Archive for May 2020
Inverted Stump
In the ongoing saga of finishing what we started with clearing growth from beneath two large oak trees near the driveway, I resumed the weekend lumberjack role on Saturday. Wielding the Stihl chainsaw like it was an extension of one of my limbs, I spent the day cutting up downed wood from the week prior.
Some of the main trunks were so heavy that we couldn’t lift them, which presented a challenge when it came to cutting them into fireplace log size. I don’t like cutting on the ground. We came up with a solution using a pry-bar, but I have since realized I could have made partial cuts down the full length of the heavy trunk and then rolled it over to finish each one.
I can test that method next week. There is one downed tree trunk left to be cut into logs.
While I was cleaning up the area, I decided to cut some of the leftover stumps closer to ground level. That exercise led to a need to change the chain on the saw. One particular stump was hollow and very resistant to my effort to saw it off. Turns out the bottom portion was filled with dirt and debris that quickly destroyed the sharpness of the chain.
We decided the abuse was worth it in the end because that stump is going to make a wonderful planter and we have the perfect spot for it. I flipped it over and showed it to Cyndie who was instantly sold on the idea.
The grape-vine covered bird feeder that tipped over this spring due to a rotted cedar post created a void that Cyndie had planned to fill with flowers. Now, the inverted stump-turned-planter is going to be the centerpiece of that new display.
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Two Soils
It’s a tale of two soils at Cyndie’s new garden plot. First, she turned over the turf, then she used a garden spade fork to break up the soil. In so doing, the clay content of that slope became very clear. Cyndie started tossing aside the clay clumps that were coming up in solid blocks.
Look at the difference in color of the dirt she tossed over the end compared to the composted manure soil we brought in yesterday from two different places where it’s been stored on our property for a few years.
I’m not really sure why it even matters. The grass was growing like gangbusters in that clay soil before we dug it all up.
Now, if the overnight temperatures would stop dipping down below freezing, that would be just great. Maybe she could start growing vegetables in that black gold.
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Damaged Faith
Among the many unsettling reports that have daily battered the shorelines of our consciousness since the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, I am particularly dismayed over the multiple revelations of unethical profiteering that have hit the news. It breaks my heart and has damaged my faith in humanity to see such blatant large scale examples of disdain for others in selfish quests for personal gain.
I’ve noticed that the focus of news reports cultivate outrage that large publicly traded corporations were awarded huge sums of federal recovery money intended for small businesses that didn’t get it. Same thing about the scandal in Mississippi where an audit uncovered details of millions of dollars of federal welfare funds were spent on concerts, cars, and Brett Favre events that didn’t even happen.
Yeah, that’s so wrong. We should be outraged.
But you know what? The outrage shouldn’t be over the fact that it happened, it should be over the fact that in order for it to be occurring, someone had to make decisions to allow it to happen.
How many times have you heard the opinion that people on welfare are lazy and don’t deserve getting something for nothing? People trying to use food stamps are highly constrained and closely scrutinized about what purchases are allowed. Disproportionate amounts of concern are levied over the use of pennies at the end of the line while millions at the top are allowed to be wrongly redirected to people who are neither in need nor deserving.
We heard about known name restaurant chains and a top NBA team among at least 75 public firms that got federal low-interest loans through the Paycheck Protection Program that was intended to aid small businesses.
Who at these companies made the decision to even apply for this money? What are they thinking? Seems to me our outrage should start right there. And it wasn’t just a handful of scandalous people. According to the New York Post, the Associated Press investigation came up with “at least 75 public firms.” That’s a lot of independent cases of unethical decision-making in positions of power running big businesses.
Just a short time later we hear about the audit of the Mississippi Department of Human Services discovering $98 million in funds from the government’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program being misspent. Who made the decision to execute those transactions?
Imagine trying to decide if you should pay out a few dollars to many families in need or give MILLIONS to one or two people who are already wealthy.
At the same time, who in the government processing these payments and seeing where money is going doesn’t respond with alarm? Small Business Administration aid package money going to the Los Angeles Lakers? Sure. Cut the check. Makes total sense. NOT!
Yes, the pandemic crisis is exacerbating a lot of injustices that were already in place. It has dented my faith in people to see how prevalent the inequitable decision making is by too many individuals in places of power.
Do me a favor. If you find yourself presented with an opportunity to take more than you need, …don’t.
Just don’t.
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No Control
Life feels a little more out of control lately than the illusions of control we felt satisfied with while plodding along on our merry ways over the years prior. It’s noteworthy how the easily understood signs of mental strain gradually arrive and intensify as the duration of an invisible health threat drags on, expanding economic turmoil in its wake.
It is difficult to tell whether anything happening to us or around us is merely incidental or somehow related to the main news topic of the day in the midst of a pandemic viral event.
We have no control over how cold it is going to be outside this morning and are watching the budding leaves on our young trees with an anxious concern they won’t freeze just as they are beginning to unfold.
Last night, Cyndie and I had a good hard laugh over one comical “outburst” I experienced at the end of my day-job work week. Exhausted by a seemingly endless barrage of customer orders that are swamping our capacity (a good problem to have, no?) that daily threaten to overwhelm my attempts to control, I found myself mentally numb and entirely listless.
For almost the entire time the world has been shutting itself down to control the spread of the coronavirus, we have been seeing orders grow almost exponentially. It’s crazy-making.
When the day finally passed into the darkness of night, I rallied the energy to get my butt up off the bed to ready myself for a good night’s sleep. Dragging the shirt off my shoulders, I considered just throwing it at the closet in demonstration of my contempt for… well, just everything. But my routine prevailed.
It would merely cause me more effort later to pick up, so I grabbed the hanger as usual.
Still seeking to protest the facade of anything being usual, the thought occurred that I might not button the collar as is my habit before rehanging a shirt. I could just shove it onto the closet to hang on the rod with utter disdain.
Except, I couldn’t. That fastidious habit has become too ingrained.
I went in to brush my teeth, because skipping that grooming habit was one I tried last weekend and was quickly reminded that it definitely wasn’t worth it by morning, and described my ridiculous moment of ‘almost’ rebellion to Cyndie. We laughed heartily over the embarrassingly infantile attempt to lash out.
The sad truth of it all is how far from suffering our life is at this point. I’m feeling all angsty over a level of stress that is of no comparison to the hardships so many others are living right now. I can’t imagine their version of not having control. It’s heartbreaking.
Somehow, I hope we all muster the gumption to soldier on and take care of ourselves and others.
It really is the better option compared to giving up and throwing our shirts on the floor of the closet.
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That Door
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there are days when I like to pretend
I don’t know which drawer she hides her candy in
back before the virus
there were a lot of things we took for granted
it’s funny how features that haven’t changed a bit
somehow look different now
tall tales that seemed laughable when we were young and still fascinated
have grown almost scary to me now
combined with the changing angle of sunlight
and smoke from distant fires
the world is painted in a slightly different hue
it’s a long hard sigh
done more for effect than for bigger air to breathe
waiting for all the other shoes to drop
in consequence for everyone trying to make too big a hop
from one thing to another
too many humans flit around after purposeless purposes
in impassioned attempts to not settle down and allow themselves to feel
but real doesn’t simply vanish into thin air
when we neglect to slow down and actually care
for ourselves
with hymns of wailing and flailing for peace and harmony
looking for love to crawl out of our core
blossom in our bosom
if and when we come to our senses
and finally open that door
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Weak Link
There are many days when the Wintervale connection to the world via the internet is annoyingly flakey. The problem is mysterious and invisible, frequently interrupting progress in the middle…
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Hi, I’m back. That’s the way this works. After a seemingly interminable pause, activity resumes as if nothing is amiss. You wouldn’t notice a thing, unless you were attempting to visit with others via Zoom.
“Your internet connection is unstable.”
As soon as that message appears, even as I rush to write a chat message to everyone to explain that I could hear them all even though my image may have frozen to them, my fate is doomed to closing and then immediately reconnecting, minus all the text I had just entered in the chat window.
It’s life in the country. For all the advantages we enjoy living out among farm fields and forests, it comes at the expense of having a reliable internet connection. The industry can’t balance the economics of running fiberoptic cable to handfuls of houses scattered across many wide miles.
We don’t stream. We rent DVDs through the mail.
If we want to accomplish something without interruption, it takes a lucky combination of atmospheric conditions and an absence of too much competition for the limited bandwidth. Oh, and we can’t have already exceeded our cap of monthly allotted usage.
In all of the Zoom meetings I have participated in over the last month, I was the weakest link.
It’s too bad because I love the possibility of connecting with my multiple remote communities, but I love living where we do even more.
Cyndie pointed out that our new openings around the two big oak trees beside the driveway allow for excellent viewing of the rising moon.
Since our internet browsers weren’t having much success loading pages, we were more available to get out and enjoy the lunar view.
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Imperfect Improvement
Five years. It’s been almost five years since I saw the 2014 documentary movie, “Fed Up” and decided once and for all to commit to a long-term intentional change to address my uncontrolled craving for sugar. (See “My Addiction“) My solution was admittedly an imperfect one, but I have very slowly achieved a noticeable improvement throughout the ensuing years.
One of the imperfections of my plan to take command of that insidious nagging urge to eat something that will produce the intoxicating dopamine reward is that I allow myself to have a little sweet treat or treats every day. I liken it to trying to live a sober life while still continuing to have an alcoholic drink every day, (no disrespect intended to those who are working a program to manage alcohol or any other substances). From my understanding, total abstinence is the more effective practice.
Since there are natural sugars in plenty of foods, total avoidance of sugar is an extreme I chose not to pursue. After watching “Fed Up,” my plan was to avoid the added sugar in processed food, especially in cases where it is well hidden and unexpected. I was surprised to learn how much sugar might be included in buns and some types of bread, in sauces, dressings, and yogurts, to name a few.
I decided to start paying attention to labels and serving sizes and plotted to achieve the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Food and Drug dietary guidelines of 10% of daily calories consumed.
Based on an oft-referenced 2000 calorie per day average (your mileage may vary) that amounts to 200 calories or roughly 50 grams of sugar per day. I decided to aim for 10 grams of sugar per my three main meals. That gave me a full 20 grams of headroom to account for variations and a modest cookie or dessert bite for moments of rewarding bliss.
One serving size of a Girl Scout S’mores® cookie equals two cookies coming in at 16 grams of sugar. I eat just one.
These S’mores taste incredibly sweet to me. One welcome improvement over the five years of measured sugar intake is that I have developed a heightened sensitivity to sweetness. That’s probably one of the things that helps me to be able to stop at just one cookie per serving.
It’s an imperfect formula that I’ve settled on, but since I started this practice, I have controlled my hemoglobin A1c levels and avoided the all-too-typical annual weight gain that normal aging usually brings on.
The craving? It’s still a constant companion, but one that has become much easier to contain, …one measured serving at a time.
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Breathing Room
There is a lot of effort required in felling every single tree surrounding a large oak tree, but when the job is finally complete, the result evokes a rewarding feeling of satisfaction every time you walk past it. The newly opened space beneath the crown of the oak inspires increased visual energy solely on the oak. It’s nice to reclaim the more pronounced prominence these dominant trees deserve among the vast number of surrounding volunteers that naturally sprout and eventually rise up to become pests.
We are literally providing them more breathing room.
Over time, my perspective of managing a wooded lot has evolved from a basic belief that there can be no such thing as too many trees to one of being able to sacrifice some toward a goal of a healthier forest overall.
That’s not a simple transformation.
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Not Simple
We really didn’t plan for this. I picture gardening as digging up some dirt and dropping in some seeds. Cyndie mentioned wanting to grow some of our own food. I’m not one to quickly volunteer for a huge project that only grows more laborious with time, but I was willing to support Cyndie in having a garden.
She suggested the slope and I agreed to create terracing to facilitate. From there, things have slowly evolved to include our simultaneous lumberjacking project to remove marked trees from beneath our preferred mature oaks. There is no longer anything simple about this modest little produce garden.
Yesterday, I finally felled the last, most difficult, trees from beneath the two oaks nearest our house. Only about 27 left to go throughout the rest of our woods.
We are wrestling with placing tree trunks that are almost too heavy to manage in place of creosote-soaked fence posts as the wall in the first terrace. The fact that none of them are as straight as first glance implies throws a real complicating challenge into my attempts to make reality merge with our fantasy of perfect results.
For her part, Cyndie is keeping the pressure on to complete this first terrace with her early planning and execution of starting plants indoors and testing soils.
The first peek of a sprout was from one of her lettuce seeds. I’ve never seen what a lettuce plant looks like when it goes to seed.
We now have data on the nitrogen, phosphorous, potash, and acidity levels in the clay-dominant soil on the slope, as well as in three different locations where we have stores of composted manure. Our hope is to combine the best of each to build a premium growing environment in this first terrace.
Seeing how involved this has become is a classic revelation of why I am not quick to jump on board with every idea that pops up. Sure, I’d love to have fresh food from a garden of our own, but can we get there by just digging up some dirt and throwing in a few seeds?
I guess it’s not that simple.
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Newest Ramp
Chicken ramp is now up to version three. I’ve given up on the cutesy woven willow branch ramps because they don’t hold up to the abuse of the elements and the apparent urges of critters and/or chickens to pull them apart.
It feels a little sad to be getting around to fixing this just days after the loss of five hens, but there are still three birds who are going in and out of the coop and I have decided to remedy the design flaw of passing through the drop zone for snow sliding off the slanted roof.
The new design approaches the chicken access door from the side, keeping it just inside the drip line off the roof.
Cyndie said the first chicken to exit the coop this morning after the door was opened had to stop abruptly to figure out the turn, but then walked right down.
I watched the Wyandotte who is becoming broody approach the new ramp from the ground yesterday, driven by her strong urge to get back inside and park in an empty nest box. She stopped where the bottom of the old ramp would have been and stretched her neck up as tall as she could with a look of incredulity as she inspected the strange alteration.
Then she flapped her wings and hopped halfway up from the side and scrambled up through the opening.
I’m anxious to see if the snow will drop just beyond this new ramp since that is the primary reason I changed to the side entry, but hopefully, that test won’t happen for many months.
Seven years ago today, the first spring after we had moved here, we received 18-inches of wet snow that wreaked havoc on trees and branches. I will always remember the sound of snapping limbs that resembled rifle reports cracking all around me within the otherwise sound-deadened thick blanket of white.
It was very distressing.
I will happily wait until next winter to see how the newest version of the chicken ramp works when melting snow drops off the roof overhang. By then, we should have round three of purchased chickens established, as Cyndie has already placed an order for all new breeds. Delivery is much delayed and breed selection was rather limited due to very high demand.
I guess a lot of people are in the market for the comfort of having their own source of eggs at a time when going out in public is being discouraged.
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Relative Something 