Cyndie’s Eye
I let the Minnesota Vikings take up the middle of my day yesterday and didn’t really accomplish much before or after the game worth writing about. However, Cyndie has been taking some interesting pictures that she has graciously allowed me to feature this Monday.
The sky at sunrise yesterday included a rather precise edge of cloudiness.
Was it clearing up or about to become overcast? The clouds were moving in. We saw a few peaks of sun, but much of the day was overcast.
These next two are glimpses she captured of me that feel a little self-aggrandizing to include, but since they each feature animals as well, I’m using them.
When you’ve been married for 45 years, and your wife is still taking stealthy photos of you, I think that is a good sign. She’s got a good eye for capturing scenes depicting daily activity at Wintervale.
We walk the dog, feed the horses, I mow some grass, we gather wild plums, and Cyndie makes jam out of them. She takes our things to a yard sale, and I stay home and watch football. (Sadly, she probably spent more money on the trips to Minneapolis than she made selling things due to the excruciatingly high cost of gas these days.)
And both of us try to capture photos that depict the beautiful surroundings of our everyday. We are richly blessed to live where we do.
.
.
Big Change
Things have changed dramatically from too dry and dusty to nicely soaked after two days of a mix of occasional rain and constant drizzle. It was just cool enough that Cyndie chose to put a rain cover on Mia, as she rarely receives a gracious welcome from the other horses who shelter under the overhang.
Since the horses were showing little interest in walking out into the rain to get a drink from the waterer, we provided some temporary buckets near each placemat. It’s interesting to see how often they choose to dip their snouts in the bucket while eating when it’s convenient. Has us thinking we should wet all their food, not just Swings’. She has been getting softened servings as the eldest mare because she has lost some teeth in her advanced years.
The muddy slurry of lime screenings is almost as annoying to navigate and poop-scoop as the overly dusty conditions. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t have some complaint to make about the conditions. Hey, I’m just reporting what I see.
Cyndie made use of the inclement weather to take care of some overdue cleaning of stencils under the entry to the shop door while Asher and I stood watch, occasionally handing her something that I thought might work better for her task.
There wasn’t much else to do in the soaking wet conditions. I ended up doing some rudimentary sweeping of the concrete shop floor.
Yesterday, I resorted to watching college football on television while Cyndie ventured to Minneapolis to add all the clutter she had scrounged from our basement to the yard sale that our friends, Pam and John, hold annually.
The sun is making a re-appearance this morning, and all the growing things look really happy about the return of hydration.
In just a few days, we have experienced a big change. Here’s hoping we don’t need to swing to such extremes every time a new weather system takes hold. For today, we are blessed with a pretty reasonable balance. We will be sure to appreciate it for as long as it lasts.
Maybe the next weather complaint I come up with in the future will be about how perfect it has been for such a long, long time.
.
.
Birthniversary Day!
Happy Birthday to Julian!
Happy 45th Anniversary to John and Cyndie!
A special amount of love cascades every year on this date, September 19. We are greatly blessed. Thank you to all our family and friends who have supported us over the years. We wouldn’t be where we are today without you!
.
.
Interesting Sightings
Cyndie’s dahlias continue to bloom with a photogenic appeal. I can’t resist capturing them in different light and at different stages of development.
I went with a little backlighting on this shot.
Yesterday afternoon, the clouds finally broke up enough to give us a sunny end of the day. It had rained over three-quarters of an inch overnight, and the day started out pretty wet.
I waited until after lunch to consider mowing. It was still a little damp in spots, but not wet enough to keep me from getting a handle on trimming the blades of grass that seem to be taking every advantage of what little moisture has been falling from the sky.
Most of the areas where the grass looked absolutely destroyed have made a decent recovery. I’m amazed at the resilience of plants.
When I returned to the house after mowing, I found Asher lounging on the garage apron and every door to Cyndie’s car wide open. In a heroic feat of decluttering, she was packing her car to its limit with items dredged from the basement for contribution to our friends’ yard sale in Minneapolis this weekend.
I hope all that stuff finds new use and is seen as a bargain by the hunters seeking deals.
Overall, it was a pretty normal day yesterday. Right up until I came upon this large hole in the ground.
Looking through it, I could see the sky.
How does that work?
.
.
Fresh Trim
The mares got professional attention on their hooves yesterday, and they all look pretty darn sharp now as a result. It doesn’t take long for their hooves to begin looking really ragged from stomping around on the dusty, dry lime-screenings surface under the overhang and the drought-worsened, rock-hard clay ground in the paddocks and fields.
One of the reasons we put the sleeves on their legs is to protect them from fly bites that cause them to stomp their feet in reaction. Repeated stomping contributes to the chipping. The dry conditions don’t help much, either. Cyndie regularly paints a conditioner on Light’s front hooves to help reduce the cracking she is prone to.
We were really pleased to see that Light showed little resistance to standing patiently for the farrier. Historically, she has been the least cooperative about having work done on her feet. It’s incredibly rewarding for us whenever she demonstrates full acceptance of the process.
Things were going so well that I decided to wander over to the compost area and tend to the piles while the other three got trimmed. Cyndie reported that they all behaved well and passed hoof inspections problem-free. We’re good for another month and a half. That’s a great feeling.
This Old Horse also dropped off a sample batch of grass hay bales that look much better in quality than the dregs we have left from the last large delivery. We’re hoping there will be more from where these came from when we get the next winter’s-worth shipment later in the year.
As evening drew near, Cyndie and Asher found the horses grazing at the far end of the hay field near the road.
They give our place such a regal ambiance, simply by their presence. It’s such an honor to be able to provide them with a healthy place to spend their retirement. The many blessings definitely go both ways, from us to them and from them to us.
There’s a lot of love happening here every day.
.
.
Delayed Reaction
If I have an itch, I have two choices: scratch it or avoid scratching it. Sometimes I scratch the itch, even though I know it will make it itch even more. As often as possible, I strive to ignore it. One adaptation I have devised is to scratch myself in a completely different location. I think it confuses my nervous system. It works to move my attention away from the original itch.
I stumbled onto some 9/11 remembrances in the days after the actual anniversary of the terrorism and now find myself being pulled back to those initial moments when I was at a loss about what was happening.
I don’t know why I didn’t get drawn into this until after 3 or 4 days had passed beyond the anniversary. I suppose the fact that we don’t turn on a television or radio contributed to my original obliviousness.
That’s not true; we do turn on the television. It’s just not for broadcast programming, so we don’t receive the messages network affiliates are delivering. I suspect the 25th anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93 was mentioned a lot in the days preceding the 11th.
I didn’t hear it. Then I noticed conversations popping up on Reddit, and that reeled me in. I came upon the 11 hours of raw video captured by documentarian Jules Naudet and watched about 3 hours of it in roughly 20-minute blocks. It’s pretty wild witnessing the shock and confusion the EMS responders were in during the early moments before anyone fully understood what was going on.
I’ve noticed that I tend to immerse myself in as much detail as I can consume about a disaster for a short time, after which I am inclined to shut down and not want to think about it again for a very long time.
That reminds me a little bit of how I feel about our Presidential elections.
.
.
Tent Retired
It’s been more years than I can confidently tally, but I have been depending on my North Face Rock 22 tent for a long, long time. It wouldn’t surprise me to discover it’s been more than 20 years. In all those years, The North Face has stood behind their product and provided a replacement set of poles at no cost. When I sent the rain fly back for service to re-seal the seams, they replaced it with a new one for free. When the replacement came with flawed adhesion of the sealant tape, they replaced that one, too.
When I was cleaning the tent after our recent dubiously ended Katy Trail trip, close inspection uncovered wear and tear I hadn’t noticed before. In one spot, there was a series of small holes in the mesh that probably looked like a gaping invitation to enter from a mosquito’s perspective. The ground tarp has a hole in it now, too. Also, the original water repellent is starting to wear out.
In addition to the flaws beginning to appear, what this dated tent truly lacks is any innovation that has occurred in the time since this now-discontinued model was manufactured. That’s not this tent’s fault, but it does weigh on my decision to finally replace it.
What may have ultimately triggered me into action was the fact that Cyndie is collecting items to bring to our friends’ garage sale this weekend. With a convenient opportunity to offer this old model to some bargain hunter who would be happy to have it despite any flaws, it seemed like a good time to update my outdoor sleeping quarters.
Yesterday, I scanned options for lightweight tents that meet my specifications. There were a variety of candidates that looked enticing. I made a conscious effort to remain open to every design, regardless of the manufacturer.
Ultimately, I found myself too attached to the level of quality and laudable customer service I’ve received from The North Face over the years.
I was able to redeem the balance of my card rewards at REI to take the edge off the expense of a new North Face tent. They have earned themselves a return customer loyal to their brand. If this tent lasts another 20 years and protects me through just as many thunderstorms as the Rock 22 did, I’ll know that my decision was a good one.
.
.
No Sooner
No sooner had I returned to my precious home and I’m spending a night in Victoria, MN, at Cyndie’s brother’s house. It made the most logistical sense. After getting the majority of the mowing done on my first day home, I spent yesterday morning trying to clean my bike and camping gear before it was time to dash to the Cities for a grand birthday event planned by Cyndie and her siblings for their mom.
They rarely do anything small, so the guest list was no less than 100 for an afternoon soirée that included a live band and enough appetizers to feed more than twice the revelers in attendance. This morning, a family brunch is occurring in Victoria, so I left my car in Bloomington, MN, to travel with Cyndie (and all the foodstuffs she prepared in advance) to sleep at her brother’s house.
There was a momentary panic last night when the cooler with the egg bake and caramel rolls looked like my tent in the flash flood due to melted ice, but it appears the water damage was limited to the packaging and not the food.
The horses are being tended to by one of our trusty hires from the nearby University of Wisconsin, River Falls, for last night’s and this morning’s feedings. Asher has been granted his own retreat at his trainer’s kennel to give Cyndie one less thing to manage around the weekend events.
I’m feeling a little like a soldier trying to return to the world. My mind is still with my four comrades entrenched in the struggles to survive harsh elements in an unfamiliar place. It’s a different frame of reference when you have to pedal your way in extreme heat for extended miles to reach a destination.
Finding myself suddenly in a bustling social situation of ease and luxury feels rather incongruent.
Standing among the horses and rubbing up against them yesterday morning took a lot less effort.
.
.
Happily Home
Gee, but it’s good to be back home. First of all, our dew point temperature is significantly lower than it was in Missouri. It actually feels like September here, with the cool evening, warm afternoon, brisk wind, and lowering angle of sunlight yesterday creating a distinct feeling of autumn. The rain that fell here while I was riding the Katy Trail has greened things up considerably.
Cyndie captured this gorgeous shot of the horses backlit by the twilight sky.
Now that’s a field that looks worth grazing.
I spotted one of her sunflowers with an echo of the actual sun in the background.
The wind picked up significantly in the afternoon while I was mowing. The north loop trail was clear when I gave it a clean cut, but after lunch, I found it blocked by a fallen tree.
It was a dead pine tree that we had let a grapevine climb, so no big loss as far as we are concerned.
Sometimes, the beauty of Wintervale causes me to question why I ever leave.
.
.
Relative Something 