Archive for June 2017
Getting Scary
This is starting to get a little scary now. First, my wife gets her face bashed in by a relatively far-fetched event of stepping on a rake. Then, a few days later, her right arm gets yanked out of the socket, tearing her rotator cuff and tendons in two places.
She toughed it out for a day or two with ice and ibuprofen, until the pain and dysfunction became unbearable. That led to a visit to Urgent Care, where she was told to get an MRI and see an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in shoulders.
He sensed a necessity to conduct a thorough interview to see if Cyndie feels safe at home.
“Stepped on a rake.” Yeah, right.
“My horse got startled by the chickens and her panicked lurch pulled the lead line I was holding in my right hand while attempting to secure the paddock gate with my other hand.”
“Are you SURE you feel safe at home?”
John might be getting a surprise visit from a social worker in the days ahead.
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Beating Heat
Although Arabian horses were bred to perform under harsh desert conditions, the humidity that we get with our high heat is enough to make all species a little irritated. In the summer, we offer our horses a warm dusty breeze that moves enough air to toss their manes and chase off some flies.
It actually seems like little comfort, blowing hot, humid air, but Legacy has taken a particular liking to it.
Delilah prefers to lay on the cool tile in the house. Her fur coat doesn’t allow for wind to be much help. Luckily, she is a big fan of sprayed water from the hose, so we can shrink her coat dramatically by getting her wet.
We are arriving upon my last weekend before the annual June biking and camping week. I will be looking for a way to spend some time on the bike seat without putting myself at risk of heat stroke. It would be really helpful if I could rig up a mount on my tractor instead, so I could sit on my bike seat while mowing the lawn.
Speaking of mowing, I will be picking up the old Craftsman rider from the shop this morning. Now I can return the borrowed John Deere and get back to my own rig. I’ll be able to find out if it runs well under intense heat, that’s for sure.
The summer heat has brought out the lightning bugs. With the strawberry moon glowing brilliantly last night, the neon green flashes dancing above the tall grasses made for a glorious nighttime walk with Delilah as I rolled the trash and recycling bins down to the road.
George has come back for the weekend while he is serving his farrier clients in the region. I tended to the horses while he trimmed our herd after dinner. Cayenne is making good progress. He removed her shoes and left her bare foot again.
It may be hot, but things here are actually running pretty cool.
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Battling Growth
Sometimes it does feel a little like a battle against a siege of growing greenery. The lawn grass that I cut with the borrowed mower the other day now looks like I’ve neglected it for a couple of weeks. Now imagine what the areas that haven’t been cut at all look like.
The two pastures we refer to as “back” and “north,” are over two feet tall. I was just starting to mow the back pasture last Saturday when the sound from the brush cutter caused me to stop and check on the gear box. There’s some serious mowing left to be done back there still.
Yesterday afternoon, Cyndie laid down some pool noodles in the arena space to do an exercise with the horses. She said it didn’t work very well because the grass was too tall and it was hard to see the noodles. I decided to get that cut before resuming work with the brush cutter.
First, I needed to sharpen and adjust the blades on the reel mower for Cyndie so she could use it on the labyrinth. Seriously, there is nowhere that doesn’t need mowing right now, pretty much on an every-other-day basis.
We try to keep the arena grass as short as possible, usually mowing it with the rider. I ventured in there after dinner last night with the borrowed tractor and quickly discovered the grass had grown a lot longer than was noticeable from a distance.
It was so long and thick in places that I needed to make a first pass at a high setting, to enable mowing it a second time at the lowest one.
While I did laps on the rider, Cyndie worked the fence line with the power trimmer.
A couple of soldiers fighting the good fight for order and scenic well-being against the growing chaos and unwelcome infestations.
Seriously, it’s like landscape warfare.
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Objective Achieved
Obviously, we have many objectives, and quite frankly –due in many ways to my lack of bringing projects to fruition– we have not achieved a great majority of them. However, if we were to focus on the dream of having chickens to scratch and spread piles of manure while eating bugs to help control pests… Objective achieved!
After dinner last night, Cyndie and I made a hay run to haul another pickup-load of bales from our latest supplier. We marveled over the phenomena of cultivating social capital to foster good will with the many service providers we have come to know in the area.
We are both intent on making the most of our limited time and work to maximize productiveness of the short hours available when I get home from the day-job. I squeezed in a couple of errands on the way home, including a stop at the repair shop that couldn’t identify any problem with the Kohler engine in my riding mower [grumble, grumble].
We settled on focusing his attention on the carburetor.
After squeezing in a very quick meal, we hustled to reach the hay farm at the appointed hour. Our new friend, Scott, entertained us with story after story while rolling bales perfectly into place for me to load. As I attached straps to hold down the bales, Scott tried a quick-fix to screw the rusted step-bar on the passenger side back onto the rusted frame, alas to no avail.
Then we chatted some more while half of me wanted to hustle home. The other half of me wanted to stay as long as he offered to visit. There have been very few, if any, interactions with folks that don’t involve some extended chatting. It’s really pretty precious.
It generates a social capital that we highly value. Projects can grow to take a fair amount of additional time, but the benefits of our interactions are always worth it.
The other errand I ran on the way home from work was to the implement dealer to see if they had any advice regarding the leaky gear box on our brush cutter. The last time I added gear oil, it seemed like it disappeared surprisingly fast. Then I spotted the dark wetness on the flywheel below and concluded the seals were bad.
An internet search on the subject was very entertaining. In classic form, I found multiple discussions where opposing views alternated with every other comment on discussion boards.
Corn Head Grease seemed to be a common recommendation. There were farmers who switched to grease over oil and hadn’t had a problem in 40 years. There were as many advisors who said absolutely don’t use grease, as it will move away from the friction points by the force of the spin.
Some wrote that they mixed oil with the grease to get the best of both worlds. The lubrication manufacturers strongly state one should never mix the two.
After twice scanning the offerings at the implement dealer, the clerk at the parts desk asked if he could help me find anything. At that same moment, my eyes landed on the answer to the question I was about to ask.
Farm oyl makes the very product I was hoping existed.
That’s one of those mini objectives, achieved.
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Okay Already
I’ll tell. I’ll tell. Enough time has passed that she’s gotten over the shock and trauma and has been able to have a few good laugh-till-out-of-breath moments over her escapade on Saturday.
Cyndie stepped on a rake.
There. I said it. It’s true. Yep. A rake.
I’m pretty sure OSHA would not approve of the unsafe work practice of letting a rake lay on the ground with the tines all pointing at the sky, but she somehow let that happen. How many times can you do that and not suffer any consequences?
Doesn’t matter. All it takes is once…
I gotta clarify, though, this was no standard namby pamby garden rake. She was working with the dreaded level head bow rake. Yeah. Ouch.
It wasn’t a slow roll up to her noggin’ it was a lethal instant THWAP to the head.
Cyndie was under the willow tree at the time of the incident, and a gust of wind blew the wispy branches in her face. In her (probably somewhat out-of-balance) reaction, she planted a foot to catch herself and stomped on the business end of the rake.
The sound made by the handle smacking her skull was frightening. Then, that was followed by equally frightening sounds of her pained reaction.
Thank goodness that’s behind us now and we can laugh about it.
We celebrated her birthday yesterday by installing a silt fence uphill of her garden of flowering perennials which was inundated by the flash flood a few weeks ago. If the bizarre laws of “the way things go” plays out, now that we have this in place, it won’t rain again for months and months.
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Just in case it does, and comes in one of those all too frequent 4-inch-at-a-time hundred-year events that happen multiple times a year now, we think we have a better chance of controlling the flood.
Time will tell.
Moral of the story, be careful out there. And always lay your rake with the tines down.
Yep, just like the cartoons. WHAM!
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Bang. Ouch!
This morning, the horses grazing in the arena space to the choral serenade of innumerable songbirds was right up there on a list of top idyllic moments we enjoy at our Wintervale paradise.
That is in stark contrast to the anxious drama that played out yesterday.
It started normal enough, but quickly shifted when a startling accident drew blood. For me, it was the sound that was most unsettling. The cries and curses, and then the flowing blood were all more of a given, considering the indescribable sound of impact and the reaction it unleashed.
I rushed over to Cyndie’s aid and worked to calm her while I recovered her glasses and guided her out from under the willow tree and up the driveway to the house. I had immediately placed my hand over her bloody forehead and then told her to use her own hand to keep pressure on the wound while we walked.
Not having taken time to immediately inspect the source of all the blood, I imagined a series of possibilities while we walked. I was also factoring in a potential trip to an emergency room to get her stitched up. Luckily, that turned out to be unnecessary.
Today is Cyndie’s birthday. She has given herself a hell of a black eye for the occasion. That, and a story to tell.
I’m not sure it is my place to reveal the full detail of her foible, but let’s just say you have probably witnessed the scenario play out on a few cartoons or slapstick episodes of Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges.
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Wish her a happy birthday. 🙂
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Feeling Summer
I like the simple designation of meteorological seasons by month, over the astrological solstice and equinox markers. My brain senses the longest day should mark the middle of summer and the shortest day, the middle of winter. By meteorological reference, summer happens in June, July, and August.
It sure felt like summer on the second day of June this year. Last night, as we tried to cool the house by opening windows to the evening air, the enticing sounds of heavy, distant rumbling thunder rolled slowly closer and closer. Eventually, we enjoyed an almost gentle thunderstorm that this morning has left barely a trace of its visit.
Except for the amazing response of growing things. Our landscape is under siege.
Just beyond our deck, the previous prominent low spruce is getting swallowed by ferns from behind and volunteer cedar trees from the front. The clematis on our trellis is being crowded out by a volunteer maple that decided to make itself at home there.
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I don’t understand why the scotch pine to the left of the trellis is so anemic. Everything around it is growing fast and furious. It is possibly being hindered by the same affliction taking down so many of our long needle pines.
The ornamental reeds in our little garden pond are spreading themselves well beyond the edges, giving the impression they will soon fill the space if left unhampered.
Meanwhile, the climbing vines are voraciously trying to blanket all of our trees, the unwanted grasses taking over our pastures, and poison ivy is thriving like you wouldn’t believe.
What’s a gardener to do? I tend to prefer a hands-off approach to the nature-scape, but we are finding the land inundated with invasives and trouble-makers that require decisive action. Desirables like maple trees are sprouting in places where they don’t belong, and though prized, will become problems if neglected.
I must overcome my reluctance and sharpen my skills of seek and destroy, or at least aggressively prune, prune, prune.
In the same way we wish broccoli tasted like chocolate, Cyndie and I are wishing the desired plants would simply crowd out weeds to the point all we needed to do would be a little cutting of the grass and lounging in the garden.
All you folks wanting to suggest we get some goats… it is increasingly weighing on my mind. Maybe I will try renting some for a trial run.
There just aren’t enough hours in a day for us to manage the explosion of growth summer brings.
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Candle, Burning
Ends, both.
I’m gaining some sense of what life is like for a lot of the farmers around here. Most of them whom we have come to know have non-farming jobs in addition to the crop and livestock work they do.
My day-job has gotten so intense, I’m puttin’ in hours today, even though it’s Friday, a day I don’t usually go in. At the same time, our ranch work is peaking, with the unbelievable spring growth about doubling the size of green things every two days.
The second I got home on Wednesday, I hopped on the borrowed John Deere lawn tractor and struggled till dusk to knock down the too long and too thick grass that hadn’t been cut since the old Craftsman engine popped a gasket two weeks ago.
Yesterday, same routine, different tractor. I walked in the door from work, stripped off the clean clothes and donned the grubs to crank up the brush cutter on the diesel. It was dry enough to cut the hay-field. Not for hay, but for the sake of mowing down weeds before they can mature.
We plan to mow that field short all summer long, hoping to give the grass a better chance at beating out the weeds. It’s a simple method that we have chosen in place of applying chemical weed killers. Just requires a little more patience, and an alternate source of hay bales for a year. We think we have both.
What I don’t have is, enough sleep.
Luckily, I’ve got incredible support from Cyndie, the energizer bunny. She is doubling her efforts to tend to the trimming up and down fence lines, while caring for all the animals, maintaining the labyrinth, buying supplies, Avenging poison ivy, watering and feeding our transplanted maple tree, and keeping me indescribably well fed.
Speaking of caring for our animals, I caught a picture of her the other day, giving Legacy a massage. That was about the same time I spotted the chickens hanging out on the bottom board of the paddock fence.
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That’s all I have time for. There’s work to be done!
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Couldn’t Resist
Obsessive? Perfectionist? Linear? I just can’t help myself.
Last night I was preparing the post for today (June 1st!), giving a shout out to the PBS program, “Food – Delicious Science,” and in my over-tired stupor, inadvertently clicked the “Publish” button a day early.
So what? Who would even notice?
I would.
It messes with my order. I figure the mistake was a good indication of how excited I was about sharing the word on the incredibly informative program. It may also be a way to nudge me toward observing and contemplating my incessant drive to maintain a regular order of one-post-per-day. Or, it could simply be a result of not getting enough sleep at a time when my poor little brain is under a lot of stress.
Regardless, without this silly little addition to fill in the gap, June 1, 2017 would have looked as though there was no post on Relative Something. An aberration! Now, you and I understand that wasn’t the case, but what about others who stumble upon this place? I have to consider them.
So, instead of letting it go and getting on with important things, I gave in to the urge to right the wrong. Think about that.
Happy (extra post) June first!
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That John W. Hays.
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Relative Something 