Archive for October 2024
Clever Disguise
It took Cyndie’s curiosity to draw proper attention to a volunteer tree growing by the driveway a couple of days ago. I had noticed it recently and wondered what it might be but didn’t give it any more thought than that. Cyndie handed me Asher’s leash and pulled out her phone with an app for identifying plants.
To my surprise, it showed Common Buckthorn as a result.
I went back for a closer look. Sure enough. It even had berries on it, the curse that attracts birds to help spread its seeds. How did I let this grow all summer long?
One reason is the absence of the classic dark green coloring of the leaves. This time of year, it gets much easier to spot the new appearance of buckthorn by the deep green that lasts much longer into the fall season when surrounding growth is fading.
Just a short distance away, I came upon these shoots that had sprouted from a spot where I had cut out growth a year before.
Much easier to notice and positively identify.
That tree by the driveway was cleverly disguised by leaf coloring that had it looking like any other innocuous growth present in the surrounding area. If Cyndie hadn’t taken notice, I probably would have ignored that bunch of sprouts for a least another season.
Speaking of seasons, as in years, we are now into our thirteenth year living on this property in western Wisconsin. Last week, Cyndie and I looked back at the posts I wrote in October 2012 when the moving truck came to our old home in Eden Prairie, MN, and relived some of the drama around the failed attempts to easily close on each property.
A LOT of things happened in the ensuing years. Our first spring here, we received 18” of snow in the first days of May. There was a lot of activity to change the fencing and build the paddocks in preparation for getting horses. We put a few years into starting a little business with the horses.
When that dream faded, it was replaced by a focus on providing a retirement home to four rescued thoroughbred broodmares. We’ve annually hosted a peace walk on World Labyrinth Day every May and improved or maintained various trails through our woods.
Every fall, I put my focus on eradicating every hint of Common Buckthorn that I can find within the borders of our twenty acres. This year, it is warmer and dryer than most Octobers here, which seems to be aiding some of the buckthorn in hiding from my view.
That doesn’t worry me. I’ll find it next year if that’s what it takes.
Our clever disguise is that we are starting to look like we’ve always lived here. We are happily forging ahead into our thirteenth winter at Wintervale. Despite 80°F temperatures yesterday, logic tells us winter will show up eventually.
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Pile Processed
It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t quick. However, our do-it-yourself solution of relandscaping the area of our walkways along the foundation of our garage saved us thousands of dollars that it would have cost to have professionals do the work. When covered in dust and mud with wet shoes, soaked pant legs, and tired backs, my cheerleading often involved reminders of all that money we were saving.
Maybe it was a residual impact of my three vaccination shots from days earlier, but my stamina for the project of processing the pile of river rock did not match Cyndie’s. Her tenacity to remain on task kept us going until the tarp was rinsed clean yesterday.
To my credit, it was my idea to modify our shoveling and rinsing by pulling out the grate we had used weeks ago when trying to clean up the old existing rock for reuse. Placing that grate on the tarp and rinsing through it freed us from the tedious effort of trying to scoop rocks off the top of the pile in avoidance of the unwanted wet, sandy gravel that became increasingly prominent as we progressed.
Suddenly, I could simply scoop shovelfuls mindlessly, and the detritus would be washed away with ease. We then used the small stones that filtered out to fill spaces between the big slabs along the walkway.
I would say the results lack the look of a job done by professionals. It needs time to settle before it will look more natural. We will be kicking stray river rocks off the slabs for months, I expect.
Each time I do that, I will think of the money we saved by doing this ourselves. I’ll also remind myself that we used that saved money to take an adventurous trip to Iceland with our friends.
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Rocking Out
That pile of river rock was not going to move itself. Despite an onslaught of blowing leaves infiltrating our futile efforts to keep them out, we washed, shoveled, and dumped rocks around both the front and back entryways of the house yesterday.
For those of you who have ever witnessed Cyndie’s ability to fill endless hours in the shallows up at the lake, scanning for rocks worthy of being picked up, imagine what this project is like for her.
They’re just rocks, you might think. Not to Cyndie. She was enjoying this project in a way similar to how I enjoy putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
“Look at this one!”
I lost count of the number of times I was invited to check out one of her noteworthy finds.
Something tells me there is no such thing as “just a pile of rocks.”
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Serious Frost
There have been a handful of mornings recently when there was a hint of frost on blades of grass in low areas, but yesterday morning, we stepped out to find a serious frost on everything. If there is any sense to be found in this world, this should finally mark the end of our growing season.
The air was dead calm, and I got the impression the cold snap had triggered trees to jettison leaves in a spectacular cascade. They were falling like raindrops and sounded a bit like them, too.
I eventually pulled out the mower to (hopefully) make the last grass cut down by the road and along our driveway.
Since it has been so dry for many weeks, I’d not bothered to cut several areas where most of the grass had gone dormant. However, in that amount of time, the swaths where the grass was growing got pretty tall. It feels good to now have it all cleaned up and ready for winter.
It was a day or two later than probably should have been done, but I also hauled the compressor over to blow out the buried water line that runs from the house down to the labyrinth. As long as I was taking care of winterizing chores, I pulled the ATV out from the back of the garage and parked the riding mower in its place.
The Grizzly is now parked front and center and ready to have the plow blade mounted for when it will be needed.
Of course, having done all this because of that heavy overnight frost, now the next six days are forecast to be in the 60s to mid-70s(F) for highs and the 50s for lows.
I just hope another warm spell won’t be enough to inspire grass blades to have one more growth spurt.
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Three Shots
Why did I get three shots at once yesterday? Because they were offered. I laugh at myself when thinking of people who refuse to get vaccinations and here I go accepting multiple at once. As a person who has made a choice to use my thoughts to support my physical self in being as healthy as possible, I am not inclined to imagine bad things resulting from vaccinations.
I frame the pain in my arms as my body getting busy identifying the threat and doing the good work of preparing to fend off any future contacts. The fact that our bodies can deal with three different instances simultaneously impresses the heck out of me.
I’m a fan of the medical advances that have come with our understanding of microscopic interactions in the biological world. We don’t experience outbreaks of diseases because some invisible deity chooses to seek vengeance against humans.
I don’t recall my parents demonstrating any concerns against vaccinations, and that probably influenced my willingness to accept modern medical advice. Somewhere in my collection of family memorabilia, I have the “Quarantine” sign that hung on my dad’s front door when he had polio.
How great is it that virologist Jonas Salk developed a successful vaccine against poliomyelitis in 1953? How about Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming finding the antibacterial effect of Penicillion mold in 1928? I lived on Penicillin through most of my youth, treating strep throat.
In the past year, I was subject to a bout of COVID-19 and, more recently, pneumonia. Today, I am armed (get it?) with fresh defenses against both, plus the current version for influenza.
I’ve entered that age bracket, you know. Goodness me, now I have to pay attention to the myriad health advisories for people 65 and older.
At least they aren’t concerned about giving old folks three shots at once.
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Middle October
You wouldn’t know by looking, but November is just a couple of weeks away. Terror movies, scary costumes, and campaign lawn signs will only intensify between now and then, but soon, it will all be behind us.
For much of my life, I have practiced the fine art of ignoring most of the crafty ways marketing whizzes attempt to grab my attention. When it comes to several house-sized monstrosities erected in and around River Falls with the name of a felonious candidate, I feel a significant dose of smugness in successfully averting my gaze to avoid looking at them every time I drive past.
Conversely, I take great pleasure in rereading the tiny little sign in one farmyard near our home that says simply, “HATE WILL NOT MAKE US GREAT.”
I see what I want to see.
I’m afraid that by the time November arrives, we won’t have any trees with leaves left in them. They are falling fast and furious now, even though some leaves are still pretty green.
I’m a little sad about how many of the leaves have just turned cardboard-brown before dropping to the ground.
One thing about the warm weather that we have enjoyed lately is having our bedroom window open to hear the hoots of our resident owls reverberating through the forest.
We’ve also noticed some instances where wailing sirens from emergency vehicles in the distance have triggered packs of coyotes to respond in kind.
I think the dwindling foliage is leading to sounds carrying further.
It sounds like fall. I think I can even hear the frost forming on the pumpkins.
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Fresh What
Here we go again! A fresh new edition of everyone’s favorite image-guessing game. It’s simple to play. All you need to do is guess what is depicted in the image below.
Do you trust your first impression, or ponder the possibilities? Can you hold off long enough to wait for the answer to come to you, or will you look for the solution right away?
You are in charge, but it is strongly recommended you come up with some kind of guess for yourself before clicking on the image to find out what this could possibly be. Guess your best, and enjoy the mental exercise! What are you looking at?
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Leak Repair
The person who installed our horse waterer works for the excavating company that delivers rock and gravel for our needs. Yesterday, we accomplished two goals that have lingered all summer through his delivery of river rock to finish our landscape upgrade and then his replacing a cracked valve in the waterer.
We started our landscape project in the spring and it has dragged on for months. It is very satisfying to finally have the rocks delivered which puts the completion of this project entirely in our control.
When the rocks poured out of the tilted truck bed, they created a cloud of dust so thick I couldn’t see the truck anymore. Their supply of river rocks had sat collecting all that dust for more than a month due to the absence of rain that would normally provide a periodic rinse.
Due to the incredibly wet spring and summer months this year, it wasn’t obvious that the waterer in the paddocks was leaking. With the arrival of our current drought, the ground dried up everywhere except the area around the waterer.
I don’t like knowing that the cracked valve that was found yesterday is probably related to a freezing event (maybe the first time the barn lost power) and has been leaking for half a year.
The Ritchie waterer needed to be disconnected and removed, and water pumped from the hole in order to confirm the cracked valve and replace it.
Of course, like so many projects of this type, the fix required a trip to the hardware store for parts, which prolonged the time the waterer was out of service to the horses.
I had closed gates to keep the horses out of the small paddock while the repair was underway, but they had full access to the fields through the large paddock. When they wandered in from grazing and showed interest in getting a drink, I hustled to provide a large bucket under the overhang that I filled from the spigot in the barn.
The repair was taking much longer than I expected. Taking advantage of the waterer being disassembled, I was able to scour moldy nooks and crannies that were otherwise unreachable, making good use of time while our favorite repairman was off buying parts. I looked up from my scrubbing and found all four horses lingering around the bucket like a bunch of people bellied up to a bar. Cute.
With Asher napping patiently in the barn, I’d spent the entire afternoon until horse feeding time on this project. When the valve had been replaced and the waterer reassembled, my feeling of satisfaction doubled for the day.
Even though it’s sad to see how dry the ground is in most places around here, I’m really looking forward to the wet spot in the paddock finally drying up for the first time all summer.
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Still Blooming
Nearing the end of the second week of October in my part of the world didn’t used to involve rose blossoms. These days, this kind of outdoor plant behavior is not all that surprising.
Asher and I were visiting the labyrinth to top off the water bag around the maple tree when I noticed the flowers. They stood out against the drought-influenced fading life and fallen leaves all around them. I was struck by the fact the rose bush was able to do so much with so little moisture available in the ground.
I must admit, it feels somewhat futile to try giving one tree a tiny bit of extra water while the rest of the growth in the surrounding woods is left wanting.
The fall colors have been less spectacular than some other years but it is changing.
As dusk settled in and the half-moon stood out brightly in the sky, the uncharacteristic warmth of a summer evening on this October night was simply the new normal.
While other parts of the world are coping with floods, our little nook in Wisconsin, USA, is warm and dry.
With rose blossoms.
Relative Something 