Archive for March 2023
Weather Related
Just in case you didn’t expect me to write about the weather today, I put it in the title to give you a warning. Where would I be if I didn’t have the topic of the weather to resort to when nothing fantastical happens worth telling? If you ask Cyndie, she’d say we need to get another dog. I find myself in hesitation mode about making that commitment again.
Speaking of the weather, I would like to present “exhibit A” as a photo to show how the increasing angle of the sun is having a visible impact on our snowpack even during the last few days when we experienced single-digit temperatures that felt ripped right out of January:
The right side of the driveway receives a direct blast of sunshine on blue-sky days while the left side does not.
Another phenomenon we are witnessing is the growing icy mounds where flowing meltwater, under pressure from the terrain, pushes up and re-freezes into surprising-looking high spots of particular hazard to hoofed navigation.
The area beneath the old willow tree in the small paddock has melted down to the dirt but the snowpack glacier a short distance beyond is currently getting thicker as melting occurs uphill and flows down to re-freeze right in front of a gate opening.
The horses wisely refrain from venturing out onto the icy surface.
Much less wise was Light’s decision to bolt in an unnecessary panic to get past me and away from Mix when Swings decided to walk over to the other side of the overhang. Swings had been successively switching sides as she waited for me to finish my housekeeping work before serving up feed yesterday morning. Light had made it a mission to follow along with Swings each time.
That meant I was frequently needing to work around their feet as they intruded on and then evacuated from the space where I was trying to scoop manure. On the last iteration of this dance, Light suddenly decided she needed to hurry to keep up with Swings. Light torqued to avoid me by about an inch but that put her off balance as she was passing through the narrow space of the single fence section that is opposite the swinging gates.
I watched with alarm as the weight of her body pushed against the fence boards, flexing them dramatically –I prepared for them to give way, but they held– before her leg slammed into the post at the other end, jolting her a bit as she continued beyond it. That brought her free to stop behind Swings who was by then standing idly.
It all happened so fast that there was nothing I could do but stare in shock over the spectacle. I noticed Light pick up her front leg and bend the joints in a way that I interpreted as her saying, “Damn! That hurt!”
I fully expected to find remnants of her hide stuck to the post after that but I didn’t find any visible damage on her or the post.
When the footing improves in the rest of the paddock spaces, I think the horses are going to be very happy to spend more time away from the close quarters under the overhang.
.
.
Obvious Evidence
Based on all the mice caught in our traps throughout the winter, it should come as no surprise that they navigate the harsh elements as well as long-legged wildlife, but I am always intrigued by the obvious evidence rodents are burrowing beneath the snow.
Despite the frigid overnight temperatures greeting me bitterly at each morning feeding the last few days, it appears one little critter was busy making tracks.
There is also obvious evidence of the increasing angle of sunshine and its growing influence by way of melting that is occurring despite the chilly air temperatures. That will prove to be a benefit when it comes to the threat of spring flooding. There is a deeper snowpack now than we’ve had in many years and if it were to melt all at once, flooding would likely occur.
There is an additional aspect that could dramatically influence whether we have any troublesome flooding this spring or not and that is the amount of rain that will fall in spring storms. Based on a recent video released by our county’s historical society, flooding from heavy rain can happen at any time of year. In 1942 there was a flooding rain that happened in September.
.
.
When I saw this video the first time, I realized I would quickly blame the extent of warming of our planet if this kind of flooding rain happened today. In my lifetime, I’ve never seen rain of the intensity described by Dr. James Vedder happen in the fall. But it did happen back in 1942.
Flooding rain fell in July of 1879 and washed away a mill and flooded my great-great-grandfather’s house a little over ten miles south of where we live now.
To me, this is obvious evidence that the steep ravines and many rivers of the “driftless region,” of which our county is included, are susceptible to flooding from heavy rain.
I wonder how many mice survive that kind of extreme weather.
.
.
Writing Words
Relative Something is a blog. The word blog is short for weblog, as in, world wide web + log [regular record of incidents]. Blogs are written in an informal conversational style. I write about my experiences like I would describe them if we were just hanging out, minus the pauses when I can’t think of the word I want to use. A thesaurus is my friend.
It would embarrass me greatly if the frequency of my error in using a word were prominently displayed on my posts. I am forever grateful for the intuition to double-check a dictionary and thesaurus. I don’t write exactly like I talk but I do write the way thoughts and ideas come into my head. Another thing I am forever grateful for is the dialogue I was surrounded by growing up. My vocabulary came from hearing the words my mom and dad used while WCCO radio and television broadcasts ran as a background soundtrack.
It is not rare that a sentence will come into my head with a word that I don’t recognize as coming from my own common usage but feels connected to something my mother would say.
Yesterday, as I steeled myself against a biting wind chill, I caught myself doing the classic “air whistle” that is an obvious habit my mom displayed. I have tried to grow out of that natural tendency, with little success beyond increased awareness of occasions when I am doing it. At the same time, it’s a habit that always draws memories of my mom from deep in my soul and brings a feeling of pride over being one of her kids.
Why would I try to get myself to stop this behavior? Maybe it’s a remnant of the urge to grow up and become my own person.
I am unabashedly a product of my upbringing and my ancestral heritage but I have the desire to grow well beyond simply being like my parents. Striving to be healthier in mind, body, and spirit has helped me to interrupt a pattern of familial depression and the use of alcohol as (an ineffective –even detrimental) treatment.
I don’t have a memory of my parents writing poetry but I have read the poems of another of my ancestral relatives. My inclination is to assemble words in a rhythmic pattern that appeals to my senses. That often drives the selection of a word more than the meaning of the word itself. When the collection of words is stacked up, the variety of possible intentions often surprises me. I don’t always know what the poems are saying about me but I have learned that readers often come to their own conclusions.
Helping Cyndie to shape and reshape a story she hopes to tell in a week and a half has been a fun experience for me. It is blurring the differences between verbal stories and written chronicles. Either way, readers or listeners are forming their own interpretations in their minds, conjuring mental images and feeling whatever emotions the words inspire.
I have a feeling her project could help me to become a better writer of stories about the experiences of *this* John W. Hays.
.
.
Hanging Ball
Lately, there are two very different reasons the horses have been confining themselves close to the shelter of the barn overhang. I was showing off the mud yesterday but that has now turned rock-hard because the air temperatures have plummeted to single digits with a wind that feels like someone set the clocks back to January. The snow down the hill from the overhang that was melting two days ago has become dangerously glazed again with the re-freeze creating a hazard that the horses wisely choose to avoid.
Just in time, I hung up a fresh boredom-busting treat, Uncle Jimmy’s Hanging Ball that Light immediately went for.
The enticing grains held together with a sweet molasses coating are hard to gobble because the ball is hung high and swings away from any attempt to get a big bite.
Sometimes I feel like it’s cruel to tease them with this but watching how they don’t give up over time and eventually the ball starts to show signs they are getting nibbles off it makes me think it is serving the intended purpose of giving them a challenge that helps fight boredom.
Surprisingly, I have yet to see the barn birds claiming ownership of these sweet grain treats. It seems like it would be obvious bird food. Just in case they are chipping away at it when I am not around, the length of time the treat lasts tells me they aren’t cheating the horses of nibbles. In fact, that would probably help the horses out because when it is completely round at the start, all they can really accomplish is to lick it.
How many licks does it take to get to the center of an Uncle Jimmy’s Hangin’ Ball?
The world may never know.
.
.
Mud Returns
Pick your adage: Be careful what you wish for. What could possibly go wrong? You never know how things will turn out. How much worse can it get?
It’s March. We are ready to be done plowing and shoveling snow. We are looking forward to seeing the ground again. We want the snow to melt. However, the ground doesn’t suddenly thaw out all at once. Just like it freezes from the top layer on down, it melts in the very same way.
Well, the top layer has thawed just beyond the overhang and it is now a muddy, mucky mess. The water can’t soak into the ground because the next layer down is still frozen solid. Water is just standing in hoof-sized pools.
My perpetual quest to clean up manure beneath and around the overhang promptly becomes an unwinnable battle when fresh droppings land in the pockmarked slurry of muck the horses keep walking in. It is a Sisyphean task that I nonetheless continue to wage despite the mess and my limited success.
Meanwhile, the space beneath the roof suddenly becomes an even more luxurious oasis than it usually is.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The long day of drizzling rain was beginning to become sleet blown sideways by gusty winds when I went down to feed the horses at dinnertime. Beneath the overhang, it was calm and dry. Once again, I found myself praising the location and orientation of this barn.
The mud might be around for a long time to come in the days and weeks ahead but we are already starting to get antsy for conditions to allow me to get back to landscaping projects and Cyndie to try walking the uneven terrain down to the labyrinth. We have hopes of being able to promote World Labyrinth Day on May 6 this year if the ground dries up enough for hosting larger gatherings by then.
I’d like to offer a shout-out to friends, Patty and Steve who plan to visit us in April to experience Wintervale in person for the first time. Here’s to the gift of unexpected connections/reconnections that seem divinely inspired. Thanks for reaching out to us, Patty!
We are three days from the vernal equinox. I’m sensing spring is preparing to be sprung. Is that too much to wish for?
.
.
Grand Slam
One of the things Cyndie decided to do to occupy herself during the months she was laid up with a broken ankle was to explore storytelling. “The Moth” level of storytelling. She bought their book about storytelling and started writing down details of stories from her life experiences that seemed worthy of telling. She picked the date of a local Moth story slam at the end of this month and has been working on honing one of her stories down to an effective 5-minute version.
Last night, we drove to St. Paul to get an in-person taste of Moth storytelling at the Fitzgerald Theater. It was their GrandSLAM Championship where nine winners of previous story slams competed against each other with 5-minute stories based on a common theme of “Crash Course.”
At the end of the night, my first question to her was, “Did that change your mind about throwing your name in the hat?”
It didn’t. I find it difficult to understand that she won’t even know if she will have a chance to try until the night of the event because they pull 10 names out of a hat to determine whose stories will be told. I don’t know how many people show up hoping to be selected to stand on stage in front of a microphone under a bright light in front of a large audience, but I’d guess it will be more than ten.
Last night we got the chance to see what aspects of the storytelling worked well and what Cyndie might want to keep in mind if she gets the chance to tell her story of baking and assembling a wedding cake for our niece’s wedding. The versions Cyndie has been trying out have changed a lot from when she started. The Moth asks that stories be “known by heart but not rote memorization.”
Whittling down the entire experience of a compelling story into a 5-minute version forces you to figure out what details are essential and which ones don’t contribute to the main point. Moving from reading it to “telling” it by memory gets tricky with multiple versions floating around in her mind.
Only one storyteller last night had a moment of visibly losing their train of thought. The emcee did a great job of rallying the crowd to support all storytellers with a lot of love and we cheered the person with encouragement and her story resumed flawlessly in short order.
“The Moth’s mission is to promote the art and craft of storytelling and to honor and celebrate the diversity and commonality of human experience.”
Cyndie has countless stories worth telling. I’m thrilled she has chosen to develop greater mastery of the art of telling them well and doing so in larger venues.
It’s a bonus for me because I LOVE listening to well-told stories. That is… when I’m not too busy trying to tell one of my own. Why don’t I try getting on a Moth stage? I think it comes down to the part about knowing the story by heart and telling it in 5-minutes. On a stage.
I’d rather write my stories in a blog.
.
.
Energized Horses
Fun horse energy is a wonderful thing to experience up close. I walked out into the paddock yesterday with no agenda beyond hanging out with the horses. It was around the time when they are often nodding off peacefully in the bright sunshine but something had them fired up much more than usual. I stood and marveled at their antics for a long time before realizing how great it would be to share what I was witnessing.
By the time I was able to start recording, they were rounding the turn on their last lap past the round pen and returning to the comfortable safety of the paddock near the watering station.
.
.
It’s possible they were on alert from the vehicle delivering the next two-week supply of feed and the sound of the woman tossing (13) 50-pound bags in an organized pile on pallets in the barn. I stepped out under the overhang after helping her unload and the horses were all down by the round pen. While I stood there and watched them for a moment, I became acutely aware of the loudness of the trickling water running in the gutter and downspouts from snow melting off the metal roof.
That sound may have also been an unnerving trigger for the horses that caused them to suddenly behave so rambunctiously during their normal quiet time.
At one point, I was standing in the very center of the round pen as they galloped around, sprinting in and out of the paddock, reversing direction in an instant as if that was the whole point of the exercise. They would fall in line in a very specific order that reflected my impression of their herd hierarchy –Swings-Mix-Light-Mia– whenever Swings would come to a stop. Suddenly, Swings would begin to turn and they would all flip around and take off running again.
Eventually, Mix and Swings ran right at me in the round pen after Light and Mia had made the turn out into the pasture. They all ran around for a bit with each pair on either side of the round pen fence. Then Light and Mia came running in to join the other two in the round pen. Four unpredictably frolicking horses and me all inside the round pen at the same time was too much for me and I bolted to move from dead center to against the fence by the door while they leaped and spun.
Horses reared and kicked, Swings gestured as if she wanted to lay down and I let out an involuntary chuckle of giddiness to be in such close proximity, witnessing such a beautiful spectacle of equine energy. When they all took off out of the round pen again, I thought to pull out my phone for recording whatever they had left.
Maybe they napped after that. I went inside because it was COLD out there yesterday, but my soul was fully charged by osmosis due to volumes of unbridled horse energy.
.
.
Weather Intrigue
It’s mostly quiet on the ranch now that we are in a pause between snowstorms. My latest solo week at home comes to an end tonight with Cyndie’s return from Florida. There were no spectator sports of my local teams to hold my attention yesterday but something else has been catching my eye.
Some interesting weather events around the world have been in the news lately. Did you know that tropical cyclone Freddy now has set a new world record for the longest-lived cyclone in recorded history? It formed early in February between Australia and Indonesia and then traveled all the way across the Indian Ocean before making landfall on the island of Madagascar.
What I find most intriguing about it is the way it floated back away from Mozambique and returned toward Madagascar before heading back to Mozambique again.
Another event that caught my attention is more news than weather. There were a series of more than 20 earthquakes in Yellowstone National Park yesterday. What are the chances it is signaling something bigger in the making? I never like hearing that there is a supervolcano under Yellowstone.
Back to the weather, how about the pounding California has been suffering with atmospheric rivers dumping crazy amounts of snow at higher elevations and flooding rains below? For a part of the country where they are desperate for water, now they are getting too much all at once. If a cyclone hitting twice seems unfair, I can’t imagine what it feels like to get flooded out in a place that is struggling with a water shortage. It’s some version of a double-jeopardy.
We have received so much snow in our region this year that forecasters are beginning to talk about possible spring flooding. The snowpack is having a noticeable impact on our temperatures, holding the daily high well below average.
I’m feeling very ready to have our snow melt away but I sure hope it doesn’t lead to a wetter than-ever spring season.
A really dry spring after a winter of epic snow? That would be intriguing.
.
.
Recycling Quest
Almost daily, two 6-foot lengths of polypropylene twine around a hay bale are getting cut in our barn and instantly become waste. That’s just at our place. Imagine how many get cut in the rest of the county and all the horse properties around the state. It does not feel right to me to have this end up in a landfill somewhere, or worse, forever floating in an ocean.
I checked locally for an option to recycle our accumulation of cut-up plastic twine and learned it isn’t financially feasible. The volume of twine that would need to be collected would end up costing more in handling than could be recovered if and when they could find a potentially interested party to accept it. The person I spoke with at our county encouraged me to search wider on the internet for other possibilities.
I thought I was searching for other collection options but I soon discovered a variety of ways other people were crafting uses for plastic bags and used bale twine.
To my skilled sisters, I thought you might appreciate how this person spins HDPE grocery bags into a cord that can then be knitted or crocheted into useful items:
.
.
For bale twine, I was inspired by this video of uses that benefits horses:
.
.
I started experimenting with braiding because the posts supporting our overhang often have horse hair caught in the splinters of the wood. Wrapping the posts with messy braids of plastic twine will be a great enhancement the horses can rub against with abandon.
It will require a LOT more braiding, but for each length of twine I can reuse, that’s one less ending up as trash.
.
.
March Weather
The people in the US state of Minnesota have long associated the state tournaments for high school hockey and basketball with snowstorms. The reason is simple. The tournaments happen in the month of March. Snowstorms this time of year have good potential for dumping a lot of snow at one time which makes them particularly memorable.
I’m enjoying both snow and sports. Being the only one in the house has made for guilt-free overindulgence in spectator sports on television while the snow piles up outside. I’m also feeling like a kid with a new toy now that I have a live camera view available on my phone whenever I want to see it.
We had a fresh blanket of modest depth on Friday morning.
You can see my tracks coming up from the barn after feeding horses that morning.
There was just enough sunshine to dry up the driveway after I had plowed so that just hours later it looked like it hadn’t snowed at all.
The blast of snow we were getting yesterday while I watched two championship high school hockey games made it look like I hadn’t plowed in weeks. Guess what I will be doing today. The snow was falling so fast when I went out to feed horses the last time, my tracks were filling in just moments after I made them.
Good thing I got all the hockey games out of the way yesterday. After the State Tournament games ended, I switched over to the University of Minnesota Gopher men and then the NHL Minnesota Wild games. The Wild were on the west coast so the game started late.
Boy that sheet of ice at Mariucci Arena looks huge compared to the NHL rinks with larger professional bodies filling the tv view.
Since the change to Daylight Saving Time happened last night, I didn’t stay up late enough to see the completion of either the Gophers or the Wild. It’s like changing to Eastern time zone without doing any traveling.
On a sad note, I took a break from all that hockey yesterday to watch several tributes to my favorite NFL head coach ever, Bud Grant, who passed away yesterday at the age of 95.
In the most impressionable years of my youth, Bud made a huge impact on my sense of order and propriety. He was a great leader of professional athletes and they entertained me immensely in the 1970s, despite failing to win the big prize in four Super Bowl appearances.
Rest in Peace, Harry Peter Grant Jr. (1927-2023).
.
.
Relative Something 