Friday

The day always seems weird when there are no kids in its schedule. More like a weekend than a weekday. It throws you off!

Today there were no kids here, nor did I see them elsewhere. Schools closed yet again for snow. You would think we have had a winter of mountainous pileups of snow, but no! Honestly, it's been a modest year for the white stuff. Not totally dry, but certainly no great heaps of it either. But, when snow falls at night, or when it's mixed with ice, the schools have no choice but to shut down to minimize morning commuting issues. At the same time, of course, parents must scramble to come up with childcare at the last minute, because work places rarely shut down.

You may think I'm on board with childcare help during a snow crisis! In fact, we tried to imagine how I could fit in some child-sitting, given various constraints in the schedule -- theirs and mine. In the end it proved to be too complicated, so I stayed to the side, promising to be on call if emergencies arose. But none did and the kids trudged from one parent's place, to various appointments and meetings along with them, and in the end I saw none of them.

So what was the day like? Well, very pretty, that's for sure! 

(looking out the front window)

The snow was wet and heavy, but it did dump somewhere between 8 and 10 inches of the stuff on farmette lands.

Enough to keep the chickens in the barn (except for one who insisted on trudging to the garage to lay her egg and then got stuck there)...

Enough to keep the cats in their various indoor spaces, except when absolutely forced to go out.

Ed and I both remarked how absolutely cozy it felt inside! Breakfast? Oatmeal of course!

And now here's a surprise: we both decided that we are fit enough to go skiing, despite our various knee issues. I'd already put the skis away for the season. Up they come now, into the car. 

We drive to our local park and pause on the way to admire the return of the cranes. I dont think they mind spring snow. They certainly know to expect it in March.

Ed's knee issues, unlike mine, are the result of an injury (so he tells me) and thus he is a little more timid in skiing today, but still, we do our loop and it is gorgeous!

Afterwards? Well, there was this snafu which I have to take the blame for: I'd been reading Wash Post's analysis of who should consider getting a second Covid bivalent booster. Ed and I are probably included in that list. However, just because some experts have opined that this should happen, doesn't mean that it can happen. And so, even though I had signed us up for it, the pharmacy in the end decided its hands were tied, because the CDC hadn't yet issued guidelines allowing for this to go forward. Thanks, CDC.

I know it's not a huge deal -- the CDC is much more concerned right now with the fact that most Americans have yet to get their first bivalent booster. Nonetheless, us compliant types should not be ignored, especially since the world is now unmasked and moving around whether or not they are sick. (I was, for example, surprised to hear that my former colleague, with whom I had dinner this week, had traveled back from a trip to the Middle East while she had Covid. She said testing was no longer required, so she felt free to return. On a long, overseas flight home. Okay...)

Ah well. We've stayed away from the virus thus far! We will continue with our usual moderate level of precautions.

Much of the rest of our afternoon is spent on reading, researching, and watching the snow melt outside. We're to get some more -- a less copious amount of it -- but of course, this is typical for March: snow, sunshine, rain, and then the cycle repeats itself until it runs out of steam, sometime toward the end of April!

Tomorrow is the last day of dark dinner hours. Daylight Savings time, here we come! Now do you agree that we are on the heels of spring?!

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!