Breakfast
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favorites
emerge organically
a surprisingly delicious meal
especially breakfasts
honey whole wheat toasted to perfection
buttered
just right
with a newly discovered cereal
whole almonds!
whole grain flakes!
pumpkin seeds!
dried cranberries!
dried cherries!
crunchy flavor potpourri
not to discount the equally delectable
lunch and dinner appeals
it’s just that
breakfast comes first
more often at home
where it’s personal
sometimes in pajamas
if a person wears them
so as not to get a chill
while reading the news
and listening to tunes
savoring each and every delicious bite
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Creepy Feeling
The month of October encompasses the anniversary of our arrival at this property in Wisconsin. The actual date is a little blurry because the closing ended up being delayed until a few days after we had already moved all our stuff in. We have reached the completion of our 14th year here. At the end of the month, it will be our 15th Halloween in Beldenville.
I had an entirely creepy experience at 2 a.m. yesterday. My bladder had already woken me, and to kill some time before falling back to sleep, I was solving a puzzle on my smartphone when I felt something moving on my forearm. Turning the phone around to illuminate the spot, through blurry eyes, I could see a tiny dot moving. If it were any other innocuous bug, I’d probably have flicked it away into the darkness and forgotten about it, but I had a suspicion that forced me to get back out of bed and return to the bathroom for some hands-free light.
Sure enough, it was a tick. So small that I suspect it was probably a deer tick.
At least it wasn’t attached to me yet. It had rained all day on Thursday, and I spent very little time outside. Did it come in off the dog? Did it get on me while feeding the horses? Why did it show up on me in the middle of the night while I was snuggled in bed? Since I hadn’t done anything strenuous on the rainy day, I hadn’t showered, a decision I now regretted, although there is no certainty it would have made a difference.
Not knowing where I picked it up and why it was crawling around on me in the middle of the night in the place that used to feel safe (ignoring tales of spiders visiting people while they sleep) has infringed on my feelings of joy over burrowing under the covers and propping pillows for hours of sweet dreams.
This morning, we signed a contract to have our roof redone. It always feels creepy to commit 5-digit dollar amounts to home maintenance projects. May this instance play out with no unpleasant surprises and minimal collateral damage. Now I need to call the other bidders to tell them never mind, adding to my creepy feeling.
One thing I don’t feel creepy about is having water in Paddock Lake again.
It looks good with leaves floating on the surface. The color makes it look like there’s a lot of iron in the water, but I think that’s an illusion. It’s probably a combination of lime screenings dust and manure more than anything else.
We had our first real frost this morning, setting the edge on the end of growing for most plants, but the forecast looks warm and sunny again for the next 10 days. I’ll take it. That’s not creepy at all.
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Daylong Rain
A short time after the Katy Trail bike trip four friends and I did in Missouri in September got cut short by flooding rain, I suggested an alternative ending. Since we weren’t able to finish the last 50 miles of the railroad grade trail, I invited them to come try riding roughly 35 miles of the hills around Wintervale to end our 2026 season of group bicycle rides.
So, it was weeks ago that we whittled down the possible days that all five of us would be available and settled on October 15th. Yesterday. While I waited through day after day of ridiculously hot weather for the countdown to reach 10 days away in order to see the long-range forecast, there was nothing but sunshine.
Finally, by October 5th, I saw that Thursday the 15th was the first day with a chance of rain. To the credit of the weather services, throughout the 9 days I watched that extended forecast dial in, the chance of rain stayed locked on the 15th. While counting the days, I saw the gorgeous fall colors waning as the loss of leaves accelerated.
When it reached two days before the planned ride, the guys and I reached a unanimous decision to cancel and reschedule the ride to next year.
Yesterday, it rained ALL day. It was cold and thoroughly wet. It was just the kind of weather I absolutely do NOT want to pedal a bike in.
At least I got to see that our new rain gauge works really well.
While the horses ate their feed in the minutes before the rain started, Cyndie convinced Mia to accept a rain sheet. Mia was reluctant at first, and her hesitancy triggered Light to stop eating and walk around to check on what was going on. By the time Light arrived, Cyndie had already won Mia’s approval and the covering was on, but we were excited to see Light showing concern for another herd member, especially Mia.
When we went down to feed the horses their afternoon serving, I noticed Paddock Lake was filled to the brim. Now I know that it only takes an inch of rain to fill up that catch basin.
Just for the record, after a lingering chance of rain today, my extended forecast shows no rain for the next 8 days. Maybe I should market my services to farmers during extended droughts. I can schedule an outdoor event at Wintervale, and rain will surely appear.
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Stunted Growth
For all the glorious trees we get to enjoy in our woods, there are plenty that are far from thriving. It can be frustrating to watch a tree year after year and not see healthy growth. I try to console myself with the fact that they haven’t completely died yet, but the way they linger for years without new signs of vigor just ends up being a long, slow slide toward eventually disappearing.
There are a couple of pines in our north loop field that serve as examples of what I am talking about.
In both cases, look at the fullness of the trees behind them. These scrawny trees are missing something the other trees are getting. I don’t know whether all the pines in this area were intentionally planted years ago, but I suspect most of them were, and I believe many of them were put in the ground with the roots poorly arranged. We’ve lost quite a few that looked like the trees were strangled by their own roots.
This field is also heavily trafficked by deer. They can be pretty ruthless on small trees. The little tree in the image above has a big portion of its middle munched. I’ve decided to gamble on letting the deer have some trees and hoping there will be enough other sprouts that grow past the most vulnerable stage and become future contributors to an overhead canopy I envision happening in our north loop field someday.
I don’t expect to have any ash trees being a part of that future.
If you’ve never seen the damage caused by the emerald ash borer beetle, we’ve got plenty of evidence for exhibit A.
There are probably as many ailing trees in our woods as there are healthy ones. A forest certainly isn’t a static system. Birth and death are happening constantly, so I never try to think of it as needing to exist in one specific way. I feel good about trying to help the more desirable trees flourish and being conscientious about controlling any takeover by invasives.
I’m choosing not to fight to avoid losing some types of trees and hoping that whichever trees successfully adapt to the warming climate and increasingly destructive storms will make for an inviting forest to visit for many years after I’m gone.
If we keep seeing occurrences of stunted growth like the pines in the north loop, that future forest I’m envisioning will just take a longer time to happen.
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Humble Pie
It’s fair to say that we have passed the peak of fall colors at Wintervale, but we are still a ways away from bare trees with brown as the primary hue across the landscape.
This tree just outside the barn has covered the ground below with leaves, but it looks like the majority are still clinging to its branches.
It serves to demonstrate just how incredible the number of leaves there are on a tree. Multiply that uncountable quantity by hundreds of trees, and you get a sense of why there are many inches deep of leaves on our pathways.
This time of year, it becomes a challenge to walk in the woods without twisting an ankle on a hidden root or hole in the ground that fools a planted foot without warning.
I enjoyed a fresh, humbling dose of embarrassment yesterday morning after pointing out to Cyndie that the clip was missing from the remote control for Asher’s e-collar. She wasn’t aware. As I headed out the door with Asher for morning chores, I suggested she check the pockets of her pants for it.
Maybe 15 minutes later, as I was walking beside the back pasture fence, I kept hearing a faint “click” that almost sounded like the electric fence was on. I knew that it wasn’t, so my mind considered other possibilities.
I reached down and found the control was tapping against the loose clip in my pants pocket. [rolls eyes/slaps forehead]
When I got back to the house after feeding the horses, before I could say anything, Cyndie reported that she had checked the pockets of all her pants and couldn’t find the clip.
“Yeah, about that…”
Luckily, she found the whole thing laughable and not an annoyance, which I would have deserved. Will I ever learn to check myself first before automatically assuming she is to be blamed for things? Hmmm. Not sure I have a great track record of such self-awareness when it comes to issues between us.
Then more servings of humble pie it shall be.
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Sawing Ironwood
A tree in our woods has been leaning over one of our footpaths for more than a week. Each morning, Cyndie and I check with each other for opinions on whether or not it is leaning a little more. It had a good number of long, thin branches tangling with surrounding trees and many tall, skinny trees that got bent over as the leaner came down, so I was in no hurry to do anything about it.
Recent winds brought it close enough down that it had become too hard to ignore.
Our kids visited on Sunday, and during halftime of the Vikings game, Julian and I went out to soak up some of that hot sunshine. I took him down to see the fallen tree and spontaneously decided to see if I could pull free the bent-over trees it had caught on its slow descent toward the ground. When that resulted in success, we then took a shot at helping the leaner to come down the rest of the way.
It was a dramatic enough change that I knew Cyndie would be shocked, so I told Julian we weren’t going to say anything about what we had accomplished and wait to see what kind of reaction we’d get.
While we were back in the house, up in the loft watching the second half of the football game, I received the following image via text from Cyndie on the floor below us:
I reacted with utter surprise and asked when that could have happened. She and Elysa knew it was recent since they had been out on the trails earlier and it wasn’t down. Then Julian and I let them know what we had done.
Yesterday, I used a handsaw to trim off all the small branches. Even though I soon discovered it was really dense wood, I ended up cutting everything necessary to clear it off the trail without resorting to the chainsaw.
I had my suspicions about what kind of tree it was, but I asked Cyndie to take a picture of the bark with her plant ID app to see what came up. American Hophornbeam, also called Ironwood because of how hard it is. Ironwood trees are scattered throughout our woods, but they can be hard to notice. It seems like they hide in plain sight by looking unremarkable.
For 25 years, we lived on Ironwood Court, but I never had a clue about ironwood trees until we moved here.
Most often, it seems that I end up figuring out that I’m dealing with ironwood when I start cutting into it. For a guy who really likes trees, I can sometimes be surprisingly oblivious when it comes to identifying them.
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Too Hot
The heat over the weekend was a bit much for our October sensibilities. On Saturday, Asher came down with us to the labyrinth while we did some mowing and weed pulling. It looked like the hot weather had melted Asher into the rocks.
He conked out so deeply that it looked like his spirit had left his body. I don’t know how he sleeps on those rocks like they aren’t even there.
I set up the mower to mulch, which worked pretty well for dealing with all the leaves. Of course, it only looks good for a couple of hours before more leaves show up to cover it all over again, but it looked great for a brief moment.
Eventually, the heat got to Asher, and he moved to the only spot of shade he could find that was big enough to cover him.
His black coloring makes him almost invisible in the shadow of the center boulders. It’s great when we find out he was lying there the whole time that we were worrying he’d run off somewhere.
I don’t know how hard it must be for animals to cope with growing their winter coats when the warming climate is delivering heat like we’ve experienced this weekend. Asher seemed happier to be lying on the cool tile in the house than walking around outside in the intense sun yesterday.
Our forecast is showing another 80-degree day today before high temperatures moderate the rest of the week with highs in the 60s. I am so ready for it to stop being too hot.
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No Explanation
Cyndie and I did another couple of rounds spreading compost on the hay field yesterday.
After the second load had been dumped, I steered the Grizzly ATV from the hay field into the large paddock, stopping at the far gate. Hopping off, I unchained the gate and let it swing wide open while the horses were standing under the overhang of the barn, completely ignoring me. I then drove the ATV through the gate, making sure to pull far enough ahead so I could close the gate behind the trailer.
Hustling to pull the gate closed before any of the horses took notice, I spent an extra minute fiddling with the chain to get it untwisted and hooked around the post just right. When I turned around toward the Grizzly again, I was shocked to find there was no trailer there.
Imagine what that felt like. D’oh!
The trailer had come unlatched back in the hay field without me noticing, and I proceeded like nothing was amiss.
I had been so focused on dealing with the gate that I didn’t realize the trailer was missing. I had even purposely pulled ahead far enough after passing through the gate so it could close behind the trailer, without ever looking to see the trailer was no longer there.
Sheepishly, I undid the perfectly latched chain again and backed the ATV through the gate once more to return to the hay field and fetch the trailer. Geesh.
I’m sure glad there are no post-workday press conferences, because it would be really embarrassing trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for that strange bout of cluelessness.
Maybe I could blame the heat. The temperature reached 86°(F) for the high yesterday afternoon. Clearly, I wasn’t my usual sharp self.
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Asher Grazes
He’s a funny guy. When he runs, he leaps like a deer. He likes to eat everything the horses eat. He lies down and stares just like the cows in the field next door. He wants to ride in the car just like people do.
I wonder if I could teach him to drive the zero-turn mower…
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Grazing Serenely
Today, I offer you a chance to spend a couple of minutes with Mia. She let me hang out with her for a while yesterday, and it proved to be a great representation of how special it is to be in this location with these amazing horses while the rest of the world is busy rattling away out of our sight.
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