Archive for December 2021
Chronological Order
We did not experience deadly tornadoes last night, just a pleasant blast of big snow that has thrust us fully into what winter is usually like around these parts. Here is my photo exposé chronicling the views.
I did a little “pre-plowing” last night to break the project up into two episodes of medium depths instead of one massive task.
Just like the meteorologists were boasting, it was coming down at 1-to-2 inches per hour, but I would say the flakes were pretty small.
The pre-dawn light was enticing and the muffled sound in the woods was accented with sweet songbird melodies.
There was a hint of a labyrinth pathway under the fresh blanket of new snow.
The horses appear to have dealt with the storm well. We treated them to some sweet apple-flavored biskets after their morning feed to celebrate the novelty of their new deep-snow landscape.
There is a lot of plowing to be done between the barn and the hay shed. I didn’t spend any time last night pre-plowing that area. The driveway has about 5 new inches on it, not accounting for the areas where drifts will be much deeper.
The depths vary greatly depending on where we check but 11-inches was a pretty common reading I found up by the house.
There is a lot of snow to be pulled off the eaves of the roof. I would like to do that as soon as possible to take advantage of the bright sunshine we expect today but there is a lot of plowing that I’ll work on first.
It will be a gorgeous winter day to be outside, which is a good thing because I expect my snow clearing work will take me all day long to accomplish.
I will be thanking the universe the whole time that I am not cleaning up debris from tornado destruction instead.
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Minor Procedure
Yesterday afternoon, Cyndie underwent a minor surgical procedure on one of her fingers and I was given responsibility for dinner. Our usual routine when it is my turn to cook involves a phone call to Cyndie’s favorite pizza place, Gina Maria’s. When they opened a location near my workplace in Plymouth and offered to deliver half-baked pizzas to our suite for me to take home, I became a regular customer.
Often, when I would call in my order, they ask if I wanted the same thing as last time. Sometimes I did. They make a fantastic deep-dish crust that we find almost irresistible. At the same time, we both love variety, so we occasionally mix it up and go for classic thin.
For last night’s dinner, I ordered a large because it might be the last time I have them deliver to me at work. I warned them that I would be disappearing from their list of regular customers.
This is what they delivered:
The person taking my order reminded me I could always come pick it up myself or have them deliver to our home instead.
“We live in Wisconsin.”
I think that is when they decided to decorate our box.
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Night Walks
Just because the daylight hours are short doesn’t mean Delilah doesn’t still get that obligatory one last out-and-about before bed each evening. This time of year those “potty walks” have an added sense of adventure due to the distinct tunnel vision view we experience as we meander along the trails.
Who knows what could be lurking just out of view in the dark?
At least with the snow, we can see clear evidence if there has been recent traffic either crossing or traveling along our same path. I should probably never doubt that Delilah’s nose wouldn’t sense if another animal was nearby but we’ve seen so many times when she appears to ignore some creatures we encounter in our daytime travels that I’m left to wonder.
One time I turned my spotlight 90° to our left in the woods and illuminated four or five sets of reflecting eyes staring back at me for a brief moment before the herd of deer bolted in exit, stage right. Delilah didn’t even flinch.
All the night-vision animals offer up such noticeable eye reflections that it is those two bright dots that I find myself watching for more than anything else. That’s a tendency I have honed over many miles of commuting our country roads in darkness.
I’ve encountered many more staring animal eyes while driving my car than we’ve ever come upon during our night walks. I figure they have a lot more time to figure out I’m coming toward them when it’s me and Delilah plodding along on foot through the darkness and they don’t choose to hang around for a closer look.
Honestly, that’s okay with me. Even though it’s a thrill to occasionally find an owl perched in our woods, I don’t mind doing our treks without uninvited company providing momentary startles right before bedtime.
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Flavorful Fun
Last night was supposed to be a dinner and concert outing in Minneapolis with our friends, Barb and Mike Wilkus. It turned out to only be a dinner date. We arrived at the location of the main event and found the place dark and the doors locked. Cyndie double-checked her email inbox and found a message informing her the concert was postponed. Oops.
Luckily, dinner was fun enough to make our outing already worth the drive through snow-congested traffic. We made our first visit to The Market at Malcolm Yards, an urban food hall in the historic Harris Machinery Co. building not far from the University of Minnesota. Wilkus Architects worked for several years as a partner in designing The Market at Malcolm Yards.
The food selections were varied enough to make decisions difficult because it all sounded alluring. Cyndie and I love to share so we each ordered something different and combined them for a feast of Korean Style Chicken with two sauces and kimchi slaw, grilled marinated cauliflower (yummy!), empanadas –one BBQ chicken and one chorizo– with two sauces, and good ol’ french fried potato strips to offset the bite of so many spicy flavors.
There were also some ice cream bites included that calmed our palates before we wrapped up our dining experience and drove off to find the concert that wasn’t to be.
The concert event was a fundraiser for “This Old Horse” and while the four of us lingered in the Wilkus’ car in the parking lot of the venue, we had a chance to meet one couple who are caring for rescued mustangs in Goodhue. Like us, they hadn’t learned of the postponement either. They were the second unaware couple with whom we were able to share our discovery before departing.
The lingering flavor memories of our fun dining experience more than compensated for our aborted concert date.
I’m already plotting what else I want to order next time we make it to The Market to eat.
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Remembering Winter
It has been a couple of years since we’ve had horses over the months of freezing temperatures and blowing snow. I’m finding it a little comical that neither Cyndie nor I remember how we handled the nuances of our barn chores during the winter months.
It’s not difficult to make it up as we go along, except for the nagging knowledge that we already had a smoothly functioning routine once before. Seems like we shouldn’t have to start anew.
Yesterday, we found the waterer was freezing up, leading me to believe one or more of the heating elements are failing. At least that is a new problem because we never needed to worry about that before.
Manure management is a little wobbly. Sometimes, frozen poop is easier to scoop up. A lot of other times it isn’t. I keep telling Cyndie we used to leave it all in place until spring but she doesn’t remember it that way. The difference, I believe, is that we haven’t received much snow yet and we can still roll the wheelbarrow around. She’ll be happy to leave it all when/if real snow begins to accumulate.
I’ve reminded Cyndie that we plowed a path from the barn to the compost area and only scooped under the overhang and in the stalls over winter. Since we don’t have any snow yet, the obvious limitations aren’t there.
I’m already trying to recall my routine of resuming active composting after winter releases its grip. Those of you who keep dogs in your backyard in places where snow covers the ground for months know what the ground looks like when the snow first melts. Multiply that mental image by the volume four horses produce.
We are getting hit with seriously cold temperatures and aggressive winter winds already. The unknown element of snow accumulation remains to be revealed in the weeks ahead.
I’m waiting to find out if this will turn out to be a winter like the snowy ones I remember most from the recent past.
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Not COVID
After almost two years of the pandemic, I finally had a reason to get tested for COVID-19. The Delta variant is raging and the Omicron variant is beginning to spread but so far I have survived in general isolation, mostly buffered from first-person contact with known positive cases.
On the Sunday after we hosted Thanksgiving, I sensed a tickle in my throat. It seemed like a wimpy cold until the fourth day when it intensified significantly. Worried that I may have misjudged what I was experiencing and sensitive to the fact we are in the midst of a pandemic, I called my doctor and was told to come in to get tested for COVID.
I had received my vaccine booster shot on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, but no masks were worn when sixteen of us spent the holiday together at our home, some of whom had traveled from other states.
When my son called with news that he was experiencing the same symptoms as me it raised my alarm a little, but he had good news of already receiving a negative test result for COVID. It restored my confidence that I would likely receive the same result.
Yesterday afternoon I began to feel my cold symptoms had plateaued and this morning my temperature has returned to normal. An hour ago I received the call confirming my test for COVID was negative.
So, my avoidance of the pandemic virus continues but my run of good luck for freedom from illness has ended. It was a little strange to experience “normal” cold symptoms during this time when a more lethal contagious virus is filling hospitals to the brim but in the grand scheme of things, it was just a normal cold.
Normal isn’t normal, usual, typical, or what is expected anymore.
Uncertainty is probably the better descriptor.
Be vaccinated out there!
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Should
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go ahead
be all passionate about that
it’s a hot-button issue
gets people all riled up
don’t for a second think
that you might be misguided
maintain precision focus
ignore all the complexities
don’t bother to figure out
the deeper reasons
why bad policies benefit
a chosen few
root cause analysis
is not your job
it’s an issue of your faith
you have an obligation to sanctimony
really?
at the expense of what?
don’t look down your nose at unwed mothers
orphans
immigrants
the impoverished
anyone different than your narrow definition
of what a human should
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Filled Frames
Just some close inspection comparisons of a few surfaces around the house…
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Short Shift
I had a very short shift of animal care last night while Cyndie was at her mother’s house for the night. Delilah seemed thrilled that we could walk through our woods again, now that the deer hunting season is over. The temperature was in the 50s(F) which seems really strange for any day in December, but not all that surprising now that the global climate is being cooked.
The warmth seems to have kicked our burrowing rodents into high gear. By the size of some of the fresh dirt piles showing up they must be building extravagant palaces beneath the turf. The soil they bring up looks so pristine. I really should collect it for future use. Not a stone to be found among the mounds of wonderfully sifted dirt.
Our habit is usually to just stomp the piles flat again but there was just too much dirt for that yesterday. I couldn’t pound them down enough so I decided to kick them around, instead. A little like kickin’ horse manure in the pastures.
I found the horses to be incredibly serene when we showed up to serve the feed pans with afternoon rations. It probably rubbed off on Delilah because she barely made a fuss while waiting for me to finish, barking only briefly at nothing in particular.
In less than an hour, all the animals were taken care of and I had the night free to lose myself in the first episode of the 3-part documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, directed by Peter Jackson.
Lose myself, I did.
I am eternally grateful to the fab four for allowing themselves to be filmed at the time and indebted to the camera operators and sound technicians who successfully captured so many hours of unscripted randomness. That we can all watch this unique footage some fifty-plus years later is remarkable to me.
With two more episodes to go, this documentary is the opposite of a short shift, and I will savor every drawn-out moment.
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Relative Something 