Archive for May 2022
Full Afternoon
When we reached the driveway yesterday after a couple of errands in the Cities, I stopped the car to check for mail and let Cyndie move over to the driver’s seat. Her new right knee was no trouble for her as she tested a quick stop and then piloted the vehicle up to the house and into the garage.
She just keeps checking off new firsts every day. After resting with the leg raised and wrapped with the cooling/compression machine while we had some lunch, she made her way out to assist me in getting our landscape pond cleaned up and the pump pushing water over the falls again.
That’s a milestone we were overdue to accomplish. It feels super to have that off our list and even better to again hear the soothing sounds of the splashing water.
Speaking of milestones, yesterday also marked the day Cyndie stopped using a cane when walking.
Activity moved from the pond to the paddocks and Cyndie walked all the way to the barn and back to the house after spending time with each horse and offering to brush them.
I went from the barn to the shop garage where I successfully fired up the lawn tractor for the first time this season. There will be no such thing as “no mow May” at our place. I mowed the two spots around the paddocks where the grass grows fastest.
Two of the more urgent projects on our spring to-do list have been checked off and both happened on the same afternoon. When spring growth finally kicks off, it doesn’t pause to wait for anyone who meant to get some things done before the leaves pop open.
I am thrilled to be able to move on to the next big thing. Friday, weather permitting, we are scheduled to receive a visit from the tree service. That’s another task I am hoping will happen before the leaves all fully open. As it is, that project is already about a week late in terms of the buds popping on branches.
Spring is springing out all over the place, and delayed though the warmth and sunshine may be, higher heat than my body is adjusted to is now showing up in force. I forgot what it was like to move hay around while working with sweaty bare arms.
I was very ready for a shower after the full afternoon of spring projects we successfully handled yesterday.
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Impressive Sky
There was no missing the approach of a significant change in the weather yesterday afternoon. It didn’t come as a surprise after a dramatic jump in temperature and humidity that was combined with a strong, gusty wind. All the ingredients were there for a bumpy end of the day.
I was moving the horses back into the paddock from the back pasture when the leading edge of a line of thunderstorms arrived overhead. A short while later, our cell phones announced our county was included in a tornado warning.
This was the second such warning to occur in this county during the past three weeks. Something tells me it’s going to be a long year for severe weather. It would be just fine with me to be wrong and have these two close calls be nature’s way of using up the threatening storms right away in early spring so the rest of the warm months will be safe and calm.
In addition to the weather drama, I got a little shock when an itch on my side turned out to be a small wood tick latched onto my flesh. Makes me miss our chickens free-ranging all over the place and controlling insects like nothing else I’ve ever seen. Sure wish the rest of the busy wildlife around here would pick up the slack and eat more flies and ticks.
The horses are also going to miss the fly-control the chickens were providing. All the wet weather of the previous weeks is harbinger of a high fly population this year. Flies have shown up early and are already making pests of themselves around the horses’ eyes.
As the sky began to look gloomier and doom-ier, we checked weather radar maps and watched as the worst looking blobs on the screen approached. Fear not, this wasn’t to be our day for damage. Just like the storms a couple of weeks ago, our location was spared as the worst-looking masses passed on either side of our property.
At one point, it began to rain in the backyard while the other side of our house remained dry.
That’s what I call really riding the edge.
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Fresh Grass
The horses have had a few days of brief visits to the back pasture now and it just makes them yearn for more. On the first day, they only got 15 minutes to munch. We increase it by 15 minutes each day for about two weeks, after which we can leave the gate open and they can come and go as they please.
Judging by their poop, none of them appear to be having any digestion issues upon the change in their diet, but it’s early yet. Hopefully, they will adjust without a problem, but it’s something that deserves our attention and we’d rather be over-cautious than have them suffer any ill effects.
When I opened the gate that first day, Mia was again the first to notice. She cautiously eased her way through the opening and quietly grazed just a short distance inside the back pasture.
Curious about whether they would stampede their way out into the field, I started recording a video when Light and the other two finally showed awareness that Mia was out there without them.
Their entry was actually rather tame but it is still fun to watch them make their way through the gate for the first time this spring. The audio is marred a bit by the sound of the breeze but after the view changes direction, you can hear all four of them snorting, which is kind of endearing.
When I went out to move them back into the paddock on Saturday after an hour, Mix and Swings had already come back on their own. I always like to see the horses making good choices that free me from needing to force them into the desired behavior.
A horse that limits its own time on green grass is a real convenience.
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Longest Shot
We have very mixed feelings about horse racing, given the harsh aspect of the sport taxing thoroughbreds to sometimes fatal degrees, contrasted against the awesome spectacle of the power and beauty of the equine athletes and teams of humans supporting them. The Kentucky Derby race is one of the biggest exhibitions.
Yesterday’s 148th running of the race was epic for the long odds overcome by the winning horse, Rich Strike, and jockey, Sonny Leon. The fact that the horse was 21st on a list of eligible racehorses for a race that only allowed 20 to run right up until the last-minute scratch of Ethereal Road.
The drama of the long-shot win was bolstered by the fantastic way jockey Sonny Leon navigated Rich Strike through the pack from so far back to find space along the rail and outrun the two leaders battling each other unaware of the additional challenger.
I suspect Rich Strike will not be such a long shot in the next race of the Triple Crown series, The Preakness Stakes in two weeks.
Yesterday wasn’t a day when Cyndie did any racing but she did get outside and walk in one direction into the labyrinth at 1:00 p.m. to contribute to the wave of peace for World Labyrinth Day.
She also stepped her way both down and back up the significant hill between the labyrinth and our house, which is an impressive feat all by itself. Between her heroic effort on the driveway the day before, and all of yesterday’s steps, she is looking a lot like a champion in the marathon of knee replacement recovery.
In this case, she was far from being a long shot.
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Peace Wave
Okay, so, then there’s this. It’s the morning of the first Saturday in May and that means it’s World Labyrinth Day! There is a rolling wave of peaceful meditations making its way around our planet.
Every year on the first Saturday in May thousands of people around the globe participate in World Labyrinth Day as a moving meditation for world peace and celebration of the labyrinth experience. Many “Walk as One at 1” local time to create a rolling wave of peaceful energy passing from one time zone to the next…
We did not make any plans this year to specifically host an event at our Rowcliffe Forest Garden Labyrinth, so named to memorialize our priceless time and deep connection to Ian and his family and their place in Portugal, because Cyndie is not fully ambulatory. That said, she did do a milestone driveway walking distance yesterday.
When I left for an errand to Elysa’s house in St. Paul in the morning, our recycle bin was still at the end of the driveway waiting to be emptied. When I returned, it was no longer there. I was certain that it hadn’t walked itself back up to our garage, so who could have pulled off such a feat?
Our heroine didn’t just walk the full length and back, more than four times the longest she’d walked up to that point, she took along Delilah on a leash, picked up the mail, and grabbed the empty recycle bin to wheel it the whole way back to the house. By her own admission, it was a very slow and methodical walk, but nonetheless, a significant accomplishment.
As a caregiver, at this point, my primary contribution is working consistently to encourage her to elevate and cool the knee often enough to compensate for the daily increases in the amount she is using it. Cyndie has needed no coaching on exercising.
I spotted a new wildflower in our woods that image searching leads me to believe qualifies as a crocus of some sort.
The dandelions will soon carpet our grassy areas and I am hoping our transplanted trillium will appear in the woods just beyond the house shortly thereafter.
In an update on my new bicycle that was in the shop, the report is that the source of the creaking frame was down in the bottom bracket, not up near the seat tube. Something was not quite right among all the mechanisms of the crank and motor interconnections assembled at the factory. Not a problem that I stood a chance of solving on my own.
On our first day with temperatures reaching 70°F, I was able to put the bike through a thorough test, specifically choosing to leave the motor-assist off for the entire ride so as to learn the response of the marvelous machine when powered exclusively by muscle. It was a very pleasurable experience that will become even easier when electric power is desired.
Think about world peace today at 1:00 p.m. your time, regardless of whether or not you are able to be walking a labyrinth. Help build the wave.
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Multiple Moves
For what seems like months, Cyndie has been working on a plan to choreograph a furniture swap between three generations of her family. With her mom’s home sold, there was going to be excess furniture left behind that was available for distribution. Like a scene right out of a movie, family members started putting notes on items they wanted.
Over time, small items were moved by personal cars but there were enough large items remaining that professional movers were called in. However, this would be no simple move. Furnishings Cyndie wanted would replace items we already had, so those needed to find new homes.
Same thing for our daughter, Elysa. She needed to jettison items to make room in her house for selected items. At Cyndie’s mom’s house, everything was going, but not to just one location. A portion went to Elysa and a portion to our place.
That meant the truck started at our house, loading items that would go to Elysa or be donated. Next, to St. Paul to deliver a few of our items for Elysa’s house, and after that, the balance to Bridging, an organization that receives donated furniture to distribute to local families in need.
Cyndie and I followed along to direct the action. After Bridging, the truck headed to Cyndie’s mom’s old house in Edina to load up for return trips to Elysa’s house and finally, back to ours. Beds, dressers, desks, tables, chairs, rugs, a gas grill, and a patio table with chairs.
At each stop, the items needed to be loaded in the proper order to facilitate unloading at the subsequent destinations. It was a bit of a circus but the guys understood the drill and Cyndie had prepared all parties well for each step so it was a nicely orchestrated circus.
Even though plenty of measuring was done in advance, there are always some adjustments to consider when given the opportunity to see things for real. The room dimensions in our house are just enough smaller that we are going to move a couple pieces around in search of a more balanced and fully functional layout.
The movers were extremely helpful in freeing us from any heavy lifting. I needed to rely on them entirely because my usual moving partner is using a cane to get around and can’t do any heaving lifting for a few more weeks.
Cyndie continues to wow the physical therapist with her progress. I’m happy that she is remembering to also balance all the walking with a reasonable amount of rest and icing of that new knee.
It really was a flawless day of multiple moves, right up until the last stop at our house. The driver immediately let Cyndie know that he was very sorry for a little slip up he had navigating the driveway. I knew it was probably bad when I saw how much mud was on the truck’s tires.
Delilah and I checked it out on our way to the end of the driveway with the trash and recycle bins.
Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark. The ground is still a little soft.
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Bloodroot Blooming
The first bloodroot flower appeared yesterday morning. I wasn’t in the woods late in the afternoon but I bet there were plenty more spreading their petals to join it by the end of the glorious day. All that whining I’ve been doing about how wet it was is a thing of the past, for a few days, anyway.
If you look closely, you can see rolled up leaves cradling the buds of many more flowers about to make their way. The distinctly shaped leaves will fully expand after the blossoms drop and get rather large in size.
Following the appearance of trout lilies and bloodroot will be the trillium we transplanted from the lake place up near Hayward. I’ll be looking for some evidence we succeeded with the most recent transplants by our change to keeping them in a more dense group when replanting.
Attempts from previous years weren’t looking very robust and definitely weren’t thickening up nor launching new sprouts. I got the impression we planted them too far apart from each other and ended up isolating individual plants.
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In an entirely unrelated topic, I had a chance to have multiple staff at the bike shop working together to hunt for the source of the bothersome creaking sound my new bike was making. After patiently listening to my long-winded explanation of what I have been experiencing, one of the guys mentioned that my shoes looked new.
Yes, they are. He grabbed an allen wrench and snugged the screws holding the cleats on each shoe as I presented the bottoms of my shoes to him. Could that have been it?
I hopped on and rode around the parking lot.
Nope. Mystery sound still present.
I convinced the mechanic to step outside and listen as I pedaled. The sound was obvious but the source of the sound was not. As a group of employees stood around offering guesses, the mechanic was trying different things with my bike. Suddenly, I heard the sound.
“You found it!” I exclaimed.
He was putting pressure on the left pedal and torquing the frame to reproduce the sound. Another guy felt all around the carbon frame trying to locate the source and to everyone’s surprise ended up thinking it was coming from up around where the seat post fits in the frame.
Trek has something they call IsoSpeed that “decouples” the seat tube from the top tube to diminish the fatiguing impacts of the road. There is a good chance something related to that mechanism was causing the sound. I needed to leave the bike with them to investigate how it is all supposed to work.
At the hour the store was closing last night, I received a message that my bike was ready to be picked up. I’ll stop by later today to get it and hopefully learn more about what they needed to do to solve the problem.
I’m really looking forward to pedaling a much quieter (new) bike.
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Survival Tactics
After two weeks of recovering from knee replacement surgery, Cyndie returned to be seen by the surgeon’s assistant and have the bandage removed from the incision. Now able to walk with only a cane for support, she let me wait in the car and navigated her way to the appointment unassisted.
The prognosis was excellent and the incision looks fantastic. Apparently, all my tender loving care is doing wonders for her. That, and the fact she has been downright heroic about balancing exercise and rest.
I was saved from needing to do the grocery shopping because Cyndie shopped online and we were able to pick up the order from the store on our way home from the doctor’s appointment. She is reclaiming some of the meal prep roles which eases some of my caregiving stress. There is nothing more challenging for me and my limited kitchen prowess than becoming responsible for feeding the head chef at a time when healthy meals are more important than ever.
And Cyndie even prepared and froze many meals in advance of her surgery to help me out during her convalescence. The master of reheating faced new complications in dishing up servings for a person other than just himself. In real estate, it’s “location, location, location.” In the kitchen, it’s “timing, timing, timing.” Heating more than a single portion of a single item threw a wrench into my old solo living survival tactics.
After getting groceries put away and laundry dried and folded and lunch dishes cleaned up, I snuck in another version of a test ride on my new bicycle. New shoes tested very well. New pedals needed tension adjusted on the clips. The seat needed to come up another fraction. The new computer sensor is working for speed and cadence. I’m starting to get the hang of brake lever shifting.
Only one problem remains. Something in the drivetrain is making a noise when I put pressure on the pedals and I have yet to figure out what it is. I can’t even say for sure whether the creaking sound is coming from the crank or bottom bracket or further back by the rear derailleur. A return visit to the bike shop is planned.
All this activity culminated in a brief rest when I returned to the house. I just wanted to sit down for a moment and check messages on my phone, maybe play a few rounds against my frenemies in “Words with Friends.”
That didn’t last very long. I conked out. Cyndie thought it looked cute that Delilah and I were napping together.
My nap seemed to energize Cyndie because after Delilah and I got up, she walked downstairs for the first time in over two weeks, went for a walk outside in the sunshine down to the shop, and later cooked dinner on the grill out on the deck. She then proceeded to recline with her leg raised and cooled by the fancy rented machine to control swelling after all that exercise.
She’s like the perfect patient wielding her own excellent survival tactics.
I’d like to know what she did with my wife.
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Limbing Up
We have a fair number of big trees that need professional attention to bring down high branches and widow-makers. I received a quote for the work but the guy said they can’t start until the ground dries up enough to support their machinery. I don’t know if it will ever get that dry.
While he was here, I asked his opinion about pruning the lower limbs of our evergreen trees. Some trees are getting so wide at the bottom, that I can barely get around them on the garden tractor when I’m mowing. He offered no objections to limbing up the trees about 3-4 feet.
For all the years we’ve been walking our property, I’d never noticed that our neighbor’s evergreens are all “limbed up” 4-6 feet until I started thinking about doing it to ours. I see that as a good sign, that I didn’t notice. It never looked “wrong” to me on their lot so I trust I won’t dislike the look on ours.
I’m starting with the trees that most annoy me when mowing and then will decide about doing more of our others after I see how the first few look. It’s really a great problem to have, trees getting so big.
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One of the challenges of pruning so many branches is that it creates large piles of cuttings that need to be dealt with later. Right now I am thinking about trimming off the smallest portions of the cut branches and creating a pile of the woodiest cores to be run through the chipper. The needles and small ends can be tossed into the brush piles I’m creating as a natural hedge fence along part of the northern border of our property.
Working on the second tree yesterday using our cool Stihl mini chainsaw, I was cutting so many limbs, one after another, the machine shut down because it got too hot.
Too much of a good thing, I think. This handy little chainsaw is a really slick addition to our cutting tools. The problem with it is that it works too well.
I have to fight the urge to cut too many branches because it is so easy. Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean I should.
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Finding
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looking
for the last thing
you haven’t been able to find
looking everywhere
except wherever it is
finding everything
else
resorting to looking
where it positively wouldn’t be
twice
just in case
looking for something different
to trick the universe
into revealing
what you are truly after
forgetting
what you were truly after
again
settling
for the next best thing
because it will be right
where you expected
to find it
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Relative Something 