Archive for October 2023
Solar Warming
It’s official. The growing season for 2023 ended for us yesterday with temperatures dipping well below freezing overnight Sunday into Monday. The moon still looked plenty full and the cloudless sky made it appear as if a giant floodlight was illuminating everything.
That clear sky remained as the sun showed up over the horizon in the morning. When the horses had finished gobbling up all the feed in their pans, I noticed all four of them assumed the classic position of standing perpendicular to the warming rays of the sun.
They closed their eyes and got very quiet, waiting patiently while absorbing every morsel of solar energy coming their way.
The air was calm, the horses were calm, and I couldn’t resist pausing for a while to stand with them and enjoy the serenity.
Suddenly, the blessing of having nowhere else I needed to be seemed doubly rewarding.
I can tell you this: it sure felt a lot warmer than what the thermometer was indicating at the time, and a lot different than what it is like this morning after snow blew in overnight last night.
Is this a Halloween trick?
.
.
Arbitrary Thinking
For no particular reason on a Monday morning, my attention sometimes bounces in many directions.
- Weekend spectator sports were entertaining but the Achilles injury to Minnesota Vikings Quarterback, Kirk Cousins, looms large on prospects for our future.
- I stayed up late on Saturday night and found myself laughing a couple of times at scenes on Saturday Night Live.
- Despite media outlets marketing it as a feature, no part of me wishes to receive “real-time updates” on news feeds covering wars.
- I could listen to some foreign accents forever while I find others deeply irritating, but I don’t know why.
- I will admit to an attraction to streaming series that have actors with superb accents.
- Last week, Cyndie and I went out to dinner to celebrate 49 years since we started dating. For dessert, we ordered her favorite salted caramel chocolate tart.
- Last night, after dinner of a deep-dish pizza from the freezer, Cyndie served her homemade version of the same salted caramel chocolate tart, along with a bite of dark chocolate pecan toffee she also made.
- The quality of both treats was so impressive, they matched anything I’ve tasted at high-end shops or restaurants.
- Last week we bought tickets to fly with friends to visit Iceland next year.
- None of my awake dreams come close to the realism I experience in my sleeping dreams. Why is that?
- Sometimes when I see someone near my age with features that trigger memories of a grade-school crush, I wonder what that person looks like now.
- Is it possible that dogma is the root of all evil?
- I love that animals can tell when we love them.
- Imagine if we bathed our brains with healthy healing thoughts that primed our cerebrospinal fluid to facilitate our synapse-firing pathways for goodness.
- What if we always offered others the slices of life we would want for ourselves?
- Even though I am no longer employed during a workweek, Mondays still retain a residual stigma for me.
- Yesterday, I contemplated what cover design would appeal to me if Relative Something were a book. (I find it hard to compete with an animated GIF that has the word “LOVE” blowing in the wind.)
- Did you know I don’t drink coffee?
- No matter what variety of distractions I think about, it doesn’t change that I will be driving Cyndie to a hospital for another surgery this week. For some reason, I keep finding myself thinking about that.
Happy Monday, everyone. Unless you are reading this in Australia today. Happy Tuesday to any readers down under
.
.
Just Pieces
One year ago this week, Cyndie shattered her ankle. After surgery to hold bone pieces together with plates and screws, she has worked long and hard to get back to as close to 100% as possible. After multiple follow-up consultations with her surgeon, she has decided to endure additional surgery to remove the hardware now that the bones have healed.
There just isn’t enough room in her little ankle to fit the added metal. Cyndie has sensed this for a long time but still put effort toward figuring out ways to cope with the ongoing pain, hoping that added time would lead to improvement.
The pain of trying to walk in a winter boot recently helped her to decide another surgery was justified.
We know the routine. She will be convalescing in the recliner with periodic icing and I will need to do all the dog walking and horse care. In the last few days, Cyndie has been working feverishly to prepare meals that can be frozen and tackling as many projects as possible before she becomes chair-bound.
I’m trying hard to keep myself from overthinking what my routine will be like during her recovery period. The difficulty is that I know what’s coming. Last year there was no warning that our lives would be impacted so dramatically for months.
I’m not sure which is worse. It was an unwelcome shock last year when Cyndie suddenly got injured so severely. But knowing in advance what is headed our way is a little scary, too.
Maybe distracting my mind by assembling a jigsaw puzzle will help. I can make it a contest to see if I will find and place all the pieces before Cyndie heals enough to take Asher for walks again.
.
.
Not Instantaneous
When we emerged from the front door this morning, there was a layer of ice on Asher’s water bowl on the steps. Today is the first time this fall that we walked out to sub-freezing air temperatures. Ironically, there was no frost on the grass. The recent rain has saturated the ground which aids in transferring the residual warmth remaining in the earth from summer.
There is no instantaneous point during the change of seasons that entirely switches things over from one to the other. This morning both Cyndie and I found ourselves digging for outerwear –and in Cyndie’s case, a long underwear top– from the closet that we haven’t used in probably 6 months.
Passing snow showers are forecast for the afternoon.
The transition to the frozen season happens in fits and starts. Below freezing at night, above freezing during the day. When several consecutive daytime high temperatures stay below freezing, the transition has progressed to a new level and all of our senses tell us fall is over and winter is on the prowl.
The loss of tree leaves also happens gradually. Some trees started shedding leaves in the second half of August. Fall colors began to burst in the latter half of September. Now, as we approach the end of October, the transition to bare branches is slowly underway.
When tree leaves fall straight down to paint a large circular swath of the grass beneath a tree, it creates a visual spectacle of exclamation that winter is nigh.
As of this morning, my knit stocking cap has replaced all my summer hats.
The leaves will continue to fall.
.
.
Homemade Chews
Our dog, Asher is a chew toy destroyer. He loves to rip things to pieces. Since he also shows a passion for tug-of-war, rope toys give him a chance to do both tugging and destroying. Cyndie bought him a “ball” made of rope which was a genius idea for a toy.
He showed moderate interest in it until one section finally came loose so he could begin to shred it. Since then, his interest soared and he thrills in bringing it to us for some tugging that leads to holding it for him to chomp the unraveling rope.
Asher also takes great pleasure in tearing the stuffing out of fabric toys and then shredding the fabric. Watching him do this to something Cyndie just bought causes us mixed feeling$.
Well, it causes me mixed feelings. I love seeing him have fun but the idea of destroying something we just spent a lot of money on bothers my miserly mindset.
That led to an idea. I asked Cyndie if she would consider sewing together some “toys” out of found materials we have at home. I brought her a short length of natural rope and Cyndie produced a collection of heavy fabric pieces. We also dreamed up the idea of putting a hard chew he’s shown meager interest in, inside one of the toys Cyndie was sewing together.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Cyndie then put one of his squeaky balls inside a little pillow she made.
He loved it! Surprisingly, he didn’t immediately rip the new toys to shreds. He mostly seemed to be trying to shake the pillow to death. The long, skinny thing had scrap pieces from a store-bought stuffed squirrel he chewed to pieces sewn onto each end. That seemed to fascinate him.
He spent a little more time trying to rip into that one, but it was still mostly intact as of last night.
With days of rain (plus predictions for slushy snow tomorrow) keeping us indoors for long spans of time lately, there haven’t been a lot of opportunities to get him running around outside. We keep trying to find other ways to expend some of Asher’s high-octane energy.
Methodically destroying sanctioned homemade chew toys gives him a good combination of mental stimulation with the tactile reward of chomping on something interesting.
I just hope we aren’t conditioning him to seek out any old thing lying around the house whenever that urge to gnaw on something shows up.
Meanwhile, I just finished putting together a small wooden puzzle to start my season.
Let it rain and snow. We’re good to go indoors.
.
.
Rain Waves
I picked a good day to go to the movies yesterday, and not just because of the discounted tickets on a Tuesday. Overnight Monday we received such a thunderous downpour I fully expected to find washouts left and right. That didn’t turn out to be the case but then the wave after wave of sometimes frightfully heavy downbursts interspersed among periods of really rainy rain all day had local dry creeks flowing like rivers by the time I returned home.
I drove to Hudson on my own to see, “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The ticket cost me $5.50. A medium bag of popcorn costs $6.25.
On my drive to the theater, I found myself getting closer and closer to a wall of heavy rain ahead. Making my way inside before the heaviest rain fell, I headed directly to the restroom after purchasing my ticket. This movie is 3 hours and 26 minutes long. Need I say more?
The quality of the film lives up to the skill and experience of the people who created it. It feels wrong to find myself appreciating a film about such diabolic events in U.S. history. I’m glad the true story of multiple murders to steal the wealth of an Osage family who profited from oil on their reservation at the turn of the 20th century is getting told. Hopefully, it will keep alive a historical truth that plenty of people would rather not acknowledge.
There was a point during the movie when the roar of the deluge outside pounding on the roof of the theater briefly wrenched the audience’s attention from the cinematic world and then another time a little later when dramatic thunder claps didn’t seem to fit with the action on screen. It took some thinking to separate the two events going on at the same time.
It also takes thinking to comprehend the violence occurring in the world today is tragically similar to countless human casualties perpetrated throughout time. It seems hard to believe the human race hasn’t been able to grow more enlightened than what is represented by deadly conflicts that continue to exist to this day.
Those of us beaming waves of love to the world are going to need to up our game somehow to create hope that a tide can be turned with unprecedented global results toward ending human atrocities.
Imagine beams of love that rain down in waves able to wrench our attention from killing “others” and overflow hearts with visions of peace.
Amen.
.
.
Leaves Leaving
Leaves were falling, just like embers
In colors red and gold, they set us on fire
Killing the Blues by Rowland Salley
I went after a little more late-season lawn mowing yesterday afternoon and it turned our backyard striped.
That is what happens when you mow over the leaves instead of raking them up first.
The leaves have been leaving the trees in an increasing amount with each passing day.
It creates a carpet of leaves beneath the trees that produce one of my favorite forest looks.
Cyndie’s prized “door table” under the trees becomes a mystical decoration in a picturesque nook where romping squirrels make so much noise it sounds like a deer must be running through.
Falling leaves. You know what that means?
Falling flakes won’t likely be very far behind.
.
.
Field Finds
I’m still feeling excited about the number and variety of new trees sprouting in our north loop field we discovered the other day. Just the fact they are appearing without any help from us is so rewarding.
Two types of long-needle pine and three oak varieties look to be two or maybe three years old.
I am really glad I stopped mowing that field and that this is what has resulted. Granted, we also have a large spread of thistle in one area and poison Ivy in another which were the reason to mow those acres in the past. We may still need to find ways to deal with the problem weeds beyond ignoring them in hopes they’ll go away.
Maybe selective mowing for the thistle, like using the power trimmer. I don’t dare use that on the poison ivy.
Now that we’ve found these young trees, we should probably put energy into protecting them from foraging deer. We know about “bud capping” the leader of pines with a stapled piece of paper. I would prefer that option over trying to fence around the young trees.
We already have been watching three young pines for the last year that sprouted closer to the driveway and debated stapling caps to those. I don’t understand what our hesitation is to doing so beyond a willingness to take a risk. I expect part of it is that, thus far we’ve gotten away with doing nothing. If one of them gets munched, I expect it will spur us into action to protect others.
Not necessarily sound logic, I admit.
There are plenty of tasks awaiting attention that linger unfinished. I was looking at several piles of tree limbs we have stacked in the woods for chipping. Days have turned to months, and now years in which we have gone no further than creating the piles.
Asher really wanted to get into one of those piles yesterday, I assume after a cute chipmunk or rabbit’s nest he could smell. I let the easier task of mowing the labyrinth and part of the front yard get my attention in the afternoon.
I suppose that’s the reason I’m so thrilled with the young trees showing up in the field. We didn’t need to put any effort into making that happen beyond giving nature the time and space to do its thing.
.
.
Cyndie’s Views
Rarely a day passes when I don’t receive a photo in a text from Cyndie. Many times, it ends up being the only image available to complement the tales I post. Occasionally, it is the main point of my post. Today, the backlog of images she recently sent me are featured in this post.
Like, “A Man and His Wife’s Dog.”
Okay, he’s our dog. Until he runs away. Then he’s her dog. Or when he chews up something valuable like my glasses. Or plows into me from behind. Or… well, you get the picture.
Cyndie gets the pictures, too. Here are five more to give you a glimpse of Cyndie’s view of this October at Wintervale…
.
.
Relative Something 