June 1st

When I was a kid, June 1st brought with it giddy excitement. This was when I lived in Poland and the date was significant for those living in so called Communist countries. On this day we celebrated International Children's Day (you can read about its origins here). Small gifts, a few treats -- maybe an ice cream scoop between two wafer bars, and school celebrations. 

I've never stopped thinking of it as a day that acknowledges the very special stage of life that is childhood. Personally, I think it's tough being a kid. I remember it as a period of great uncertainty. Where was I heading? What would I become? Who will I marry? Will I die before reaching adulthood? Will I ever have my own home, however small, maybe a studio, a place to escape to at the end of the day where no one will look over my shoulder and tell me what to do? The usual kid stuff. If you have a family, a safe home, adequate food, good health, a school where you actually learn something, then chances are you're not unhappy. And I wasn't unhappy (though I worried about what "being happy" was really like and if I in fact had risen to that level of life satisfaction, given that I was also so apprehensive about where I'd land as an adult, if I ever reached adulthood). But I had the feeling that I was just treading water, and that life would really began once I had my own home and maybe a child in it. Hmmm... waiting for childhood to be over so that I could then assume responsibility over another childhood?  I tell you, being young is hard, contradictory and often nerve-racking. 

And yet, there is that impishness, that playful defiance that seems to slip away as you grow to be a Responsible Person. These days I look back at childhood and I smile at all that seemed so normal then. Downing a candy bar (in New York) or a whipped cream concoction (in Warsaw) after school. Taking my skateboard out and pretending I was so cool with it (in New York). Watching endless TV shows when my parents went out (which, given my father's diplomatic career, was often). I may have worried about the future, but I never worried about investing time and energy into that future, preferring to find something to amuse myself with, sometimes, indeed oftentimes, to the detriment of my school work. 

These days I have plenty of kids in my life and this is a good thing. They remind me of what it was like to be their age. I hope I can reassure them that finding happiness is a worthwhile pursuit, even beyond your childhood years. Too many of us can, but wont look for ways to lead a satisfying life. Reading about all the children that can't even imagine what a peaceful, healthy, food-filled day looks like only reminds you how precious are the days where these are not your worries, or the worries of your children or grandchildren. 

I wish I could just say "Happy Children's Day" to all the kids of this world and make it be so... 

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In other news -- it is a calm and very lovely morning here, at the farmette.

We eat breakfast on the porch and linger once again after we're done eating. I'd purchased cushions for our metal chairs and Ed is trying very hard to convince me that this was an unnecessary acquisition, but I've noticed that since I put them down, our breakfasts have doubled in the length of time we spend on them!

And then I finish the weeding of the sunny flower fields. Thoroughly! Ed's friend comes over to visit and as he pauses to watch me bend down to pull out the weeds, he asks if I ever suffer from back pain. (He's a chiropractor, so well he might know about back pain!). I don't know why I can do this for so many hours and come out unscathed, but so far, I've been spared! 

And by afternoon I am done. The fields will never again be this weed-free -- certainly not this growing season and perhaps not ever. True, it is like cleaning a house: within a short period of time the house will be messy again. Guaranteed. But unlike in a house, where wiping a surface will not lessen the likelihood of a dirty one soon after, a removal of a weed lessens the magnitude of weed proliferation over the summer. You've removed seeds. You've weekend their root structure. You're investing in a lovelier landscape way beyond the period where you can say proudly -- "we are, at the moment, weed free!"

Of course, this is work only I can appreciate. Here, I'll take a photo of a field or two: you can't tell it's weed free! But I can!

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And still other news: I see that today's election in Poland cannot be called with certainty, though it does appear that the Warsaw mayor (you can view him as pro-EU, pro-democracy, anti-whatever it is that authoritarianism brings with it) may eek out a presidential victory. Which would be splendid. And here's what really is inspiring: 72.8% of Poles voted. (65.3% of eligible Americans voted in 2024.) 

 

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In the evening the young family is here for dinner. It was warm enough for them to have gone swimming at their community pool today. Could it be that we are done with spring? 

 

 

 

We eat on the porch. Of course.

 This is what contentment looks like. For all of us. 

with so much love... 

thank you, May

Thank you -- for a month of progressive warmups. For an assortment of daffodils, then tulips. Indigo, then iris. Allium then peonies. And clematis blooms. Thank you for holding off on any night frost: my tubs of annuals loved you for it. Thank you for the two days of rain. We wish there'd been a little more, but hey, the two day steady trickle was awesome. Thank you for the sunshine, for porch breakfasts, for flowering fruit trees and all that delicious asparagus.

Thank you for giving me the time to take care of my flower fields, of my grandkids, and a little bit of Ed and myself. Thank you for the month low on drama and high on love.

Once again I feel like our planet is reeling from one cataclysm to the next, but in our small corner of south central Wisconsin, this month has been so beautiful that really, the heart aches for those who cannot share in its riches. 

The last day of May.

Despite the Canadian fires, the air quality has improved. I can feel it just in my short walk to the barn.

I feed the animals. Pancake, the wildest cat, has been in another fight (not with our cats) and he once again is sporting bruises all over his body. I have to wonder why this happens repeatedly. At the farmette, he is by now accepted as one of the pack. The cats dont chase him. Dance occasionally gives him a gentle swap on the porch to remind him and everyone who is watching that she is top mama here, but otherwise no one bothers him. He is well fed and has plenty of comfy spaces to rest. Do other feral cats come here to bother him, or does he go out looking for trouble? We cannot tell.

It's early -- Ed is still not up when I decide to go downtown to the farmers market. For the asparagus and for an extra bouquet of flowers. Late May, early June -- this is a tough time for flower growers. Sure, people love buying peonies, but many of them do not open up and, too, a peony bush takes up space and offers up not too many flowers for cutting. Those who sell bouquets at the market mix peonies with false indigo which looks okay the first few days anyway. I walk the entire market before I settle on my favorite bouquet.

(And carrots and arugula from these guys.)

 

Breakfast, on the porch, with market flowers, with fruit, with Ed, and with treats from the Origins Bread stand. These are made with different flours (rye, millet, cornmeal) and in principle, I like them, though in taste -- only a couple would I ever buy again.

We linger on the porch for a whole hour, commenting on the wonderful silence today. Hardly any traffic on the rural roads. No one within earshot is using any machinery. It really is special for us to hear only the birds -- a chickadee, a catbird, a blue jay. And the sun comes out and the air is just right. What a grand ending to a month that's not shy in displaying its magic.

 (Friendly likes the dome we built for a Clematis vine)

 

I then finish weeding the sunny flower fields. That takes many hours! I want to get the beds ready for June -- I have a complicated trip right at the tail end of spring (or is it the very beginning of summer?). The flower fields have to be at their best by the time I leave. 

I have to say, I think I've done more weeding this year than in any of the previous growing seasons here, on farmette lands. Farmers have been saying that it's been an especially weedy month and I have to agree! And I'm more fussy this year. I don't know why -- some years are just like that. But the results of all that work are obvious, at least to me. The fields all look healthy and ready to take on summer!

 

 

Thank you May. You've been the best!

with love... 

May endings

May is never dull. It is intense, it carries the greatest bulk of outdoor work (because the weather is so good for it, and the bugs are so few!) -- and it's work of a good kind. It is also the end of the school year for the kids and there are events signaling this: outdoor sports days, hikes, recitals. Me, I never travel much in May and yet the month is so exciting! The move to the porch for breakfast (really exciting!), the progression of blooms outside, and visits -- the Chicago young family comes, my far away friends come, my daughter's friends come. A social time that I love, because these are all people who make me very happy. 

And now here we are, at the tail end of the month. Like with all good things in your life, it feels like a speed demon has seized the month and ran full speed ahead and away with it. And so here we are -- on the last days of it. But May leaves behind a deep contentment that carries you through so much of the year. May is like an intoxicating sugar high that lasts, one that is good for you and carries no penalty.

Today would have been a spectacularly brilliant day but for the wildfires in Canada. The pollution is making its way south and so our blue skies of the early morning turn hazy by breakfast time. Like summer skies on the coast that seemed to me to be perpetually and unpleasantly thick when I lived there. 

We tried to concentrate our outdoor stuff in the early hours, before the air quality index shot up.

And yes, breakfast was on the porch!

 

 

 

Ed worked on repairing the walkway to the back door. 

 

 

I did some heavy duty weeding at a nearby flower bed -- the one that has abundant sunlight and so I am especially careful with it. Two hours later I straightened my back and gave it up -- to be finished tomorrow. Maybe.

The kids are here in the afternoon. There have been some tricky situations at school, and I was proud of how both supported each other as they discussed the ins and out of navigating challenging situations. 

Perhaps wanting to switch focus to stuff outside their own backyard, we read nearly the entire time they were here. The current book we're on has some pretty obnoxious characters in it. Anything the grandkids may encounter in their days looks tame by comparison.

Evening: I'm hoping for rain tonight and cleaner air tomorrow. Is that too big a request? What can I say. It'll be the last day of May. Maybe it will deliver!

with love...

 

May young people

Did you know that 70% of people my age would benefit from a visit to a podiatrist? I bet you, younger ones, aren't thinking of managing feet as being eventually part of your senior repertoire! And I'm not one to rush to foot specialists either. I'm perfectly capable of caring for my own, thank you, and that includes nail care as well. (I dont object to nail salons and certainly not to podiatrists, I just dont want to take the time to go to another appointment, anywhere for anything.) But of course, eventually problems surface and you need help. So today I dutifully drove over to the podiatrist who was to "fix things." Except that she sent me home doing nothing at all. Her post-care instructions were impossible to meet: stay off your feet for at least 24 hours, soak your feet daily for three weeks, come back with any problem and so on. Can't be done! I'll see you in the fall.

The point is that it is one beautiful day once again and here I am, breaking it up for a visit to a foot doctor. I mean really, what a waste! (No disrespect to the doc intended -- she is a lovely person.)

The morning walk to the barn was lovely...

And I did do some weeding by the sheep shed. And I dragged Ed out to take a look at the proliferation of Jerusalem artichoke plants we have growing there. Neither of us can figure out how they got there (maybe from sunflower mixtures I've been known to sow around the farmette lands?). Local herbivores love to eat them so I'm not sure how many veggies we'll get out of them, but for now, we are quite proud of our dense plot of sunchokes. (By the way, the name Jerusalem artichoke is funny in its total inaccuracy as the plant is neither from Jerusalem nor is it an artichoke. I'm told the name likely comes from the Italian word girasole, which means sunflower. They are a type of sunflower.)

I'd picked up pastries and bread from Madison Sourdough (I need bread for dinner and cookies for Sparrow) so we indulged ourselves for breakfast with cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

And of course, after breakfast there was plenty of garden work, interrupted by a visit from this trespasser:

... and my visit to a foot doc.

 

(While the hens indulge in a sun bathing session)

 

 

In the afternoon I did not have the kids here because I tasked myself with dinner prep. My daughter's two grand college friends are visiting and it has become a lovely tradition for them (along with the young family) to come to dinner at the farmhouse. I cook up the usual kid favorites -- crunchy chicken with noodles, and of course asparagus because 'tis the season. For dessert I make a strawberry rhubarb crumble. Again, 'tis the season. For rhubarb anyway. 

(dinner: Ed is still out biking, postponed from a rainy Wednesday, so it's just the 8 of us)

 

(and a group photo, taken by my son-in-law)

 

 

Evening? A happy one, because there's much to be grateful for.

with love...

May thoughts

When it drizzles, you slow down and reflect more on what is before you. You may even go the full range and return to thinking about the details that you've come to regard as part of a new normal. We adapt quickly to change and this helps us cope with unusual and sometimes harrowing events. I remember accepting the reality of living under so called communism in postwar Poland.  (My book, Like a Swallow addresses this.) Our authoritarian regime's excesses weren't part of the daily conversation for most of us. Except for the moments (maybe on a rainy day?) when they were.

This normalization of both awful and joyous transformations may have their positives (do you really want to bounce around in your thoughts between peaks and valleys all the time?), but I recognize the downsides of our tendency to moderate and normalize: how then do you revel and rejoice in the beauty of a day that is otherwise ordinary? And should you really accept as near normal the crazy chaos that you see all around you as your country descends into something you could not have imagined even one year ago? An article in today's NYTimes warns us of the dangers of doing this. (I gifted it for you here.)

And equally important is that flip side of your emotional range -- the dulling of your sense of joy and hope. So for balance, may I suggest a listen to an interview done by Andy Borowitz of Jane Goodall. (Here's the link, though I can't gift it for you -- you have to subscribe to Andy to listen to it. Hey, he's pretty funny so I recommend Andy for those who want to lighten up their day, despite everything!) Goodall is 91 now and her message of hope is... joyful. If you asked me what senior person is absolutely heroic in my eyes, a role model for sure, I would point my finger right at her lovely countenance.

 

So I get up in the morning, I throw a jacket over my head against the rain and I take extra care -- to admire the flower fields...

(without warm sunny days, the peonies are slow to open up)

And to think about the events of the week -- the good, the not so good. The discouraging and the hopeful.

 

We have breakfast in the kitchen. The light rain cooled off the temps, so the porch is for another day.

Ed is trying to decide what to do with the butchered maple (the one a farming truck massacred yesterday afternoon).  Our town's tree people come out to give advice. And in the end, Ed takes on the project of cleaning up "the wound" himself. Me, I'm concerned about the general health of the tree. So many limbs have been cut off because of their proximity to the power lines that the overall structure of the maple is definitely not great. Can it survive this latest attack? The tree people think that it can. It's got another maybe 15 years of life left -- the specialist tells us. Ed is thrilled. That's fantastic! It will outlive us! 

And the drizzle continues and I stay mostly indoors.

 

Despite the weather, Wednesday is ice cream day for the kids and so after school our first stop is at the Chocolate Shoppe. 

(he's trying, unsuccessfully, to convince us that he is feeling grumpy this afternoon)

 

 

How did this routine get started? I can't even remember. No matter. They have one more Wednesday of school after today. We can handle another ice cream Wednesday before the year is out. 

[Here's a fun fact: did you know May 28th is Whooping Crane Day? We did not see any whooping cranes, but on our way home after the ice cream, we came across this familiar family, hanging out just steps from the last sighting!]

The evening is drizzly enough for Ed to cancel his bike ride, but not wet enough to give the gardens a satisfactory soak. I have this feeling that we'll come out on the dry side of the equation this summer. But of course, don't ask me to predict anything with any confidence! I stick with the idea that in your flower fields, like in life, you can only anticipate what's immediately before you. For example, I can tell you that tonight, Ed and I will slink over to the couch and have a good chuckle over something on TV. I'm sure of it! Even as I have no idea how we'll take on tomorrow.

with love...

 

May everyday

Nothing stands out as unusual or out of the ordinary. The morning is exactly as it should be: with a repetition of all the good that comes this month, a calmness that is too often hard to come by, and a beauty that singularly belongs to this month.

Somewhere around the age of 72 you come to appreciate, nay, love ordinary days. Not the blandness of them. Ordinary days do not have to be boring or given over to chores and small tasks. If you've spent years perfecting a walk on a tightrope suspended between two skyscrapers, well then on any ordinary day you'll include a practice session for that. The point is that you're not especially looking to fill your day with novelty. Instead, you go about doing things that you know you love and that have carried you through countless days out of the 26 280 (and then some) that you've lived on this planet. Calmly, confidently, with a light smile.

I walk to the barn early, paying attention to the flower fields...

(last year's potted strawberries sprung many babies around the courtyard!)

 

... but also to the dynamic among the animals. For instance, I notice that one of the hens is running to the corner of the barn and jumping into an old box left there who knows when or by whom. Aha! She has been hiding her eggs! Sure enough, I find five.

And the cats: the three sheep shed ones are all outside, reluctant to enter, even though I'm clearly there with food. Why? I can't figure it out. Someone must have been in there disturbing their peace. Was it Pancake, our 6th feral? Or another stray cat? A racoon? I cannot tell.

I snip just a few weeds (it's been an unusually weedy spring), then come back to the farmhouse to fix breakfast. 

More weeding and lilac trimming follows. I'm not as ambitious today and that feels nice. I take pauses. I talk to a daughter. I read articles that I would normally skip over. So, no adrenaline pumping stuff. Just a wonderful day of outside work and inside leisure. All the way up until the time to pick up the kids at school.

We drive home to the farmhouse with expectations: we're in the middle of a very dramatic book (Back Home). We want to get going with it. The kids are hungry for their usual snacks. Sparrow is in a hurry to return to his Legos. But as we drive up the driveway, we hear a crash and a fall. What just happened?

A piece of farming equipment -- one extending significantly both in height and width -- drove by our roadside maple and crashed into some of the branches, bringing down a few of the heavy limbs.

(here's the truck, with at least one branch stuck in its machinery)

(Sparrow, surveying the damage)

 

 

Ed is out for the day with his machine design project and so I have to deal with the aftermath. I call the police because I think if there is an accident, then they must be summoned to file a report. Turns out that's not the case when the accident destroys property at the side of the road. I'm told that's a civil matter. Luckily the owner of all this heavy equipment drives up in his pick up and is willing to give me his name and phone number. We can sort through the damage later. For now, the driver moves the heavy limbs that fell on the road, grumbling to himself about the stupidity of trees, I'm sure.

I return to the farmhouse where the kids are waiting patiently for the afternoon to unfold along a familiar, yes, calmer path. I suppose kids, like 72 year olds, appreciate the ordinary.

(making yellow marks with a dandelion)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the evening? As normal and calm as they come. I make chili -- a standard several day supper at the farmhouse. Ed and I find our comfortable spots on the couch. We turn on Clarkson's Farm (season 4) and smile.

with love...

May beauty

May isn't done with its flood of loveliness. This day! Oh, this day! So stunning that words fail me. Perfect for work outdoors and we both jump right to it. Well, after the usual. Walk to feed animals, breakfast.

I had a vague plan for the day: finish trimming spent flowers on the lilac and maybe snip down some of the saplings growing in the roadside bed. None of that happened. I went out with a bucket and bent down to pull some weeds in the corner of the Big Bed. If you're a longtime reader of Ocean and you pay attention to my gardening saga, you'll have read about the Big Bed. It's one of the first ones that I planted here and over time it grew. And grew. And grew some more, until now it is a Super Big Bed. Because I added plants and extended it over the years, it's rather haphazard. Different parts bloom at different times of the season. It would be splendidly abundant and a riot of color were it not for the big Honey Locust and Norway Maple that grow by the garage shed. Tall trees with a wide canopy, they now provide shade over the bed for a good chunk of the day. What used to be a sunny field is now a partly shady field. Sigh...

Nonetheless, I've not given up hope for this jungle of flowers. (Really, there are hundreds of them in the Big Bed.) And today, once I started pulling weeds, I couldn't stop. I'd done spot plucking throughout the season, but today I did a thorough clearing of it and it took me the whole day. Many, many buckets of creeping charlie, creeping bellflower, common violas, crane's-bill. And millions of saplings: maple, lotus, crab apple. 

Most likely I wont do a thorough weeding in this field again this year. I have other priorities: the field by the house, for instance, is my biggest bloomer (it has the most consistent sunlight). I concentrate on that as the summer progresses. Still, I'm happy to have tidied up the Big one. And of course, it kept me outside most of the day which is nothing short of splendid. 

And Ed? I gave him the thumbs up on overnight weather: it'll be warm enough now for him to plant the tomatoes. Unusually late this year!  The nights have been too cool. In they go now. With a fence this year. Ed is determined to shield them from deer!

This post is like my day -- all about the flower fields and growing things. It's where I stayed all day and it's where my focus was. And look! The first peonies popped open today. Alongside an iris and a yellow false indigo. A lovely late spring combination.

My clematis vines are starting to bloom...

 

 

 

And another surprise -- the day lily, an early one, began its blooming season. In May, of all things.

Beautiful day! Just beautiful.

with love...