new month, new efforts

Do you know what the most requested recipe is of all time from the New York Times? I'm told it's the Plum Torte, developed by the cookbook author and former food columnist for the paper, Marian Burros. It's been called many things: iconic, simple, tender, cult classic, with gravitas, and utterly delicious. And I've never made it. 

I ate a lot of plums growing up in Poland. The fruit of late summer. Small plums were ubiquitous at a time when many other fruits were not. But when I moved to the States, I found the grocery store plums to be blah. Tasteless really. I rarely purchased them, never served them, and I'm not sure I ever baked with them. They just went by the wayside.

Until this year. I was, of course, flooded with mirabelles, those sweet little plums, both in Poland and France.  And I thought -- I really ought to pay attention to these fruits.  Surely there are good ones to be found at the markets? Even in the grocery store? And when the Smitten Kitchen newsletter appeared in my Inbox last week, with none other than the purple plum torte recipe -- with a slight update to the Burros one, I thought -- well now, the plum gods are telling me something. So I purchased a dozen small purple plums and announced that tonight, we'll be eating plum cake.

Ed positively balked. Why not apple cake? We have so many apples in the old orchard. And have you even used our the rhubarb this year? Soon, too, we will have an overload of peaches...  Clearly a plum skeptic. But I am determined. 

First, though, the animals. With a few plucked weeds along the way.

Then straight for the porch, on this most perfect morning. With breakfast.                  

I'm running low on granola. Baking a batch takes priority over a making a fruit dessert. 

But in the end, I do get to the plum torte, or cake, or however you might want to refer to it.

The first hing I note is that the dozen small plumbs I purchased from my grocery store? They are awful! I mean really awful! Rotting from the inside maybe. Yuk.

I wonder if the taste might improve if I submerge them in cake batter. But no, I can't risk it. It really is always a mistake to use awful ingredients.  What to do? Well, I have about five plums of varying sizes and varieties lined up on the window sill, waiting for breakfast. I can use those!

I'm saving the cake for the family dinner tonight (moved from Sunday and with a visiting guest added). Smells great!                                                                                                                            

They are here! It's been a while...

And of course, it's a porch dinner. It could be the last -- though Fall evenings are always a great unknown in Wisconsin. 

It's a very beautiful way to greet September, and my daughter's friend's visit only adds to the greatness of the moment. Ed and I are outnumbered -- in terms of the mean age, we hang way above the three young adults and of course, the three kids. And yes, they are all spirited and playful and of course, to be part of their world, even for just an evening, is simply wonderful. 

Good moods are easily shared. Here's a piece of advice -- if you feel one (good mood) coming on, go out and let others be part of it, however tangentially. They'll love you for it!

yours, with love... 

August endings

In mid-August, during my one day trip to St-Malo in Brittany, I needed to kill time in a quiet space. Someone had recommended a tea shop and though it was just a block away from the hordes that paced the main shopping artery, the shop was calm and had a few empty tables. I ordered, well, a pot of tea of course. Rooibos. As with all these rooibos red teas, this one was "theine-free"-- a new word for me. It's caffeine free as applied to tea leaves. I liked it enough that I bought a container to take home (I'm drinking it now), in part, I suppose, because I felt guilty about lingering there over an hour with just a cup of tea. But what I liked even more, was the tea pot which they brought to the table. Talk about a clever way to keep your tea warm! I asked if they could part with one (yes, I'm that bold!) and they said: yes of course, in fact, we have a few for customers like you who request them. So I'm not the only wo is bold! Then proudly -- they're made in France. So among my two bottles of alcohol free wines and my large jar of honey, I packed a tea pot to bring home.

And as I sip this tea now, I'm thinking -- my, but August has been good to me! Lots of calm moments, lots of nature walks and even a few city walks. Lots of social activity but also quiet times with Ed. I haven't seen family as much as usual, but I'll be making up for it in the months ahead. And of course it has been the month of great flowers for the table, and great corn! And that's just from the short list of superlatives. 

Of course, the country is falling apart, but that just provides you with more reason to look inside your own back yard to find comfort and joy. Pleasure does not come from reading the news. 

Morning at the farmette: time to look at pockets of color rather than with a sweeping gaze at the entirety.

(the gladiolus murielae bulbs are in full blossom now)

(all three roses are doing well! let's see how they come through the winter)

(the sunflowers that the deer ate sprouted offshoots and bloomed anyway!)

 

(and yes, these are the most prolific lilies; almost done, but not quite)

 

 

Breakfast, outside. I think it's a little on the cool side, so I make oatmeal.

And then we do not one but two bike rides! The first -- to Stoneman's, for their corn. These are the last days of their harvest. By next weekend, the Stoneman family will no longer wake with dawn to hand pick corn for us. Sad (for us) but true. 

I have the carrying basket on my bike, so I fill it with a dozen+1 ears. We give some greens to Rosie the goat and Buttercup the sheep.

Our second ride is later and longer: to the next town, at the other side of Lake Waubesa, where we like to stop by a cafe. Ed eats a lunch, I sip a coffee. It is a nothing-special place, but the ride there is exceptionally pretty...

(well, I'm not as fast as Ed)

 

And besides, we have kind of adopted this cafe as our own. Today we sit outside for a really long while. Ed finds a paper to read, I'm totally engrossed in my novel (The God of the Woods). I'm 79% through it and I have no idea who the culprit in the drama was! I will not go to sleep tonight until I find out.

Such a beautiful day! Gorgeous sunshine, clean air, cool breezes, a scattering of lingering blooms. August goes out with a blast of beauty!

 

 

 

Evening? I am so engrossed in my book that I forget about time. It's 7 o'clock and I have no dinner plans. So Ed makes supper for the both of us. We have been together for 20 years and I believe this is the first time that he has prepared dinner for me. It's not for lack of trying -- he offers every now and then, and I usually respond with a "no thank you." I admit it -- I do not trust his cooking, which oftentimes has him stuff tortillas with stuff I regard as suspect. But today, I'm all in! 

Now shhhh! Don't bother me! I have to finish my book!

with love... 

 

well that was interesting!

I must add -- the day was interesting to me. Not to Ed, not to anyone else -- just to me. I spent it reviewing my travel future. All day long. Scheming. Counting. Re-configuring. Hoping. And finally -- deciding. My hours were filled with this. Pure happiness! It's so strange to know that what I loved doing at age 20 still brings me such pleasure at age 72.  So much else has changed -- family grows, then shrinks, then grows again, career changes, evolves, and eventually ends, hobbies come and go. Gardening persists, cooking stays, reading and writing -- well yeah! But this, this planning a trip? I don't know many who would list it as an enduring love! So weird, yet so mine.

The day did begin in a much more active fashion. I was up early and announced to Ed that I want to be done with chores and head for the downtown market by 7. To make use of free parking meters. To avoid the crowds. To pick up veggies (radishes, carrots, mushrooms) and flowers. I was going for Wisconsin peaches, too, but guess what! Our peach trees in the new peach orchard are starting to produce! And their fruits are good - we sampled one today!

(our peach trees grow in my Meadow no. 2; we have three designated meadows now!)

 

 

(It's getting harder each day to find upright blooming flowers! Here's a reliable patch...)

(and another...)

(and one more...)

 

 

Shockingly, Ed said he wanted to join me for my market outing, so after my animal chores, the two of us set off. Before 7. The market was very empty then, though there was a flurry of activity at the sidelines: they were setting up for an afternoon of "Taste of Madison" -- one of my least favorite events! It's been an annual tradition to have this in Madison on Labor Day weekend. I remember taking the kids to it and making the rounds from one feeding station to the next, and by the time we were done buying $3 samples of this or that, I'd look in my purse and note that it was depleted of cash. That stuff adds up and yet you don't even feel that you've had a proper meal. So, no Taste of Madison for me, but yes to a lovely market.

(I chose one of these...)

 

(Ed loves pickled mushrooms...)

 

His perfect breakfast: those mushrooms and an apple from our old orchard. 

 

So you could say that this day, with so much time spent researching and calculating, was for the birds. And you'd be right! In the end, it was the theme of birds  that came through for me on this otherwise quiet day. Wild turkeys on the driveway, and young mourning doves on the porch glass rooftop...

... and then, in our local park (because Ed and I did rouse ourselves late in the day, and we attempted a walk in the park), I heard another song -- that of a Warbling Vireo. A first for me. I know, because the song was so different, so very enchanting in its tweets and warbles. Yes, the Warbler actually warbled!

But about that walk: we gave up on it after just a few minutes. Our park was just as buggy as the farmette. There were plenty of people who seemed to not mind. The weather, after all, was so fine, and here we were, on a long holiday weekend, wanting to wallow in the last wisps of summer. Perfect for an outdoor saunter, right? No, not for us. We'll save our park walks for later, when this wave of mosquitoes has left for good. In the meantime, we're listening to the song of the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher too! A bird with a very promising name. A bird that really likes to devour mosquitoes. 

with love and one more lily for you...

 

 

 

cattywampus flumadiddle, rantipole and ninnyhammer

Ed often tells me -- you are so lacking in a true American education! He is correct, to an extent. Although I attended six years of elementary and middle school in New York, I'd say that my most formative years came later, after age 13 -- and those would be years that I spent in Poland. Years that I did not study American history (however it was presented in the 1960s), or the English language. And importantly, according to Ed, I missed the cultural icons of the period. But since I came back to New York at age 18, my "gap years" are a funny blank insert into an otherwise very American cultural immersion. Well, of sorts. Living then as I did with a wealthy New York family (as a nanny to their child) doesn't quite put me in the American mainstream. Still, I returned to school here, I had American friends -- it all rubs off, no?

So we play this game (he and I): I come across a historical fact or a word that is completely new to me, and I ask him if he knows of it. If he says "no," then I classify it as an esoteric little thing that many Americans would find odd or unfamiliar. If he says "yes," then I add it to my collection of "things I probably would have known, had I fully grown up here." 

This morning I came across one such word, and then another, and then two more -- all new to me. Once I learned their meaning, I saw that I could put them together to form a sentence that well describes action taken by our leadership at the moment! But putting that aside, I was interested in seeing if these were familiar to my all-American sweetie. So again I asked -- Ed, have you ever come across a cattywampus flumadiddle or rantipole or ninnyhammer?  And he had! But just one. Cattywampus. Slowly I'm filling the gaps I had by leaving the US as a teenager. Today I join the ranks of all Americans who know what it means to be a cattywampus flumadiddle, a rantipole or a ninnyhammer. Useful words, all of them and especially now, don't you think?

 

The reason I had time for mulling over less than familiar words is because I was supposed to go to the Biggest Outdoor Water Park Ever (or at least in America), which happens to be just an hour north of where I live. A couple of grandkids, their mom, some kid friends, and me. And slowly that plan fell apart. As a result, I went very quickly from having before me a full day, to having an empty day. Normally that would push me outdoors (weeds!), but unexpectedly, it rained. Well now, isn't that a signal for me to stay home and think about travel and in the alternative (because I have no trips coming up) words? 

The rain brought down what few flowers were still standing tall. Some will recover, but most will not. All the more reason to post a photo or two from just prior to the rain. Tomorrow's lot will be... slumped.

Ed and I ate breakfast inside. 

 

 

 

Because of the rain you think? No, because we finally gave up on trying to cope with the bugs and asked the mosquito guys to come spray some areas with their "natural whatever" -- stuff that keeps them away for about an hour. Well, maybe two. Ed thinks he's as allergic to their spray as he is to my Christmas scented candles and so he wont go outside until the air "settles." Of course, then the rain came and whatever was there to deter bugs got washed off by late afternoon. 

Tomorrow I will get moving again. TOday? pure couch potatoes, both of us!

with love... 

 

 

just your ordinary Thursday

Low motivation is a gardener's curse. You ignore trouble in your flower beds and before you know it, those flower beds are suffocating under a dense weed blanket. You let the weeds go to seed and you're guaranteeing an even stronger presence in the future. All this is happening under cover: you dont really see trouble until it's too late. And here's the thing: the threat of a jungle is not necessarily enough motivation to get you to do the needed work. For one thing, even if you devote many, many hours, days even, to clearing the gardens, it's not as if, to the naked eye, it looks better after all that work. The before and after sort of look the same, unless the weeds and grasses had shot up above the tips of the flowers (which, at this time of the year are spent, so they're never going to be splendid anyway, not until next year). And one more disincentive to getting you out there: the bugs. The wretched mosquitoes that have stubbornly stuck with us all summer long.

So, to weed or not to weed -- that is the question! 

At this time of the year, working hard outside is like taking a long walk in Paris: I don't necessarily set out to do it. I step out and see where the day takes me.

After my morning chores of course.

(this rosemary struggled inside during the winter; in the summer -- it grew into a bush the size of a bear!)

(phloxes aren't just purple...)

And after breakfast.

And today, the day took me into the thick of those flower beds, where I worked all morning long, slapping bugs left and right. And of course, I only made a dent. Nor can you see much in the way of improvement. But I do feel better about the care I gave to those plants that were put in with such affection and hope, back in spring, or in years past.

(I also did some path mowing. You don't see anything that resembles a lawn anywhere on farmette lands,  and you rarely see the western edge of the Big Bed, because we rarely mow there and so it looks rather messy. But today? Looks good enough to be in an ad for lawn services!)

 

 

In the afternoon, Ed and I venture out to our local market -- me on Rosie, he on his own motorcycle. There isn't much that I need today, but Ed is a regular trader (our eggs for John's cheese curds, our rhubarb for a Sugar River Bakery sweet loaf), and a total fan of a black walnut cranberry sourdough loaf baked by this guy: 

 (he brings just four loaves to the market...)

 

 

I go to say hi to Natalie, and check out the flowers.

 

I haven't raved about the weather, but I should. It really is beautiful outside: not too hot, plenty of sunshine. I've been taking walks daily -- nothing ambitious, just along the prairie and the new development, while Ed has been busy with his machine design. Those walks have been gorgeous! It's the ultimate luxury, really: to be able to step outside and find yourself on s path bordering a prairie, with the gold of late summer flowers, the breeze that blows across those fields, and the drying plant life all around me, giving me that first taste of autumn. If someday I have to move back to the city (and I may, because I can't count on being able to manage all that the farmette requires of us), I will miss this even more than the flowers that I grow in the flower fields: that ability to step out and walk along that path, or at our local county park, without the noise of traffic, or anything at all, inhaling deeply, taking in each new season as it slowly paints a new canvas for me of a beautiful day.

with love... 

 

adjustments

New weather patterns, new season, new school year, a new school for one grandchild, new friends, new schedules, new attitude toward gardening. Same old mosquitoes, still with us. Same old unheeded warnings leading to same old tragedies that we then read about in the news, shuddering at how broken we can be, not having the imagination and perhaps the will that would allow us to move forward on a better path.

I do appreciate the idea of being stuck. The seasons change, the kids grow up, the world changes and yet we hang on for dear life to habits and inclinations that we picked up that we have to know do not serve us well, do not serve anyone well and yet, here we are, stuck. In fact, I'll admit that Ed and I can be very good at getting stuck in patterns that suit us, ones that we don't much think about until something really pushes us to find a better way. They say older people take longer to change their ways. Oh how true! Ed's rules of conduct are rock solid and if you ask him to adjust to a new reality, he'll resist change even more. Me, I'm probably no better: I couldn't imagine a year without travel when I was 20, nor when I was 40 or 60, and surely not now, when I'm 72. In the past, when I ran out of money to do it, I took on extra work, organizing tour groups, baking in a restaurant, even selling creams and lotions for L'Occitane.  I'll probably be that person who breathes her final breath while sitting at a table in a cafe in some overseas destination, hard of hearing, with poor eyesight, but looking on anyway, and enjoying my glass of wine sans alcool.

Just like everyone, I'm much more in favor of getting others unstuck than getting myself out of a habit or pattern or belief system. For instance, I wish I could open Ed's eyes to the beauty of facing emotions (rather than, for example, curbing my own a little, so that we'd at least meet each other somewhere in the middle). I wish I could get Snowdrop to love brushing her long hair, and to inspire a yearning for fruits and veggies on the part of Sparrow and Sandpiper. My own rut, of loving a breakfast of treats from Madison Sourdough? Oh, I'll get around to fixing it someday! Not today.

(Ed is on a Zoom call, so initially it's just me and my Kindle)

My day, of course, did start with a walk outside, among the phloxes that are such a reliable source of color now.

It's a cool morning, but a fine day. I've designated the afternoon as "Snowdrop day." The girl has wanted time at the farmhouse and this afternoon, when her brothers are getting end of summer haircuts, seems the perfect one for it. I pick her up and we drive over to Stoneman's first. For the corn.And it is during this small errand that I see how much the girl has moved on the the next stage of her life. I take my usual photos..

("I dont see the point, gaga, but okay...") 

And as we then pick out the corn, I see that look of amusement but also embarrassment cross her face, as I say something to the Stoneman people that's slightly amusing and apparently more than slightly embarrassing.

I really love this age, with one hand into adolescence and one still clutching the playbook of childhood.

And straight from that playbook, late in the afternoon she asks me -- can we go somewhere? Like to Eugster's Farm? We haven't been this year! 

(... to feed the goats)

 

  

 

(and romp in the lavender fields)

 

 

(Boys, back at their house, after haircuts)

Ed bikes today. An old habit that is a good one to keep. I reheat chili made yesterday from our homegrown tomatoes and wait for him to join me on the couch.

with love... 

 

socially speaking...

Any literature professing to give you scientifically verified factors associated with a longer, healthier life, will include at the top of the list the directive to socialize. I've often wondered what this entails. Does it count if you chat up your grocery clerk? Or if you make gurgling noises to a newborn? Is it within the realm of socializing to Zoom, to correspond, to talk on the phone? How about if you sit in the same room with someone but say nothing (ha! a familiar situation)? When you're young, it's quite clear that to socialize means to engage with others, not over work, not over mundane chores, but in presumably a pleasurable way - to have fun, to exchange ideas, to share. When you're older this becomes more muddled. To socialize may well be simply to not isolate.

No matter how you slice it, I communicate. I talk. I listen. I do not isolate. But by those youthful definitions, I do not frequently socialize. For the fun of it. For the laughter, for the mere pleasure of letting go. I don't have time! If anything, I lack hours where I can isolate. Quiet time. Stay with my own thoughts time. 

But not too long ago, I connected with two friends of yore and we set up, quite unintentionally actually, a rotating breakfast. We take turns hosting. And the breakfast always runs into the lunch hour, because early morning hours don't give us enough time to talk about our days and our plans for the future. Yeah, you young people, we older ones do make plans for the future -- perhaps even more than you do. I suppose this is because we can assume that someday we may not have the presence of mind to make those plans. May as well address future needs and wants now. Interspersed with just pure enjoyment. Over good food.

This breakfast was on my calendar for this morning and so I was up very early, so that I could tick off farmette chores in good time.

(With a quick coffee boost before I set out downtown)

 

 

It was wonderful of course. We've known each other a long time and the comfort level is very high. 

 

 

 

And the food was really good -- a peach smelt sourdough cake (or was it bread or pancake?), fruits, cheeses, chocolate.

 

 

 

Both women are older than me and so I learn from them. I need those lessons! My aging mom wasn't a happy person. Even contentedness eluded her, and so I look elsewhere for role models in the art of achieving happiness.

But by noon, we all had to disperse We all have full calendars. Me, I have the young family coming over for a visit.

And my evening? Definitely quiet time. In the kitchen, cooking up a pot of chili. And then on the couch. With Ed. Well, and the cats. Does that count, by the way? To socialize with cats?

with love...