Thursday

A transition day. In between the time I was away along with the days I used to recover from being away, and the time I will focus extensively and almost exclusively on my family as Ed packs up and takes off (not yet but soon) on an adventure (which could last anywhere from one day to many weeks). It's still sunny and mild, I'm still tickled by the way August is unfolding here in south central Wisconsin, and I'm still enjoying the calm after the chaos, but increasingly I'm thinking about and getting ready for family stuff.

Of course, cleaning the garden is always the first task of the day. Today's photos reflect the obvious: the flowers are fading, autumnal crispness is setting in. 

(the best view for me right now is the one that I get when I first step outside...)

(lilies that are repeat bloomers are a real prize now!)

(find the froggie!)

(hungry girls want their breakfast)

(so beautiful in the morning sun...)

Breakfast -- on the porch of course.

And then I do a big time mowing job on many of the overgrown paths and on some of the areas that we dont usually mow at all at the height of the season. It's always a toss up. The tractor mower makes the job fairly easy but it's bumpy and I spin the machine around enough that I can really make myself sick out there. And the question is -- how much to mow? Three times each year (in spring, during summer, and once at the end of fall) I do a pretty extensive run through the farmette lands. I'm aware of the fact that I am disturbing the peace that reigns in the tall grasses among the insect and reptile population, but to promote a healthy meadow or prairie, you really need to cut back some of the mess every once in a while.  So, I'm thinking today is a good day for the summer clearing. No way do I like anything about mowing down tall grasses, which forces a restarting the darn machine again and again, as it stalls over the excessive load, but I always feel better once it's done. I leave enough for the bugs and froggies, but I also clear away spaces that are sprouting mountain-sized thistles and burdock and honey locust saplings.

And in the afternoon, Snowdrop comes over.

(she wants to check on the watermelon growing in our veggie field)

It's Thursday, so... local farmers market day! Snowdrop loves everything about it: the size, the foods, the familiar faces. She talks us into a cherry pie, a bag of cheese curds, and a pint of small tomatoes. (She devours all the tomatoes in the five minute ride home. You'd think I hadn't already given her her afternoon snack!)

Evening. I drop the girl off and return to a garden touched by that gentle light that comes only in the very early hours and again just before sunset.

 

 

The garden is ready to call it quits for sure, but the process of winding down for the season is slow. There will be weeks of blooms still. Perhaps not as lush or abundant. But if you look carefully, you will continue to see flowers somewhere in the farmette fields. Until the first frost, when it all shuts down for the year. (In Madison, the first frost usually comes in the first days of October.)

Light supper tonight, last day of Convention streaming, making me feel even more like we really are transitioning to early fall already. People are posting fist day of school photos! Wow. Wasn't the longest day of the year just yesterday? Amazing!

dinners to plan, dinnsers to cook

Add one more stunning day to the string of gorgeous weather days.

Good morning, farmette flowers and plants and chickens and cats and bugs and birds! And lilies. Because there are still some to be found (In fact, I snipped nearly 100 spent ones this morning, though most were from just two late blooming plants.)

Brilliant day for breakfast on the porch. Oatmeal begone! A return to croissants...

And then Ed and I sit down and plan out menus. He's set to go adventuring with his buddies next week and it is clear as anything that the guy needs help menu planning. (They're taking their own food.) Predicting what three clueless guys will eat is a bit of a challenge, but I do my best and by the end of the morning, the list is done. (Yes, it took that long.) 

And I face my own dinner plans for tonight. We've moved Sunday family dinner to this day because my daughter's good friend is in town and tradition has it that he should come for a farmhouse meal and it should include shrimp and we should eat on the porch. We all consider this guy to be part of the family by now  and what a welcome addition! One should always be so lucky as to rope in someone who is funny and smart and kind, all in one fell swoop. So I set to work on getting the basics done, before the kids come for the afternoon. 

Because yes, the kids are here today, in this last week of morning summer camp.

And yes, today is the promised ice cream day.

In the early evening, the gang arrives for dinner. Hi Sandpiper!

(all but Ed, who is off biking, as is his habit on Wednesdays: we ate corn from Stonemans Farm, eggs from the cheepers, green beans and tomatoes from the market and Krowki fudge candy from Poland; the seafood came from... the sea.)

If you think this is an abbreviated post, you just wait until next week when all hell will break loose and my days will be so full that you will be lucky to get a sentence out of me to let you know I have survived! (I exaggerate. When is the last time you have read a post here that is only one sentence long...)

I should mention that in the evenings, I tune into the historic Chicago convention. Call me sentimental, but I sure loved hearing the candidate spouse extol the virtues of his wife, and the dynamic super couple (our 44th and his wife) use their best oratorical skills to tell us why and how we should vote come November. So yes, it's been fun to watch and that is not something I could have said about days spent watching the counterpart to this convention back in July. Anger and hatred just doesn't appeal to me for evening TV viewing. I'm more of a hope and hard work kind of a person. Optimistic with a realistic slant!

And now it's time to exhale. With contentment. And love...

farmette days

Slowly, I am returning to a summer routine. Lots of work outside, kids in my afternoon, little tasks, but also little pleasures sprinkled throughout.

The weather is still perfect, the mosquitoes are low in number in the morning, medium in the afternoon and evening. That may not be great for those who come around later, but for me, it's great. My work in the flower fields is almost always heavily concentrated to the mornings. Today's images from my weeding and pruning:

 

(lilies that don't recognize the end of the lily season)

(the new orchard: apples and a flowering meadow...)

(the six girls)

(oh, hello more lilies)

(pathway to the door)

And I return to the bakery to pick up breakfast treats and cookies for Sparrow. 

After breakfast, Ed is preoccupied with work calls and I do not want to devote the rest of my living days to weed pulling, so I head out for a walk. Just along the bike path which weaves to the back of the farmette lands. I've always loved looking at the "rear end" of the farmette -- there's something gloriously wild about it since you dont see any of the structures in the season of dense foliage.

I dont often worry about how long I will keep on living there or whether Ed will lose the strength that we need to keep the place going (mine is less important: I can always let go of gardening, allowing the flower fields to sink into some dense jungle of weeds. It would be painful to watch, but we would survive, whereas without his engineering knowhow and physical stamina, we would not thrive there for long. All this is not usually on my mind. I've always believed that if we, if I had to take a radical turn in life, I would manage. But in the meantime, I remind myself that I cannot take all this for granted. It's easy to just accept waking up to a farmette day, to look outside and see all that is expansive and beautiful, seasonally exciting, to feel the calm, to believe that it will forever be this way.  

And maybe it will be and maybe it wont. But for each day that is exactly like this one, we really are grateful. And I suppose ignoring the possibility (indeed, likelihood) of change in the coming years is a good way to live with affection for the present. I need only look to my mother to know that you can snuff out and destroy all seeds of joy if you're sure nothing good will ever come your way again. Her favorite home has always, always been the one she just left behind.  And so I remind myself each day -- this is what good luck looks like. This field of golden and purple flowers, this porch breakfast, this walk on a brilliant late summer day.

 

After, I get ready for the kids. Fruits in their fruit bowls, cookie for the cookie guy, a croissant split between them.

I'm at their pick up point on the nose at 2:15. And I ask them: should we get corn at Stoneman's today and get ice cream tomorrow, or the other way around?

Guess which of two won for this day?

(she loves the friendly cat at Stoneman's)

(he likes to feed Rosie the goat)

(Boo the sheep is not hungry)

(at the farmette now...)

(cherry doubles...)

Surely what you'd recognize as a fantastic day. An noble day. Weeds pulled, steps taken, kids fed and happy. Summer at her best.

farmette days

I am sitting on the farmhouse porch. Gorgeous weather. Sunny, but not too hot this week. The familiar sound of known to me birds. Two cats, Dance and Friendly, taking in the sun  -- one on a chair and one on the table. Before me, a felled gladiolus murielae with some false sunflowers, in a Brighton Blue vase from Sissinghurst.

 

Nothing is as calming, soothing, and brain unscrambling as a day started in just this way.

Oh, okay: with Ed, over breakfast.

This is why my posts always include this morning pause at the table. It's like a pill popped by people who depend on pills: it sets the mood for the hours to come. It is so important for me that I post it again and again.

It isn't that I returned to a perfectly wonderful state of things. First of all, Unfriendly -- my second most favorite cat of the seven that are here -- disappeared the day after I left. Ed called for her, he walked the roads and searched the farmette lands. Nothing.

Unfriendly liked me best and one tiny part of me thought that maybe she went out looking for me once I left, but that's highly speculative. Much more likely is the sad reality that she lost it to predators or to some fight in the wild. She was the most fearful of all the cats and so she was prone to start fights with anyone and everyone except for Dance. Fear breads that kind of cat behavior. Dance and she were buddies. Dance understood her and took her under her fold. They'd often snuggle together in the farmhouse. 

Her absence is palpable.

Then there's the house -- I cleaned stuff all evening and unpacked stuff all morning and still, there's work to be done.

I wont even mention my mother: I have voicemails from her that came at all hours of the night in Europe and there is much that I have to figure out with respect to her care going forward. For now, we are back to our daily "visits by phone" (she prefers it that way).

 

Perhaps most pressing is the issue of the flower fields. Obviously after a two and a half week absence in the height of summer, they need work. I expected as much. What I did not expect is this back issue that clicked in a couple of days ago. Working in the garden with a whacked out back is... uncomfortable. Nonetheless, I worked. From just after sunrise until Ed and I sat down to breakfast at 9:30, I worked. Pulling weeds (only the tall ones! bending down is not a great idea for me right now) and snipping spent stalks. Lilies, yes, but those are long past their flowering period (with some exceptions).1 snipped off spent rudbeckias, spent phloxes, oh, why even list them! Everything needed a snip and a tidying hand.

A few photos from a late August garden, because, well, it is late August.

(Big Bed)

(these are my tall, long lasting, late lilies...)

It was interesting working in the fields so closely to the time I was in Sissinghurst. On the one hand, my flower fields are so familiar to me! I know their issues, their strengths. At the same time, I looked at them with new eyes. I'd snip off a hollyhock and mutter -- how come you're so tall and need to be staked? Sissinghurst hollyhocks were shorter and remained upright on their own! And of course the glads -- I liked the way they looked in big tubs on the Estate. Maybe I should try that here? And speaking of tubs, maybe I should  change things around next year, following some ideas from one of Sarah Raven's books? 

And I hum songs to myself that are still with me from my visit to Poland. And I move through the day in this way - immersed in my farmette life, more confident now in keeping at it, moving ahead in the way that I have chosen to move ahead. 

Supermoon tonight. Blue moon (the third in a season of four full moons). Very rare to have these coincide. Maybe you happened to look up? Did it make you smile?

with love...

returning home

It's a beautiful, mildly sunny morning here, in London. 

(out my window, towards the back this time)

I almost wish I had another day here. I say "almost." I am so ready to go home.

My flight is at noon. I plan to leave the hotel at 9, and so I can fit in an early morning walk. After breakfast. They can be pokey with serving it and I don't want to take chances.

Where might I walk? Well, in many previous visits to London, I'd stayed closer to Sloan Square. Same Kensington neighborhood, but away from the chaos of Brompton Road. I walk over there now. Not so much for old times sake, but for the quiet.

I guess I expected a tidier face of London in these blocks which, after all, are at a price point you wouldn't believe. 

But no. For a society that is so darn stratified, trash here knows no class boundaries. It's everywhere. Such a visually interesting city...

... with such indifference to litter.

Okay, you probably think I'm exaggerating. That I come here with a bias. Ha. I'll break from my principled position of respect for the local, not liking to post pics that highlight the indignities of a tough existence, just because I think London deserves this:

And this...

And in the very lovely block of my hotel (though not next to it), this:

So I ask the staff -- is it that there is a trash collectors' strike, or is there some problem with rubbish removal service? No, they tell me. It's the way Londoners are. Indifferent to it. They'll put their trash right next to a sign telling them not to do so. (Yes, see above!) In front of their own homes, seemingly hurting themselves too. 

Is it that they've given up? Or is there no pride of place? We're not talking impoverished neighborhoods. This is a district of expensive homes. 

And speaking of expensive homes, there's another trait in this town that I don't much care for: padlocked private parks.

It used to drive me nuts when I'd spot a small green space on the map, walk over with the girls (when they were little) and find that "Do not Enter" sign. Walking past this particular little park, I see that no one is using it. And yet there is stands: locked. [Some wealthy Londoners with private access to such city gardens "generously" let in the public for two days each year. Read about it here.]

What can I say -- the city has so many virtues. It's vibrant, diverse, culturally exciting, visually -- well, potentially grand. But you have to not mind its problems and at my age, I do mind, especially since so many places in this world, in Europe where I usually travel, do have a pride of place. We're on this planet for such a short spec of time. It seems obvious to me that we are all responsible for the people and places we encounter in our very small orbit. We owe them something. Care, kindness, respect.

Londoners, get it together! Do better by your city!

(I'll leave you with a photo that makes me smile: the discreet sign by the door, announcing my hotel. Nothing flashy, nothing grand. Just small and intimate.)

 

At the airport, I find hierarchies firmly in place and my dedication to Delta pays off. I'm zipped through without hassle or delays. Given my back and knee issues, I am actually very grateful.

And the flight takes off on time. (I watch endless episodes of Frazier for the 8 hour 8 minute flight to Detroit, laughing too loudly, dozing off occasionally. Some traveler recently wrote that on overseas flight, light TV reruns are the best. I agree. Movies are hit or miss and finding one you like can be frustrating, but known to you TV shows? A real chuckle can be had.) And my layover in Detroit is the perfect amount of waiting minutes and by 6 pm, Ed is there at Madison's airport, waiting.

I have missed you, my travel-hating ever patient partner in the project of living a principled, calm and happy farmette life. So good to be home.Tomorrow, I'll take stock of the damage my absence has done in the flower fields. Tonight, I just want to stay content with being back.

with so much love...