Archive for October 2022
Just Cry
Without intentional effort to think positively, a person could easily find the ongoing trials and tribulations of the world too much to bear.
Sometimes I just want to cry over the horrors of present wars and the calamities of global warming, the destructive inequality between rich and poor, the failure of government to serve people before corporations, and the masses of people who believe that lying and hurting others can be justified to achieve their desired ends.
Cyndie and I plant some trees and tend to our forest to help a few local acres of the planet.
We love and care for four rescued Thoroughbred mares residing on our land.
We treat people respectfully in our occasional interactions and manifest loving intentions for family, friends, and the world at large.
Still, sometimes the pain and sorrow in the world bring tears to my eyes.
If there is any justice in this world, those who are enduring suffering will sense recognition that tears are being shared in their honor in the same way that loving energy vibrations radiate throughout the universe.
Here’s wishing that happiness and laughter actually outweigh sadness and crying around the planet as a whole.
At least then I could be crying tears of joy.
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Falling Leaves
I recorded this just the other day as waves of leaf showers were falling.
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Enjoy a few moments of this annual fall performance.
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Madness Method
It is the season for easy sighting of the invasive Common Buckthorn which we regularly seek out for elimination from our woods. The leaves of Buckthorn hold a deep green color longer than most other undergrowth in the fall. Now is the time when I can spot what was previously obscured by other summer growth in the woods and venture off-trail to cut back any progress made by the pernicious invader since last year.
The small sprouts that pop up from seeds dropped by birds are easy to pull by hand. New sprouts that emerge out of a root structure that was already in existence don’t pull as well. If I bring a shovel with me on these missions, a lot of those can be dug up. Anything that has made it to “tree” size presents a bigger challenge.
I have decided on a process that I call my method of madness, partly as a result of a handsaw being all I was carrying way back when I first started cutting Buckthorn on our property. I cut off the trees at a height of 3 or 4 feet so the stump will be noticeable the next time I pass by, knowing there will be subsequent growth since I don’t apply an herbicide to the cut.
This process wouldn’t be practical if I wasn’t constantly walking through these woods and following up each year on the re-sprouting stumps. After a while, new sprouts will stop showing up. Here are before and after images of one example of my madness:
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This year I have also removed a section of bark on some of the stumps to see if that will prevent new sprouts above the break.
I found an interesting video from the University of Minnesota Extension that reveals how Buckthorn has become a winter haven for soybean aphids. An added incentive for farmers to pay attention to the invasive growing beside their crop fields.
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Boggles my mind that people figure out stuff like this. Who noticed the aphids were going to the Buckthorn and laying eggs that survive the winter?
Seems like madness to me.
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Finally Connected
Ten years ago today, October 18 was the very day of our arrival to this property we call Wintervale. Hoorah! I looked up our property on the county site and grabbed a couple of images from the widest span of dates available.
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On the left is the year 2010 which was two years before we purchased the property. On the right is from 2021 according to the county.
I prefer the images our friend Mike Wilkus provided from his recent flyover.
I was hiking the north loop trail with Delilah, waiting for the arrival of our in-home broadband internet installer to finally connect us to the world of streaming content, and spotted this scene of pine needles carpeting the ground.
I’m sure glad that tree isn’t over our landscape pond.
As can be seen from the view perspective of Mike’s photo above, there are cultivated crop fields around us, keeping us aware that we live among farmers.
Yesterday the closest field to our south was being harvested. Something tells me we aren’t in the suburbs anymore.
That’s quite all right with me, …especially now that we are hardwired with fiber optic broadband.
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Pond Down
Despite the promising prediction that our daytime temperatures will warm considerably next weekend, the near-term prognosis suggests we will experience a couple of overnight hard freezes. Our last required act of preparation was shutting down the landscape pond yesterday.
We pulled the pump and associated plumbing and then Cyndie trimmed back the Sweet Flag pond grass and picked out handfuls of pine needles and leaves. We have come to the realization that a pine tree is a bad choice to have around a landscape pond.
The final step of winter preparation for the pond was the netting we drape across it to capture the continuing assault of fallen leaves that blow in all throughout the off-season months.
Mission accomplished.
What’s next? I don’t know about you but I’m feeling ready for a day when it is snowy and cold and there is no reason to do anything but lounge by the fireplace and read or work on a jigsaw puzzle for hours on end. Maybe with a cup of hot chocolate.
I shouldn’t get greedy. I spent a few hours on the couch yesterday watching the NFL Minnesota Vikings achieve their fifth victory of the season. I tried to swear off the NFL some years back but that was a goal I failed to achieve. There are just a bit too many of my impressionable years immersed in the games and the characters involved, not to mention my father’s fanaticism, which still runs in my blood. I watch games now somewhat begrudgingly.
Keeping a distraction handy when things aren’t going my team’s way helps me avoid getting sucked into a funk. Yesterday, I tried searching the internet for a live performance of a song I once had on a VHS tape and haven’t seen for decades. After a few iterations with increasing promise, I stumbled on more than I hoped to find.
I recognized the look of the first image that appeared. Not only was it the right artist in the right venue, I had discovered a full 26-minute segment of the 1991 show broadcast on our local public television station. I let it play while simultaneously following the ever-improving circumstances of the Vikings football game.
Unfortunately, only one of the two versions of entertainment turned out the way I wanted. The Vikings won!
When the 26-minute performance had ended, the song I was waiting for had never shown up. It had been left out of this version.
This afternoon, we have a scheduled appointment for the final step of getting hooked up to high speed broadband internet. One of the first things I hope to do when it is connected is deepen my search for that song performance, using what I discovered yesterday.
Greg Brown with Pat Donohue performing “Good Morning Coffee” on Twin Cities PBS program called, “Showcase,” air date 12/1/91.
Why that song isn’t included in the 26:55 available minutes of the version on TPT’s web site is a mystery to me.
Seems like a good project now that we’ve got the pond down and it’ll be freezing outside for a couple of days.
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Helping Ourselves
We asked for help in finishing the landscaping along the steep edges of our new driveway. I’m taking the lack of response from our excavator to indicate they are either too busy or simply not interested. They must not need our money.
It is a peeve of mine when contractors choose to “ghost” potential customers after initial contact. I generally follow the idiom of squeaky wheels getting the grease but after multiple unsuccessful attempts to communicate our genuine interest in paying for help with our landscaping, we have fallen back on doing what we can with our limited resources.
Up by the shop/garage, I have been feathering the edge with composted manure. Yesterday, we mined a ten-year-old pile of dirt down by our southern border drainage ditch to use at the bottom of the driveway by the road, filling the trailer behind the ATV with hand shovels. We made six trips back and forth and covered a humblingly short length of both sides.
Cyndie suggested we rent a skid steer tractor. She’s not wrong that it would be a more impressive machine for addressing this size of a job. My first hesitation with that plan is that I would be the person to operate it and I’ve never driven one before. The subsequent issues include our lack of truck or trailer to transport the machine, the small amount of available dirt a machine like that could move, and the abuse my novice use would do to the surrounding terrain.
We don’t make a lot of efficient progress with our shovel-fulls at a time, but I have the skills to operate a shovel and can do the work with minimal collateral damage.
The only real challenge beyond not being able to finish the job quickly is coping with my self-conscious embarrassment about the neighbors’ opinions over our using hand tools to tackle work that deserves machines. Working down at the road leaves our methods glaringly obvious to local traffic passing by.
My slow and primitive methods are less obvious up on the other end of the driveway. I’m not certain our efforts will ultimately produce the desired results but Cyndie and I agree what we can do ourselves will be better than nothing. Time will tell.
Having successfully made that small bit of progress near the road yesterday, I’d like to keep going while the weather allows until we use up the rest of the old pile. It’s a good exercise in coping with my apprehension over the impressions my methods give to local observers.
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Swift Switch
We were not expecting to wake up to such a wintery scene yesterday morning as the one that greeted us as darkness faded enough to reveal whiteness covering our deck.
Ever one to playfully re-interpret reality, before Cyndie opened her eyes, I told her that it didn’t rain overnight like we had expected. The early dose of measurable snowfall made about the same impression on our Japanese silver grass as it did on us.
It felt like a great day to stay in bed a little longer than usual and be warm under covers but duty called and we dug boots from deep in the closet, spilling a pile of things out in the process, and took Delilah for a walk before feeding the horses.
Speaking of horses, yesterday we had a visit from the nutritionist from This Old Horse who measured each of our Thoroughbred mares and issued a pleasing assessment that they all looked really, really good and healthy.
They have gained weight as hoped. We’ve been giving Mix an extra serving of feed pellets per day and we will begin doing the same with Mia to keep them on track toward a goal of optimal robustness. Mia, especially, could use a bit more body fat to cope at this time of year. She was pretty shivery at the start of the day. We are going to get a moisture-wicking blanket for her to help during these in-between weeks of cold precipitation.
Their winter blankets would be a bit much at this point. She just needs a raincoat.
Mix likes using mud for a covering. She rubbed her face firmly to paint her cheeks thoroughly and looked proud of her appearance after she stood up again.
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By the end of the day the snow had disappeared and this morning there are areas of blue sky overhead. We are feeling a new urgency about finishing a few projects that require we be able to see the ground, including one that involves digging dirt before it freezes.
We also still need to shut down and pull the pump from our landscape pond. It looked strange to see the water flowing with everything covered in snow. I pulled a snow shovel out to clear the steps yesterday morning, feeling it was way too soon to be doing so.
Time marches on. We are having our grief over Pequenita’s passing poked by continuing to find her toys tucked under or behind furniture. Even a dust bunny of cat hair becomes a tear-jerker at this point. Thank you to all who have conveyed your support. We truly appreciate the love. ❤️
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Sad Goodbye
We are sad to announce that yesterday afternoon, Pequenita departed this Earthly realm for kitty afterlife under the tender care of Dr. Jenni at Kinnic Veterinary Service in River Falls.
Pequenita, or “Nita” for short, remained a wee one throughout her very active eleven years. We’ve been medicating her for a thyroid condition for a few months but she really didn’t like the pills, regardless the multitude of methods we concocted to finagle her acceptance.
This week she stopped eating, drinking, or using the litter box, signaling that her little body was calling it quits.
We have nothing but wonderful memories about the ten years she allowed us to be her human companions. One of our favorite stories is the time Cyndie cooed from the darkness as we were about to fall asleep, that Nita was giving loves on her face.
“I was just going to say the same thing,” was my response, “because Nita’s face is right in mine.”
Cyndie quickly came to the realization that she was getting her loves from the butt end of the cat.
Pequenita is already missed and indoor life around here will never be the same. We are relishing all the fond memories of the years she preciously enriched our lives.
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Passing Peak
One day you wake up and notice the dominant shade out the window is yellow-brown. Honestly, it seems like it happens overnight. Tuesday, the trees were ablaze with vibrant hues of red and orange with green and yellow highlights backed by a blue sky to set them all off magnificently.
Yesterday, it looked as if a switch had been flipped to subdue the magnificence and replace it with a dulled pallor of decaying leaves.
The high heat of Tuesday held the potential of triggering some thunderstorms overnight but our roof received nary a drop. Somewhere around zero-dark-thirty, my full bladder nudged me out of a perfect slumber and in semi-consciousness I suspected I was hearing rainfall. Turned out to be the furnace fan noise through the floor vent.
A trip to the bathroom rousted me enough to check my phone for weather details and I saw there was an alert of lightning strikes nearby. I pulled up the radar image and discovered the line of stormy weather had split around us to the north and south. That would be great luck if you were hoping to dodge bad weather but it is rotten luck when the ground is so dry it is cracking open in a gaping grimace of distressed thirst.
The sparse sprinkles that misted down from passing clouds yesterday afternoon were just a mocking wetness that barely settled dust. It is weird to watch the dark rain clouds in the sky moving by all around us but never overhead.
The bright spot that occurred for us was the arrival of a truck up the driveway with a logo from the underground cable company that is installing fiber optic broadband internet cables in our county. The guy had just completed splicing the line at the road and was coming up to the house to check the strength of the signal.
We now have an appointment scheduled for in-home installation of the modem, the last step to get us connected to high-speed internet.
At least the technician didn’t have to deal with any rain while he worked to splice our fiber.
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Interrelated Accomplishments
One thing conveniently led to the next in the series of projects we chose to take on in yesterday’s unseasonable heat. While we had been working in the woods the day before, Cyndie discovered a spot that looked promising for digging up more rocks for use in the labyrinth. There remained a surprising number of plaster fake rocks defining the pathway that we have always intended to replace when we find suitable real rocks.
I can no longer recall how many of these faux stones were left behind by the sellers of our property because it’s been so long since we used them all up in the labyrinth. Since we started reclaiming them again and storing them on a pallet, we’ve reached roughly five layers of the plaster half-rocks now being stored in the hay shed. That is more than enough to keep in reserve for replacing ones that fall from the veneer of supposed field rock plastered around the foundation of our log home and the shop garage.
Yesterday’s rock exchange in the labyrinth resulted in a wheelbarrow full of the faux stones which I needed to purge. Convincing myself that we didn’t need to store any more fake rocks, I came up with a good use for them. I dumped them on the corner where our loop around the hay shed meets the new pavement of the driveway.
I have been working to build up the corner to support the lagging trailer wheels that follow off-track in a turn onto the narrow driveway. After adding rock to the shoulder of that corner, I have been covering it with composted manure, our most available natural fill.
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Our great need for fill along the driveway is conveniently coinciding with my goal of clearing out space in the compost area to make room for the coming winter.
So, to review:
- We replaced faux stones that were temporarily used in the labyrinth.
- I was able to use the faux stones as fill for building up the turn from the hay shed loop to the driveway pavement.
- I’m using composted manure to cover the added material along that turn.
- Using that compost helps to clear out space for winter collection of new manure and possibly bedding from the barn stalls.
It is wonderfully satisfying to be making these improvements and having our efforts pay off in advancing other projects concurrently underway. It feels like we are getting two rewards for one effort, multiple times!
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Relative Something 