Archive for August 2021
Normal Morning
I’m writing a little late this morning as I have been occupied with solo coverage of the ranch this morning, as Cyndie spent the night at her mother’s house in Edina yesterday. Delilah and I startled a couple of deer in our woods on our morning walk, which then grabbed the attention of the horses who were grazing nearby in the back pasture. Their heads were all on full alert when we popped out of the woods.
I took a picture of some fantastic-looking fungi on the edge of one of our trails as we passed.
The horses were a combination of calm yet mischievous as I set out the pans of feed for their morning rations. They had serenely paraded their way into the paddock from the back pasture alongside Delilah and me as we made our way to the barn. The four horses conveniently avoided being positioned on either side of our serving area under the overhang, so I decided to serve them where they stood for a change.
They quickly set about moving around from one pan to another, snitching bites between rotating to be sure no other horse was getting something they didn’t have.
I finally coaxed Mix to the far side and closed a gate to disrupt their dance. That solved things and they all stopped to finish the pan at their feet in front of them while I rolled the wheelbarrow around the paddock to do the morning housekeeping.
By the time I finished tending to the compost pile and returned to get Delilah in the barn, the four horses we already around the corner in the back pasture again, grazing peacefully.
On our way back to the house, I need to detour to the shop to pick up some tools for a kitchen project Cyndie left for me. She bought new slide-out racks for cabinets that are going to require some customization of the dimensions of the openings. There, I discovered a mousetrap had tripped and the victim was being cannibalized by other vermin. Oops.
My bad.
Back in the house, the dog and cat were served their breakfast and then I fed myself.
Somehow, the early morning hours have vanished, but it was all rather normal except for the fact I was alone with the animals.
I look forward to getting the kitchen enhancements installed. Anything to make Cyndie happier in the kitchen is going to directly benefit my luxury of being exceptionally well-fed.
It only takes one morning of fending for my own food to be reminded of how well I have it every other day.
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Equine Companions
The best part of mowing yesterday after getting home from the day-job, besides the fact there was a pleasant breeze that kept the temperature from feeling uncomfortably hot, was seeing the horses choose to come over the hill toward the road to graze near where I was working.
I had started the project by cutting the longest grass around the perimeter of the paddock fence and the horses hung around calmly, as opposed to getting riled up by the noisy tractor and running off. I took it as a good sign they were growing ever more comfortable with us and their surroundings.
When I moved on to the area by the road and the horses followed me up there, it was even more affirming. I think maybe the horses were enjoying the smell of fresh-cut grass.
I enjoy that the horses are behaving more and more like our companions as we move into our fifth month of them living with us.
That might be tested come Monday when the vet shows up for an appointment to file their teeth.
Maybe they will understand that we are doing it for their own good, but who ever likes having their teeth worked on? They have shown significant difficulty eating the pellets of their morning and afternoon feed, so we are hoping a little dental treatment will make chewing a little easier for them.
If we get that issue taken care of, all that is left to do for them is get a farrier to show up for their next hoof trimming appointment.
It’s what you do for equine companions.
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It Seems
It seems to me today that I can’t add anything that you don’t already know. What would be the point of describing how oppressive the hatch of mosquitoes has been since the last long ago rainfall? Despite how fast the grass around here grew after that last dosage of water from the sky, I ended up deciding not to cut it, because the days have been nothing but hot and dry ever since. I didn’t want to stress the grass at a time it was again enduring another stretch of hot, dry weather.
Maybe we’ll get another batch of moisture on Friday, but I can only imagine what that will do for the mosquito population. I’m thinking about mowing this afternoon when I get home from work.
As I turned the last corner onto our street coming home from work yesterday, I was passed by a farm tractor coming from the opposite direction. Then another and another. Ten, then twenty, maybe thirty in a row. Every variety of manufacturers, some with a single passenger beside or behind the driver looking almost board, many with flags attached. A few had cute canvas canopies over the top for shade.
I guess that was something you didn’t know about. I certainly didn’t know anything about it. Some sort of parade out in the wide-open countryside on a Wednesday afternoon when few people might be around to notice. I didn’t see any signs to convey a message. Maybe they were headed somewhere to congregate and make a point. Protest at the steps of the county courthouse over the lack of rain?
My positive momentum is fatigued due to the constant waves of angst flowing from Afghanistan / Taliban / Wildfires / Earthquake / Tropical Storms / Delta Variant / Mask Mandates / Booster Shots / Political Blame / Shouting Matches / Criminal Trials / Sick Pets and every other challenge to peace and harmony that is vibrating so strong these days.
A certain feeling of guilt over the blissful beauty of our immediate surroundings needs to be processed before getting on with the beaming of healthy love out into the universe from the heart.
When I walked up to the paddock gate Tuesday evening to see the fallen snag first hand, Light responded to my presence instantly by purposely crossing the length of the small paddock toward me to make a brief connection. She inhaled my scent, paused, and looked around. I extended a hand to offer a scratch but she had stopped out of my reach. She breathed in again with her nose on my hand, then slowly moved on to join the rest of her herd near the overhang.
You probably didn’t know about that exchange, either.
Seems to me, the old adage about writing what I know tends to work out even when I don’t realize there is anything new about which to write.
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Snag Down
The inevitable has occurred and the snag we left standing inside the small paddock after cutting back the dead limbs almost five years ago has now fallen to the ground.
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It had a good run as a scratching post. After the recent discovery that it had been pushed into a noticeable lean by horses rubbing against it, I did some pushing of my own to assess the status of its integrity. It was still too solid for me to be able to push the rest of the way over, but it did move back into a fully upright position, so I left it.
Yesterday morning, Cyndie found it looking like this:
Over text messages, we discussed what to do with it. She said it is too heavy to move without dragging with the tractor or sawing into pieces. I suggested we could leave it in place for a while to provide a little intrigue for the horses to investigate.
We don’t know which horse might have been responsible for knocking it over or whether others were in the vicinity at the time. None of them showed any signs of having suffered a close encounter with falling tree trunks. I’m wondering if they might enjoy gnawing on it a little bit.
It looks kinda cool lying there. I like the thought of the horses adapting to something new happening in their midst, adjusting to the change, and hopefully exploring the interesting shaped object now on the ground.
Cyndie spotted Swings and Mix doing just that later in the day.
I did a visual scan for future comparison to observe whether they take an interest in chewing on it. If they soon appear to be ignoring it, we will likely cut it up and split the logs for firewood before the whole thing rots.
As my good friend, Steve Reynolds has been know to declare, standing dead trees are just verticle firewood storage. Now that it’s no longer standing, I best not neglect it for too long.
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One Less
Back in July, I reduced commuting to the day-job from four days a week down to three. I now drive into the Cities on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. That one small change is providing a large improvement to my quality of life. Just one less day on the road is saving me expenses and reducing stress. I also moved some documents online in order to allow more productive use of my remote days, a step that probably should have happened a year ago when COVID moved much of the world’s workforce out of offices and into homes.
When the pandemic first materialized, our customers quickly assured us we were “essential” as manufacturers of high-tech industrial products, so we maintained our normal schedule without interruption. I just kept doing things the same as always.
Now the increased productivity during my two remote days is freeing me up on the other three days to give more attention to on-site issues that arise. Now if I could just control things so that issues only arise when I am on-site, everything would be perfect.
Being available at home an additional day per week is providing rewarding benefits, too. Yesterday afternoon I was able to double-team two small projects with Cyndie that most likely wouldn’t have happened in the few hours after I normally get home on commuting days.
All that is needed now to recover some normalcy in our workplace is two or three skilled high-tech assemblers to walk in our doors and fill openings that have existed since before the pandemic even became a thing.
While I’m dreaming, I’d also like my government to never again invade another country with the idea of overthrowing a less equipped but incredibly patient group of local fighters. Fool us once, fool us twice…
Might as well keep going with dreams of solving world problems. What if we found ways to move impoverished peoples off of islands where earthquakes or hurricanes, and sometimes both in rapid succession, repeatedly occur?
The people of Haiti could do with one less disaster right now.
The people of Afghanistan could do with one less day of everything that is out of control there.
The people in the western states of the U.S. could do with one less drought and raging wildfire combination.
The doctors and nurses treating unvaccinated COVID sufferers in over-crowded ICUs could do with one less highly contagious coronavirus variant.
I could do with one less global catastrophe, but for now, I will settle for driving my fossil-fuel-burning vehicle one less day every week.
Small changes can sometimes lead to proportionally bigger rewards.
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Rewarding Accomplishments
On a weekend when we squeezed in two evening trips to the Cities for wonderful social occasions and a surprise visit from sister, Judy, and husband, Scott, Cyndie and I also knocked off mowing and trimming the entire labyrinth of some tall growth. Our growing ground cover has made efficient use of the rain we received last week. The lawn grass is so long already, I need to mow again less than a week after I just finished the whole property.
I took a panoramic photo into the sun to show the freshly coifed labyrinth with the adjacent gazebo and its barely alive vines for a roof cover.
We also made short work yesterday of an inspiration I had to open up a new footpath through an untraveled section of our woods. Untraveled by us, that is. We chose to route it primarily along an obvious path traversed by deer often enough that our eyes were able to discern where they have been walking.
Of course, being deer, they seem to magically navigate through downed or low-hanging branches that entangle us. A bit of pruning and sawing provided quick reward and suddenly we had a whole new shortcut between two existing trails.
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We were so pleased with it, we sauntered back and forth along the new route multiple times, just to enjoy the experience.
It was very rewarding to get two projects off the to-do list, even though one of them had just been spontaneously added the day before. Accomplished, nonetheless.
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Night Sounds
With the present summer weather about as perfect as could be, we had our windows open the last few nights while we slept. Or, tried to sleep. Our resident owls have been wonderfully vocal with each other lately, opening with a long, classically owl sounding, “Whooooo,” but quickly followed with a repeating variation of short shout-like hoots.
At least two of them have been calling back and forth at noticeably different distances from our house. Last night, that seemed to trigger one of our neighbor’s dogs to do some shouting of its own.
The next time I unintentionally surfaced from the depths of precious slumber, the lovely sound of a songbird was resonating strongly through the forest. In the predawn darkness, it revealed morning light would be appearing soon.
Underlying it all, the continuous drone of crickets, tree frogs, or both paved the foundation for a comforting summer night soundtrack.
What we haven’t heard recently is the howling and yipping of coyote packs, so maybe they have figured out there are no chickens left to steal here and moved on to harass some other property.
Cyndie spotted another young family traipsing across our backyard early one morning last week.
Wild turkey parents were parading a brood of young ones along the edge of the woods.
I guess coyotes must not like turkey as much as they do chicken.
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Mental Break
Last night, Cyndie and I watched the movie, “A Private War,” about journalist Marie Colvin who died in 2012 while covering the siege of Homs in Syria. It was some heavy, intense subject matter of the awful horrors civilians suffer in war zones. As soon as it was over, Cyndie said she needed a mental palate cleanser.
She took Delilah for a little walk in the direction of the horses. I chose to catch up and meet her out in the hayfield.
On the way, something grabbed my attention at the gate from the paddock to the back pasture.
The horses have worn a very specific path they trod when wandering into the field. For some reason, instead of meandering randomly out of the paddock to graze in the pasture, they regularly walk a precise route quite a way out before dispersing.
Inside the small paddock, the snag we left standing for their use as a scratching post had been pushed askew. The bottom is rotting enough that stability is almost gone.
Both Cyndie and I walked out into the hayfield and the horses happily followed. Then they kept going past us, climbing the rise and continuing over it to the far side facing the road.
The sounds of their contented chewing and ripping bites of grass have a soothing quality to them. The evening air was cooling nicely and the endearing sounds of nature surrounding us, combined with the munching horses as daylight faded, provided everything we wished for in terms of clearing our minds.
It is such a truly divine privilege to have horses living with us again.
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Exercising Memory
My memories are fading, but as I revisit many of them, the details I review slowly grow more memorable and probably less accurate with each iteration.
I remember what my life was like before my eyesight declined to the point of needing glasses to see with functional clarity. Those memories often arise in response to needing to clean my glasses in the present day.
I remember how free life was before the coronavirus pandemic.
I remember when there were no personal computers.
I remember getting my first mobile phone when my workplace at the time made them available to all employees for personal use.
I remember how awkward it always felt to walk alone in front of the entire length of the high school bleachers on the way to get a bag of popcorn from the concession counter.
I remember how much I liked the popcorn purchased at those basketball games in the high school.
I remember using our basement for a kitchen in our Eden Prairie house while we were having the upstairs remodeled.
I remember putting a vinyl Crosby, Stills, & Nash record on the old hi-fi phonograph with the sliding glass woodgrain top panels when it was in the closet of my boyhood bedroom and then laying on my bed to listen until I fell asleep.
I remember when the impacts of the greenhouse effect on our planet were hardly noticeable and mainly the subject of scientific predictions.
I remember when we first set foot on the property we eventually purchased in Beldenville, Wisconsin. I will always remember walking one of the trails near the house and coming upon the gnarly oak tree that remains the most prominent.
I remember when the sky turned a deeper blue during the two times when air traffic was greatly reduced: After the September 11 attacks and when the pandemic lockdowns stopped almost all travel around the globe.
I remember the morning I called our health clinic to ask to be seen in my first step of treating my depression.
I remember how moved I felt after learning about the extent of hidden added sugars in processed foods that occurred with increasing frequency throughout my lifetime.
I remember tying one of my deceased mother’s handkerchiefs to a branch as a prayer flag in the Himalayan mountains around the highest elevation I achieved during the trek I did in 2009.
I remember my son inspiring me to start a blog to chronicle the trek I would be doing.
I remember learning I was an asthma sufferer during my physical that was required by the adventure travel company before the trip began.
I remember waking up stressed from breathing the smoke that had leaked from the woodstove all night when we slept in the lodge of the Sherpa sirdar guiding our trek.
What I can’t remember is any reason I started this exercise and whether or not I had a point in mind. Having a point would have come in handy when it came to reaching a conclusion.
This reminds me of how often I find myself laboring to come up with a closing line for daily blog posts.
Sometimes, I just want to “Say goodnight, Gracie.”
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Relative Something 