Our own groundhog...

Our own groundhog? Never showed up for his big moment. Still sleeping, I'm sure. And we're not about to poke him in his abode. Nonetheless, if I can speak on his snoring behalf -- we're getting the spring season soon here. Cloudy as anything out there this morning.

I don't know about you, but for me, a cloudy day always stirs up a craving for a something sweet or yeasty for breakfast. I dig out cinnamon rolls from the freezer. That'll do!

And this is when I remember that too sweet is worse than not sweet enough. Most cinnamon rolls are extravagantly sweet. Why do these things always come to mind after you've done your dastardly deed?

The guilt. Oh, the guilt. 

February is a slow month here on the farmette. This isn't necessarily a bad thing -- savoring a retired day could well be the goal for any of us. Doing so slowly allows you to take gentle steps rather than rushing head first without paying attention to anything at all. Slow eating, slow shifting of priorities. Slow planning, or no planning at all. I have to wonder though -- if you decelerate the pace, does everything, absolutely everything slow down for you? January, February -- they're a crop farmer's resting months, but for those of us who are not farmers and whose physical labor is limited to chasing kids around or planting flowers and fruit trees, do we really need to slow down? And if we do take measured steps now, in the winter, do our minds also slacken? Fall off the treadmill? Turn out thoughts and ideas that just a decade ago we'd have considered... inconsequential, to put it mildly?

So on the one hand, I like the idea of slowing down. On the other, I want to put in spurs, right around mid February. Something to kick me forward at a faster pace. For the physical challenge, but, too for the mental one that is its counterpart. 

The easiest way for me to do this is to hop over to a new destination. Put myself in strange surroundings.  Because a winter slow down, while heavenly, also sounds a warning bell: dont get used to it! Stay sharp, stay focused!

In the afternoon I have my not-very-slow kid pick up. Today's the day I shuffle them off to their various lessons. I think I said "hurry up!" one too many times. Oh well. They are forgiving children.

And in the evening I cook chili. Slowly. With food, slow is always good!

February 1st

Now that January is over and done, with all the good, the interesting, the long, the gray, the adventurous, the wonderful moments that make up each day of that very wintry month, I expect to coast! Yes, I would love more snow. It cannot be that I will have skied only twice this whole winter! (Ed did better, since he skied in the week I was away.) But, too, I would love more of that cornflower sky that February typically brings us. Lily, my Massachusetts artist friend who unfortunately passed away recently, left behind a trail of wisdom and stardust and she always admonished me when I grumbled about February days. Look at the sky, she'd tell me. Just look at that faintly blue sky.

Perhaps in honor of Lily (who also liked to picnic outside on February 1st, every year, no matter what, well into her octogenarian age), February started off for us like this:

The misty blue sky came and went, all day, playing around with a cloud cover, as if in a contest as to who had more might, but I saw enough of the good stuff to remind me that gloomy days are fleeting.

And my basket of tulip bulbs kept on blooming...

As I did my usual read through the various news sources, I had to smile at an article appearing in the NYTimes today. The author suggested that it's worth spending 36 hours in a city that is often passed over by travelers. It was one of those times where in travel, someone out there is following my thought pattern because in fact, it is exactly where I am going soon, and for 36 hours no less! So I spent quite a bit of time thinking about it and reading more about this place that I in fact have never before visited.

The rest of the morning was spent on Zoom. Ed with his bon ami, me with mine.

And the kids came after school, and the sun came out again and the afternoon moved forward as if on autopilot.

There is no guilt to staying indoors on a sunny day. You still feel the same exuberance, the joy of watching the transformation outside from bleak to brilliant, without getting your shoes muddied in the melting slush in the process. 

It was, indeed, a very lovely day for us all.

Wednesday

A day of waiting. Rumor had it that there would be sunshine. Buoyed by this, I planned on picking up Alpine Blue (my e-bike) from the bike shop (some dozen plus miles away, on the other side of town) and riding it home. Ed would tag along for the adventure of it. 

But, the morning began like this:

Breakfast with Ed, still in the gloom of yet another foggy day.

(Hey wait a minute! you're not Ed!)

(that's more like it)

And so we waited. 

We should go anyway. It's warm enough -- this from Ed. He regards 37F (not even 3C) as warm enough. I would agree if the sun would be out. Not so much on a gray morning. Maybe we can have it delivered... There is a slight charge for carting the bike over to your place, but I'm beginning to think it's worth it.

We dawdle and pause and resist. By 11:30 I ask -- what do you think? it's now or never. Google estimates the ride back to be 1 hour and 15 minutes, but it's a complicated routing. Half of it is through the outskirts of Madison, half along snippets of a bike path. I have kids to pick up today and so we have to be back in time for me to head out for them.

Let's do it! Ed's up. Somewhat reluctantly I take a scarf, a jacket, my warmer gloves and we drive over to the bike shop, with Ed's bike on the car rack, so that he can ride back with me.

In fact, by the time I've settled the paper work at the shop (new wheel! updated bike! cleaned up and adjusted! all under warranty), it's just past noon, and the sun does come out in patches. But the wind! No one told me about the wind!

Still, it's a great ride for me, exactly because it is a challenge. My face and hands are icy red, but it is sort of special -- to be biking away on the last day of January. In Wisconsin. They said it would be a warmer winter. They were so right.

 

 

We park our bikes at home, I drive Ed back to the shop so that he can reclaim his car, and from there it's a hop skip to the kids' school. 

 

 

 

One word to describe the two older ones today: absorbed. Sparrow spends the entire afternoon lost in a game with the toys in the playroom. Snowdrop is completely mesmerized by the book we're reading together. She wants nothing else but to make progress with it.

 

 

 

And in the evening I drop them off at the pick up point and here's the thing -- it's just dusk then. The sun barely set, the sky is not yet dark. A month ago, I'd be doing this in inky black light. Today? We are marching straight toward spring.

with love...

Tuesday

I'm not the first who'll say that the best conversations with a kid happen in the car. A captive audience: she has got your attention, you've got hers. Nonetheless, yesterday, we hit the big topics while at the farmhouse. Snowdrop and I had just finished a book that had quite the serious World War II content and she told me that coincidentally, her third grade teacher started in on a book (for reading to the class) that also hit that same topic of the war. She tells me -- I saw a picture of Hitler. Not much one can say to that, except that World War II is a topic I talk about with a sense of not only history, but personal history. At 70, I obviously wasn't a child of the war, but I was a postwar baby in a country utterly destroyed by the Nazis and so I treat the passing down of facts and reflections on that topic seriously. I tell her -- Hitler was such a cruel despot, that when you want to emphasize someone's terrible use of power, you often say he (she) was like Hitler. 

A little later, Snowdrop asks -- was Hitler like the devil?

This stumps me a little. Snowdrop has a very devout friend who has been sharing her church related thoughts and beliefs freely and I don't want to tread on that exchange. So I ask -- you mean, like what we feel the devil stands for? Utter meanness?

Gaga, don't you believe in the devil?

As in a force that propels all of us to do bad things sometimes? That's too whimsical for her. No, like the devil acting for Satan.

So, the devil is just a team player and the Satan is the leader? I figure it's best to ask. Those who have read Like a Swallow certainly know this about me: my religious education is, for better or worse, very... scant.

Yeah, I guess. 

So, he's like at the head of a table and gives orders to devils, who follow through?

She laughs. But she wont give up. "Do you believe in..." is not an infrequent question for her. Well, do you? So I ask back -- you mean, not as a force of evil but as a red figure, maybe with a tail? She laughs again, but she pushes forward -- yeah, sort of. 

No, I tell her. I do not. You know that Ed (she has a nickname for him, but we'll leave that for the files) and I believe in the world that we feel and see before us. Animals, nature, people. As I say this, I sense how imperfect my explanation really is. I mean, we don't see or feel the entirety of the universe and yet, we don't doubt its existence. Lucky break for me -- we are in the car and approaching our drop off point and she is resolutely using my phone to text her parents, firing questions about the devil. Offloaded to parental insight!

I think about how we like to have kids figure things out for themselves, but of course, we can't pretend that they're not listening to what we say to them. And yet, as a grandparent, I watch myself. I'm not the one to shape their worldview in any significant fashion. I can tell them to eat their fruits and veggies and wash their hands after school, I can give them ideas about how to manage sad feelings or school playground dynamics, but I like to stay to the side of big ideas. I'm not the one tucking these kids in bed at night and reassuring them about monsters. I feel I was given a pass yesterday, and yet today, as I get going on my morning chores...

 

... I'm thinking I need to do better in the way I answer some of the trickier existential questions that the kids throw my way. After all, we spend a lot of the time in the car together!

Now, about the morning... Good morning, farmhouse sleeping cats! Ready to go out?

 

 

 

Breakfast. Oh, just fruit today...

Then coffee and sweet stuff with a friend downtown.

And since I am near commercial areas, I go on to shop. I'm on the hunt for stuff that will display my Polishness to little kids. "huh?" -- you ask. More on this toward the end of February.

Okay, Sparrow and Snowdrop pick up time.

Thankfully we stick to smaller topics today, such as whose day was better/worse, who had what friend issues and for what reason. Those aren't easy, but at least an adult response can be straightforward and predictably gentle and guiding. Less tough than discussing Hitler and the devil.

(claiming Ed's computer "just for two minutes")

(secret thoughts written daily in secret journal with secret ink)

In the evening, I exhale. I had so little free time today that I am truly happy to just have these moments on the couch, with Ed, watching a show, exchanging comments on very inconsequential topics. Perfectly calm, perfectly lovely.

 

Monday

No need to ask about the weather, right? It is what it is.

 

Feeling fitful and rested, I start in on breakfast.

Except that I did not want to wake Ed. And then boom! The phone rang for him and he was off on one of his technical calls that lasted hours. Not wanting to interrupt, I ate alone. A good thing, as he didn't get around to his granola until in the afternoon.

 

The nice man from my bike shop came. (He is from the place I had purchased Alpine Blue -- the bike, not the car, which I confused the other day; I believe my car is named Blue Moon. Alpine Blue is the e-bike.) Like the car, this pretty little thing needs periodic tune ups. Too, I had whacked the wheel out of its trueness when I swerved the other day and so it needs additional fixes. Too, they'll clean it up. After the weekend ride over wintry terrain, it is one big muddy mess.

 

I work on my computer as Ed works on his machine design and before you know it, it's time to pick up the girl.

 

Happy child. I dont ask this of my grandkids -- after all, I'm not happy all the time and neither are you. Nonetheless, Snowdrop is a smiler in life. Easily made joyful, content to do the simplest thing. 

Like reading, which is our staple. Or, on occasion, bugging Ed about his computer.

After she leaves, I return to my work, Ed returns to his machine design. We are lost to the world, to the weather (dont ask), to the demands of the day, until hunger drives us to give it up for a bit. Dinner -- reheated stuff. It's Monday, official leftover day at the farmhouse!

with love...

Sunday

I've thought of a new strategy to combat this never ending drippy, gloomy weather, without adequate snow or sunshine: ignore it. If someone asks you -- what are the temps this afternoon? -- respond with "I don't really know." Comments like "sure is nasty outside" directed to you? Look surprised and respond "I haven't actually noticed." 

I'll give it a try.

We are in a bit of slump this morning because Ed picked up a version of The Bug and if you know him, you'll know that he is never at his rational even-tempered delightful self when he is under the weather. He locks himself inside his own world and ignores pretty much everything and everyone else. Like me, he does not like to discuss his physical shortcomings and failures and so we move through the day second guessing each others issues, or ignoring them altogether, while the cats stare at us in bewilderment, wondering why the sudden stillness in the air, the silence, the lack oh human sound.

Come on, cats. Let's go out to the barn. Hens are hungry.

The best part of breakfast (not to eat, but to admire) is the basket of forced bulbs. They don't last long, but when they're in bloom, you feel like hugging the world.

After that, Ed rests, I attend to stuff. Someone has to! When was the last time I cleaned the house anyway??

 

In the evening the young family is here for dinner. Ed is dis-invited due to his potential germyness. 

It's good to see them all in one place again. I've had sightings of Sandpiper and the young parents throughout the week, but on Sundays, no one is in a rush to get anywhere and the sweet warmth and predictability of the evening are its huge charm.

(the boys are the cheese and cracker guys!)

(can she still be held??)

Later, much later, Ed claims he is feeling better but you can't tell for sure because, well, you know, we are quiet about the bothersome details of our physical well being. I thought this might be the perfect evening for me to rewatch some dopey show alone while he rests, but no! He's up for Ted Lasso. After a very bothersome night, morning and afternoon, I'd say we're back on track to being very content.

With love...

Saturday

Yes, it was misty cold and damp on my morning walk to the barn. Nothing new there.

But just a few minutes later, I had a peak at what life will be like once the cloud cover lifts and moves on and our usual brisk winter weather returns. Here, take a look out my car window as I drive to Madison Sourdough because I have an inexplicable yearning for a cinnamon roll for breakfast. Note that the cupola of the Capitol is completely lost in a foggy cloud. (And by the way, that strip of blue sky was visible today for all of.... a handful of minutes.)

It was so lovely to see that play of mist and faint sun that I almost parked the car and got out to admire it up close, by the shores of Lake Monona. But in the end I drove on. Like I said, the yearning for that breakfast roll was so strong...

(Breakfast)

I did think that even with the return of the gray skies, we could challenge ourselves today and go out for a bike ride. Yes, I know it's January. Yes, I know it's just a smidge above freezing. That the roads have slush at the sides and sudden patches of melted ice. Nonetheless, I love the challenge it presents!  Just interesting enough to lift us out of our winter lethargy.

I dress for the occasion. Ed, in shorts, asks -- are you going biking or skiing? You mean there's a difference?

In the end, it's a fabulous (if at times challenging and cold) ride.

As we pause by Lake Waubesa, I watch two brave souls go out to ice fish. There are warnings in the press about the lakes right now. People are nuts! -- I say to Ed, as we push our bikes through a slushy bit of driveway. Um, yes they/we are.

And the rest of the day? Much of it is spent reviewing my daylily situation. The chickens have substantially messed up the bed by the driveway and I need to do some replacement planting there. (And I swear, I'll butcher the whole lot of them if they go after any new planting!) (Just kidding.) Too, I check in with my best lily supplier (Oakes Daylilies) to see what's new this year. And I order some prairie plants. So yes, one foot in the garden already. Delivery scheduled for late April. That's three months from now! Can you believe it? I'll be up to my knees in mud, shovel in hand, in just three months.

In the meantime, I make soup for supper. Hot and nourishing. With collards and cannellini beans. Sprinkled with parmesan. A winter favorite. Because, well, it is still winter.

 

Friday

You have to pull out all the stops to like a day like this: wet and cold and gray, with an exclamation point! Snowdrop said yesterday -- I like snow, but I like it when it's clean and fresh and not soggy and dirty. Well said. Unfortunately, we are in for a spell of soggy and dirty. Consider the morning walk to the barn:

I brought the last of my tubs of forced bulbs to the breakfast table. All the stops, I tell you!

It is impossible to get excited about a walk in the park, so I head out for just a few minutes, with my rain jacket, into the new development. With a rain jacket, in January, in Wisconsin! It really messes with your sense of time and place, but there you have it -- we are stuck in a cloud of weird warm soggy air.

I do try to focus on garden planning, but I have to say, I'm only modestly excited about it. As my beds shrink from the encroaching shade, I feel that my aspirations also have to shrink. Too, I'm no longer expanding the reach of my planting. Last year I barely kept up with the fields currently under my care. (Well, truthfully, I did not keep up with the ones furthest from the farmhouse. In the fall I took the tractor out there and mowed down the weeds that had taken over!) Still, I will admit to being excited about the coming of the growing season. This winter isn't exactly tough on us here at the farmette, but nor is it a stellar one, with the crisp landscapes and pale blue skies that we love so much at this time of the year. So yes, l'll be looking forward to spring along with everyone else. Two more months!

And in the afternoon, the kids are here, for their usual Friday eat-read-violin-ballet sequence. 

The pick-up, the time at the farmhouse -- it all seems like a repetition of the same each day, doesn't it? In truth, it's not. Snowdrop and Sparrow are getting older and the conversational dynamics are changing. Snowdrop raises topics that dont deserve pat answers and cant be sidestepped easily. Too, we're continuing with a book that puts us right into the bombing of England during World War II. Another set of issues for us to talk about. Sparrow tunes in, tunes out. You never know when he is fully present, in the way that younger sibs are even when you're talking about stuff that is beyond their immediate comprehension. War? Child abuse and neglect? What does he make of that? And the more mundane topics -- class dynamics. His are difinitive recounts: he has a good day with friends or he doesn't. And the "not so good" days are never bad, it's just that nothing stands out in his memory. So we juggle it all and in doing so I watch these two grow up and I have to say, this, to me is the best part of parenting or grandparenting -- when you can help these young ones sort through perplexing topics so that there is always clarity and hope for them.

I come home late on Fridays. This is the perfect day for reheating foods. And I do. And it feels warm and comforting to sit down with Ed over bowls of farro, as we laugh a little at funny moments of Ted Lasso on the big screen. The week is done. All's fine with our little world. 

with love....

Thursday

Little lemons, that's what I call them: the little lemons of a January day.

Take the weather: stuck at foggy, drippy, cold, wet. There will not be a different photo for you from my morning walk. It will be a repeat of the same, every day, because that's what the weather will be like for the next two weeks.

(the marching band...)

Breakfast: I'm feeling like I should return to oatmeal. Step aside, croissants, I need to get back to a healthier start to the day.

I have an appointment for a 30 000 mile checkup on the car. I drive up, ready to relinquish Alpine Blue for a couple of hours and am told that it will take the whole day. The whole day? I can't be without a car for the whole day! Ed's out at work and I have kids to pick up. And what is it that you need to do that requires a whole day? I'm given a list and a price tag. Whoaaaaaa! I will have spent ten percent of the cost of the car on maintenance this week! Why cant we have better public transportation in place anyway? Cars cars cars! We rely on them, we need them, we cant live without them and we spent a fortune on making them safe. (Nice big squeeze on my little lemon here!)

I reschedule the tune up for a weekend day and go back home, where all these little lemons lead me to bake lemon blueberry muffins. Because when life throws you little lemons, you may as well bake these muffins.

On the upside, the kids are up and running and I am back in the pick up line waiting for them.

(Off come the coats! Neither kid likes to sit in a car with coat on...)

And we come to the farmhouse and it all feels so normal again!

Well, except for the drizzle, the fog, the kind of stuff you're okay with in November, but not now, not in crisp January! 

I've made a batch of farro with cauliflower, tomatoes, and parmesan. A perfect comfy food. No lemon juice for this one. Warm and cozy, familiar and delicious!

 Okay, I'm ready for another day of drizzle, fog, and cat fights, and chickens messing up our walkway. It's all good. Really truly.