit from those magazine shelves they used to have in drugstores and I was hooked! I read the darn things cover to cover, every month. Eventually I added cookbooks, but by then I considered myself to be almost a decent cook!

So... what's Women's Day for me? Well, I still I want to buy myself a carnation for the hell of it. But mostly it's a time for me to think about women who really do struggle to make something of their lives, here, elsewhere, at the same time that they so often are charged with putting food on the table, with or without the help of a partner in life. Inspiring women, creative women, deserving women. Happy Women's Day indeed!

March 8th is also a date that brings us that much closer to spring. It's easy for me to show you signs of the new season -- they're becoming abundant!

Ed was up all night with his design project. Nonetheless he made it down to breakfast...

And indeed, he was quite willing to go out for a walk immediately after. To the park. By the lake. Which is melting rapidly because, you know, it's almost spring!

The walk nudges me to also spend some time in my own flower fields today: I rake, I pull out Creeping Charlie. The ground is indeed partly frozen so pulling out a weed is really a futile effort at controlling invasives, but on the other hand, it slows down their attack on my beds, so if I practice my usual bend and snip, I can at least feel that I have not surrendered! The effort continues! My hands are starting to get that springtime toughness to them. 

At home, I bake. This time it's my simple blueberry-lemon-thyme yogurt loaf. The berries have been on the mushy side and they will fare better in a loaf than in a fruit bowl.

And in the afternoon Snowdrop is here.

In the evening I go out to dinner with a group of (women as it happens) former colleagues from the Law School. I rarely do this because I am so much a say at home in the evenings person that it hurts, but I decided to push excuses aside and venture out. Listening to friends talk is good for you!

Another night, another day closer to spring... and closer to the snowstorm that is supposed to pound us tomorrow night. Happy Women's Day, happy coming of spring. Sometime soon. I hope.

 

Tuesday

Glorious morning! Really beautiful: full of potential, full of early spring light.

In walking to the barn, I glance over at the huge honey locust limbs that are overhanging the western side of my Big Bed. This is where the flowering is reduced by shade. These are the limbs that I want to cut down. This is the tree that Ed is hell bent on protecting from my evil ways.

Still, I keep trying: Ed, we have one, maximum two weeks in which to do the tree cutting. (After that, the buds will get beaten down by falling branches.)

We can go out and look.

I dont want to go out and look if you aren't going to do anything.

So let's not look.

No, fine, let's look.

After inspecting the tree closely he gives me the verdict -- I need a new kind of saw for that, but I will cut down one of the branches for you.

Just one? At least five need to go!

Just one.

If you wont do it, I'll do it!

You can't do anything.

This is the time to pick up one of these oatmeal bowls and throw it at him.

Instead, I have to laugh, because he is of course correct. My idea of "doing something" is to pay someone to come out here and do it for me. But, we don't operate that way. Ed's vetos are absolute, as I suppose are mine, except that I never have any. I always want to forge ahead with even ridiculously complicated projects (remember the time I was determined to get goats?).

I do gently hint that he cannot trim all our trees on his own all the time. (The only reason he gave last week's job to a professional was because the branches extended over the neighbor's property. The neighbor wanted a pro and Ed agreed that it was safer that way.)

I have been doing all tree maintenance here all along.

Yes but you are now 72 years old.

Okay...

I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere with that one. As for the other branches that I desperately want removed -- well, I'm hoping when the special high limb saw comes, I can twist his arm.

In other gardening news, I received a joyous email from White Flower Farm (a nursery where I have been shopping for flowers for some forty years now) telling me that my clematis and dianthus were on their way! Delivery expected this week!

What??

I call the nursery and I get some half baked explanation that these plants can wait for planting until my ground thaws.

Yes, but you cannot be sending flowers to Zone 5 (our planting zone) in March!

Well apparently they can, especially since I appear to have checked off some box indicating a desire to plant as soon as possible! Of course, "as soon as possible" has many meanings and one thing I know for sure -- planting in Wisconsin in March is not possible. Looks like I'll be piling lots of little pots on the windowsill this month!

Snowdrop is here in the afternoon, as usual, and I do try to get her ready for ballet class on time, but this is getting to be more of a challenge, as her hair gets longer and longer (and she adamantly refuses to trim it). 

When I pin it into a bun, she claims it feels wobbly. Not wobbly, just heavy, from all that hair!

Nonetheless, it stays up, and our afternoon ends without a hair calamity, and indeed without any calamity at all, big or small.

Driving home after dance class, I let myself feel that wonderful evening light of spring. Because winter is really a thing of the past. We'll get snow, we'll get cold winds, but they will have the feel of spring. And that's such a beautiful thing.

Monday

Suddenly the emails piled up. An unbelievable number of back and forths over an unbelievable number of unrelated issues. I feel like I've just returned to the office after a long vacation. 

But you know, it is a pleasant morning nonetheless. Cloudy, sure, but not too cold (not too warm either!). The kind of weather that makes you realize that spring never just barrels in and takes charge. It creeps up, in small steps, testing the landscape, hesitating, retreating when it feels it's not ready. Only in May does it explode with a full blown lushness that is yours for keeps. So, we are just beginning the transition and it is a slow one and I will be patient.

I have bakery treats from Chicago's Floriole for breakfast. This is a welcome change from the usual stuff,  for Ed. For me as well.

And then I lose myself in email responses, and Ed and I do our usual back and forth on articles we may have read in the paper, and I am once again grateful that I live with someone who is flexible in his thinking, and not quick to jump on a bandwagon, on any bandwagon, just because someone somewhere said a few appealing things that fit into one's mental image of the world.

In the early afternoon, we take apart and unclog slow drains in the bathroom. It probably isn't the world's most disgusting job, but it ranks up there, especially when you have two people with bad knees working at it and failing dismally at first, second and third attempts. Still, I have to say, any project with Ed is deeply satisfying. He's just so methodical in his approach, and though he isn't a funny guy, still, he can make me laugh. with his deadpan waggish tone. (After the third try, where we used sticks, snakes and our own fingers to take out all that does not belong in a pipe, he looks at the pool of water in the sink, then at me and says -- I don't think we succeeded, gorgeous. Indeed.)

And in the late afternoon I pick up Snowdrop. 

I'm steering the car up the farmette driveway very slowly. The chickens have chosen this time to scratch in the mud here. One of them has just laid an egg in a nearby box and I pick it up (it's a green one!) to bring it inside. Snowdrop asks me if there's a chance that it has the beginnings of a chick. 

Nope. We don't have a rooster. It's not fertilized.

Are you getting a rooster?

Yes, probably. In June.

And he can fertilize the eggs? How does he do it? With his sperm? Does he have sex with the chickens? How? Just like people?

Ha! Is this the sex education that's being taken out of the school curriculum in many states? Including in Wisconsin? Well I'm not school.

Yes, just like people. He fertilizes the egg with his sperm, and he does this by having sex with the chickens. I then give her some idea of how this takes place.

Okay, take my picture in the tree!

Kids never hang on to a random interest for long.

Inside, as always, I remind her to wash her hands and brush her hair. 

Her hair is getting really long and she never wants to tie it or push it back. By the time her school day is done, her hair... needs a few brush strokes. 

Every child on the planet will have a fantasy about how they want to appear to the world. Tall, fancy, ragged, whatever.  Hers -- to have hair long enough that it touches the floor! -- is whimsical and not realistic. But on the other hand, is there a reason to cut off some inches, when she loves this idea of very long hair so much? That's between her and her parents of course. Me, I'm just always handing her a hairbrush and telling her to comb it out. Under threat of a haircut appointment!

Evening. I cook, Ed rests his knee. He's sure tomorrow it will be all fine. Ever the health optimist. And that's such a good thing!

a few more hours

I spent a good part of the night thinking. You know how it is: a full set of hours that fills your heart and mind -- you need to digest it afterwards. Well, too, the fabulous dinner at the Elske in Chicago... Think, process, digest. There's a discussion taking place about whether skillful food preparation can rise to the level of art, or if it is merely there to stimulate your palate and your senses. I think places like Elske care about presentation, but even more so, they care about awakening you to the possibilities of taste. There was a grilled duck breast and sausage dish with dried fruits and fennel that was as simple as possible, yet masterful in getting the most flavor out of this game bird. Absolutely delicious. And it was the kind of dinner I would not have enjoyed alone. You need someone else at the table, so that you can grunt your love or look quizzically at your mates to try to figure out a surprising flavor.

But mostly, I thought about my daughters. I've said this before (and I know I am not unique in having these feelings) -- I think both are so wise and funny, so full of affection, so full of insights and sentimental reflections that I could spend endless hours just listening to them go back and forth over one topic or another. Yesterday I let them guide the night, a dreamy night when we let ourselves go back in time to childhood memories -- and there were many! -- and it struck me how children form such lovely ones based on absolutely nothing significant. The name of a park, a vitamin tablet, a beloved Chinese restaurant on Michigan Avenue, a Chicago cheese store whose name none of us remembers, but which supplied us with a slice of Brie when it was otherwise very hard to find stinky cheeses out here in dairyland USA. 

So that was our yesterday, followed by a night at the hotel for my older girl and me, and now I wake up to pretty morning and I look outside and I think -- I lived for a total of maybe ten years in New York and some six years in Chicago and I still find it so strange to see tall apartment buildings so tightly next to each other in these larger cities.

I let my daughter sleep in and I take my bag and slip out for a walk. It's Sunday morning, so the streets are mostly empty. A nice time to be out in the city.

I turn toward the Oak Street beach, because Chicago is so much linked in spirit and in realtime to Lake Michigan.

Nice...

And now I am hungry for a coffee. I catch an Uber ride to my younger girl's home.

Primrose is getting ready to go for her swim lesson, Juniper is getting ready for... play!

My daughter suggests that while her big girl swims, we take the little one for a walk to Floriole bakery. Splendid idea!

More time to talk, to look at that sweet little face...

And now we are in the cafe part of the bakery and yes, the coffee is grand, and the buckwheat scone (for me) delicious as always. Juniper is equally thrilled with her bits of croissant.

Back home again -- fortified and energetic!

(While her older sister, back from her swim lesson, plays "doctor visit" with me)

It's nearly tradition to end a Chicago trip with brunch at Middle Brow. Older daughter is here now too, so we are a group of six.

I love this busy place with its dedicated staff and  delicious foods (shakshouka for me!). 

If we had such an eatery (or gastropub?) in our farmette neighborhood, would Ed and I make this our place for an occasional brunch? Or is it that I only allow for the idea of brunch when I am with my daughters?

Such a special set of hours!

It's time for us Wisconsinites to drive home. Primrose complains that our visit was too short. We had too little play time. She is correct of course. We had cut our trip by a day (even as not a single snowflake fell in Chicago this whole weekend!). Still, I am full of grand moments, satiated because every hour was so beautiful.

But, too, happy to be home with the big guy who spent his weekend chopping up tree limbs.

Hi Ed, I got you some good bread from Chicago!

with so much love...

Chicago Getaway

So it isn't a weekend in the Caribbean. Not even in Arizona or wherever else they have luxurious spas where people think peaceful thoughts and wear cucumber slices over their eyes all day. But it's ours and it's glorious! A slightly attenuated (but we don't mind!) weekend with my daughters!

*     *     *

I do a quick run through morning chores, not bothering to check for buds (no time!), but loving the March feel to the air anyway...

We eat a rather early for us breakfast...

And then I'm off to pick up my older girl. Let's put on the music and get going, to Chicago!

*     *     *

We arrive just in time for lunch.

Though one goal for us big girls is to spend time together, as a threesome, an equally important purpose of being here is to check in on the two granddaughters (or nieces). My March visit with them! 

It feels like I haven't seem them for ages, though they all smile at that -- I was just here three weeks ago. Still! Ages!

But in the later afternoon, the kids retreat for their naps, and my daughters and I head out. It's spa time!

We allow ourselves to be pounded all over with super restorative massages and once again I tell myself that if I were infinitely wealthy, I'd pick weekly massages over getting a cleaning service for the farmhouse -- that's how good I think these kneading and rubbings are! 

My back pounder was a guy named Bill and he seemed so competent that I had to ask toward the end -- have you been doing this for a long time? Oh, years and years! And in fact, last year, I did a total of 1253 massages! Impressive.

*     *     *

My older girl and I booked a room at a downtown hotel. Just to make it feel even more like a getaway to some distant place. (We're at the Sofitel.) The three of us go there now -- to check in, to freshen up, to get ready for dinner, to look out at the view.

And since we have a short while before our dinner reservation, we go down to the lounge  and have a drink. Yes, right, it's all rather a blur now!

*     *     *

And now we Uber over for dinner. My two daughters and me, at Elske Restaurant, which describes itself as "a low key spot ... offering menus of creative American fare with Danish influences" focusing on "simplistic fare, seasonal ingredients and energetic hospitality."  (Elske in Danish means "to love" --- how incredibly appropriate!) David and Anna Posey are the chefs -- she is in charge of pastry. Both have racketed up the awards over the years for their incredible talents.

One is tempted to do the tasting menu when one eats in special places. You needn't stress then about what to order -- the best of the best is presented to you.

It's all great. The flavors are uniquely subtle and exotic, all at the same time.

Every dish is creative and wonderful.

Indeed, the whole evening is superb, as of course it was going to be. The three of us together -- it feels like we are all just starting out on life and yet, he we are established and secure and happy in our families, partnerships, love. 

We spend a long time bringing up childhood memories for review and reconsideration. "And remember when" -- these were common words for us today. And we did remember. Poignantly, and with a great deal of affection. And laughter.

*     *     *

From there, my younger girl returns home and my older girl and I return to a downtown hotel. The room with a view, more or less (I did not splurge here. We're not here long enough to gaze out and admire much of anything.)

Such a day! Among the best. Yes, yes, the best of the best is when all your beloveds are around the same table, but this moment in time felt downright superb!

And with so much love!

weekend away?

A few months ago I had a terrific idea. Well, a theoretically terrific idea: I asked my daughters -- how about if us three grown girls go away somewhere together, so that we're not always trying to catch up with everything while kids are in our midst?

Theoretically a gem of an idea! If only they didn't work and have family to think about and commitments spilling left and right. When we got down to actually imagining how this might work, everything became very muddled and complicated. A getaway would add stress rather than taking away some of it.

But then we came up with something else: what if my older girl and I came down to Chicago for the weekend and we would do some family stuff with the Chicago young family, and, too, some "just me and my daughters" stuff throughout. 

We agreed on the date (this weekend), the Chicago girl came up with our meal plan, I found some massages that would almost make us feel as we'd gone to some spa in Arizona, the dads would hold down the fort with the kids -- we were set!

Then came the weather forecast.

Winter storm to hit Chicago today, at exactly the time we are to drive down. Is that bad luck or what???

Last night I made the decision to postpone our departure by a day. It's one thing to drive myself into a storm, it's another to take my daughter along with me. Ah well: we lose a day. We will adjust: we'll go early tomorrow and squeeze everything into a 24 hour period! Still, as I write this, I am hugely aware of the fact that we should be in Chicago. Right now. Darn it.

Up here in the Madison, Wisconsin area, we're not getting any of that storm. It's basically cool, brown and cloudy and it will be thus for the next bunch of days. Nothing to write home about, but not too bad either, considering it's only early March. And every day now, I am on the prowl for signs of emergent life on farmette lands. Here's today's find: crocus tips!

To cheer myself up this morning, I pick up some baked goods at Madison Sourdough.

For breakfast. With Ed.

And then we roll through a very normal weekday at the farmette, except that I do include a swing over to the playground, so I can practice some hanging. No, I'm not suddenly more powerful than a locomotive, but I'm sure my upper body has roused itself from the stupor of older age and is getting ready for action. Maybe.

And speaking of hanging -- Ed hired someone to bring down some tree limbs that are hanging over our neighbor's house. They came today to do the job.

That's fine, but I am so sorry that tree trimming did not include removing limbs hanging over my Big Bed. With each year, the flowers there are less abundant since they are no longer picking up their requisite 6 hours of sunlight. Ed knows this, but getting him to agree to clear the overhang is another matter. Even threats that I will abandon flower growing altogether (said emnphatically!) don't work. He hates cutting down trees or branches. Somewhere in his head is the notion that trees have feelings. Or some plant life aspirations. Or something.

And in the afternoon Snowdrop is here...

On the ride home, we talk about friends. Ones who wont allow you to express hurt. Snowdrop is rapidly getting to the age where you need your smarts more than your physical strength to help her navigate life's hurdles. She is also at an age where she welcomes helpful advice. So I give her some. One thing you might try is phrasing things in terms of yourself and not the other person. She sighs. Gaga, I know that! And it doesn't work! She just retorts that if I don't like what she does then I can find another friend to play with.

Wow. I'm out of suggestions and I'm dealing with an eight year old! I suddenly remember that moment in my daughter's lives when they presented me with unsolvable problems and I thought -- why did I ever think it would be easier once they slept through the night and knew how to cut their own food?

(Pajama day at school)

And in the evening, I pack my bag for tomorrow's overnight trip. And I'll tell you what else will be packed to the hilt: my day tomorrow! Expect a very abbreviated post!

with love...

Thursday

I ask Ed -- do you think we could install a hanging bar? They're only $20 and the article on aging and fitness says that they are monumentally effective in building and maintaining upper body strength!

Ed, who has been struggling with his own knee issues looks over his computer screen skeptically. Cant you just walk over to the monkey bars at the playground and hang there? 

That's a ten minute walk! Each way. You need to do this regularly!

You want one up in the barn? 

I feel like if I hang from a barn beam, I'll bring the whole structure down. That place looks to me like it's ready to topple any day now. Besides, the air there is polluted with chicken dust. I share my wisdoms on this with Ed. He grunts and goes back to his computer work.

The fact it that we are always innovating in the way we move in the course of our daily routines. Come summer time, my flower fields keep me busy: squatting, heaving dirt, and pulling weeds uses muscle groups I didn't even know existed. But in the non growing seasons, we need to get creative. Neither of us likes tedious repetition. Boredom is a horrible partner to most forms of exercise. Doing pool laps? Yawn... Treadmill? Done that, hated it. But hanging seems fun! I decide to give it a whirl, over at the playground, today.

But first, there are the animals to feed. On the upside, the snow on the paths is gone! I mean, it does look dreadfully dismal right now, but you have to remember that these weeks are like Christmas Eve: grand because of the anticipation of what's to come.

On the downside, I see that there has been some fighting here, and I have a terrible feeling it involved an attempt by Pancake to enter the sheep shed. I spot traces of blood at the indoor exit ramp. Darn those territorial cats. Live and let live, you beasts! You all get more than enough food!

Discouraged, I fix breakfast for the two of us. Oatmeal, so long as we're on a day of fitness preoccupation.

And then the monkey bars. The same ones that Snowdrop loves to navigate with alacrity. Me, I hang on for dear life! I can do all of ten seconds on the first try and it goes down to five seconds on the next attempts. I clearly need to dangle more often!

Feeling monumentally stronger, I return home and get back to my computer.

And in the afternoon, Snowdrop is here again.

She has her own ideas as to what photos I should take.

But the very last one, at drop off by her brothers' school, is a real prize and surprise. It is in the city, so the temps are slightly warmer here, but still, it's March 2nd and we have... Snowdrop by snowdrops!

And there you have it -- beauty, in a field of more somber colors. There, if you look for it.