Archive for October 2016
October Flowers
It’s All Hallow’s Eve and we have still got some flowers blooming. Who’da thunk it?
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Today is the 25th anniversary of a blizzard that hit the Twin Cities in 1991. One of my memories of that event is of our next-door neighbor trying to navigate his car through the mess of deep snow and ice on the road and his not being able to get into his uncleared driveway. There was still a MN Twins flag attached to his car, a remnant of the 2nd World Series championship the team had just accomplished days before.
It seemed so surreal to me. Baseball. Halloween. Blizzard. It was rather odd.
It was actually morning of the next day and I was standing in our driveway, almost finished with shoveling the 2-feet of snow we had received. We mutually agreed he should park his car in our driveway until he got his cleared.
That storm now serves as a benchmark for me to always be aware that winter could arrive all at once, in one big storm that changes from a warm fall afternoon to snow that lasts a season, all in a matter of a few days. And it could happen in October.
Which is similar to the benchmark I now use for spring snowstorms. The first year we lived here, in May of 2013, we received 18 inches of snow. Who’da thunk it?
It could happen.
But it doesn’t look like we will have any worries of snow in October this year. More likely, we’ll have November flowers.
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Shaping Terrain
Despite the sprinkling rain that pestered most of the day yesterday, I decided to try moving some dirt and turf from the drainage ditch along our southern property line to the adjacent sloped path.
When the new fence was installed and the drainage ditch improved, there wasn’t much width remaining beside a little bend in the fence. It was an impediment to being able to use the tractor to mow that section of path around the outside of the hay-field fence.
Originally, I envisioned using the loader on the tractor to dig out the sediment that has been accumulating in the ditch, but it hasn’t been dry enough to do that for months.
Since I was already working along that fence line this weekend, I decided to see what I could accomplish using a shovel to dig it out by hand. It was a little messy, and a bit tedious, but it was probably a better method for then using the material removed to improve the path.
Using blocks of dirt and turf that I could barely lift with the shovel, I built up the low side until it was wide enough to fit at least the lawn tractor, for now. Might be dicey fitting the diesel around that bend.
The strip around the fence only received infrequent attention and would grow tall and thick, so I had been mowing navigable portions with the brush cutter. Now that I will be able to drive the lawn tractor around, it will be convenient enough that I can keep it cut short all the time.
Well, as short at the rest of the lawn, which all grows so fast that short is a relative term.
With that little narrow bend of path fixed, there was only one other barrier remaining to allow driving the full circumference of our horse-fenced fields. Back in the corner by the woods there is an old ravine that was created by years of water runoff. Previous owners had dumped a lot of old broken up concrete in it to slow the erosion.
We have created a better defined intentional swale a short distance above that directing the bulk of energized flow into the main drainage ditch. It crossed my mind to fill in the ravine, but some water still wants to follow the ease of that natural route and I’d rather not fight it.
Simple solution: a bridge. For now, nothing fancy. I used a few left over fence posts and then broke down and actually purchased additional lumber to make it wide enough to drive across.
I placed them across the washout yesterday in the rain, leaving the task of cutting a notch in the dirt on each side to level them for today.
Then I will be driving to the airport to pick up George and Anneliese. I’ve come to the end of my solo weekend on the ranch. They are going to return the favor of airport transport after midnight tonight when Cyndie arrives home from Guatemala, so I can get some sleep before the start of my work week.
I’m looking forward to having everyone home again.
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Straightening Posts
With my trusty companion, Delilah, tagging along, I lugged tools across the pasture to finally deal with a corner post that had been bugging me for months because of its ever-increasing lean.
Starting with chains and a come-along, I quickly discovered that the angle I was dealing with was compound.
I would need to pull from both directions. There was a problem with that, though. There wasn’t anything to pull against in the second direction.
While Delilah and I surveyed the situation, the neighbors suddenly showed great interest in our presence.
The cows came running up to the fence around their pasture and stared at us expectantly. I think maybe that leaning post was bugging them, too.
Since I couldn’t pull in that second direction, I decided to push. I got the tractor.
It worked pretty slick, although it required a lot of climbing on and off to check the progress. Delilah wasn’t offering any assistance at that point, and I couldn’t see if it was straight from the tractor seat.
Once I had it where I wanted it, there was a long process of trying to pack the soil around the posts to a point that would hold them in place after I released the supporting pressure. In fact, just to be sure, I left the come-along and chains in place overnight, even though I had put the tractor back in the garage.
A little insurance while the soil dries out and settles for the long haul, which I hope lasts for a very long time. Of course, that part about dry soil won’t last long at all. It is supposed to rain again this afternoon and tonight.
I wonder if I packed the soil firmly enough.
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Revisiting Drops
From the Relative Something archives, last night I randomly popped in on March of 2010, from which I have selected a poem for reposting today. With no particular reason in mind, I (re)-present: Dew Drops.
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early today
when it’s hard to decide
whether to stay in bed
or get up instead
and go outside
there is a part of me
that already knows
plan as I might
all the time just goes
somewhere far
away from here
and that one chance I had
up and disappears
like a wispy wet cloud
of dew drops and tears
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.It is possible that my unconscious mind is contemplating the fact that I have a weekend brimming with potential ahead of me, and a simmering trepidation that I might let it slip away without accomplishing much in the way of rewarding results. Or maybe it’s just that I am too tired to think through writing something fresh and new.
I drove George and Anneliese to the airport very early in the morning yesterday, at the expense of a long night’s sleep. Now I’m on my own for the weekend, which could mean I won’t have any distractions and will get a lot done, or it could lead to a loss of motivation that spawns an excessive amount of sloth-ness breaking out.
I feel as though I wouldn’t have any difficulty in framing a few prolonged bouts of sleeping as a much-needed and highly valuable thing to do.
Even as all the time goes and chances to do things up and disappear.
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Rain’s Back
At least we had a week where it didn’t rain on us. Yesterday afternoon, the ground was just starting to show signs of drying out a bit. That’s over now. 
The horses were grazing in a tight cluster under the gloomy sky. I’m pretty sure they had a sense of what was coming our way. The precipitation made a slow approach, prolonging the wait for the inevitable.
I had just the plan for a rainy night. I had volunteered to prepare dinner for George and Anneliese, and I was serving up my specialty. I brought home a pizza.
That meant we could warm up the kitchen by using the oven. But, shhhh… don’t tell Cyndie. I had her favorite pizza delivered to my workplace, half-baked. She wouldn’t want to know she was missing her beloved deep-dish and more episodes of our current tv series addiction, 2007’s “Life” with Damian Lewis, Sarah Shahi, and Adam Arkin.
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We’ll keep that secret just between us.
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Sun Basking
This time of year around these parts, when there is warm sun painting the afternoon, you best soak it up to the fullest extent possible. After tending to the horses when I got home from work yesterday, Delilah and I were making our way back to the house and were overcome by an irresistible urge to pause and bask in the glorious warm autumn sunshine.
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After I took a few portraits of her, Delilah said she wanted to take some pictures of me. I gave her the phone and struck a pose.
She said she needed to fix something. My nose was runny.
If I used Facebook, I’d have to update my profile picture with that one.
.It was pretty funny watching her hold the phone in her teeth as she reached up with her paw to touch the button for the photos.
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Soccer Again
Yesterday, Elysa and I got to see the US Women’s soccer team in a friendly match against Switzerland at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
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Once again, we took the light rail train from her neighborhood to the stadium. My vague plan worked out perfectly and we entered the correct gate of the facility to put us directly at our section. For this game, I selected seating on the opposite side of the field from where we sat for the International Champions Cup match back in August.
These seats were also located a lot closer to the field. It was great to be able to hear the chatter from the players as they directed each other during play.
Unfortunately, whatever was used in attempt to mask the NFL markings on the field made for a rather ugly backdrop, but once the action started, I didn’t have a problem ignoring that.
I have very limited knowledge about our national team, and absolutely none about the Swiss, but quickly discovered Switzerland is pretty good. They played smart and executed very well, jumping out to a 1-0 lead and dominating play while putting us on our heels.
The US was able to tie it up after a smashing goal by none other than Carli Loyd before the half was over.
I don’t know what happened at halftime, but the second half performance by the US side was completely different. We dominated play and scored a variety of nice goals, winning the game by a pretty dominating score of 5-1.
It wasn’t until I got home after the game that I read that these two teams had already met in a match held earlier in the week. The US won that one as well, 4-0, so maybe the home team was just playing a little too overconfident during the first half of this game.
Maybe the best thing about the match for me was that it kept me from being able to witness the sad performance by the NFL Vikings in their first loss of the season. Those are just the kinds of games that make me want to stop watching the home team altogether.
A bad game in any team sport is so much easier to watch when it is not my home team that’s stinkin’ up the place.
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That Time
It’s that time again. Now is the time of year when it is very easy to see the common buckthorn leaves in the woods, because they stay green longer than our other trees. Buckthorn is a non-native invasive tree that makes a great hedge, but given free rein, can block out all others here and take over the landscape.
I let the buckthorn get out of hand on our previous tiny lot in the suburbs, so I have first-hand experience on what can happen, and what it takes to eradicate it. Now we have a LOT more property to police, which makes it a difficult thing to control, but I still want to put effort toward keeping it at bay.
There are still a few other plants that also have their leaves, so it isn’t as simple as pulling up or cutting down anything that is still green. Most of them are relatively easy to recognize as something other than buckthorn, but there is one in our woods with leaves that look surprisingly close to those of the buckthorn.
Usually, if I’m not absolutely sure, I just skip over it for the time being. Once you know what buckthorn leaves look like, it is pretty clear when you come upon them.
The saplings are rather easy to just pull out of the ground, and the area where I was working was very wet, so that gave me even more inspiration to try pulling most of what I found.
Some were just too big, obviously ones I hadn’t properly dealt with a year ago to have grown so large. Those I had to cut down with a saw.
The pulling is just so much quicker and more rewarding. I knock the dirt off the roots and dangle them over some nearby branches to wither and dry. Delilah loves to help with the root pulling. She claws away at the dirt and then grabs the roots in her teeth and pulls.
Sometimes we end up pulling against each other.
It is a serious full-body workout to pull the bigger ones. It ends up becoming a challenge for me to see if I can dislodge the next size larger trees by gripping them with my legs bent and then trying to stand up. I need my legs to do the bulk of the work, not my back.
At one point when I felt my legs tiring of the effort, I looked over to see how Delilah was holding up. She was sound asleep in a nap.
Yeah, it is really an exhausting exercise.
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Micro Climates
This morning while walking the trails with Delilah instead of lingering in bed to write this blog post, (because Cyndie is gone for 10-days to Guatemala visiting Dunia and family, helping guide some equine-assisted seminars while there) I was struck anew by how different our property is in as little as a few feet separation.
In the woods, the prominent grouping of trees change from oaks and maples to butternut and poplar. The trail transitions from hard soil to mossy to grassy to muddy to sticks and dirt.
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I paused to take a picture of a spot that grows a beautiful carpet of medium-length grass and Delilah photobombed it. I like it!
Popping out of the woods, suddenly we are walking beside open fields, each that have their own characteristics of differing grasses, prominent weeds, and volunteer trees trying to grow. Of course, we also have paddocks with horses in them.
Cayenne had isolated herself away from the rest of the herd by grazing a spot that dead-ended around the round pen and she was making her way back to the paddock upon noticing Delilah and I approaching. I figured the morning feed was her priority, but when dog and I came around the bend I found her nose to nose with Hunter.
He received her invitation and they set about grooming each other before coming up to eat the morning serving from their feed pans.
Standing with the horses, the muddy trail at the bottom of the hill in the woods seems like it must be miles away.
It is only a minute away by foot.
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Relative Something 