Archive for August 2023
One Solution
There is one easy solution for me to get a break from any more close encounters of the slithery kind at home. Pack up my things and get out of Dodge, as the saying goes.
But where would I go?
We left Asher at home and skedaddled to the lake where conditions were perfect for floating under the afternoon sun.
The poor pup got as anxious as ever over the obvious signs of our impending departure. While I was finishing up tending to horses down at the barn, Cyndie brought Asher up to the house for his breakfast. My mostly-packed bag was on the floor in our bedroom and Asher helped himself to a box in one of the end pockets that contained a pair of my eyeglasses.
When I stepped into the house, I commented that it seemed strangely quiet. Cyndie told me Asher was on a time-out. I noticed she was holding my glasses and a long-nosed plier. She could work on them all day long but after a pair of eyeglasses have been chomped on by a dog, they will never be the same.
My spare pair made the trip to the lake with me.
I drove up on my own and Cyndie came later with her mom. On Monday, I will head back to take over for our animal sitter, Anna, and Cyndie will stay for a few days to help host a gathering of Marie’s friends.
I’m going to enjoy this break from dog duty to the fullest because when I get home it will be all me and only me in charge of keeping the pooch safely occupied.
I wonder if I can teach him to hunt snakes.
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Unwelcome Surprise
She was repotting some houseplants and pouring potting soil from a previously opened bag into one of the pots. Suddenly, Cyndie shrieked, jumped, and dropped the bag as a very long snake slithered out.
That bag of soil had been stored in the garage attached to our house. This means that the snake had been rooting around in the garage long enough to make its way up onto the lower shelf and find the bag opening to get inside.
For a better perspective of how disconcertingly long this snake was, here it is with our shadows for comparison:
Much to my dismay, it didn’t make haste to wriggle its way off into the woods. In fact, while I was sitting in the glider nearby as Cyndie worked, I suddenly noticed the snake had turned around and was making its way back toward us.
No thank you. Suddenly I was the one making haste to remove myself from the vicinity of our front door. It will be bad enough if I encounter this snake in our garage but if it somehow makes its way into the house I may be looking for a new place to live.
As far as I’m concerned, winter can’t get here fast enough. Ice-cold temperatures and oodles of snow. No bugs. No poison ivy. NO SNAKES!
In the eleven years we have lived here, I haven’t seen nearly as many snakes on our property as I have this summer.
For the record, in case you haven’t noticed, I. Do. Not. Like. Snakes.
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Smoothing Edges
Imagine if your dentist did house calls. Great, yeah, but then imagine that your dentist sedated you and put a contraption on your face so you couldn’t close your mouth just so you wouldn’t bite the grinder that was filing sharp points from your molars.
Looks like fun, eh?
Tell that to the horses. They had been given a dose of “I-don’t-care-about-anything” medication that left them all rather drowsy in their stalls.
They didn’t seem to care and they definitely didn’t seem like they’d had any fun.
At least the horses weren’t stressed by being in their stalls after our frequent periods of giving them chances to get used to the inside of the barn again. Unfortunately, it was uncomfortably hot inside and they worked up quite a sweat despite the fans positioned to move air through the barn.
We couldn’t let them out until enough of the sedative had worn off that they’d regained their senses.
It’s hard to tell whether they feel as good to have this process completed as we do knowing it’s done. I’m not the one trying to eat the little feed pellets but I am feeling really happy that their mouths have been inspected and cared for by an equine veterinarian.
At the same time, I’m under no illusion that this will mean they waste any less food by letting it fall out of their mouths while chewing.
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Asher Stung
We were having a good time working in the backyard yesterday morning while Asher romped around nearby off-leash, periodically coming over to “help” by digging ferociously. Just like the horses stomping their feet to shake off biting flies, Asher frequently swings around and chomps at flies when they are bothering his butt.
When he made that gyration with amped-up energy to both his left and right yesterday, it caught my attention. There wasn’t anything visible to bite but he reacted as if the problem wasn’t going away. He then sat down hard for a second before twisting around and lifting his leg to bite the inside of his thigh.
That’s when I saw it. The classic yellow and black of a stinging insect was the target of his bite. I guessed that poor Asher was getting stung by a bee. He seemed to cope with it pretty well, although he stayed down for an extended period and licked that spot.
Later, Cyndie caught him standing in the pond so maybe he was looking for added relief from some cool water. We contemplated ways to help him but he wasn’t demonstrating any further signs of need and we had no ideas for any tolerable ways we could effectively soothe his immediate pain.
No other issues arose throughout the day beyond Asher getting a little too hot waiting for us to finish tending to the labyrinth for the day. I was mowing and Cyndie was pulling weeds.
When I finished, I invited Asher to tag along with me as I climbed the backyard hill to return the mower to the shop garage and head inside to cool off. He seemed thoroughly happy with my plan.
After he cooled off enough to stop panting, he and I played some “soccer” in the house with one of his squeaky Kong balls. Then he conked out for a respectable nap.
At bedtime, he loaded into his crate and went down without a peep. Apparently, he has gotten over whatever was stressing him out the night before.
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Days Two
Family who slept over Saturday night were treated to a second day of the events of Hays Days, starting with a breakfast of baked double-berry French toast and a perfectly spicy egg bake.
Asher made sure everyone received a warm greeting to start “Days” two.
If they had tented overnight, weather conditions would have allowed them to pack a dry tent in the morning but not if they waited too long. We finally received a small amount of precipitation and I’m not going to complain because a little is better than none at all.
We received just under a half-inch of rain out of a mid-day shower.
Indoor activities included plenty of cutting and pasting for collage projects, then some delicious pasta-making, and ultimately, fabric painting.
It has been confirmed for me once again that an overnight stay increases the connection among relatives at family events dramatically more than just a one-day visit.
I’m not sure what it does for pets. Asher had endless opportunities for human interaction yet he began behaving as if he wasn’t getting enough. What started as one isolated incident of picking up a tossed sock and trotting off with it eventually became a never-ending routine of grabbing a shoe or a shirt or a bag of dice, anything in reach that he seemed to understand wasn’t one of his toys.
At first, I wrote it off as him being out of sorts due to so many new people occupying his living space but after everyone had departed yesterday evening, Asher twice absconded with one of my slippers. At bedtime, after we put him in his crate, he uncharacteristically whined and whined until I finally came out of our bedroom to sit near him and watch Lionel Messi playing for Inter Miami on AppleTV on my laptop.
Asher quieted down immediately. I think he likes Messi.
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Hays Days
Just like all the small-town fairs and carnivals that come up with names like “Schooner Days” (Eden Prairie, MN) or “Rutabaga Festival” (Cumberland, WI), this weekend is “Hays Days” at Wintervale.
Cyndie pulled out a collection of sidewalk chalk and Heidi Shatek created a gorgeous logo for our event. One highlight of the day was a visit from a relative my siblings had yet to meet. We share a great-grandfather because each of our grandfathers were brothers. I met Jim Hays after he contacted me while researching our ancestry. Now most of my siblings got to meet him too.
Another highlight was having our son Julian bring a drone that allowed the easiest group photo we’ve ever taken.
The scavenger hunt I devised worked out slick. I think I had more fun hearing about people finding one of the ten items than they did finding them. “Old metal gate in the woods… three different types of pine cones… carabiner clip in use… two different rain gauges… butternut tree seed pod…”
Asher was in his glory with all the attention and loved being in the middle of the action.
There was no shortage of scrumptious food prepared by loving hands to keep much of the activity close to the kitchen throughout the day. Toward evening, many of the folks needed to head home but two adults and a crowd of third-generation cousins hung around for a sleepover.
Tent camping was considered but the ease of just crashing indoors in sleeping bags won out. There was a chance of rain that bolstered that decision but rain never came. We continue to endure a serious dry spell that has the soil cracking and the dust under kicking horse hooves creating clouds.
As Hays Days winds down today we can turn our sights to another season. Yesterday we announced a save the date for February when the lake place is reserved as the sight of a winter gathering of our clan.
Here’s hoping we boost the numbers to include even more families than were able to show up to this weekend’s Hays Days at Wintervale.
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Pocket Pictures
I don’t understand how my phone is able to activate in my pocket when it won’t do anything in my hand until it identifies my face. Many times I pull the phone out after I’ve been mowing or using one of our trimmers and the phone is in the middle of some activity I don’t even recognize. There is usually a cancel option for me to end the phantom task but I am at a loss to understand how it woke up, opened an app, and began trying to do something.
Yesterday, I pulled the phone out after mowing and my camera was on. No big deal. I swiped the camera app away, got back to the home screen, and pressed the button to put the phone back to sleep. It wasn’t until later when I was checking my photos that I found a series of unrecognizable images and one video that I can only guess were taken in my pocket.
I was wearing green pants, so maybe that’s where that shade of color came from. The second image gives the impression of possibly being a zoomed photo of the one above. There were five images like the zoomed one, then five with the green dots, then a one-second video of the dots, and finally, one more still image of dots.
Makes me long for the simplicity of the good old butt dial. That also has happened in my pocket when I’m working and in thinking about it, I have the same questions. How did it wake up? Why did it choose the phone feature? How does it decide who to call?
I think my smartphone is a little too smart for its own good. How does it wake up and begin functioning without seeing my face or asking for my passcode to unlock?
It doesn’t make any sense to me.
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Over Cooked
I worked outside in the humid heat yesterday for a little too long. My clothes were saturated with my sweat and my fingers were getting pruney even though I’d long ago ditched the gloves that were too soaked to be any good to me. I knew I was pushing the limits of my stamina but I wanted to finish some mowing with the push mower.
As I made my way to the shop garage to put away the mower, I could tell my muscle response was getting rather sluggish. It was past my dinner time and my body was running on fumes. Even my hearing and vision started to waver a bit as I cleaned up the deck of the mower before slowly making my way back to the house.
Before I could even peel off the soaked clothes that were clinging to my body, I succumbed to a powerful desire to lay down for a few minutes so no muscles needed to do any work at all. The cool tile floor of our sunroom fit the bill nicely. What a relief to immediately rest my entire body.
When I did try to move again, my muscles wanted to cramp. Cyndie brought me an iced electrolyte concoction to drink.
I was cooked. Overcooked. Cyndie offered to serve dinner, which I needed, but I was feeling nauseous and asked for a brief delay before eating. Getting out of my soaked clothes was going to feel good but I wasn’t looking forward to the effort it would require.
The reward for that effort came in the form of a shower. It was weird to enter the shower with hands already pruned and then have the pruning intensify. I wanted to make it short because I was too tired to stand for long but our shower has a spot to sit. My body chose to spend a few seconds seated under the spray whether my mind wanted to or not.
The air conditioning has been on in the house for a couple of days and that soon had me feeling colder than I wanted to be, which is weird after being too hot just 15 minutes earlier.
I started the day using our hedge trimmer to clean up the new growth on the natural green wall along our north loop trail. That tool is my new favorite, for sure. We now have two pathways tunneling beneath the branches of our big willow tree.
We got new blades for the little Stihl hand-trimming chain saw so I put one on and cut down some pine branches that were sagging into the pathway. What a huge difference a sharp chain makes.
The clouds have disrupted our viewing of the first supermoon of the month. Cyndie captured an interesting cloud formation on Wednesday that looked downright tornadic when I viewed it on the small screen of my phone upon receiving it from her in a text.
See what I mean?
Looks like we will be waiting for the blue moon at the end of the month for that eery glow illuminating views out our windows in the middle of the night. Cue the howling coyotes…
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Search Worked
Walking Asher unleashed through our woods yesterday, I took a picture of him trotting in front of me because he was so calm and happy. I was even happier because he stayed on the trail and was not manic about the sights and smells constantly vying for his attention.
Shortly after I captured that image, his trot picked up pace and soon he was running out of sight ahead of me.
It was nice while it lasted.
No trouble came from any of his brief excursions out of our sight on multiple sessions of walking with him unleashed. Asher generally explores the woods adjacent to our property and returns within roughly one to five minutes of vanishing. Since he has yet to reliably respect our voiced recall commands, our off-leash walks happen more toward the wooded end of our property as opposed to the open fields near the road.
We do not trust he would know enough to stay away from traffic passing on our street. I suspect just the opposite; he would be inclined to dangerously chase after moving vehicles at this point.
On one of our trails, we passed something I don’t recall ever seeing before.
Do you know what critter makes this?:
There was a half-dozen of them in relatively close proximity.
I added my foot to one of them to give a size perspective.
Just ignore that brightly colored leaf stuck in my boot. [I can’t keep my eye from looking at that distraction.]
Cyndie suggested we do an image search after uploading one of my photos. I figured that wouldn’t work but I was very wrong. She quickly found many photos with striking similarities to this one of mine:
Based on the search, the likely creatures are ground bees. Color me surprised.
I’ve seen bees disappear into a hole in the ground but I’ve not seen the ant-like piles of granules with the perfect pencil-sized hole on top like these.
I learned two things from this. One is obviously the discovery of ground bees. The other is to not doubt Cyndie’s problem-solving prowess.
Married for over 41 years and known her since we were teens in high school. You’d think I would have already learned not to doubt her abilities by now.
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Lots Done
Sometimes I don’t accomplish very much by the end of a day. Other times –I don’t know why– I find myself checking off one thing after another on my list of tasks deserving attention. Yesterday was one of those days when Cyndie and I got a lot done, due in no small part to Asher being off to an all-day “Fit-Dog” session with a canine coach.
Cyndie kicked off the day by putting up a simple fence around my manure compost piles, hoping to dissuade Asher from rolling in them.
Before we started anything else, we decided to give the horses time to come inside the barn again to receive a snack in the stalls. Despite it requiring extra effort to convince Swings to come back out, we agreed it was another successful session. Once they were back outside, they moved out to the hay field which enabled us to close gates behind them so we could put fresh lime screenings under the overhang.
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The horses got a little testy about being locked out of the paddock while we worked and took out their frustration by racing around, which was a treat for us to watch. It looks like Mix is unsure of what to think about the changes we were making.
While I had the tractor in the paddock, I mowed some weeds on one end and then used the bucket to drag washed-out lime screenings back up to fill the area I was doing by hand the day before.
From there, it was just a few gate openings and closings and I was free to mow the back pasture.
Keeping the momentum going, I slipped out the back gate when I was done and made a pass up and down the drainage ditch along our southern border.
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On my way back to the garage, I took a couple of passes with the loader bucket along the gravel drive in front of the hay shed to see if that would be an easy way to tear out the massive weed infestation. Earlier, while moving loads of lime screenings into the paddock, I had forgotten to lift the bucket high enough to clear the ground on the way out one time and it carved off a layer of turf. That revealed a nice-looking patch of the fresh gravel that was underneath which inspired me to try doing that intentionally on the rest of the loop.
The results were promising but if I’m going to clean up the gravel, I might as well put the back-blade on and use that for the purpose it is intended.
With energy to spare, I decided to hop on the zero-turn after parking the diesel and made my way into the round pen to mow down the growth in there.
Almost as good as a putting green, and with sand traps to boot.
We got a lot done yesterday and it sounded like Asher had a good play date at his “Fit-Dog” session. I’d say that qualifies as a double bonus of accomplishments.
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Relative Something 