Archive for September 2016
Like Artwork
Cyndie shared a scene of the horses out in the hay-field that she captured on Sunday evening and my first impression was that it looked like it was a painting.
There’s a filter for that. I dipped into the effects toolbox and came up with an oil painted version of the same view. Sometimes living here feels like being in a 3-D gallery of fine art.
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Anniversary Thirty-Five
Happy Anniversary today, Cyndie. Thirty-five years in a blink. How’d that happen?
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At the same time, today is also Julian’s birthday. Thanks for sharing this day with us, my other jwh, and making it even more special than it already was!
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How Many?
If you know me at all, it may not come as a surprise that I am having trouble deciding how many icicle prisms to hang on our cherished family heirloom lamp over the island in our kitchen. Cyndie surprised me on Thursday with the gift in honor our upcoming 35th anniversary.
When I first got the lamp hung in that spot a couple of years ago, we felt the addition of the dangling crystals might improve the way the light distributes, as well as create a better finished look for the variety of viewing angles available.
At that time, I did some shopping for the prisms, but they weren’t readily available in person and there were so many different shapes and sizes to pick from online that I was overwhelmed by the exercise of choosing.
I went with my usual solution to this dilemma and ended up doing nothing about it.
Like so many times before, Cyndie has come to the rescue. I think she made an excellent decision about what size to get. Regarding how many to buy, let’s just say there will be some spares left over. The question of how many spares is still in limbo.
As I started hanging them, it felt right to go for the max. The picture at the top of this post shows what that looked like. We loved it.
It creates a flare out that is taking me some time to get used to, making the bottom look wider.
I wondered if that might be related to the high number of icicles we used. My intuition told me, less could be more. Adding a little space between each prism was easy to do.
Deciding which I like better is proving to be not so easy. I like them both.
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Winch Works
I discovered that my problem with the dead winch on our ATV wasn’t the winch or the solenoid. It all works just fine if the wires are properly segregated. What would mess with the wiring?
RODENT invaders!
What is the deal with mice and chipmunks that they choose to chew on wires? Does the plastic coating taste good to them? Are they trying to get more copper in their diet?
The other question I have, from driving past farm after farm with equipment parked outside year round, is how they deal with the constant threat of damage from nesting critters.
We leave our truck parked outside most of the time, and now when we lift the hood there is the disconcerting sound of collected acorns rolling down inside the lid.
The heat tapes that our gutter installer put in the problem spots of our roof and routed through the downspout and into the garage to the AC outlets only lasted one year before rodents chewed through both of them.
Maybe this explains why one of our neighbors has so many outdoor cats. A way to keep the rodents at bay.
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Where
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where are all the people
we meet along the way
for just a moment
for days, weeks, even months
sometimes years
who then vanish
for any number of reasons
they’re just gone
from our lives
as we all bob along
in life’s flow
from place to place
one job to the next
or schools
or towns that became home
surrounded by even more people
we don’t know at all
coexisting with strangers
extras in our movie
always there
but not really there at all
mobile mannequins
starring in their own biopics
that oddly don’t interact with ours
as scenes play out side by side
day after day
on the highways, in restaurants, and stores
the paths of our parks
with pets in tow
all these people we don’t even know
without the ones we did for a time
who’ve exited, stage left
while we continue on
with our small cast of family
and unique special friends
floating together
where the current goes
in the mysterious sea
of humanity
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It’ll Do
I have seen perfection. This is not it. I have witnessed the results of master craftsmanship next door at the lake place. First you flawlessly prepare the logs, then you apply coat after coat of tung oil to get a beautiful finish that will protect your logs from the elements.
I don’t have it in me.
Currently distracted with trying to do the necessary lumberjack work around here, tend to the all-too-frequent lawn mowing requirements, manage the unending supply of manure to be composted, fix fences, maintain trails, replace the ATV winch, cut the over growing pastures, rake the round pen, fill in the growing ravines in the paddocks, and work the day-job, I have elected to try getting away with doing an almost embarrassingly perfunctory job of patching the most needy bad spots on the house and shop garage.
If I actually execute this plan, it will be a big accomplishment of overcoming my perfectionistic tendencies.
Yesterday after work I ran a little test to see if putting the least amount of effort toward the task will produce a passable result. We have the advantage of already having plenty of cans of stain that were left by the previous owners, but I have no idea about the shelf life of this stuff, so the advantage comes without providing much in the way of confidence.
I followed up on a tip to use compressed air to help remove the old flaking finish, but quickly found my tank isn’t designed for the task. The pressure drops rather quickly, greatly reducing the effectiveness. After testing a few other methods, I settled on doing a rather superficial job of surface cleaning.
I was excited to find a stirring apparatus stored with the stain that I can connect to my drill for thoroughly mixing the product. The one half-filled can I opened looked fine to my untrained eye, so after a good stir, I dipped in a brush and started painting the stuff on the siding.
It may not look ideal and it probably isn’t going to provide maximum protection, but it is better than doing nothing at all, which was the option we went with last fall.
All things considered, I’m hopeful this effort will suffice for getting through another winter, at the very least.
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Entryway 2.1
Back in the first week of August, I posted about the bush at the front door of our house dying an unexplained death. A few days after I published the picture, I arrived home from work to find the dead branches all gone.
Cyndie had cut it back to the main trunk, saving that for me in case I wanted to balance some rocks on it.
That was all the invitation I needed.
I didn’t actually believe this would last as long as it has. When I pass by with the lawn tractor while mowing, I fully expect the stone to topple over from the vibration, but it has survived multiple mowings thus far without falling. There have been a few rainy and windy days, too, but it continues to stand.
I never expect balanced rocks to last, but when they endure for long periods of time, I grow increasingly attached to them. It becomes hard to try something fresh after they come down, because I get more interested in trying to get back what we had before.
That’s probably a good metaphorical life-lesson for me right there.
I’ll ponder that as I gaze a while longer at the mesmerizing balanced stone.
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Unsurprising Revelation
It does not surprise me one bit that recently discovered documents reveal the influence the sugar industry applied to deflect attention away from sugar and toward saturated fats as the culprit in a link with heart disease back in the 1960s.
This successfully contributed to a national campaign to reduce fat in our diets. How ironic that the net result some 50+ years later is an epidemic of obesity.
I bet that’s not hard on people’s hearts.
A trade group called the Sugar Research Foundation, known today as the Sugar Association, paid three Harvard scientists to publish a report and made it clear that they wanted the results to favor sugar. The rest is history. Bravo. They have profited handsomely and altered the health of a nation for the worse.
The food industry responded by reducing fat in their products, and adding sugar.
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Please, read the labels of processed foods you eat and pay attention to both the serving size and the grams of sugar. You won’t be able to see what percentage of the daily recommended amount of sugar the food contains, because industry lobbyists have successfully influenced politicians to keep that incriminating fact out of sight.
We have to do the math ourselves. Be informed. Eat smart. Be healthy.
Good luck. You will be up against an industry that is banking on people not stopping themselves.
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Feel It?
The sun set at 7:30 last night. The last two nights were chilly enough to require sleeping well-tucked under the covers. Change is upon us once again. We have color showing up in the trees. I was inspired to apply a new coat of waterproofing to my boots.
There is no doubt about what lies in store for us in the weeks ahead.
Shorter days and colder temperatures bring a shift in priorities. I need to start identifying items that shouldn’t freeze and moving them to safe storage.
It occurs to me now that I still haven’t fixed the winch on the Grizzly, which I will need for the snow plow blade this winter.
How’s that for living in the moment? I’m already thinking about snow season.
While I’m focused on the future, the sunny September weather is serving up some delicious days. It wasn’t lost on me yesterday, as I basked in the warm glowing sunshine with the cool gusts of wind.
Cyndie started the day working with clients in the arena space and later moved to the round pen. It had dried up wonderfully, allowing activities to proceed as intended.
This time of year is pretty dreamy around here, when it isn’t rainy. It’s my favorite.
At the same time, it tends to bring with it a feeling that the other shoe is about to drop.
I can feel it coming.
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Definitely Wet
Cyndie is leading a workshop session this weekend, which normally involves use of the round pen. Friday, in preparation, she spent some time pulling weeds from the sand because the wetness made the chore easy. After that, the plan was to drag the pen with the rake behind the ATV.
Unfortunately, it was too wet for the 4-wheeler. I waited until yesterday and then checked on whether I should try raking it by hand. It was even wetter than she had described.
That happens around here. After a day of sun, when you’d think the ground should be getting dryer, it actually gets wetter. It takes a day or two for the ground water to make its way through our property from land above ours.
Yesterday morning the round pen sand was like soup in places.
—For some reason, that picture tends to look reversed to me upon first viewing, so that the footprints appear raised up above the background. Sometimes it is a struggle to get my brain to correct the perception, but when it suddenly does, I find it almost impossible to go back and see it as I previously had. An interesting optical illusion.—
While I was raking the muddy slop, the horses meandered over to offer their moral support, grazing nearby.
I’ll check the sand again this morning, in case the low dew point temperature, sunshine, and breezes of yesterday helped dry things enough to make it useable, but I’ll be surprised if it did. I was mowing through standing water in a few places yesterday afternoon.
The grounds are definitely wet around here, top to bottom.
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Relative Something 