Spring Growing
The new green growth of spring is ramping up to top speed around here. The thing about mowing the grass is that the saturated ground is not solid enough to support the riding mower in most places. I almost buried the back wheels by pushing my luck in the ditch beside the driveway that I knew would be a risk.
Every time I make this mistake, I ask myself why I can’t keep from testing the inevitable. Just don’t. But then I do.
It’s such an affront to my sensibilities when certain areas of regular mowing are neglected and stand tall, looking hideous, while the surrounding grass has been freshly trimmed. You’d think it would be easy for me not to care, but my true lawn vanity seeps out in the end.
One place where the super-wet ground is making spring growth very happy is the willow tree in the small paddock that is supposed to be dead.
I’ve never before seen such a dead tree look so happy to be alive. Doesn’t make any sense to me. The horses continue to gnaw on the wood as if they are intent on making it disappear. It can’t continue like this indefinitely, but I am becoming fascinated by how big the new growth on top will get before the end finally arrives.
Moving indoors with the subject of new growth, our repotting of the ZZ plant got me thinking about our Bird of Paradise, so I sought out a picture of what it looked like when it first arrived from Elysa and Ande.
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Look how many new leaves have sprouted on that in the 20 months it’s been here. It’s reaching for the sunlight, but we are hesitant to turn it because the tallest leaves are being supported by the cabinet. The main trunk leans enough that we fear it will topple over without support.
This afternoon, I hope to mow the grass along the driveway and the road. Tomorrow, I will mow the labyrinth. Even with so many trees, bushes, and ground cover growing rapidly, there are plenty of things that barely have buds yet. It leaves so much of the splendor of our spaces far short of its ultimate lush glory.
It has me thinking we should create an event of similar attraction all our own, later in the growing season. A Labyrinth of Love walk, maybe. All we would need to do is find a weekend in the summer when we aren’t away at the lake. Is that a thing?
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Accepting Attention
There is nothing more satisfying for me lately than seeing the horses looking thoroughly contented. We started their day yesterday by closing gates to confine them to the paddocks in advance of an appointment with a farrier. Being suddenly restricted from the acres of fresh green grass didn’t appear to bother them much.
I noticed two of them napping on the ground and decided to wander out and scoop up a couple of fresh deposits that had recently been dropped. While I was out there, Swings decided to lie down as well. Light stayed on her feet, but was doing her own version of snoozing in the warmth of the morning sunshine.
Before the farrier arrived, Cyndie and I showed up to put halters on the horses. Only Swings showed some initial resistance to the idea, but soon cooperated. What followed had me a little surprised. Our contact from This Old Horse, Maddy, arrived, and she joined Cyndie in grooming away the hair the horses were shedding. The fact that none of the horses objected to the intensity of attention was very uncharacteristic of them.
After a bushel of hair carpeted the ground, Cyndie began brushing out manes, using conditioner to detangle knots. While she worked, we moved one horse at a time to the other side of the overhang for the farrier, Jamie, to take care of their feet.
Light was first, because she doesn’t always stand well for the procedure. Jamie was wonderfully patient and completed all four hooves with only minor noncompliance. Cyndie brought Swings over last, arguably the easiest of the four.
We then opened the gates to the fields and gave the herd of old Thoroughbred mares full run of the place again. They calmly made their way out into the sea of green to graze. Out there on a sunny day, they are the picture of bliss.
When Asher and I showed up to serve the afternoon feed, three of them slowly made their way, one by one, back to the paddocks as I was getting things prepared. Swings chose to linger on the grass. I know enough now not to fret over their timing. I hung out all four buckets and took Asher back to the house for his dinner.
Opening the app to view our surveillance camera, I could see Swings munching away at one of the buckets while Mix was taking bites from a hay net, and Light and Mia stood by looking perfectly satiated.
Having these rescued horses accept all this attention and then appear so wonderfully satisfied is incredibly rewarding. They’ve come a long way from the stressed condition we witnessed when they first arrived here.
I’ve learned a lot from them about allowing time to pass for deep healing to emerge. The process of reclaiming their fully deserved equine health probably never really ends.
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Soaking Rain
There are a variety of ways our land is impacted by an inch of rainfall, depending on the time of year and how dry or wet it was beforehand. Yesterday, that amount of rain seemed like a lot more than just an inch. It rained for most of the day. Asher was about as reluctant to go out in it as I was. We made a trek down to the barn while it was raining rather intensely in the middle of the day to retrieve empty feed buckets from the morning serving.
Asher led me back to the house without hesitation after I was done down there, not even pausing to pee. We both decided the best course of action at that point was to nap.
When the appointed hour for feeding horses in the afternoon arrived, there was a pause in the precipitation, and Asher and I took advantage of that to first walk through the woods and around the fields. The trails were like flowing rivers. Water in the drainage swale along the south border of our property was overflowing its eroded ruts.
Water draining out of the hay field was running on top of the boards that keep the riding mower wheels out of a rut.
Soggy is an understatement for the conditions during our little walk.
The horses were split between interest in eating the feed pellets I was serving up and staying with the freshly washed green grass. Can’t say I blame them.
I inadvertently made a new version of a pitchfork the other day while turning the manure pile inside the large paddock.
I’m not sure what it would be good for in this configuration, but it looks interesting. Using a long-handled tool until it gives out due to metal fatigue serves as a marker revealing you’ve been at this game for a significant amount of time.
At this point, I suspect my body is going to give out before we see the replacement fork Cyndie brought home yesterday fail. I think my back was getting dangerously close to feeling like that pitchfork looked when it cracked on me.
It’s funny how robust physical activity can be a good workout for the body while also potentially putting it at risk of failure.
A little like how rain can be beneficial for all the growing plants and creatures, but can also be so soaking that it becomes too much of a good thing. In these cases, the adage “moderation is key” becomes the advice to heed.
I can control how hard I work my body. Too bad I can’t control how much or how little rain we receive on any given day.
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Plant Rescue
We were given possession of a root-bound ZZ plant (zamioculcas zamiifolia) by friends who were reclaiming some space in their home. Our daughter, Elysa, and Cyndie separated it into 5 different pots yesterday.
I’m hoping we can make it a companion to our Bird of Paradise plant that Elysa and Ande gave us after having gone through a similar exercise of separating and repotting that beauty. They should make a great pair.
While we were at Elysa’s, I did my feeble best to rescue her 2-door fence gate. I can’t fathom how eight screws (4+4) in two hinges completely sheared off one of the doors. I was thinking I might be able to simply move the hinges on the door until I discovered they were part of a metal frame that spans the entire width of the door.
We ended up raising the whole thing half an inch and screwing it into the post. It is now reattached, but getting it to butt up against the other door requires a little extra effort with a lift and a shove.
Cyndie shifted her focus to pruning dead shoots from some very vigorous raspberry bushes along the fence.
When we were ready to wrap up our visit, my car was filled with the larger of the potted ZZ plants and multiple shoots of the raspberries. As I was driving home, Cyndie was reading up on how to take care of our newly repotted plant. We decided to put it in the front sunroom for now to give it time to settle in the new pot.
I’d like to see it turn toward the sunlight and have the soil firm up to give the stalks more stability before calling this a successful transplant. Then I hope to buddy it up with the tall Bird of Paradise on the sunnier half of the house.
I like the symmetry of our two rescued/repotted exotic plants growing alongside one another.
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Love Energy
This morning, I received an email reminder of the 2nd anniversary of the passing of a man I feel extremely lucky to have known, even though I only encountered him a dozen or more times over a number of years up to the end of his life. It has me thinking about what a gift it is to have this kind of influence on others.
For far too many years from adolescence through my 40s, I felt more angst and bitterness about the world than I care to admit. I attempted to mask it from others to a reasonable degree, but that energy was probably always emanating toward people around me.
Being able to know the difference in my energy since treating my depression offers hope that any influence that might linger with people in the years after I’m gone will be a lot more loving than if I hadn’t addressed my mental health.
I asked Cyndie to review the people who have responded with intentions to come walk our labyrinth on Saturday, May 2nd, and learned it is a wide array of folks who likely won’t know each other.
We are looking forward to letting all the love energy of our property and animals give people a boost in ways they may not anticipate. I’m watching the weather forecast and plotting a goal of having the grass freshly mowed by the appointed hour of visitors arriving.
If conditions hold as the current projections suggest, this could be the first World Labyrinth Day with sunshine for us in years. That is a truly lovely outcome that I am looking forward to enjoying.
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Riding Gravel
As nature is hovering around the point of total explosion of spring growth, some trees seem so delayed compared to others around them that I get concerned they may no longer be living.
Cue my dread over the way the seven-year-old transplanted maple tree in the labyrinth went from vibrant to dead in a matter of months when it didn’t sprout a single hint of new buds one spring.
Our oaks are always slower than most of the rest of our trees. The overly tall Miss Kim Lilac tree is already green, and the maples have a yellowish hue in their early stages of leaf emergence.
That Miss Kim in front of the house has long looked confused over living or dying. One of the sections will completely dry up, and the rest will burst forth with aromatic white flowers. It currently has a healthy new stalk sprouting in the middle, which had me thinking about pruning the height down to let the new shoot compete for dominance. Mostly, I resort to interfering as little as possible.
With all that blue sky yesterday and the ground too wet to mow, I decided to give my bicycle some overdue attention.
After refreshing my tubeless tires with sealant and cleaning the drivetrain, I hit the road on an exploratory route to visit friends who live about ten miles north of us. After riding this bike on gravel roads and bike trails for the last two years with friends who have “gravel bikes,” I’ve become much less averse to going off-pavement.
The road tires on my bike are 32 mm and, for the most part, smooth. I have been surprised by how well they have performed on the different versions of gravel. Yesterday, I decided not to let our many unpaved roads inhibit my route choices and confidently forged ahead with the most direct path to my intended destination.
My secret weapon is the electric assist on this bike that makes the effort needed on gravel feel almost equal to riding on pavement.
After stopping for a quick visit and a glass of water at our friends’ place, I was uncertain about which road to pick for my return home. While stopped to check the map on my phone, I was alarmed to suddenly notice air leaking from my front tire.
I placed my finger on it and noticed it was wet with sealant trying to do its job. I quickly spun the wheel to redistribute sealant and decided to make haste for home, hoping the constant spinning would avoid further leakage.
Now I don’t feel a need to justify buying new tires, and I can pick something with a tread intended for a wider variety of surfaces. This will open up the surrounding area to unlimited exploration pedaling for me. Plotting routes on the map is a challenge when trying to limit myself to pavement out here in the country.
That leaves only not knowing how steep the hills I encounter will be on untraveled roads in this undulating, driftless region where we live. That decision to go with an E-bike is one I will never regret.
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Watchin’ Hockey
Maybe it’s a carryover from the US Olympic hockey victories a few months ago. The NHL Stanley Cup tournament is underway, and I’m finding myself drawn to not only the games of the Minnesota Wild but also those of any of the other teams, too.
It has me staying up past my bedtime too many nights in a row and leaving me a little bleary-eyed during the day.
Our games have been starting so dang late. Even though it’s the playoffs, when other games go into overtime periods, I tend to give up and shut ‘em off. But I can’t do that if it’s the Wild. What’s a guy to do? I gotta watch, but it sure stings double if we lose in sudden death a couple of hours past my regular sleep time.
Even if we win in late-night OT, there’s all the residual adrenaline making it impossible to fall right to sleep.
It’s interesting to be so fanatical about something that is basically a form of entertainment that means very little in the grand scheme of things that truly matter in life. It’s a little crazy to sacrifice a good night’s sleep over a hockey game.
I’m glad I have the luxury of not needing to show up at a workplace this morning. Still, I shut the game off at midnight last night when my eyes gave out.
I can always watch the replays.
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Sailing Again
The shade sail is up for the season!
Cyndie floated the idea of trying to make this happen before she needed to leave for an appointment in about an hour. If it wasn’t for her prompt, I would have let this slip to some other time. Since she asked, I decided to jump and make it happen.
I hadn’t thought through the steps in advance, so I just dove in and made decisions on the fly. Everything seemed to work just fine, and we got it completed in the allotted time. Later, on a walk with Asher, I spotted Mia already standing with her head and neck within the shadow. It is a wonderful reward every time I see them taking advantage of the shade.
While Cyndie was waiting for me to retrieve a second ladder, she noticed the horses’ eyes were getting swarmed by flies. Seems early to me for them to need masks already, but why wait?
Not long after, I spotted one of the gray masks on the ground in the hay field. It was Swings who had wriggled her way free of it. I waited until they were eating their afternoon feed to offer Swings a different version of mask, and she willingly accepted it.
I think the masks are begrudgingly accepted by the horses as a necessary evil. The face coverings are annoying, but not as annoying as the flies.
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Painful Dislocation
What a way to wake up. All she did was sit up in bed, and suddenly Cyndie yelped that her jaw had dislocated. We were both dumbfounded. While she whimpered in pain and desperately tried to self-analyze what was going on and how to resolve it, I felt totally incapable of doing anything to help.
I’ve had my jaw pop out of joint before, and it was incredibly painful and scary, but it was only momentary. With no logical trigger for what had occurred to Cyndie, we feared that a correction may be beyond our reach. I wondered if I would be driving her to urgent care, and whether I should try to take care of the dog and horses before going, when Cyndie reported she had managed to get her jaw back into position.
At least that ended her crying over the intense pain. It’s brutal to be the observer when the closest person to you is visibly and audibly suffering in acute pain, and there is little you can do to fix things.
As awful as that is, at least there’s no physical pain involved. No one goes unscathed, though.
After a morning that started like that, the rest of the day is wide open for improvement. Cyndie was able to rally and resume her planned art class in Hudson, and Asher and I carried out our duties, living a life of luxury at home.
As I was getting Asher ready to go out for a walk, I opened the door without looking to let him charge after a squirrel or rabbit or whatever threat he imagined was out there. It was after he took off like a shot that I spotted the delivery truck coming up the driveway.
As fast as I let him run, I was suddenly hollering at him to stop and grappling with the ecollar controller to push the alert button to distract his focus away from the vehicle. He obeyed just barely enough that the driver made it three-quarters of the way and rolled down his window to hand me a package. I grabbed Asher’s collar to keep him in place while the driver turned around to depart.
Later in the day, I was spectacularly successful in convincing Asher to hang out close by while I pushed the mower through the labyrinth for the first cut of the season. Mia wandered out into the back pasture to graze, and Asher made himself comfortable, sprawling out to survey the horizon for anything else that moved.
It feels very rewarding to be able to accomplish the first cut before the growth has gotten too far along. The hardest part of the job is pushing the mower over the raised ridges from the voles that think they own the place.
Cleaning the deck afterwards, I scraped as much dirt as I did grass clippings.
It was a good finish to a day that started out a lot scarier.
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Relative Something 