Archive for August 2013
Big Weekend
It is a holiday weekend, but I am staying home. Cyndie still wants to make a one-day/one overnight visit to the lake place, but I am feeling like there is too much that I want to accomplish here. If I make great progress today, maybe she can talk me into it tomorrow.
Today, the crew that is ever-so-slowly building the hay shed for us, will start putting up the metal shell and roof. I need to finish bolstering the outside walls of the barn under the lean, and work on grading the ground in the paddocks. I also want to do some cutting with the brush hog, and move a pile of top soil, so I may spend some time on the diesel tractor.
We are behind on lawn mowing, too. I gave the Craftsman lawn tractor a little attention yesterday afternoon. Oil, grease, gas, and then mounted the grass catcher on the back. While waiting for Cyndie to get home, I started cutting the area around the hay shed. After that, I moved on to the area outside the first paddock. That’s when I hit a hunk of wood from an old root, which got stuck on the mower blade and seized it up.
I ended up jacking the front of the tractor into the air and after several wild attempts to get things unstuck, had to remove that blade. I succeeded in getting that situation resolved in time for Cyndie to cut grass after dinner. Then I moved on to working on the Stihl trimmer. The plastic line needs to be replaced, so I changed to the saw blade. I have abused that blade so much in the short time we’ve had it, that it hardly cuts anymore. I limped through trying to knock down tall growth around a couple of our culverts, then gave up and called it a day.
The biggest successes of late have been my ability to master some maintenance and repairs. That bolsters my confidence a bit. Unfortunately, that is offset by the limited progress I have made on tasks we are working on. Today I am hoping for better luck and big gains.
Maybe, deep down, I really would like to go up to the lake.
Gravel added around the waterer
Gravel spread over the new path behind the barn
New What
It’s time again for everyone’s favorite Relative Something image guessing game called, “What”! You have been missing it, haven’t you? Well, wait no more. It’s simple. All you need to do is guess what the item is in the image below. Do you trust your first impression, or ponder the possibilities? Can you hold off long enough to wait for the answer to come to you, or will you look right away? You are in charge, but it is strongly recommended you come up with some kind of guess before you click on the image to have the answer revealed. Enjoy!
Not Long
It is funny to me that I find something slightly amiss when I return home from work in the late afternoon and decide not to dive into some project or another around here. Between the excessive heat warning we have been living under in these parts for the last few days, and my not feeling quite on top of my game, I have avoided doing any real work after I have arrived home from the day-job. It feels wrong.
Therein lies my challenge of living in the moment. There is nothing wrong with taking some time to rest and recoup. I should be enjoying the time to the fullest.
There is so much that I (we) want to get done, that it feels unsettling to allow time to pass without achieving any significant accomplishments. Daylight is growing so noticeably shorter. The month of September looms large on the near horizon, and schools and fall sports are primed and ready to launch. We are in contact with our anticipated source for horses and plans are being initiated to make the transfer of the first 2 of 4.
That adds a bit of pressure to finish additional things in and around the barn. In classic form, as each task accomplished gets checked off, two new things needing attention appear. The closer we get, the behinder we are.
I’m hoping for a new burst of energy to emerge when the oppressive heat and humidity move on. I’ll be working to get everything shipshape and Bristol fashion for the new residents of our barn and paddocks.
Choose
.
.
freedom
to choose health
in the face of other options
takes effort
that is rewarded
incrementally
sometimes infinitesimally
over time
do the math
not the science
that it takes
making rockets fly
simple addition
day after day
for months at a time
healthy emerges
for goodness sakes
like green on the grass
running in a river
rounding the rocks
headed toward forever
where life is esteemed
and success of good health
the spectacular garnish
that feeds on itself
in magical ways
running and jumping
with joyous persuasion
returning investments
of health options chosen
turn off that tv
go do something else
break down that routine
be someone else
that unlikely person
you never felt could
emerge from your shell
stuck there for good
just a choice
to be made
inside the mind
there’s reward to be nabbed
free for the choosing
life filled with promise
of better than good
outside the lines
of everyday drab
just beyond reach
of those who don’t try
it’s easy to grasp
for the bold few who do
exercise free choice
to choose better health
not just for a day
but from now on
days-months-years at a time
.
.
Cyndie’s Idea
We are in the middle of a multi-day excessive heat advisory and that high dewpoint temperature is making quite an impression. It is hard to drink enough water to offset the amount lost to sweat. My belly gets so full from drinking water that it gurgles when I walk, and I’m still thirsty!
I took Monday off from work and lounged around for some extra hours in the morning, just because I could. Since it was so hot outside, I decided to let Delilah stay inside and nap on the cool tile floor. She was asleep when I stepped out to take on a couple of outdoor projects. Later, when I stopped back to check, I found her gnawing on the wood of our sunroom walls. She hadn’t done that again since the first time we caught her, so I was hoping we were beyond it.
Regardless the heat, I banished her to the outdoor kennel. It is covered, and in the shade, so I wasn’t worried that she would over-heat, but I knew it wasn’t going to be as nice as being inside the air-conditioned house.
When Cyndie arrived home from work, she had some fresh ideas for how we might advance our progress on normalizing the relationship between Delilah and our cats. Up to now, we have been keeping Delilah confined to a small space near the front door, and the cats have had free access to the whole house. The cats seem to have gotten used to the presence of a dog, but Delilah continues to over-react to most sightings of the cats. Our plan has been to keep her restrained until she proves she can remain calm when the cats appear.
Cyndie’s new idea involved confining the cats to one room, and giving Delilah a chance to roam free throughout the rest of the house. I thought it was such a great idea, I wanted to try it right away. Delilah was very keen about diving into the cat food that we left out. We corrected that quickly enough. Then it was a game of following her nose to every nook and cranny where those cats have left their scent.
While we were in the mode of allowing Delilah to exercise some new freedom, Cyndie decided to try letting her go outside the front door all by herself. From my perch on the couch in the main room, I asked what the dog was doing. 
“She walked out into the yard. Oh, now she is headed around the garage.”
One second later, Delilah was at the back door, on the deck, peering in at us. Cyndie let her back in.
I think it was a brilliant change of routine to give her some free access to the rest of the house. We are intent on not rushing the cats into making contact with the dog, but my patience is being tested waiting for the dog to relax around the cats. This is a helpful exercise for me, because it provides a new way to advance toward our goal, and gives me a sense of making progress in that direction.
Flying Moments
I really don’t want to be that guy that always marvels over how unbelievable it is to be the date that it is, …but, how the heck did it get to be August 26th? Seriously, I don’t think I am getting the gist of living fully in the moment. I too easily get focused on the future, and can’t believe we’ve reached the present date, while feeling that events from May, June, and July just happened last week.
Time certainly does fly when you are having fun. Obviously, it has flown a lot for me this year. Cyndie’s nephew turns 6 today! Happy Birthday, Beck. How’d he get to 6 already?
Kids growing up is a classic example of time flying. We had the gift of an opportunity to spend some time with the kids for an overnight at our place over the weekend. Non-stop energy. Time flew, but I think we enjoyed every moment. Hopefully, we gave them a few memories to carry with them.
I felled my second tree while they were here, and got it hung up in the branches of other trees. A situation such as this is called a ‘widow maker,’ but I avoided putting Cyndie in that predicament. I tossed a rope around it and started pulling with a come-along. When it seemed like it had reached an impasse, we decided to leave it for a while, and went to do other things.
After the kids had been picked up, and a short nap in the cool of the air-conditioned house, I watched some videos of techniques for bringing down a tree that is hung up. I then headed down to check on our specimen and gave one strong pull on the rope hooked up to the come-along. The tree came loose and dropped straight down to the ground. Mission accomplished.
Upon cutting and stacking the logs, I discovered there were some fascinating patterns in the cross sections. It is hard to imagine what was creating such fantastic figures. They look almost angelic. I’m going to have a hard time choosing to just split this and burn it. The way I see it, there are a variety of potential art projects to be made out of these. Wouldn’t they look great sanded to a fine, smooth finish, and then oiled?
New Pen
We set up the first round pen yesterday. Cyndie purchased panels online and had them delivered here. We stacked a few at a time into the pickup truck in order to drive them around to the far side of the paddock, to the spot we prepared. It took some adjusting to get them all to fit, but they are easy to connect to one another, and other than some heavy 2-person lifting, it was one of the easier things we’ve tried to do around here.
It looks good, except for the fact it creates another echo of the fact we have no horses here yet. They can’t be far off now. We still haven’t secured the proper insurance, but requests have been made for quotes. We need to get the ground around the waterer in the paddocks rocked to create good surface for the heavy traffic that will occur there. With luck, that will happen this coming week.
Horses by Labor Day? Maybe just after. It was Labor Day weekend, last year, that our offer to buy this place was accepted.
What a year it has been.
Notice Things
Last night, I wasn’t feeling my best, and decided to lay low for the evening. It was a beautiful night and I didn’t want to miss out on all the action, so I plopped myself on the deck to be near Cyndie and Delilah while they were playing together in the back yard.
It was gorgeous out there. It helped me to realize the importance of stopping to enjoy the thrill of just being here in this fabulous paradise. It is too easy to talk about how nice it is here, like we did a lot with friends who visited last weekend, as they marveled over the place. It is easy to know how great a place this really is, intellectually, as I plod from one end to the other, toiling away on chore after chore. It is another thing to pause and enjoy it to the fullest.
Knowing and talking about it is NOT the same as stopping to actually experience it. I had a wonderful opportunity to do that last night.
It occurred to me that this was an extension of a theme that started earlier in my day yesterday. In a discussion with a mom of a 6-month-old girl, we marveled over the thrill of watching an infant discover themselves and the world around them. Baby’s new revelations bring shrieks of joy and laughter, from both baby and mom!
“Oh, I have arms!” baby must be thinking, “And look! They move back and forth like wings!”
We could all use an occasional reminder to revisit that child-like wonder about the miraculous number of things our bodies are able to do, and for amazing things in the world around us.
As I was preparing to crawl into bed last night, I happened to notice a “fix” I had hastily conjured up weeks ago, to keep our headboard from knocking the wall every time we turned over. When I put it in place, I didn’t honestly expect it to last, but intended to try it out to see if it would prove the concept. It has worked so well, I’d completely forgotten all about it.
Notice something today that time has led you to take for granted, and give it a renewed sense of child-like wonder in your mind. The world is no less awesome now than it was the first time we became aware of ourselves and our place in it.
Rough Terrain
I’m sure I have mentioned this before, that one of the hassles we continue to struggle with around here is the uneven terrain where trees and overgrowth were dug out last year. There are big divots in the ground, shrapnel from root branches, and mounds of dirt that the skid-loader kicked up, the majority of which becomes obscured by the thick summer growth of grass and weeds. Some of that rough terrain is located inside parts of our two paddocks.
Cyndie is very concerned that such unsure footing will be dangerous and problematic for our horses, so one of my next priorities is to get the ground in the paddocks fixed up. The early opinions from our many advisers have leaned toward “discing” the entire thing. I don’t have a disc attachment for my tractor. We could rent one, but there is the challenge of transporting it. Of course, my neighbor has a disc harrow, as he has demonstrated recently by volunteering to smooth out the area outside our paddocks, but I’d rather try to solve this one on our own, if we can.
The thing is, there is a fair amount of good grass growing in the paddocks, grass that we really want to keep for the horses to graze. If we disc the whole thing, we will need to plant grass seed, and wait for it to get established. If we put horses in there before new grass gets started, they will never allow grass to get established. It will all become a dirt sacrifice area.
I am lobbying for a more refined, albeit manual, approach. We did a little test area last evening, and it worked well enough for me that I am encouraged to forge ahead, by hand. It allows me to save the grass that is already there.
We still need to plant new grass, as a large part of this was dug up to install our on-demand watering station, but this way we won’t be trying to replant the whole thing. All we will need to do is augment what is already there.
.
It has been a dry few weeks, but right before we went out to work on the ground, we received an inch of rain in a blustery summer thunderstorm, which softened things up just a bit. The dewpoint was high, and we became drenched in sweat as we worked. Then, as darkness approached, fog began to form.
It was just plain wet, in the air, on the ground, and all over our bodies.
Relative Something 