Saturday

Happy Fall to all you northerners (and happy spring to you down there, in the south)!

Oh, that smell of autumn... No other season brings with it such a pungent air. A smell of wet leaves and spent plant life. Of forest bark and mushrooms. Of nasturtium, dahlia, and sunflower heads -- the ones that are still blooming and the ones that are not. Step outside on a summer morning and inhale. We are so small, nature's reign is so vast...

(bike ride snapshot)

Ed is up before me. This happens maybe once a season and today is that rare day. When I come down (almost always around 7), he has already fed the animals. I order bakery items online and then we get on our bikes.

To market!

I cant say that we buy much. Carrots. Flowers. Some pesto for my daughter. We have plenty of corn and the farmette is still churning out lots of melons, watermelons and tomatoes. So we pick up the essentials...

... then bike to Madison Sourdough, for today's breakfast treat (an almond croissant), for a loaf of sourdough bread, and for croissants for the kids for the week.

Roundtrip, it's a two hour ride for us. With pauses and purchases. The day is perfectly warm (meaning not too warm). And that fragrance! Your olfactory sensory neurons are working in overdrive!

Breakfast on this first autumn day is on the porch. Heaven...

Of course, I weed. I have to get those beds cleared the next few days, or else I'm not the garden person I set out to be here, at the farmette. 

I weed hard. Many buckets -- thousands? millions? Dig, shake free of soil, dump. Over and over and over again. It's shocking how well the weeds grew given our drought this summer.

I was reminded of a story I heard on NPR last night -- about the runner Clarence DeMar from New Hampshire, who won the Boston Marathon in the early 20th century (the story is here). Over and over again. He was the first to demonstrate that extreme exercise can indeed be good for you and not wear out your body. The caveat -- it comes with side effects. Though I never trained for, or ran a marathon, I know those side effects well -- I got them for the first time when I was in my late 30s and took a saw to the thick limbs of a maple tree in the back yard. My PT person from this spring would say that I exceeded my therapeutic window! 

Today, I think I may have just hit the outer edges of that therapeutic window again. In other words, I worked hard and this after my smart watch rings had already closed from the long bike ride. 

Wait, is this what you call a restful weekend??

I think so. When I work, my mind floats from one idea to the next, processing old information, incorporating new stuff. Even as my hands and back work to the max, my head stays nimbly centered and whatever is going on inside there is calming. Exasperations with the world and some people in it mellow. Peace is restored.

But oh, does the body feel the toil of those long hours in the yard!

If we had a bathtub in the farmhouse this is the one time when I would use it, though I suppose there's a risk I'd doze off in the sheer comfort of floating in warm water.

In the alternative, I fix dinner and Ed and I turn on the next in a series of PBS shows we can watch -- Professor T. Sure, there are the dead bodies, but remarkably, each episode concludes with justice prevailing -- a good message for the end of an incredibly full (of weeds) day.

with love...

Friday

I don't know about you, but I feel like I'm ready for a weekend. It's been a packed set of days -- so much so that I haven't danced my ballet dances for three days! And the weeds? Not a lot of progress there since The Attack of the Virginia Stickseed. 

This morning, too, is busy. Animal care first (and yes, we do miss Peach, which is strange since she was just a chicken, a meek one, rarely venturing out of the barn in her advanced age). 

(Hey, lilies, you do know that this is the very last day of summer?) 

(the crab apple in early fall is just as beautiful as it is in early spring...)

Immediately after, we bike to the pharmacy to get our Covid vaccinations. It's a lovely ride...

...but getting the shots was not easy. Pharmacies are struggling to meet the initial demand. The supplies are very low. We almost got sent home with only the super duper senior flu shots to show for it, but at the last minute there was a miracle and boom! We are Covid vaccinated.

Each and every time that we have gotten the vaccine or booster, I'm overwhelmed with relief. How can one not be, especially since rates of infection, hospitalization, etc are going up. You gotta love science for all that it does to make our lives better! (And you gotta not love the way our health care delivery works: not for us the simplicity of health care for all, where you never see a bill, never get told, as Ed got told that the paper work, draconian and never ending for the poor pharmacists, is stalled, so that he has to pay for both the Covid and flu shots out of pocket until it is processed through the "system.")

Breakfast -- small, because it's so close to lunch that it hardly deserves its own special moment. With a cat who loves to join us ON the table, and Ed, who luckily is not up there with him.

A quick job of spot weeding and now it's time to pick up the kids.

Typically, Friday afternoon starts a period of lessons for them: he gets violin and she gets ballet. They then roll into Saturday morning where she gets violin and he gets ballet (and Sandpiper gets multisports, which he adores) and then she gets Code Ninjas (a coding class which she loves). This, of course requires juggling and when one peg falters, the structure falls down. Today, the violin teacher called in sick so I had to take Sparrow along for the ride to ballet. After that, one parent did this, another did that and eventually I believe they all wound up in whatever place they needed to be. Which is a good thing because the parents are celebrating their anniversary tonight and a sitter is keeping they young ones occupied. The parents surely need their moment of evening pleasure!

Me, I make my way home. I snuck in my own ballet in the early afternoon and I surely clocked in a solid bike ride today. I'm ready to put my feet up and watch a movie with Ed. Know any lighthearted ones where not too many people get killed or have their lives ruined by unsuccessful relationships? No? I guess we'll just watch farmer Pete on YouTube, minding his cattle and pigs and turkeys. Very low key. Just what I need! 

the presence and absence of...

Fine, so it turns out I have my limits. (Ed would have chimed in -- oh yeah!) You know that children's book about Madeline? "...She was not afraid of mice, she loved winter snow and ice?" Like Madeline, I'm not particularly afraid of mice. They move fast and so if I am on a hunt, I am anxious to move even faster. Call me agitated. But bring in other wild animals onto our living room carpet and I run for help. Not only am I convinced that they will view me as a coconspirator and they will sink their sharp teeth into my flesh should I come near, but, too, I'm sure they'll run and hide and I will never get them out!

In other words, when I hear that telltale cat yowl signaling a catch, brought into the house through the open patio door (such a warm night!), I go down with apprehension. Sure enough, I find a huge chipmunk being tossed around by Dance and so I do the only thing that's left for me to do under the circumstances: Ed!

Those little critters know how to play dead. I'm not sure what it gets them. It's not as if the cat is going to look at them and say -- oh, you're dead, why that's no fun! -- and leave them alone. No. They become a football, a game, and the only help for them is in the form of that human who'll come by and, disgusted with the whole thing, pick them up in some fashion and take them outside. 

This was my early morning. 

Immediately after feeding the impatient animals...

(Unie)

(nameless Bresse girl)

... I took out my bike and went for a ride. Randomly. Up and down rural roads. 

(passing another field of Scottish Highland cattle)

I somehow steered my way eventually to the new development's soon-to-open cafe. The owners happened to be there and we chatted about the menu. I gave them excellent suggestions (I say "excellent" because it's what I would love to see there!) and I am happy to say that they were very receptive. It's true that the cafe is a lure. The developer has yet to build many blocks of new homes and townhouses and the locals want a coffee shop. Can the neighborhood sustain an eatery? That remains to be seen. Right now it's there to make the development an attractive place for prospective buyers. That's okay -- Ed and I figure we have at least two years to enjoy the cafe before an ultimate reckoning about its future. Since they're priming the place with great coffee and Madison's best pastries, I am sure to be there on a regular basis. For two years, or however long it lasts.

Breakfast, during which we review the day thus far!

And then I drive over to the storage unit which houses boxes of junk since my move out of the suburban home my ex-husband and I shared for many years. I did not feel empowered to throw the stuff out 18 years ago, because much of it had to do with the childhood years of my daughters. Their school papers. Their clothes. Some of their toys. Their books. Added to that -- some boxes of home stuff that couldn't possibly be sold in a garage sale -- worthless art pieces. Worthless to most anyone, probably to the girls as well, but I wasn't sure.

The goal today was simply to make certain that the key still fit and that no rodents had gotten inside. Mice would have a field day with all that stuff, munching and peeing their way through it as if it was their own private abode.

The verdict -- no mice (phew!), lots of dust, boxes still standing. Everything fading in the way that it does after decades of disuse.

I know that the past has significance to all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not. But how we choose to remember it is another matter. Many of us like keepsakes. Some of us like to sift through old family papers. A friend of mine just this week is rereading all the letters her mom wrote her when she went away to college (that would have been more than fifty years ago). Me, I have one lengthy letter a parent wrote about me, pages and pages of analysis. That's enough.

You could say that when I wrote my memoir (Like a Swallow -- pick it up at your library or bookstore or online!) I let go of my childhood. But what about my married life, when I was such an actively involved parent to two little girls? 

I've always said that the only thing worth keeping is the stack of photo albums I put together (one for each year), compiling our history, their history in this visual presentation. When my husband and I split up, I let him take those albums, because we were friends then (we still are, but now with roadblocks, not necessarily of our making) and I thought it would show good will. I had access to the albums anytime I wanted to see them. That lasted for two years. I haven't seen the albums since.

Remarkably, I haven't been bothered by that. I know the albums are there, in his home. It's not as if they'd gone up in flames. If I made an effort I could probably work out some arrangement whereby I could haul them over here. 

But I haven't done it.

The memoir notwithstanding, indeed, Ocean notwithstanding, I don't really enjoy sifting through the past. Writing about it -- perhaps that. But physically holding on to some pieces of it? That's not me. 

Nonetheless, when I was in the storage unit, I found a huge box of photo rejects. The ones that never made it to the albums (with good reason! most of them are terrible!). I didn't really go through all its contents. But I picked up random envelopes (remember those envelopes we'd get at photo development places? With negatives in one pocket, photos in another?). And I glanced through some of them. With a smile.

What stood out for me was how close my daughters were in their later childhood and adolescence. And how much they were already building the blocks of their adult personalities. I see it in their eyes, in their poses. 

I took a scant handful of random pics, reminding myself that someday I can get a look at those albums again, though not now, not this year. Just someday.

(from our one family trip to Poland; these days I am the shortest of the three and we no longer all wear the same shoes!)

In the afternoon I pick up the grandkids.

And in the evening, a very gentle rain comes down. I reheat the chili, Ed goes down to the barn to lock up the hens. He comes back and tells me that Peach has died.

She was our oldest girl of the current flock. (We got her off of Craigslist in 2017 and she was already laying eggs then.) She belonged to a period where we named our hens and worried about pecking orders. She survived raccoon and opossum coop raids, hawk attacks, severe winters and amorous advances by over zealous roosters. Good old Peach! We buried her to the music of Moonlight Serenade, in much the same way we buried other animals here -- with some sadness, but a deep belief that her life (their lives) was, were, happy. She squawked for food until the last day of her life and demanded to be carried on colder days. But she was never grumpy, always a little shy, always our old Peach.

with love...

Wednesday

It happens at least once a year, right about this time of the year. And each time I feel so terribly beaten. Helpless. I harbor the certainty that the damage cannot be repaired. All hope fizzles out. I walk out of a flower bed with the drama of matted hair full of Virginia Stickseed (sometimes called Beggar's Lice).

Have you ever seen it? Here's a picture of this nasty weed:

It's bad enough when it sticks to your clothes (you have to disentangle each clinging seed -- it's a chore!). It's horrible if you get it into your hair.

[You'll ask -- how on earth did I manage that? And every year? Well, it's easy! You attack some weeds in a thick clump of tall spent flowers. In this case it was the Monarda. (The good gardener will not just pull on a weed. She'll bend down to get at the roots.) You didn't notice the Stickseed. You try to straighten up and lo, your hair is a matted mess. Dozens upon dozens of these monsters pulling together to form a jungle of hair that cannot be untangled. You try every remedy known to you, none of it works. You're ready to call the hair salon for an emergency appointment, wondering how you'll look with a buzz cut. But first, you go upstairs and wake Ed to share your misery with your beloved. He rubs his eyes, he spreads out a towel and a tissue on top of it and he gets to work. One by one, hair by hair, he patiently untangles the thick mess of hair and seed, removing each tiny clingy particle, putting it down on the tissue, going after the next, and the next, until half an hour later, you can actually run a brush through (what's left of) your hair again. And once more you thank your stars that you have an Ed in your life.]

I did manage to feed these bandits first.

And after the de-tangling and seed removal operation, we have another job to do -- a far more pleasant one, indeed a beautiful one -- we call Stoneman's farms, find out they have freshly picked corn, and so we are off! On our bikes, to Stoneman's. (The family also raises Scottish Highland cattle. If I were a beef eater, I'd be at the head of the line to buy their meat. Their herd, totalling 200, but spread out between three fields, looks stunningly fabulous and very happy!)

I have this dilemma: how many ears should we cart home? Should I freeze more kernels or should I merely buy for the next ten days and let it go for the year? It's likely our last haul. The kids love corn for their Sunday dinner at the farmhouse, but I've always found cobs to cook. Who knows where the winter corn comes from. Spain? Chile? The end of the world? I want to switch to our own frozen kernels. Kids are weird eaters. Will they accept the substitution? If so, I should freeze more. A lot more.

In the end we get two dozen. That's a lot of shucking and freezing, but after a season of Wisconsin corn, I have no stomach for the winter imports. It's our corn or rust!

(our chosen two dozen)

And now it's time for breakfast. We are having a two day warm-up. On the porch we go!

Reluctantly, I go back to weeding. I mean, the beds really need it. Occasionally I kick myself for letting the summer go by without greater garden care, but of course, there wasn't time for greater garden care. Lily work, travel, kids, watering during the drought -- they all took a chunk of time. I barely kept up with the basics. 

So I weed.

And eventually the clock strikes an afternoon hour and I give it up and go and pick up the kids at school.

I tell them that Ed is on an important Zoom call in the other room so they have to keep the noise level down. Every few minutes, I hear a shout, or a drum roll, or a screech, always followed by the words -- oh, sorry! I forgot! Had I said nothing, I'm sure we would have had our usual quiet set of hours. These kids are not especially loud by nature!

(Finally, Ed's done with the call. Their gymnastics follow... I say -- that looks so scary, she says -- do it again!)

The family is car-less today, so toward evening, I pick up the whole pack of them and cart them home. I drive back late, but it's okay. Ed is out biking. I have a pot of chili to prepare. With corn, because right now, we are swimming in corn! (Such a nice image, don't you think?)

rain

I remember well the rainy days of summer in my childhood years. Almost all were spent in the village in Poland. With my sister and my grandmother. My grandfather was an elusive presence, roaming in and out of the village all the years I would stay in the house he helped build. Those cool wet days were plentiful and my sister and I would search for ways to keep ourselves busy. Not much in the way of toys, not many kid books around, no libraries of course, so we'd pick up the occasional magazine before it made its way to the kindling box. Kobieta is Zycie (Woman and Life) ranked high. They had a column that posted funny things little kids have said. And tips on keeping your hands from drying out in the winter. More serious stuff too, but in those summers in the village, I avoided the serious stuff. Newspapers? This was so called Communist Poland. Newspapers were poor sources of information. Still, they'd keep you busy for a few minutes. No TV, no films to stream, not even a radio to offer up some music. Just the sound of rain outside.

The rest of the time we spent on drawing. Maybe a few village friends would stop by if they were feeling brave. (My grandmother did not like kids messing up her well scrubbed spaces. She'd greet them with a frown rather than with a plate of cookies.) We'd quickly scamper off upstairs to the attic bedroom -- a vast space where we could spread out and take out sheets of paper and shared colored pencils. Some of us had talent, most of us did not and still we would draw because, well, what else could you do when the rain pattered rhythmically against the roof above us. 

When the showers and storms let up, we'd go for a walk to study the puddles formed along our dirt road. Sometimes we'd go to the forest to pick mushrooms. Sometimes we would ride our bikes, enjoying the spray of water we deliberately created as we pedaled the bikes into long stretched of wet rivulets forming along the road.

I thought of this today as I woke up to rain. I thought how different my life is now! I opened up my laptop and checked the forecast, noting that the rain would stop by 9:15. 9:15!! I can now tell almost to the minute when it will rain, when it will not rain, when the sun will come out, when it will hide again. As a child I functioned with none of this information. When will the rain end? I don't know. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. That's the best I can tell you.

So I have a couple of hours of rain, gentle rain, much needed rain, and I dont need to go out to feed the animals until it tapers off to a low drizzle. They can wait. The coop door will swing open for the hens at 7:45 (unless it gets stuck in the dampness), they'll go out, I'll stay in. For now.

What do I do in those early hours? Cut up fruit for myself (always the gray bowl), for the two kids who will be here this afternoon (red bowl, white cup). [It used to be for Ed as well, but our garden has been overproducing melons and so he is off the line-up for now, cutting off endless chunks of melon for himself.]

(Sparrow is not a fruit guy but I insist. He chose apples and strawberries. Snowdrop cleans her big bowl of every fruit I put in it, every single day that she is here.)

Then I bake muffins. Yes, for here, but also to send back with the kids. Getting them to eat breakfast is a challenge. But at least one of them never ever refuses one of my "best ever" blueberry muffins.

And now the rain has calmed down. I go out to feed the wild brood of cats and chicks.

Finally, breakfast.

Having put in 18 solid days of good movement, I do not want to stop now. Here I am, 70 rather than 7 or 17 years old, taking out the bike after the rain! But avoiding the puddles. There's no joy at this age in splashing the world on a cool September day. It's only 60F (15C) out there and already I'm wishing I had brought along gloves for the ride. Are my biking days coming to an end for this year? Ed will keep going until there's ice on the road, but Ed's blood is made of different material than mine. So what will replace biking? I think about it as I pass the wet and beautiful landscape.

(so often they walk in pairs...)

And in the afternoon I pick up the two older kids at school. 

A good school day today. You can't hope for that every time you pick them up, but I am pleased as anything when no one has any mean kid behavior, or great disappointment to relate.

And now they are home and I am home, feeling a little like I have to dodge bullets for the next two weeks. My mom developed Covid (second time for her) at her assisted living facility. She is vaccinated and boosted, so we expect her infection to run its course without issue, but still, I checked the data: there's Covid in our community, that's for sure. Ed and I have avoided it thus far and we'll double down on precautions before we get our next vaccination (end of this week!), but still, we wont close off the world. We're not at that level of concern. Heightened, but no cold sweat or pounding hearts! Kids are here, I'm planning to travel in October. Lots. With a packed supply of masks once again. 

At the farmhouse, the colorful lights I wrap around the stairs for year-round cheer have gone out, as have the ones on the porch. It's a reminder that the holidays are around the corner. Time to start thinking about hyge once again! I've bought a candle that promises to give us the slightest scent of a boreal forest. I had found the scent in Copenhagen, so it's about as Danish huge as you can get. We have three full freezer bags of corn kernels and forty bags of tomatoes in the ice box, waiting for those cold weather chilis. We are so ready for cozy farmhouse moments!

Monday

You can't sustain that kind of tempo for long: weeding a garden with a new knee means basically working in a down dog position. For hours on end. The next day you pick a few weeds and say -- enough for now. I dont want to come out of this with a bad back. 

I try not to pay attention to the work that needs to be done out there and this morning it's easy to scan my eyes over a broader landscape. It's foggy and the views are gentle and pretty.

I note my neighbor's forest across the road. He had planted all the trees -- hundreds of them and now there is this forest and in September it is beautiful.

In our own space, there are still wisps of flowering plants, always inspiring me to want to do more...

But, I go easy on outdoor work. Two buckets of weeds instead of ten.

Breakfast, inside!

And I take a walk. No ambitious hike, just in the neighborhood. Enough to (eventually) close my rings! (The clump of taller trees? The farmette.)

And after lunch, Snowdrop shows up at the farmette. No pick up at school today. The kids haven't even been in school for a full two weeks and already there is a day off for teacher whatever. Training? Service? Discussion? Catch your breath? All this makes sense to me -- teachers have a heck of a load to carry these days. Kids and now parents as well bring their whole load of issues to the classroom door. Nonetheless, what is a parent to do when the demands of work are such that you cant take random days off to mind the kids? We are so unkind to parents, forever sending the message -- fend for yourselves! Having money and/or an available grandparent helps. Most people don't have enough of either. 

Snowdrop is in a happy mood and peace reigns at the farmhouse for several hours. 

(Ed brings in the largest of the watermelons we've grown behind the barn. It's good!)

In the evening, I drop her off at the pick up point and I meet up with my former colleagues for a dinner at an Indian place. This is nearly always the cuisine of choice for all of them (rarely, Thai steps in) and I'm fine with it as well, though I wonder how it is that we come to be stuck in our habits so much. (I am not exempt from this!) I cant imagine meeting these women without the aroma of Indian spices rising from the table. It sets the mood. 

At home again, prompted by an article in the NYTimes about the declining birthrates (in all countries), Ed and I talk about children (he has none) and how they change your life, your schedule, your ambitions, nearly all your waking hours. Rearranged because of them. (Not for all parents, but for many, perhaps most.) Your emotions, swaying, tilting, moving around because of them. Your bank account emptying because of them. Because I love my girls so much, I would change nothing. Indeed, do it all over again, but perhaps with fewer illusions that it would ever be an easy breezy sail. In my retirement now, however, I'm holding onto my quiet evenings and movement-based mornings. These and travel keep me spry. Though less spry than I was ten years ago. Ten buckets of weeds turns out to be too much. Two is plenty.

with love...

Sunday

It's worth remembering that some of the most important, worthwhile, positive things we do bring no tangible reward. No prize, no promotion, no kind words from the beneficiaries of your effort. No exercise ring closure on your smart watch.

I began the day with, well, animal care.

And immediately after -- weeding. Much of this involves digging up the incredibly invasive common violet. This is one of those flowers that inspires people to get into fistfights over its worth (figuratively of course). It invades lawns, which in my opinion is a good thing, but it also invades flower beds and it is persistent. It has at least a hundred ways of spreading (an exaggeration, but indeed there are many) and it uses all its available tools to take over beds that are not yet established. I have maybe a million of them growing in my one sunny bed by the secret flower path and the only thing to do is to take a shovel and dig each one out. There will be seeds and left behind and next year I will find a whole new ground cover of violet clumps, but at least I will have saved the bed from total destruction. (They suck up the nutrients and moisture and latch onto roots of other flowers. And no, they do not have a lovely smell and they do not add color to the garden. Their bloom period is short and they are fragrance free.)

An hour's worth of work before breakfast, another hour after, and of course, there's not much to show for it: a tiny fraction of the bed is now weed free (not that anyone could tell) and my watch rings moved, but imperceptibly to complete their circuit. Bending and digging doesn't count as heavy exercise, even though I am exhausted from the effort.

Breakfast is late. Again, I dont mind and, too, it gives Ed a chance to sleep in.

And I return to weeding.

Later, in the afternoon, Ed and I do our bike and walk loop. Trail to park, a forest hike, road to farmette. It's unusually lovely at this time of the year. You see the beginnings of a fall landscape, but it isn't intense yet. Gentle greens, a touch of yellow. The prairie is drying up, but it remains stunning even in this autumnal iteration.

And as we cut through this verdant landscape, I think about a childhood friend who died this summer. She belonged to the pack of friends who came to the village in Poland year after year, in much the same way that I did. Parents remained in the city, kids stayed with grandparents, or known entities who lived in the country and could stand to look after them. We were free to do what we wanted so long as we showed up for meals and didn't get into too much trouble. Of the maybe a dozen kids that we would get to know over the years, three have already died. Poor health, maybe substance abuse. I dont really know what happened. But back in those tween and teen summers, when we sat on the hill that sloped down to the meadow, trying to decide whether to walk through the forest and catch the sunset on the other side, or toss a volley ball around in a circle, thinking no great thoughts, floating no great ambitions, I have to think we defined living in the moment. It's funny that we should work so hard now to rid ourselves of sinking off into the past or endlessly arranging our lives to meet some insane future expectations. Back then, it came naturally to move with whatever idea came to mind, to walk, to maybe sing a Polish pop song, like our friend liked to do. O mine sie nice martw, o mnie sie nice martw, ja sobie rade dam... (dont fret about me, dont fret about me, I'll manage just fine...) 

Evening. Young families are in their own orbit tonight. Ed and I fix our supper and then we exhale. It's been months since I'd worked this hard in the garden. You can't tell by looking at it of course. Behind the scenes work. Laying the foundation for next year's growing season.

with love...