Archive for November 2016
How
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that light
is too bright
especially at this time of night
I can feel my eyes
putting up a fight
with hopes of saving
some small shred of sight
despite the unwelcome fright
of seeing what just might
transpire
I cannot understand
how so many people
would knowingly raise their hand
in support of one particular man
who has demonstrated time and again
so many traits unpleasant
while he repeatedly fanned
flames of hate, fear, and banned
good sense or even
complete sentences of real plans
just a catch phrase or two
bullying braggadocio
rising on the worst
his cultivations rehearsed
to prey on some rabid thirst
void of real love and honesty
what remains is some kind of curse
how?
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Another Tool
I have totally abandoned my attachment to manual saws for trimming high limbs, and I know exactly why it happened. I have enjoyed nothing but successful ease with our two Stihl small gas engines after making the leap of buying a chainsaw and trimmer.
They were my gateway drug.
It took nothing more than a casual work-place conversation reference to a chainsaw on an extension pole to trigger my conviction that that was exactly the tool I needed. We already keep a jug of mixed gas and have experience with two very similar engines. What’s one more?
When a discount coupon arrived in the mail from my favorite hardware store —the one that has supplied my fix of other Stihl equipment— I was all in. It felt a little like I was being possessed by Tim Allen’s grunting tool guy.
The first tall branch where I hoped to test it turned out to be a bit more than what I could reach. Why start small? I quickly learned its limitations. Even standing on my ladder, I couldn’t lift the motorized pole high enough to reach the height where the limb had snapped and was dangling.
It seems like it should be so simple in theory, but the combination of difficult angles, heavy weight of the motor and pole, and awkward leverage of the long reach make using this tool a complex challenge.
Still, it will be a very helpful addition to my arsenal for clearing overhead branches along our trails. Also, and maybe even of more significance, it will serve us well in creating a high hedge-like wall of growth along our northern border where our neighbor grows a field of corn.
For those of you keeping score, this now makes it four small gas engines, …and still not a leaf blower among them.
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Now
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what we don’t know
that waits around the corner
is not there
until we show up
if we do
with our bells on
it is our time
our moment
notes of a song
real
happening like laughter
singing
because timing
that is everything
is actual
like now
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Adding Siding
Record warmth yesterday, and we spent almost all of it chipping away at the somewhat tedious task of siding the chicken coop with salvaged lumber. It feels a little like I’ve made this project more complicated than it deserves, but I justify it in my mind as a good exercise in teaching myself carpentry skills.
I’ve never tried to make cabinets and had no clue about mounting a hinged door. We started small and did the narrow opening for accessing the poop board. It turned out a little too tight, but filing edges has been enough to make it work.
Next, we hung the three-hinge people door. I’m still unsure of the essential details that need to be considered, but somehow I seem to have faked my way through it and ended up with a door the appears to work perfectly.
Working in the hot sun was almost too uncomfortable, but since it is November, it seemed a little inconsiderate to frame that hardship as a complaint.
The warming of our planet does come with some short-term perks in the interim before whatever large-scale calamity will eventually doom civilization as we know it.
Using the boards we salvaged from pallets, we are now slowly but surely working our way up the walls with a piecemeal patchwork of siding. It is creative fun for a while, and then gets a little too tricky around openings and edges that require excessive amounts of measuring and cutting to fit.
Whose idea was it to make this thing so complicated, anyway?
Good things come to those who wait, and with that, I expect to be happy with this mansion of a chicken coop when it is finally completed.
More importantly, it is my hope that some chickens will be very, very happy with it, too.
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Beneath Trees
After a bit of a pause in construction, I was stepping out to work on the chicken coop again yesterday, now that Cyndie is home to lend a helping hand. We were taking advantage of the very summer-like weather gracing our region this first week of November.
Striding across the yard I was suddenly struck by how distinctly different the carpet of leaves was within just a few steps. Photo op!
Beneath a big old oak tree that holds most of its dried leaves through the winter.
Next tree over is a dominant poplar that lost a significant portion of its top in a storm during the summer.
On the other side of the driveway, the grove of maples create a thick layer of light crunchy playfulness that is a delight to walk through.
Another example of the micro-environments that collectively make up the paradise where we live. We call it Wintervale Ranch.
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Boulders Rocking
While we were standing around the center of labyrinth Wednesday night, I glanced at the big boulders and immediately sensed something seemed different. One of them seems to be settling into an increased lean away from the other. It comes as no surprise, since the soil is so incredibly saturated around here. 
It has me wondering what it will be like this winter when the ground freezes. Will the excess water in the surface soil create more in the way of heaving? Could those boulders get pushed over on their sides?
Maybe when the tree finally gets established, we can get rid of the boulders altogether and let the maple take their place.
What do I mean by we ? By the time that happens, I probably won’t be around anymore and those decisions will likely be someone else’s to make.
For this moment, I am going to work on tending to the boulders to the best of my ability, while also finding a way to adjust my attitude so that I will accept the unexpected results that nature serves up.
I’m sure hoping that nature will serve up a healthy and vibrant transplanted tree. If that happens, I will find it much less concerning if/when the boulders shift into a new and different orientation from the one with which we started.
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Trying Again
Despite a strong inclination I have had to just shut up about the tree transplanting —at least until we finally meet with success in this one particular spot— I can’t stop myself from reporting the story. We have waited for most of the summer to pull out the previous dead tree from the center of the labyrinth, even though it was long ago obvious it hadn’t survived.
There was no hurry, because our plan for the next attempt was to wait until the trees drop their leaves before trying again.
The trees have dropped their leaves.
Earlier in the summer, when we knew we would need to try again, I searched through the saplings beneath the magnificent maple tree that has been my inspiration all along. I like envisioning what one of the offspring of that beauty will look like in the middle of the labyrinth garden when it reaches the same maturity of years.
I selected and marked a tree that I liked. Then we waited.
Yesterday was the day we picked to execute our fourth try at transplanting one of our maple trees to the center of the labyrinth. Cyndie dug out the hole in preparation and when I got home from work, we set about the challenging task of extricating our selection from the spot where it originated.
It didn’t want to come out easily.
With daylight fading, we finally wrested our new hope from the earth’s grasp. Using a wheelbarrow, we transported the tree to the labyrinth and slid it into the hole.
With all the tender loving care we could muster, we prepared the new home for this tree. Now we wait. Nature needs to do the rest.
And if it doesn’t take, I’m just going to keep trying, all the while debating whether I will do so covertly, or choose to continue chronicling the possible repetition of failures.
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Goal Achieved
I was wearing a short-sleeve tee-shirt and mowing grass in the warm afternoon sunshine on November 1st. Whaaaaat?
It’s for real. Of course, I also then went inside and watched some baseball on television afterward. It’s like a summer with no end. Something tells me it might make winter’s inevitable arrival come on with an abrupt switch when it finally hits.
So, my main motivation to get out on the lawn tractor was to test out my latest landscaping efforts and see how navigable the path around the southern fence lines is.
It worked! Not flawlessly, but it did work. I have wanted to accomplish this goal for a long time, so this was very satisfying.
There are two spots in particular where I needed to get off the tractor to lift it over a too-steep hazard where there are runoff trenches across the path. If I want to be able to drive across these, I’m going to need to modify them to create much more gradual sloping edges.
That can be done, but it’s not imperative that it happen right away. I’m kinda hoping our grass will stop growing and the snow season will arrive soon enough that I won’t need to be driving around there again until next spring.
After I completed a return trip along that fence line, I turned the corner and was headed toward the labyrinth garden. There, I discovered two deer casually grazing the variety of growing treats within. They looked up at me with mild curiosity, surveying my approach. It surprised me a bit that they didn’t act alarmed or run off.
So I just kept rolling toward them, pulling out my phone to see if I could capture them in a picture to share with Cyndie.
They’re there, but the natural concealment of their coloring is very noticeable, because they are mostly not!
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Some Days
Yesterday at work I found myself a little short of feeling like my best. Was it simply a result of it being a Monday? Possibly. More likely, it had something to do with a sub-par night’s sleep. I couldn’t get myself to turn off the Cubbies Sunday night as they eked out a victory in game 5 of the World Series. That kept me up past my bedtime.
In addition, my days of having the whole bed to myself came to an end when Cyndie arrived home from visiting the Morales family in Guatemala in the wee hours of oh-dark-thirty. That’s about the worst time of night to have a sleep cycle interrupted.
As I sat at my desk trying to shake out the cobwebs, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I should have just stayed home for the day. It wasn’t anything physical. I felt fine, I just didn’t feel all that… fine.
Then an issue needed to be addressed, and another, and another. Good thing I didn’t stay home. I may not have been my best, but I was present and available to at least contribute in the moment. Some days we need to allow ourselves to accept this as good enough. Half-speed is better than no speed at all when there is work to be done.
So, Cyndie got home in the middle of the night and I left for work in the dark of morning. She was back, but I hadn’t seen her yet, so I was getting excited to get home. I had no idea I would find this:
She had a fire in the fireplace and the kitchen filled with the aroma of fresh-baked cookies, there were scones she’d baked for breakfast, and that bread was rising on the stove. Oh, and it was nice to be able to see her, too.
As it was, a day that started out less than fine, turned out pretty darn good in the end.
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Relative Something 