Archive for April 2016
Hazardous Conditions
Yesterday, while working outside for long hours in the spring wind, we exposed ourselves to enough tree pollen to cause significant irritation to our delicate tissues. I think I also successfully altered the weather to shut down precipitation here for some time.
While my nose dripped at an ever-increasing rate, I built a barrier of old, moldy hay bales in the trees by our uphill neighbor’s corn field.
During heavy rain, the water comes off that field in a torrent and washes sediment onto our property. Lately, it has started to fill in a drainage trench beside our driveway.
Oddly enough, I actually wanted it to rain today, so I could see if my creation worked as intended, but the forecast shows no precipitation expected in the days ahead.
Given that, I guess my project worked. It has stopped the sediment from pouring into our trench, hasn’t it?
While I was working in the tangled bramble of uncontrolled growth that forms the border between our property and that cultivated field to the north of us, I decided to finally address a remnant of rusted barbed wire fencing that had been swallowed by a tree.
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The tree had long ago been cut off, leaving a stump that was about the height of a fence post. Made sense, since the barbed wire ran through the tree, it was already functioning as a fence post.
Removing the rusted fencing was made easier by the fact the tree was rotting to pieces. So much of it came apart simply by prying at it with one of the old fence posts that I found myself struggling near the end, to finish it off in the same manner. Eventually, logic, and my increasingly irritating allergic reactions to pollen, led me to hasten the task by way of the chain saw.
The area looks like it has been through a serious spring cleaning now, with the added benefit of opening up visibility to the area where water flows off the neighbor’s field. It is easier to see if the barrier I built is doing the job of keeping sediment out of our ditch.
Sneeze. Cough. Drip. Stinging blink. It’s the hazardous working conditions of spring!
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Frozen Blades
It isn’t raining or snowing this morning! There are no gale force winds blowing! What a relief that is. Instead, we have a hard freeze and coldness that is reminiscent of a mid-winter day. It isn’t pleasant on an April morning, but I’ll take it. It is, for the most part, dry.
The ground was frozen enough that it was possible to walk on the muddiest sections of our trail and not sink in. There is enough blue sky visible that it looks like sunshine will be able to warm things up nicely as the day commences. We are hoping the blueness prevails long enough for that to happen.
In the mean time, …frozen blades.
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And Sold!
Got what I wanted! Yesterday afternoon I completed the sale of my old car after just 4-days of listing it on Craigslist. The first person to test drive it made an immediate decision to buy, and offered my asking price. It couldn’t have gone any easier.
I’m giving credit to Cyndie’s influence, as I needed her to meet the buyer for a test drive while I was at the day-job. Who wouldn’t want to buy a car from her? I think she charmed them into making the quick decision, then she drove home and they drove off to get the cash.
I had the title with me and would connect with all of them back in the parking lot in River Falls on my way home from work. I got there first and picked an open spot in the parking lot where I would be easy to find. After a short wait, the buyer and his mechanic showed up. They presented the payment and I started filling out the paperwork.
They seemed relieved when Cyndie finally pulled up with the car. The first thing she said to me was that I had parked in the exact same space where she had earlier in the day, when initially showing the car. Great minds think alike.
After the deal was done, and we were safely on our way home in the car I purchased last week, she shared something else. While driving to meet us for the closing details, she noticed a sheriff approaching on the highway. He had his arm out the window and was gesturing to her to slow down.
If she had gotten pulled over and ticketed, that would really have put a damper on the otherwise festive occasion. As it was, her little story just added a laugh to an incredibly smooth situation that played out for us yesterday.
Goodbye, WRX wagon. You have been a great pleasure to own and drive.
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Lambing Season
As I pulled in the driveway yesterday afternoon, I found Cyndie walking Delilah on the 26′ retractable leash. Cyndie was shaking her head as she approached my car. I glanced down at Delilah and saw that she was carrying something in her mouth. Guess who found a rabbit’s nest?
With all that length, it is easy for Delilah to explore a little ways off the trail, into the woods. By the time Cyndie realized the dog was onto something, rabbits were already scattering in 4 directions.
Before I could even get the car backed into the garage, Cyndie was calling out that our neighbor George had sent a text message that there are new lambs. Since Delilah was preoccupied with a project that we didn’t want to see, we left her on her own in the kennel and drove to George’s.
He hadn’t returned home from his farrier work trimming or shoeing horses, so Cyndie dropped off a treat of homemade muesli cookies inside his door and we went exploring on our own. We found two mommas in pens with heat lamps, each with a pair of lambs.
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It has been rewarding for us to gain an up-close view of the activity of livestock farming on the small scale.
Thank you so much, George, for coming into our lives!
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Freezing Wet
You know what is worse than freezing cold? Freezing wet. It is one condition for which we would never question whether or not to move the horses indoors. Our horses do a pretty good job of enduring exposure to snow and cold, but when it comes to rain at freezing temperatures, they need shelter.
Regardless the pleasure of early warmth we enjoyed throughout much of the month of March, the trend recently has shifted significantly away from pleasant.
It has us burning fires in the fireplace and cuddling up under blankets, drinking hot drinks.
I suppose there is a lesson for us somewhere in this situation about patience, but I don’t really need to be tempted by early warmth to get the lesson about being patient for the spring growing season to truly arrive. I’m sure I could learn it just as well with winter staying winter the whole time, and lasting well into April.
If I had any sense I’d be using this time to change the oil in the lawn tractor and finish preparing it for the long mowing season that lies ahead. The cold and wet may be lingering, but logic dictates it will eventually end.
When it does, growing things definitely won’t hesitate to respond.
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Growing Green
We don’t even recognize this brave creature that has sprouted from the earth at an alarming rate of growth in the last week. I am amazed that it is doing so despite our frequent harsh returns to winter. This beauty is exploding forth with a surprising rate of growth whenever it sees more than a few minutes of warm sunshine.
Cyndie says she has a little sign downstairs in a bag that would tell us what it is, but she doesn’t remember off-hand.
When the weather isn’t snowing and freezing, which it has done overnight more times than not lately, the green growing things have been reaching for the sky. The ground is so saturated with water that I shudder at the thought of trying to drive my lawn tractor over the grass, but it is quickly threatening to get long enough to deserve mowing.
Reminds me of the annual dilemma we face with our hay-field. We would like to cut it before it gets so overgrown that the stems get too woody, but when that maturity is developing, the ground is usually still too wet to drive on.
Also, when the tall hay growth gets cut and is laying on the ground for a couple of days to dry, it doesn’t work so well to have the ground be still saturated.
Here is a worm’s-eye view of the back yard that will need cutting soon at the rate it is growing. I wonder what it is like to try mowing a lawn that still has snow on it…
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Snowy Stones
We have been on the roller coaster of spring weather lately, mixing beautiful warm days with blasts of wintery cold. We wake up to snow and it melts by the time the sun gets high. It feels a little crazy-making, but I love the way it looks.
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This Happens
In the morning, our wake up call comes from Delilah. She sleeps in a crate beneath the spiral stairs in the main room. During my work week, when I leave the house in the early morning darkness, she regularly ignores me and stays quiet until around 7 or 7:30, if Cyndie is lucky.
It’s not exactly uncommon for Delilah to start getting vocal more than an hour earlier than desired. When it is way too early, I discovered that if one of us moves to the couch behind her crate and lays down to sleep, she will usually go back to sleep, too.
This morning was one of the occasions where it wasn’t so extremely early that it was still dark outside, but it was earlier than either of us wanted to wake up, after having stayed up a bit late last night because it was, after all, a Saturday. Cyndie, being less inclined toward sleeping on the couch for the dog, got up and let Delilah out of her crate. Then Cyndie came back to bed, hoping to get a few more minutes of shuteye before getting up for real.
That practice is based on the willingness of Delilah to calm down again after having just stretched out in expectation of starting her day. She puts her feet on the bed to check on me, she paces a bit and pants loudly. If we are lucky, she recognizes the situation and walks in a tight circle about 6 times and lays down to give us a little added slumber.
Then this happens… I realize that I have to pee.
Go figure. I am desperately trying to stay in my sleep mode, and the dog has just indicated she is willing to gift us with precious added time. I don’t have to go to work, I can sleep as long as possible, but my bladder is asking for relief.
Since I am tired, it is possible to override the body signals long enough to regain unconsciousness. It could be blissful, except for one thing. The body has its own intelligence, and it doesn’t give up without additional effort.
You know the drill. I was dreaming that it was time to leave and people were waiting for me, but before I could leave with them, I needed to use the bathroom. Actually, I think there were several bathrooms involved in this morning’s dream. Of course, a toilet couldn’t be found in any of them.
I dreamed I was peeing into something where I had mistakenly placed a kitchen utensil I had just used. Then I was peeing into a tub that had been placed where a toilet was supposed to be, but it turned out to be filled with plastic building block toys. In that case, the door was not latched and my niece’s young son wandered in, with her right behind. Soon she was commenting on my choice of receptacle.
It’s like being stuck in a labyrinth that has no end.
After Delilah decided we had enough extra time, she woke us again, interrupting my troubled sleep and freeing me from my self-inflicted imaginary dramas.
That was a relief for my mind which then, finally, allowed relief for my body.
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Harsh Winds
It didn’t rain last night and we got away with leaving the horses outside. That makes clean up much simpler. However, we didn’t expect the degree of wild weather we are getting in place of rain this morning.
Overnight we got snow, and then in the wee hours of the morning, the wind hit with a vengeance. It is a gusting wind, around 40 mph according to reports, making the house audibly stress at every joint. I discovered a stack of wood in the woodshed had toppled over, and in my dismay, I didn’t even consider the more significant fact that the shed itself is still standing.
Apparently the anchors work. It helped to have the hands-on assistance of my friend Mike Wilkus, who happens to be an architect, to rebuild the shed after winds toppled my first version. I had tightly packed this first stack of new wood in hopes of keeping the pile up until the next one over was finished, but the wood shrinks as it dries, and I’m sure the shed was flexing in these gusts, so it isn’t a big surprise things tumbled.
As we turned the corner toward the paddock from our walk through the woods with Delilah, we could see the horses were calm and collected in the relative protection from the worst gusts of wind. I am so happy for the wise placement of our barn. While the house sits on the high point of our land, where it suffers the brunt of the worst weather that arrives from the west and north, the barn is located below enough that it is generally spared.
The horses perked up when we arrived and got a bit rambunctious to warm themselves up before we served their morning feed. While we were cleaning up manure prior to putting the feed pans down, the horses did a few rounds of running, kicking, and flailing about.
Cyndie warned me that she was uncomfortable about my proximity to Legacy’s hind end, in case he decided to kick. It wasn’t him I was concerned about. The others are a lot less predictable. In fact, as Hunter approached in a frenzy, Legacy adjusted his position to protect me from the antics. What I didn’t expect was for Dezirea to decide to bustle through the narrow space between Legacy and me from the other side, because we were by the fence.
She did it anyway and landed a glancing brush of her hoof on my side as she passed through. I’m hoping she kicked the shingles out of me.
Cyndie got her “told you so” moment, and I got my lesson without suffering seriously.
I endured a lot worse abuse when I walked Delilah down to the mailbox and had to face the wind over the first rise on the way back. I think I would rather have been kicked, than beat by these frigid gale force gusts.
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Pizza Therapy
Since I don’t drive to the day-job on Fridays, Thursday nights have become my “Friday night.” Even though my work week is only 4 days long, I am no less exhausted by the end of it. Yesterday, despite all that I was struggling to manage at work, Cyndie decided to complicate it in the early afternoon with a request that I be responsible for dinner.
Sigh. Really?
Okay. I called Gina Maria’s.
One of the greatest culinary events for Cyndie and I occurred the day our long-time favorite pizzeria opened a branch within delivery range of my work place. When the guy who stopped by to announce the new location told me they could do half-baked pizzas, my heart swelled.
I had a new dinner solution, and it was Cyndie’s number 1 choice for pizza.
We invited George to join us for Thursday night pizza therapy. He calls it Thursday night Hays therapy. We think of it as “friend therapy.” Most often, our weekly dinners haven’t been pizza. Maybe it should have been “pie therapy.”
Last night, pizza was just right. Cyndie added an incredible salad and decadent “healthy” multi-berry pie for dessert. It was healthy because it had pecans and walnuts and oatmeal, along with the fruit. She even added flax seeds. I figure the healthy amount of brown sugar in the topping was how it earned that moniker.
The dessert pie was great, but the pizza pie was the key to making dinner therapeutic.
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It was pizzatacular and pizzarrific.
It’s therapizza!
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Relative Something 