April 12th

Why list these days as if they stood for something unusual, extraordinary? Hey, it's April 12th! So what?

To me, it's all unbelievable. Spring came bravely, thunderously, exuberantly. No slow crawl this year. March was silent. April has been explosive!

I can hardly keep up with all that's budding: the lilac. The willow. The crab apple. And the blooms! Daffodils are opening up one after the next.

The weather is warm -- too warm. We're touching 82F (28C) today. I know it's short lived and we'll go back to the cooler days of spring, but still, the gift of great gardening weather is fabulous for me, since at the end of the month I'll have to take a pause with yard work and attend to my knee.

[What does "gardening work" consist of, when you're not planting? Weeding. Digging weeds out constantly and everywhere and never completely because, well, that's the way it works.]

Breakfast on the porch once again!

Ed and I do go to our park for a walk. We're wondering if the turtles are out on the logs angling out of the pond. Silly us. There is a turtle explosion! Is there such a thing as a turtle over-population? -- Ed wonders.

(On Lake Waubesa: a White Pelican...)

And in the afternoon I pick up a very excited girl. Yes, we do the usual stuff at home and a tiny bit of outdoors. 

But the main focus for her is an event this evening at her school -- a talent show. She'd signed up to play her violin and she has been mulling over whether she will get stage fright. Or not. I say not!

Toward evening, we meet up with mom and brothers (dad has work commitment)  for a quick dinner out at Novanta Pizzeria.

And from there -- straight to school for the big event!

You had to be impressed with the dozens of kids who had signed up to participate. Cant sing or play the piano? Tell a joke! Or two. Or three. Or four. Do cartwheels. Or, like Snowdrop --play the violin. The only one up there with a string instrument, properly held, briefly played,  to the great excitement of Sparrow who said again and again -- Snowdrop, I was so so so so proud of you! (Not sure Sandpiper could figure out what was happening. Lots of people, lots of kids, lots of clapping. He avidly participated in the clapping.)

It was a full day. Amazing, beautiful, and very very full!

April 11th

This year's first daffodil flower bloomed today!

Actually, at least three showed their pretty yellow faces and they are lovely.

We have been promised beautiful warm weather and that promise holds. It's a stunning day -- way too beautiful for April, which is typically stingy with sunshine and warm air. 

Morning walk -- good, though still a little cool, which is as it should be.

I then have a stress test -- something that needs to be done before knee replacement since running uphill on a treadmill (on crutches?) afterwards seems, well, not doable. I am hugely competitive on these things and today is no different. I aim to outperform. I do not know why. The nurses do not care. Indeed, outperforming to the point where I will drop rather than give up, sounds sort of wrong for a nearly 70 year old, but there you have it: I want to beat my old record, which admittedly, is exceedingly hard with a bad knee. Still, I do okay!

And because this stuff has to be done before morning coffee, or morning food, or morning anything, breakfast is very very late. So late that we are already at 72F (22C) by the time I put out the food. On the porch of course!

Such a treat to be eating outside in April! A wonderful, awesome treat!

We do take a walk in our local park, yard work notwithstanding. One doesn't walk away from a stress test without feeling like you have to keep at it or else next time, several years down the road, you'll be a total stress failure!

And in the afternoon, Snowdrop is here and it is indeed ballet day, so outdoor play, indeed, any play is kept to a minimum. That's the plan, anyway. But driving in the vicinity of the playground just pulls me to it and of course, the girl is thrilled to climb, sway and move from bar to bar.

And now we really should hurry. Go inside, read a page or two, eat that snack and get ready. And yet we pause. For that moment in the yard. Because it is that grand to be outside.

Evenings, too, are so lovely now... The last bits of sun come in from the west windows, the animals settle down for the night, Ed and I retreat to our couch moments. So perfect at the end of a stunning day.

April 10th

On this most beautiful day, warm, inviting, delightful, we did not eat breakfast outside (too chilly in the earlier hours of the day), I did not plant a single thing, and weeded very little. Indeed, I spent the better part of the day inside working on federal tax returns. 'Nuf said, right?

Oh yes, I loved my morning walk to feed the animals...

And even the kitchen based meal was very very pleasant (oh that panettone! just so so good!)...

(Observed by our seventh stray, Pancake, who more and more is feeling like this is also her home. We've started reworking her and soon will trap her and take her to the vet to get spayed...)

But then, I had to turn my back to the farmette lands and concentrate on those forms, especially since Ed had some time to help me through the tough spots. Why he, mr. engineer, should have to help me, ms. lawyer, is, I suppose, puzzling, but he is more adept at throwing correct schedules at me, one after another and so the time savings for me were substantial. 

Twice I made a mistake and the online fillable form site rejected the final product, but the errors were readily fixable and by early afternoon, I was done with at least the federal paperwork for myself. I smiled when I saw that I had done the taxes on April 10th last year as well! I seem to always wait until almost the last minute.

I took a five minute walk, which put me face to face with the field of Siberian Squill -- always a beautiful sight!

And then it was time to pick up Snowdrop.

I'm tempted to do something outdoorsy with her, at the same time, I know we both like the calmer pace of a farmhouse afternoon. So I do a compromise: we stop by the playground near me -- she loves to run through the possibilities there and I am really impressed how much her arms have grown stronger in recent months.

(It gives me a chance to swing as well: I'm up to all of 20 seconds! Snowdrop, on the other hand, can nimbly swing from one bar to the next... Hmmm... Could I ever have done that?)

At the farmette, it's easy to get her excited about staying outdoors. I tell her that the hose is on!

(She loves to make rainbows with it...)

(And, of course, to water any new plants...)

(Spring almost never disappoints!)

We'll have a few more such days -- days that properly begin in late May. I'll try to make up for this terrible acquiescence to indoor work. I mean, really, fabulous April warm spells are explosive and exhilarating. I cannot waste them!

spring, full and beautiful

This morning, I could not leave, not for anything in the world. I could not get up from this miraculous moment where Ed and I felt warm enough to take our meal outside, on the porch.

True, it was a very late breakfast and so the temperature had already risen to 62F (17C). And we had put in a mountain load of work: I'd fed the animals...

Happy Easter, girls!

Ed had chopped up some of the branches of the trimmed tree, and I had done the somewhat yucky task of spring cleaning the porch. After a winter of snow, wind, dust, dirt and cat traffic, that space can look awful come springtime. I washed down the trim, vacuumed thoroughly, wiped down the furniture and changed the table cloths. 

And so we are ready!

My one concession to a morning of Easter foods is to buy and serve a Panettone -- an Italian yeasty, eggy bread. Ed makes fun of anything with candied fruit in it, but Olivieri makes one with just chocolate bits and it is delicious!

Ed scrambles up some eggs, and I feel like we have given this holiday its due recognition! 

And after all that wonderfulness, I just have to linger and be in the moment. I make myself a second cappuccino and I sit there and I have to say, the feeling of overwhelming peace and beauty is profound. 

Wow. It really is spring!

I wish I had pressing yard work to do, but right now, as I wait for the day lilies and the annuals (both should come in about two weeks), all I have is maintenance stuff and much as my flower fields appreciate my TLC, I have to admit, the IRS needs me to focus on taxes even more and so I do retreat into my lair and study sums and curse the complexity of this job, as I do every single year. I make no progress. The lure of the great outdoors is overwhelming.

We do take a walk in the afternoon and that is another piece of heaven. It's a new path for us, just a few minutes to the west, through a pine forest which, of course, smells divine. The feeling of immense gratitude takes hold and stays with me all day long.

In the evening the young family is here. 

(Kids, in their Easter regalia, in a field of Scilla Siberia, now blooming!)

They'd been in Chicago earlier and so they are a bit travel weary, but still, the weather revives us all...

...and we have a lovely dinner of roast chicken and roast potatoes and of course asparagus because every April meal should have asparagus in it!

And yep, those chocolate eggs for dessert.

I hope your day was beautiful. I hope you found peace and joy and that your table had good food on it and you had someone with whom you could share a moment of happiness today. 

with so much love... 

Easter Eve

There are two things that stand out for me about Easter: first of all, it brings with it food traditions (different ones in different parts of the world) that are interesting and sometimes fun for me to replicate. Secondly, the holiday wakes up my sometimes sleepy friends in Poland. All my best pals there reach out on this weekend and it is grand to connect with them once again. 

Oh, of course, I love the fact that Easter comes at time when the earth here, in south-central Wisconsin, is also waking up. You already know that I'm nuts about spring!

Besides those factors, I've never latched onto Easter in the way that I have latched onto Christmas even though I'm not Christian. Bunnies and chicks -- it's all very charming, but there is a heck of a lot of sugar thrown into the mix: more than even on Halloween and that's saying a lot! Coloring eggs can be beautiful, but then you have all those hard boiled eggs in the fridge and only Ed is a fan of egg salad for a meal and he doesn't care how pretty the shell may be. So we do a very low key Easter: I make sure we have something special for breakfast and if the young family is here for dinner (and they will be), I'll prepare something out of the usual rotation. And yes, I'll put out some chocolate eggs (indeed, Snowdrop and I bought some in our travels just for this purpose), as if anyone needed more chocolate!  

Still, I recognize that many people love this holiday and it has great meaning for them, so if you are an Easter person, or indeed a Passover person, well then, happy holidays to you!

Our hens join in the chorus of good wishes!

(Morning walk: Snowdrop had asked yesterday "how come your neighbor's grass is so much greener than yours?" She got a very long explanation from me, with many references to the insanity of lawn maintenance! Still, you can see the green color coming back to the farmette lands, no?)

Breakfast, ordinary, but splendid with the pastel backdrop.

My day today is a marathon of gardening. Honestly, I really did work like a person possessed and Ed was not far behind, helping me fill tubs, fix the lavender field and do some of the grunt jobs that I happily hand over to him. Here's what we did:

I planted all the strawberries. We hit 64F (which is 18C) today and it is only going to get warmer this week. They will survive any frost that may still come our way. This is the set up we came up with for this year's crop:

I also planted all the phloxes that came from the same nursery (meaning early). And the astrantia, and the clematis, and the dianthus. Some plants were bare root and I'm not sure if those will fare well after the mudroom hiatus. We will see.

Then we got busy with the tubs. We have pretty much eliminated the attractive but short-lived cedar tubs and have replaced them with the aluminum ones which I admit, do look like the tubs my grandma used to do the laundry outside before we had running water. I wasn't sure how these would look in the yard, but after a trial run last summer, I decided that they were indeed farm-like and once they are filled with flowers, they look terrific. So we got them ready for planting. It's a tedious job and I'm glad it's behind us. 

Then I planted the lavender cuttings we wintered-over in the sheep shed. The whole lavender field is a work in progress and I was disappointed to see how fragile the roots of these baby plants were, but maybe they will survive the transplant. I'm hoping!

(the lavender field, before I added my row of baby plants...)

And, too, I planted peas. That was easy! The trellis was already set up. All I had to do was weed the dirt and push in several dozen peas. And water all the new plantings. And pull out endless weeds and creeping charlies in different flower fields. A marathon, I tell you!

At the end of all that, I said to Ed -- things are looking good, honey. (That's my standard line at the end of a work day outside.) He responded -- until the weeds grow knee high again.

Well yeah, he has a point. In early spring, everything looks grand and under control. It really does feel like you are the champ and the garden is your great work of art. Nature hangs back and lets you strut your stuff. Then it doesn't hang back anymore and you get the not so gentle reminder that you are a mere peg in her grand scheme for the land around you. You may contribute, but she is in control. The weeds thrive, some plants topple or wilt or are done in by any number of viruses, bugs, weather crises. It's all just so much bigger than you! Still, you contribute and in these early months of the growing season, you are rewarded by splendid buds and tips and all those other signs that maybe, just maybe all's right out there and maybe your successes will outnumber your failures and in any case you will have learnt a lot and the farmette lands will be the better for it.

April stuff

How good it is to step out, step in, do one thing out there, come back inside to finish your coffee, go out to do something else! In winter, you need to brace yourself and layer on the wraps for that blast of cold each time you leave the house. Now? You're in step with the weather. You are made of stuff that can join with the forces of nature. In out. All is one and you are part of it!

This is what April feels like.

Morning walk with the animals...

Breakfast with two of my favorite animals...

And then we do this dance of working in and out, not quite yet immersed in planting, but setting the stage for it!

One task that we have is figuring out where to put my strawberries -- the ones that came too early!  They're doing well out there in the mudroom and tomorrow I can put them in their permanent homes. But where?

They can't go in the ground. Chickens, groundhogs, rabbits, squirrels -- they all eat our berries. But last year I put out two pots on the picnic table and covered them with netting. That worked well enough, though netting and berries are a tricky combination. Everything gets tangled up and picking out berries is tough going. Ask Snowdrop, who did manage to reach for and consume our whole crop of fraises de bois! So yes, I'll use pots, though maybe I'll rethink the netting. But I cant just put them on the picnic table again. Ed wants to keep that mostly clear for his outdoor work.

Initially I thought we might put up a board over sawhorses, but finding a sunny spot for this set up is not easy. Ed offers another idea -- why not move some of the tree stumps that he sawed up and use them as "tables" for berry baskets? 

I like it!  

We work on this for a while. Tomorrow I'll plant (and take photos).

In the back of my head I have that nagging thought that I really should be working on taxes. On my quick pause inside, I get the papers together. It's like prepping the strawberry pots! The stage is set. I'll fill in the forms.... another day. (Insert sheepish smile here.)

In the afternoon I pick up Snowdrop, but not at school. She is home today because, well, school's out for the day. I'm getting used to these frequent school closures but I can only imagine how messy this is for most working parents. 

She is here, enjoying the coming of spring almost as much as I am...

She looks a little concerned here and I ask her why the hesitancy. Bees -- she tells me. She likes them, but  at a distance.

I look closer. Bees? Awesome!

And then comes evening, only it doesn't really feel like evening because the sun is now setting at 7:31 p.m. which is amazing and wonderful all at the same time. Honestly, is there anyone in the northern hemisphere who does not love April?!