Archive for March 2016
Inside Views
Today, a few views I captured from inside, looking out.
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Watching Amy
We watched the documentary, “Amy” last night, about singer Amy Winehouse, and it triggered a recurring sadness for me that you can’t instantly remedy whatever it is that drives a person to make unhealthy coping choices. You can send love to those who are hurting, but if they aren’t able to love themselves, health and healing can only wait on the sidelines to be invited in.
I’ve had moments of grandeur where I thought the environment we have created at Wintervale, the horses, the labyrinth garden, wooded trails, and our dog & cat, combined with the life experience and emotional intelligence Cyndie and I have gained, could serve as an intrinsic salve to any and all who visit.
Reality isn’t that simple. I have had opportunity to discover my acquired peace doesn’t automatically transform others merely by proximity. I found that it is possible not only for me to be helpless about inducing healing in another, but I am as susceptible as anyone to being drawn down by contagious unhealthy energies.
Being a positive healing influence on the world is something that requires definite effort.
Detangling from a general pattern of unhealthy behaviors requires a definite choice. We have to make an informed decision to change our life for the better. It doesn’t happen by just spending some time at a healthy place.
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The movie about Amy Winehouse includes a significant amount of footage showing the frenzy of paparazzi she faced. It was tough to witness. Nobody deserves that abuse. Take a moment to cherish the anonymity that allows for normal daily life.
Cyndie and I were talking about situations of celebrity hounding and recalled the amazing surprise we felt years ago, when we spotted Eric Clapton on a street in Chicago, unnoticed by anyone but us. We were killing time on a weekday visit and strolling the shops along The Magnificent Mile, or possibly some side street just off Michigan Avenue, when two guys stepped out the door of some apparel shop.
They were carrying large bags of their purchases, which was one of the first aspects that caught my eye. Two guys on a little afternoon clothes shopping expedition? Seemed somewhat off gender-usual to me.
As my surveying glance traveled up to their faces, I wasn’t able to mask my shocked recognition at the face of one of my musical idols, just inches away. In a split second, I chose to avoid spoiling Mr. Clapton’s moment of walking the street like any anonymous bloke.
As they passed I looked at Cyndie and she was looking at me with that same wide-eyed shock over who was walking by. It didn’t seem possible. We immediately began debating our decision of not saying anything to him.
I consoled myself with the vision I will never forget: the look on Eric Clapton’s face when he saw our shocked expressions and knew he’d been recognized, …yet not hassled.
I wonder if Amy Winehouse ever enjoyed the pleasure of being recognized, but not hassled, in the brief time after her music became wildly popular.
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Not March
This is not the weather I recognize as occurring in the month of March in the region where I am from. That’s no surprise, since we are breaking records for both highest overnight low temperature, as well as the daytime high for March 8th.
Our back yard looked almost summery in the afternoon sun.
No snow in sight. It felt unnatural. Thinking back just a few years, I was trying to carve drainage paths through the mounds of packed snow on the sides of our driveway in March, for water to drain away.
No such problem this year.
Just to keep us from getting too far ahead of ourselves, the landscape pond is available to remind us that spring doesn’t happen instantaneously, even when it seems like that is exactly what it is doing. There is a solid mass of ice filling the pond still.
Something tells me it won’t last much longer.
When I was a kid, the saying was, “April showers bring May flowers.” I wonder what the March showers will bring in this new climate reality.
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Forest Cleaning
It wasn’t too muddy beyond our trails, among the leaves carpeting our woods, so we took advantage of the favorable weather and did some “forest-keeping” yesterday. Since we were already picking up the branches I had pruned from trees, we got inspired to keep going and clean up some of the years of accumulated fallen limbs and dead growth.
It’s like magic. Once you decide to start picking up branches, there suddenly becomes more branches deserving to be picked up.
We collected a wide variety of them into piles at the side of our trail, to make it easy for chipping later. We can grind them up right where they lay and spread them out to pave the trail for better footing during the muddy season.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could bring the tractor in there now? But the ground is too soft for the time being.
Timing is everything.
While picking up some branches that had lain there for years, I found myself wondering how I would know when enough was enough. It looked really good in the areas we had cleared, but I felt a desire to avoid trying to make it too pristine.
Cyndie agreed with me that we should seek a good balance of making it look well-tended, while maintaining a certain amount of natural character from the few oddities of limbs or saplings that grow askew or have reason to fall.
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Cuttin’ Wood
The weather on Friday started out just right for getting outside and doing some work in the woods. The air temperature was comfortable, and the ground was frozen, so traversing our terrain was clean and dry. I decided to cut some wood.
There are a lot of standing dead trees awaiting my saw, and plenty of dead branches that could use pruning. I started with our apple tree. There were a couple small branches that were easy to reach with my pole saw, but one fair-sized limb up high enough that I needed to throw a line and use a rope saw.
The apple tree was a treat to cut because it smelled marvelous! It also offered a beautiful visual of enticing rings. Such an artistic depiction of the history of the tree. How can I not spend some time creating something worth keeping out of this? With any luck, hopefully something I would actually finish.
I cranked up the chainsaw and successfully dropped a standing dead butternut tree. It was a great victory for me because I needed to first get a line over a small tree in the way so I could pull it aside to make room for the felling. The butternut fell right where I wanted it.
I had barely sliced the trunk into logs when the perfect day turned into a spring-like snow squall. It forced me to gather my gear and hustle indoors. When I got back out there yesterday, the temperature was hovering just above freezing and the wet new snow began to turn the trails into hazardous, muddy slip-slides.
It is time to minimize travel on our trails for a while in the afternoons.
Maybe that will give me a chance to make good progress on a few art projects in the days ahead. Sounds fun!
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Periodic Assessment
Yesterday was the day of our annual furnace inspection by the company that installed it a few years ago. So far, so good. Honestly, I would have been shocked if he had found something amiss. We are past the initial break-in period where manufacturing or installation issues could appear, and it is still new enough that no parts should be wearing out. Plus, it has been performing flawlessly from the start.
Still, I pay good money for the peace of mind to know all is well.
Our experience last fall of discovering the cracked tiles in the flue of our chimney bolstered my confidence in the value of regular check-ups.
Upon recommendation from someone at work, I watched “That Sugar Film” last night. I invite you to check out the trailer for a sampling. It might make you crave seeing the whole movie. It served as a periodic assessment of my sugar reduction/control efforts, not that I wasn’t aware of some slippage in the wrong direction.
I struggle with a physical addiction to sweetness. Well, mental and physical, frankly. Every time I cheat a little on my attempt to stay below the recommended healthy daily amount of calories from sugar, I feed the mental monster. My mind then works with my body to coerce me into feeding the urge.
It is weird to watch the movie and get a sense of how similar my sugar craving is to drug addictions that are publicly looked upon as all around bad things, while the food industry flashes spectacular and colorfully happy ad campaigns in broad daylight for products laden with the chemical that will capture our minds and make our bodies sick.
Think, tobacco industry. How many years did they get away with it? Cigarettes were safe. Heck, they were even good for you! NOT!
That scene is happening today with soft drink companies, cereal, yogurt, pasta sauces, …pretty much all processed foods. They are all safe! Enjoy!
We can trust them, because they pay scientists to collect data that shows everything is okay. It’s fine. Don’t worry. Have some more. You know, a calorie is a calorie, whether from sugar or otherwise. NOT!
Don’t fall for the ruse that you should be able to exercise enough to justify that next sugar laden meal. That is a war that can’t be won.
If you have children, save them from this. Please, understand the effects of sugar on our brains and bodies.
Addiction is addiction. Pick a poison. Street drugs, prescription drugs, tobacco, gambling, sex, shopping, food, sugar.
When choosing to profit off the human brain’s cravings, a company should have a plan to hide the facts about making their customers sick. Maybe no one is noticing the obesity trend and subsequent increase in associated diseases, like diabetes and heart disease. Go ahead, keep on eating the convenient foods filling the grocery store shelves.
What this movie points out is that he doesn’t eat the obvious soda pop, candy, and ice cream which most people know should be moderated.
He chooses supposed “healthy” choices of cereal, yogurt, juices, and snack bars during his 60-day experiment. It’s eye-opening, even for me.
I need to renew my effort to spot what my brain is doing to feed its craving.
Last night, it was pasta for dinner. It was soooooo good.
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Photographic Decay
Something about the puzzle-like visual of decaying wood and metal really grabbed my attention last weekend when we were snowshoeing in the woods and came upon the trash dumps. So, naturally, I took a picture of it. I’ve noticed since, the photo has captured that same allure for me. I can’t stop looking at it.
I think that says a lot about the success of a photograph. If you find yourself wanting to look at it again and again, you must have done something right.
I can’t really grasp what it is that draws me to it. Maybe that is a part of the attraction, …the mystery of it.
Admittedly, the curious cutouts are attention grabbers, but I think the shadow plays a big part for me, maybe just as much. Throw in the clean-looking snow, the spindly branch above, and the bark-like appearance of the disintegrating wood, and you get a combination of features that keep my eyes coming back for more.
There is a juxtaposition that I like in the discarded item having been left for decay, now transformed to a new use as the primary feature of a photographic image.
Everything old is new again.
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Good Footing
It’s the time of year again when the thawing ground turns to mud, especially in areas where the horses walk. The first couple of years after we moved here were extremely wet in the spring, so we got a thorough lesson in worst case scenarios. The best thing that came from that was a recommendation for using limestone screenings in our paddocks.
I was unsure, at first. The searches for information we conducted tended toward extensive projects involving removal of all topsoil to some significant depth, and then installing expensive plastic grids and laying down thick layers of sand or crushed stone.
We opted for the least complicated idea, as a first test. We simply spread a thick layer of limestone screenings over the existing soil. The first time it rained, I figured we had made a big mistake. The lime screenings took on the water and became like thick, wet concrete. The horses sank right down in it. If it got below freezing overnight, the endless craters of their hoof prints would create an almost unnavigable landscape until the next thaw.
All it took was added time for the screenings to cycle through being packed down by the horses and baked by the sun, to set into a firm base that could support the horse’s weight. Other than the setbacks of losing a lot of material when heavy downpours created deep rills and washed screenings away, the overall result was proving to be worthy.
We simply ordered more limestone screenings and filled in the voids. So far this year, the surface is holding. Look at the dramatic difference from the areas we haven’t covered yet:
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We definitely need to order more, as we have yet to cover the critical heavy traffic areas around, and through, gate openings. The big challenge with bringing in more loads of screenings is the damage caused by the trucks delivering the heavy weight. We need to determine the right compromise of cost per benefit. A smaller truck would do less damage, but having smaller loads delivered drives up the cost a huge amount.
I find it hard to decide how to calculate the cost of damage that the full-sized truck does. Mostly, it costs me peace of mind, as it bums me out to break up more of the asphalt or get deep compressed ruts on our land. We figure the driveway is already a lost cause, so it becomes a matter of tolerating the additional damage until we take on the project of resurfacing it. Getting rid of the deep ruts hasn’t been a piece of cake, either, and who knows what damage it is doing to roots or my buried drain tubes.
For the most part, we plan to confine dump trucks to our driveway, and we will just have to move the delivered loads to any final destinations using our tractor.
Here’s a shot of Hunter showing how nice and dry the footing is on the well-set limestone screenings up near the barn. Niiiiice.
No complex process of soil removal and inorganic sub-surface installation. Just limestone screenings dumped on top of the existing surface and spread out to a depth of 6-8 inches. Oh, and time. About a year of horse traffic, hot sun interspersed with soaking rain, more limestone screenings to replace what runs off, more sun, and more packing. Walaah. Good footing.
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Intriguing Find
While searching through old images recently, Cyndie and I uncovered many wonderful memories, and discovered some particularly precious pictures of our horses. These images were snapped before we had any idea the horses would end up living with us.
Years ago we were visiting the horses at their previous home because Cyndie spent time working there with several of the herd which totaled around 35. She had even ridden Legacy in the past.
I accompanied her on a few visits to see the large collection of horses, and always brought my camera. Looking back on the pictures now, with the added knowledge of all that has transpired, has a bit of a mystical feel to it. At the time these images were captured, we had no clue whatsoever that these beautiful animals were in our future.
Seeing these images again, and thinking about our being unaware of what was to come, provides a tingly sensation for us today.
Pulling burrs from Legacy’s mane
Dezirea approaching to say hello
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Hunter (right) listening in on conversation
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Since we didn’t spot any shots that included Cayenne, I’ll throw in a couple of bonus items that we received in the mail a short time ago. The previous owners found some pictures of Cayenne when she was a mere hint of what she would become. What a hoot!
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Relative Something 