Archive for July 2022
A Speck
Cyndie has wowed me with another sky pic. I have cropped it to exclude the ground, leaving a spray of thin clouds smeared across the blue with a half-moon all lit up in broad daylight.
But there’s more.
Up near the top there is a speck that she hadn’t noticed at the time. I tried to brush it off my screen.
A high flyer soaring almost out of sight.
For as inconspicuous as it is, I think it disproportionately adds a lot to the image composition. Even though that dark spec barely catches my eye, knowing it is there provides added depth for me.
Or, I’m just thinking too hard. I simply like the image she captured. Down to the last speck.
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What Priorities
Looking at the topic of mass shootings from this perspective really struck me this morning.
Sorry. We’re all out of mental health care.
Ouch.
Back up from the point a person is in need of professional health care and consider the years that led up to it. Every little action and experience contributes to our future selves. Day after day after day. We make our future by how we choose to behave today. Parents, you are molding your children’s future health.
What are our priorities?
Imagine a world where we focused our resources on education and family health, working to reduce poverty and inequalities for all people.
Sending love to all who are struggling or in crisis. There is no quick fix but if a person spends whatever limited energy they can muster on choosing a healthy option instead of an unhealthy one this day and then does so every day after that, improvement is made possible.
Maybe that will buy the 90-week wait time for access to talking with a professional.
Or not. Where are your priorities?
I vote we seek to enable a better world.
Prioritize HEALth! Love yourself enough to show yourself love. Loving ourselves is the first step to loving all others.
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Full Day
I didn’t set out to put in such a long day yesterday toiling away on big accomplishments, but circumstance allowed and I achieved much more than I thought possible. Cyndie was occupied in the kitchen canning jam with the help of her mother in the morning so I was on my own working outside. Since I got home from my bike trip I’ve intended to take the chainsaw to the large limb that broke off a big maple tree beside the back pasture.
I was eyeing that task while walking Delilah in that back pasture and pulling weeds that were getting tall. The dew point temperature was high and it was going to be a sweaty day in the great outdoors. Delilah likes being out with me so I picked the weed-pulling for her benefit before it got too hot. While walking the field, I sensed it would be mowable if no additional rain fell during the day.
That left me with two significant projects competing for my attention. I decided to start with the chainsaw on the downed limb. It was one of those cases where the more branches I cut and pulled out, the more branches it looked like remained. By the time I found myself soaked in sweat and exhausted, I had a mess of tree shrapnel, cut logs, and limbs for chipping to clean up. I began to think I may have bitten off more than I could chew.
Time for a lunch break in the air conditioning!
That renewed my energies and I immediately set out to finish and clean up my lumberjack work. Without a moment’s hesitation, I brought out the diesel tractor to take on the pasture mowing project.
Starting very slowly along the fence, I completed the full circumference before kicking up the speed to see if I might be able to cut the entire pasture before rain or darkness stopped me.
I made good progress navigating the Ford New Holland around the corners and recesses. Cutting at a different angle than the last time to improve results, I triumphed within minutes of the dinner hour.
Two large tasks knocked off the to-do list in one day, with credit given to Cyndie for being able to take on the afternoon horse feeding and dog walking that allowed me to mow uninterrupted to the end.
Color me extremely satisfied this morning with such progress achieved in just one day.
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Ravaging Varmint
We received a wonderful multi-colored lily as a gift last year and Cyndie planted it in the ground outside our front entrance to the house. It was one of the first plants to sprout from the ground when the snow melted away this past spring. It brought us both great joy when the flower blossom appeared.
Isn’t that just wonderful?!
Well, yesterday, this is the scene Cyndie unexpectedly stumbled upon:
Not looking so wonderful anymore, eh?
What critter would not only dig up such a beautiful flowering plant but toss it away like a piece of unwanted trash?
The most likely trouble makers we suspect are squirrels or chipmunks. We’ve seen both marauding in the vicinity of the once glorious lily.
We’ll see how hardy the lily turns out to be. Cyndie replanted it.
I may need to spend some extended time lounging on the front step. My slingshot hasn’t had any chances to come out a play for quite a while. We can find out who is more patient, them or me. If I sit still long enough, me thinks they might just forget I’m there and I can apply a little consequence for their ravaging behaviors.
Vengeful? Who, me?
In this case, a little.
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Slowly Advancing
I love slow-motion replays. When I was little, I wanted so badly to be able to perform an athletic maneuver in slow motion while playing football in the yard. The closest we ever came was playing in the winter in deep snow surrounded by the padded insulating layers of our snow pants and jackets. We didn’t fall any slower but the landings were softer. It was easier to pretend we were moving in slow motion.
Watching radar images of advancing thunderstorms is a different version of slow motion. We can see it coming, but can’t do anything about the ultimate timing of arrival. It’ll get here when it gets here… if it doesn’t use up all the energy before then. My favorite MPR weather blog pointed out a whopping 86°F dew point in Iowa yesterday afternoon that combined with a 90°F temperature to create a heat index temperature of 121°!
That seems like the kind of extreme heat that could cook up some impressively stormy weather.
Yesterday morning at our place felt rather otherworldy. We walked out into a landscape that looked like we no longer had any neighbors. Our high dew point temperature was making it feel remarkably tropical. There were so many droplets falling from the tree leaves it sounded like it was raining in the woods. A thick fog was obscuring the view of anything beyond our property lines.
Days like this strain my senses to reconcile how dramatically different it is here during the frozen desolation of winter. I don’t tend to think about the changes between those two extremes as happening in slow motion, but obviously, the transition takes months.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about another thing changing in slow motion. It came to my attention via some television programs that included scenes of life in Europe in the 1930s and the early episodes of fascist intimidation. It is hard for me to imagine what that was like in light of the knowledge of where it led and the ultimate atrocities that transpired. It makes me want to shout at those people in history to not let it happen.
It causes me similar discomfort to witness rhetoric and animosities happening in the present day that has an eery similarity to 1930s Europe. There are moments when I experience the uncomfortable sense that I am living during the beginnings of a slow-motion transition away from democracy and acceptance toward an intolerant and authoritarian political philosophy.
The politicization of the US Supreme Court feels so wrong and shows no signs of reversing course. The long game being played by those who sought to reverse the law allowing women to choose to have an abortion by electing a president who would appoint judges to achieve their goals is very much a version of slow motion.
It disturbs me to witness the slow-motion trends happening in the present given the outcomes of authoritarian intolerance that played out multiple times throughout the world in the past.
It’s a jarring contrast to the innocence of my dreams of slow-motion leaping and diving in real-time when I was a kid.
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Berry Season
It’s a little later in the summer than what we have experienced over the past ten years, but we aren’t complaining. Wild black raspberries are showing up all over our property this week. This is made more thrilling by the fact we lost many bushes to a rust fungus that is extremely contagious. Over the last two years, Cyndie has dug up countless plants in an attempt to limit the spread to adjacent bushes that showed no signs of disease.
To offset the losses, Cyndie has been working to establish a patch of red raspberry bushes that aren’t susceptible to the rust disease. Unfortunately, the deer liked the spot where she planted them and munched off the tops of the plants before they could flower. No red raspberries showing up now.
With the black raspberries now ripening everywhere we turn, it would be wise to always bring a pale along on our daily dog-walking excursions. Berry picking can spontaneously occur at any time when the berries all ripen at once.
Cyndie has found that her efforts to cover the entire property when the season is at its peak could become an endless loop. By the time she returns to the place she started, more new ripe berries appear and she could just keep on going round and round again.
In contrast, her strawberry patch is all in one place. The biggest battle there seems to be a resident squirrel with a taste for the fruit. In classic squirrel behavior, this varmint tends to just take a bite out of each berry it can reach instead of eating just the entirety of one. Maybe it is trying to lay claim on as many as possible with the intent of returning later for a larger feast.
As much fun and sublimely delicious as it is to get fresh strawberries from our own patch, Cyndie says there aren’t enough to fulfill her desires for her massive jam-making extravaganzas. When she returns from the holiday weekend at the lake, I believe there is a trip to the local berry farm in her plans.
She needs to get the strawberry projects completed to make way for the black raspberry jam and baked goods spectacles that immediately follow.
It’s looking like it will be a berry, berry good season for us this year.
I say, “Mmmm!” to that! Better late than never.
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Being Horses
This morning I am feeling overwhelming awe over my opportunity to live in such a beautiful place and care for these four rescued thoroughbred mares. In a conscious effort to compartmentalize all the ills and angst-inducing news roiling our planet, I am focusing on the peace and tranquility of my immediate surroundings and soaking up the soul-nourishing thrill of it all.
Being home alone with our animals brings on plenty of opportunities for contemplation. Half of me is thinking about which of our unending projects I can tend to on my own –chainsaw use is not allowed when I am alone– and half is wallowing in the bliss of all the pleasantries of solitude.
Partial solitude, that is. Delilah frequently reminds me that I am not totally alone. She also influences which projects I choose to tackle and when because some tasks don’t lend themselves well to having a leashed dog along. I am extremely grateful for her patient tolerance of my extended lingering this morning after tending to the horses.
The completion of the morning routine at the barn is regularly the trigger for returning to the house to feed Delilah breakfast. That she would accept any delay in being fed is absolute generosity on her part.
While the horses were calmly consuming their morning feed servings today, I quietly made my way down to open the gates to the freshly cut hay field. I was dumping a wheelbarrow of manure onto the most active compost pile when the horses took advantage of the renewed opportunity to roam the front field. They were just making their way over the hill and out of sight when I returned to the barn.
Curious about what was drawing them to immediately head to the farthest reaches of the field, I convinced Delilah to walk away from the house toward the high spot in the driveway to see what the horses were doing down by the road.
They were munching on the grass along the fence line as if in a gesture to demonstrate that they could. It was as far from the barn as their confines allow. With Delilah’s generous patience providing me ample opportunity, I just stood and watched our herd of four gorgeous horses being horses. Mix turned first and began to make her way back up the rise in the big field.
She stood at the top for a moment and looked absolutely regal, then moved into a happy trot down to the gate into the paddocks. The other three walked along behind. They appeared to be reveling in the regained access to the full reaches of their current home.
It is such a rewarding honor to be able to give them as much autonomy as possible throughout each day.
Their happiness is contagious.
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Summer Progress
The last few days have felt very much like classic summer days. I guess it is right on schedule as we now find ourselves in the Independence Day holiday weekend. Cyndie headed up to the lake with her mom yesterday and I stayed home to tend to our animals. We weren’t successful in securing coverage allowing us both to be away over the 4th of July weekend this year.
One classic sign of summer for us is the sight of our field converted into hay bales.
This year, Brad, who grazes cattle on our neighbor’s land, had his guy cut our hay field when cutting fields adjacent to us. A win-win for everyone as we wanted our field cut and hoped someone could use the hay, it was conveniently located for them to cut and bale, and it gives Brad a little more hay supply than he would have otherwise had.
Meanwhile, our horses have the back pasture for grazing. Yesterday evening, Delilah and I wandered out into the pasture to pull some weeds and the herd showed up to munch nearby.
The sound of the methodical biting of mouthfuls of grass as the horses torque their heads to break the blades and chew is a wonderful summer soundtrack backed up with songbirds, and the calls of frogs and crickets. It provides a soothing, meditative mood that nurtures my soul.
In contrast, serving up pans of manufactured nutritional feed pellets in the dry, dusty surface under the barn overhang can be a little irritating when things don’t go smoothly. I wish I didn’t so frequently find fault with the conditions as being either too wet and muddy or too dry and dusty. The days between those two states are way too few.
Since we allow the horses some autonomy –usually temporarily separating them into two groups of two– they are able to wander over and check out what the other horse was served, triggering a back and forth movement that foils the soothing sounds of contented munching we so enjoy.
Of the four horses, Light is the most prone to stepping into her feed pan, often tipping it rapidly and spilling the contents. In attempt to avoid them trying to eat the spillage out of the sand, which is not good for their gut, we have tried serving Light’s pan on a rubber mat.
I think we’re gonna need to use a bigger mat.
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Relative Something 