obsolete? I don't think so...

A morning like so many others in July: warm, with a touch of sunshine. I walk the flower fields snipping lilies. Still low on the count: about 240 spent flowers today. Let me correct that: spent lilies. In the course of the morning, I also pinched off some two hundred spent petunias and another hundred or more marguerite daisies from the tubs. There will come a day when I will have had enough. I'm nowhere near that moment yet!

(Such stunning color: like a goblet of a rich Pinot Noir!)

(or do you prefer something with a lemon twist?)

(a check of the roadside bed)

(by the walkway to our back door, which we use 100% of the time as the front door)

(a fragment of the Big Bed with a fragment of a hen)

We eat breakfast on the porch. 

 

 

 Sometimes Ed is sleepy for the morning meal. Sometimes he's attentive. Today, he is feisty. 

My haircut person (whom I saw Monday) told me how happy she was that her son got into (through a lottery) a dual language kindergarten classroom. If he stays with the program, he'll be guaranteed a language fluency very quickly. I mention to Ed that I heard an expert say on NPR this morning that in order to speak a language like a native, without that telltale accent of your place of birth, you really need to learn it by age 12. After that it's just very very hard (perhaps impossible) to shed traces of your learned pattern of pronounceation after that. I've said this before and I repeat it now -- I wish schools here would start teaching languages before kids enter Middle School.

Ed shrugs. Pretty soon, learning another language will become obsolete. Goodle translate is getting to be that good. 

I see we are going to have that discussion today. 

Since Ed has given up on travel (at least my kind of travel, where you actually pay for a hotel room, a shower and a toilet, booked in advance), he has found every reason to believe that spending time in another country is unnecessary to your growth or well being. I've come across this before -- people who claim to get as much from reading books or watching films and who find travel to be a burden, a waste, and a strain. I don't have issues with people not liking travel. I get it: it gets to be expensive, energy consuming, stressful. And yes, I'm sure many people are more informed about the culture of another land by imersing themselves in texts and films than they would be if they were herded like sheep from one iconic art piece to another, shoulder to shoulder with people just like them -- tourists, with no real contact with the communities they visit. Sure. I get that.

But as I tell Ed this morning -- it's not the same. You get something from being surrounded by people who are not like you. And you especially get something if you try speaking the language of those people, I try to analogize it to his world of machines. Listen, we watch Just a Few Acres, where Pete the farmer walks us through his daily routines and spends not a small amount of time explaining how he restores old tractors. The fact that he understands the mechanics of everything in that engine puts him at another level of comprehension than would be the case were he to simply plug in an error code into a reader and get his information from that source. Google translate is not the same as speaking a language.

Of course, he persists. Still, I don't need to know a language to communicate or get exposure to another culture. And in any case, you don't get much exposure by simply popping into a country for a few days, staying in comfortable places and then going home. 

Here's where I get slightly exasperated: I know you are proud of your sleeping in a ditch in South America, hitchhiking across Mexico, hanging out in Cuba for a month. But those trips, glorified in your mind, were a long time ago and not for a minute have you ever been or will you ever be treated as a local while traveling abroad. And especially not with your Google translate. And here's a fact: you can think me to be uninformed in any number of domains, but having lived back and forth between Poland and the US all my life -- a few years here, a few years there, as a Pole, as an American, as a Pole, as an American -- puts me miles ahead of you on the subject of cultural understanding and assimilation and especially the absence of either.

We don't often get into discussions about travel. About languages. About assimilation. About American isolationism. Ed surely is a globalist in that he favors (as I do) immigration that fills many voids in the American employment market place, to say nothing of being the vehicle for innovation and growth. He is (as I am) an American who believes in multiculturalism, seeing it as a good thing rather than some kind of an impediment to prosperity. And yet he stays put, nose buried in reading material, avoiding direct contact with something brazenly foreign. Again -- all good until I hear from him that this is "just as good and perhaps better than going places." Go ahead, stay home, you'll not be harmed by it, but you are then missing a layer of understanding that comes from direct exposure, and especially if accompanied by an attempt to speak the language that is not yours.

Feel free to disagree, but I'm pretty convinced on this point. (Even though this is not why I travel to Europe so often. I do that because I like a break from being home and I like Europe. But not in July. July is flower field time!)

 

 

 

My sweet, sweet Ed! When we first became a thing, a couple, a partnership, he worked hard to convince me that we have common ground. He actually had more than one pair of shorts then and twice (but only twice) he agreed to go t-shirt shopping with me. I picked out 3 cheap shirts at Gap that I still think are my favorites, torn and ragged that they are. Over the years we have both relaxed, giving the other more room to explore preferences that we know are not shared. And yet, we share a ton. We know to go gently when a choice is directly in opposition to the choice of the other. We know to ask (or at least give notice) before we disappear into our own worlds. And we know where we are alone in our thoughts and beliefs. Our morning discussion was nothing more than a conversational game. I know his approach to travel, he knows mine. And never the twain shall meet.

Coincidentally, I came across an article tonight in the Economist focusing on the benefits of bilingualism. It appears that cognitive benefits are greatest for the young and the old (and less obvious for the middle aged). If Ed is at all correct and people will, over time, forgo foreign language acquisition (because of Google translate or the like), then we will all become dumber than we already are. A frightening thought.

 

In the afternoon, I run errands. UPS, RX, USPS. Drop off this, pick up that. I should have biked, but most stops are on busy streets and you get spoiled biking as we do along paths or quiet rural roads. And I do my annual vacuum and cleaning of the car. A year of debris. Car cookies, an odd french fry. A sticky straw once filled with honey. Crumbs, wood chips, dirt. A year of memories I suppose. Time to make new ones!

In the evening, Ed bikes, I watch fireflies outside and read my fifth Tana French book. This is the summer of Irish mysteries! Perfect for losing yourself in stories that are not your own. 

with love... 

and now it's July

Spring, coming as it does with spring flowers, is exhilarating.  That sudden appearance of color -- yellow, pink, blue, the fruit tree blossoms, the lilacs -- it's all brilliant. But the fact is, when I think about my flower fields, when I buy additional perennials, when I strategize on how to fill spaces with blooms, I am really thinking about July. This is the month for my lilies. Yes, I've had some blooming already in June and I will have some more continuing into August, but July offers that potpourri of lily color that I love. And it gets better and better as the month progresses. You'll never get me to leave the farmette for long in mid July.

So here we are: the start of the big flower month. I work so hard for its glory. In these 31 days I reap some of the biggest rewards.

Two good things happened today: the humidity went down and so did the mosquito population -- the latter with a small assist from us. We allowed some areas to be sprayed with the "natural" mosquito deterrent. It's supposed to scare them away and in the past it's been pretty effective, though for a very short period of time. Maybe a handful of days. After that, you either repeat it, or live with whatever bugs stubbornly are still there. Last year two sprays did the trick for the summer: the swarms were dispersed and the stubborn ones that stayed were manageable. We'll see what this year will bring.

Because we were focused on doing bug control, I kept the animals under lock for the first morning hours. I did snip the lilies very early -- maybe around 250 today (I got interrupted in my count), still slapping away at the disgusting blood suckers but by late morning, I could finally do some outdoor work without the constant buzz in my ear of these horrid disease bearing pests. 

 

(day lilies to the left, true lilies to the right)

(it rained again last night)

I've been much more careful with the back ends of the flower beds this year. Weeds removed, new lilies (day and true) and cone flowers planted. I don't think anyone can see these from the walkways, but I know they're there! And when I plunge into a field to do some weeding, I come across these very pretty scenes.

 

(A real peachy pinkie!)

(Meanwhile, plunging into the Big Bed...)

We eat breakfast in the kitchen. Ed claims there is a faint smell to the stuff they used on the mosquitoes. I think he imagines it, but he is convinced that we should wait a good hour before resuming outdoor activities. I tell him that if he's smelling anything, it's my freshly baked granola, which indeed has a strong and very lovely aroma, but once he has the idea that there is a whiff of something out there (think, for example, scented candles), he insists on keeping his distance until things settle down once again.

He asks me what my next project is for the yard. Well now, the fact is that unless the unexpected happens, the heavy work is behind me. Right now it's all about maintenance. I do spot checks and small corrections all day long. It's delightful stuff! Sure, I do sometimes get sucked into heavier work -- today I pulled out roots of saplings that have grown quite high at the base of the crab apples. But for the most part, my work at the moment is easy compared to all that I have done between April 15th and now!

(these are such July colors!)

 

 

In other news, today Ed's new wallet arrived. I mention this because pages of writing would not describe this guy as well as one photo would. I'd been gently suggesting that he get a new wallet for many, many years. His stock answer to this and anything else is -- this one will do. Until this weekend when he reached into what once was a wallet and felt that things were rather loosey goosey in there. Could I get him a nice new one? No indeed. He found one that he likes on Amazon. $9.99. Here's a picture of the old one. I asked if he perhaps would like to put it up on Craigslist. I swear, he hesitated.

Evening. I make chili with fresh tomatoes. We finally finished last year's crop! The freezer box in the basement is waiting for a new harvest. Ed's tomatoes in the newly fenced in area are doing well so far. 

It's a fine year to be growing things in south central Wisconsin!

 

 

 

with love... 

how did we get here

Who introduced you to your hobbies? Are they new to you, or have you nurtured them all your life? Are there many?

I've been thinking about mine. I think there are many. Most I've had all my life. I've wanted to be writer of some sort since I was 12. I have taken many photos with a camera every month (and eventually every day)  since an even younger age. Reading? Oh yes, forever. Cooking? Skiing? Traveling? At 18 years I kicked off all three, with abandon.

Gardening came a little later. 

I watched my grandparents work the soil all my childhood years (I spent most summers in their village home in Poland). My grandpa was the flower grower. My grandma did the vegetable patch. I did ask at some young age if I could plant my own flowers and was told  -- go for it. Here's a patch of soil underneath your bedroom window. Put in seeds, watch them grow. I did put in seeds and then promptly neglected them, expecting miracles to happen without my input or attention. Of course, nothing came of it. I shrugged and never thought about planting anything again until I moved to Madison and invested in a place with a sunny balcony (1980 -- I was 27 then). I thought -- wouldn't it be nice to fill it with pots of flowers. I went overboard. And from then on, I've always gone overboard with planting flowers in whatever form or fashion, wherever I could.

It's not impossible to start in on new hobbies when you are much older. But I think it's significantly tougher to get blown away by them then. You can't help but feel your novice status. It's tough to be completely incompetent at something at age, say, 72. Whatever skills I have in growing flowers, they've come about through years of mistakes, omissions, failed experiments. You don't gain that sort of knowledge overnight or from taking a class. 

The funny thing about this passion of mine is that it could disappear overnight. I would not be able to live at the farmette and manage the land here without Ed's hlep. A couple of days ago a large portion of a willow tree fell down. Someone needs to take a chain saw to it. It's not going to be me. I can give you countless examples of things that happen here that I cannot attend to, or repair, or take care of. This place is ours. It could be just his. (He would simply let the flower fields go wild where I not here to take care of them.) It could never be just mine til I'm old and wobbly. Not without Ed here, on call to fix whatever suddenly falls apart.

Working the fields for me is an act of hope. And a belief in the beauty of the moment. It may all crumble at any time, but today I have this:

( a fragment of the long roadside bed)

The morning is lovely, if extraordinarily buggy. I convince Ed that we need to give the fields a "garlic plus" spraying tomorrow. It's impossible to snip lilies and be overrun with biting mosquitoes that no longer seem to regard Off as a deterrent. I only had 170 snipped lilies in my bucket, but I did want to finish up with the weed pulling over by the sheep shed. It was tough going!

 

 

 

 

 

(why a cat should be scared of a hen is beyond me.. ) 

 

Breakfast, on the porch.

Appointments, chores, and then back to work outside for as long as I could stand the bug slapping.

 

In the end, I also managed to see the two older kids today -- I caught up with them as they were leaving their Shakespeare group towards evening, because the parents had left something at the farmhouse last night and this was the best way of getting it to them.

 

A wave, a hug, and a smile and then I am back at the farmette, thinking that surely there are less laborious hobbies out there than digging, pulling and slapping myself in a futile effort to ward off the bugs.

And yet... I love those flowers. I know all of them. They are under my care. I'm going to make them shine!

(new this year: the climbing rose)

 

 

with love... 

 

caprice

I read that soon after we left Europe, the continent and especially France in the Loire region and in Paris, got hit by major storms. The city's metro system flooded. Trees were uprooted. Some streets had a foot of water streaming across. 

You can't count on good weather when you travel, or when you want to spend a day outside, maybe pulling weeds out of your flower beds. Storms will come without consulting you if their timing is right. Heat waves will make you sweat, downpours will soak you, winds will knock down heavy limbs in your yard. You adjust and accept your fate and thank your stars if your travel destination or your own back yard escape the caprice of turbulent weather, or as the airlines like to call it -- rough skies.

I may call this a hot and sticky day, but in fact, I don't dislike it. We have air conditioning (set at 77F/25C) and every two hours, I come in to cool off and drink a gallon of water. How really grand it is to be able to live this way -- sheltering in a cool house on hot days or in a warm house on the coldest of winter days! We are a privileged lot!

Once again, I start in on garden work early. Even before feeding the animals.

I do some random checks and adjustments on the already cleared fields, then take the big wheelbarrow over to the roadside bed and begin my cleanup work there.  Once more I am stunned how much has grown in the last two or three weeks. As one farmer said yesterday at the market -- our weeds have done really well this year! Yes they have. But the rains have given us something else as well: robust perennials and a soft soil. Removing weeds from a parched earth is terribly hard. Not so after all the rain: I get most of the roots out as well, which means I'll have less work as the summer progresses.

I'm still rather obsessive about it and once again I work too hard. I've never done such a thorough job of weeding on all the beds before. And the more compulsive I am about it, the more determined I become to get it all done in the next couple of days. (I do finish the roadside bed; all I have left are the two beds by the sheep shed.)

The gardeners among you who have watched me plunge into flower work in the past may wonder if I'm snipping spent lilies yet. As you can see from the photos, the lilies are just starting their blooming period. But today I did begin counting: I snipped 130 spent lilies. My flower fields are so big and so many in number that you can't really appreciate the blooms yet. Indeed, you might ask -- where are these lilies any way? Well, spread out! Each bed has only a couple of lilies blooming right now. But they're starting to add up!

We eat breakfast inside. Ed isn't a fan of the humidity and after working outside, I'm not objecting to a meal in a cool house.

And so the day continues, until the afternoon, when I give it up for the day, take a much needed shower and start in on Sunday dinner. For these guys:

(Sandpiper is now joining the big kids in their big chairs at the table)

And yes, we eat inside. When the temps hit 90F/32+C and the sun hits you from above, when the air is still and humid, we're better off keeping the door to the porch closed. There will be plenty of dinners outside this summer. Today is not one of them.

I wont see these kids in the next week -- they have a full agenda of summer fun. One last photo of them then...

Evening. The fireflies are tremendous this year! It's such a perfect summery day that I say to Ed -- maybe we should move to a place that lets us work outside all year long. (I'm not tempted; it's just my way of saying -- this is so very grand!) He responds as he always does -- New Zealand, gorgeous. And I say -- could you have picked a farther place? Ireland then. Though a bit dreary there in the winter. How about Vancouver? A moment of silence follows and then I laugh. We love it here. We'll never move.

with so much love... 

 

the big push

Ed tells me -- working hard is good for you, but don't overdo it. He rarely comments on my choices and so I take this as a signal that I'm pushing it today. What the heck, I don't even need the signal. I know I am working too hard. And I don't have to do this. I have days before me that I could only dream of back when I was working and parenting young ones. I have time. And I use it to work too hard. Go figure.

I start early, because the morning is pleasantly cool. We're to have a spike in temperatures. Later in the day. As Ed sleeps in, I feed the animals, survey the fields, and think about where I should focus my efforts.

 

 

 

But first, before I start in on the flower fields, I drive down to the Farmers Market. 

 

(It's the same route as to the bakery) 

 

 

I'm there before the meters click into action (so, before 8). I want to pick up a bunch of flowers for the kitchen table. That's it. We had a veggie delivery from our CSA this week and we are well supplied with peaches, so food shopping is not on my list for today. Still, a trip to the market is so much more than just food and flower purchasing. It's a chance to see what the farmers are up to. Which veggies are in abundance, which are tapering off. And, too, I stop by and visit with Dave from the Flower Factory.

Dave kept me supplied with perennials for decades. He retired from the business of selling plants form his greenhouses, but he still comes to the weekly market with a few pots of his choice. And as always, I am tempted to add a couple to my collection. Maybe I should work in a Lupine again. And an Agastache Hyssop, because humming birds love those flowers so much (in fact it's sometimes called the "hummingbird mint"). I tell Dave that at 72, I should not be expanding flower fields anymore. I can hardly keep up with what I have now. And yet, here I am, adding more. He laughs. I'm 77, he tells me. Growing these perennials keep me sane.

 Funny, I sometimes think growing so many plants at the farmette is rather insane! And yet, it's a pleasurable insanity, with high rewards.

Breakfast. I wake Ed at 9:20. I want my coffee! (With market treats and market flowers.)

And then I get to work. All day long, I stay in the flower fields. 

 

(portions of the Big Bed are starting to bloom)

 

 

Yes, weeding. But also feeding the pots, planting a new one because I have some left over annuals, mowing our driveway, and redrawing the border for the driveway bed. (Ed, can you help me move the railroad tie out a few inches... well, maybe more than a few inches?)

By the end of the day, all the important fields are cleaned up. Indeed, things are looking so good right now, that I almost feel like I've prepped the farmette for a big celebration. And maybe I have. A celebration of summer. Of the growing season. Of life.

with love... 

the futility of asking "why"

I have stopped trying to understand much of what is around me. Maybe a search for answers is a young person's pursuit -- that inquisitiveness that leads to discovery and invention. For me, at my age, it seems intractable and pointless. Most explanations are not fully accurate. They change over time. And many behaviors, impulses, beliefs are simply baffling, leading me to think "I'll never understand why..." And if that's true, then why bother struggling with finding answers.

I don't really know why I work so hard in my flower fields. Their season of beauty is short. No one sees them. The amount of work involved is monstrously huge. For example, today I toiled for six hours on weeding the beds. I still have the roadside bed, most of the Big Bed and the sheep shed beds to clean up, though I do think the lion's share of the work is "done." For now. I put quotes on done because it's never really done. If I stand anywhere at all, near any bed, I can guarantee that there will be at least a half dozen weeds within an arm's length that I will have missed. 

I could be reading. Learning a new language. Volunteering somewhere. Writing! And yet, I hum a stupid song in my head, bend down and pull out one weed or grass clump after the next, all day long. Sometimes I think I'm batty. Other times I don't think anything at all. Is it an obsession? Or, do I work so hard because I can, because the work is there, because I like flowers, because it's good to be outside? Who knows.

 

Jet lag is receding. I went to sleep at a regular hour, I got up close to my usual. Ed is out until at least 9. As is Dance.

 

 

 

Me, I feed the animals then get to work on the flowers at 7.

I do pause for breakfast. I would say weather wise, this day is golden. 

 

 

 

A little buggy, but when it's time to return to work, Ed sprays my shirt with Off, and the breeze picks up, and it's entirely manageable out there. 

The day would end on this -- weeding, or me writing about weeding, except that I do pause by late afternoon. My younger girl is in town with her husband, and my older girl and I go over to the east side bar that got all the good press last month (it's called Public Parking) to meet up for a drink. 

My girls... 

 

 

Don't you ever ask them why, If they told you you would cry, So just look at them and sigh, And know they love you... (CS&N)

My girls are the big storytellers when we get together and kids are not a distraction. Listening to them, I have this strong surge of gratitude, of indescribable love. My good friend lost his daughter to cancer last night. One of those imponderables.  How could this happen to a her, to him? (And sadly, he is not the first friend of mine to lose a child in this way.) 

I am the lucky one tonight. Here I am, laughing with these two as they poke fun at my weather obsession (what? you haven't noticed??), at our various eating preferences, at the absurdities of their days. The thrill of being with them is so deep! It is one beautiful break from work in the garden!  

At home now with Ed, with our show watching, our supper, our squares of chocolate. Again, with love and gratitude. 

 

hot humid buggy and yet...

And yet still beautiful. Still fantastically dense with flowers in the ready. Lush and wonderful. That is what the end of June looks like.

(early bloomer)

 

 

(lots of buds)

 

 (Heliopsis Prairie Sunset)

 

 

 (Big Bed)

 

Nevertheless, it's hot, humid and buggy. 

I am up early once more. It's the jet lag, but also it's being back with Ed. We often come up with interesting stories and exchanges right around 5 in the morning. He then goes back to sleep. I do not.

I wont mention how many hours I spend cleaning up the flower fields today. And no, not even half done. But I will admit to starting in on it early. I thought I'd beat the heat and humidity. And to an extent I did. But the bugs at that hour are ferocious. I was glad to stop by 8.

The bakery opens then and I need a batch of croissants and cookies. Sparrow will be at the farmhouse later on and that boy really loves croissants and cookies.

(morning trip to the bakery)

  

And as long as I am downtown, I stop by briefly to visit with my friend -- the one whose stress level is enormous right now. I take over some peaches because... this is our peach season! If early June brings us strawberries at the CSA farm, late June and July bring us peaches. Not local yet -- these are from Georgia and they are heaven on earth. And we have a lot! Perhaps I over-purchased.. You'd think that until you watched Snowdrop devour peaches. Today she ate four.  

But that happens later. First I have breakfast, with Ed, on the porch. He's barely awake, and it's really getting muggy, and yet it is so good to share this morning moment with him.

And then I go back to work outside.

 

At noon, I pick up the two older ones from their Young Shakespeare Players program. Sparrow has joined the  group as well (the age range is from 7 - 18). Both kids are in lovely moods and we reclaim our farmette routine for the afternoon. 

(the girl asks for his computer; he suggests that she reach for mine; fair point -- it's standing idle)

 

 

I've been saving the cherry tree bounty for them, but Sparrow hangs back. He's not a cherry fan and he is completely engrossed in his Lego set up. So, just Snowdrop and me, plucking the ripe, golden cherries.

Their mom stops by for a bit, she reads, we read. 

And you guessed it, after they're gone, I return to the weeding, until I feel drops on my back and then something far wetter than just a few drops. (Now where did that come from??) 

 

 Evening: I make soup, we stay up. Ed has found a several part show for us. Will I sleep through the big storms that are allegedly coming straight  at us? I doubt it.

with so much love...