Archive for November 2024
Thistle Seeds
We are at the lake! After an uneventful drive (other than the fabulous cheeseburger and fries on the road from the Lake Magnor Restaurant in Clayton) we arrived just before sunset and (oh, we also stopped in Hayward to pick up a pizza from Coop’s and some essentials from the grocery store [did someone say “ice cream?”]) we set about the routines of arrival.
“Do you have the key?” Check.
“Turn on the water.” Done.
“Can you start a fire in the fireplace?” Of course!
“I’m going to turn on the end of the football game.” Sure!
“Do you want to sleep in the loft or in Mom’s room?” Either’s fine with me.
“What the heck is in this drawer!?” Uh oh.
There was too much for it to be mouse turds. Was there a bag of wild rice up in the loft? No, that’s birdseed. Thistle, to be precise. We checked the pantry where birdseed would likely have been stored. Sure enough.
How could such a little hole lead to such a big spill?
This had to be a couple of lifetimes’ supply for the mice. I wonder how many trips up to the loft it took for the amount of seeds Cyndie found stashed up there. Being a wily sleuth, Cyndie checked a kitchen drawer that has had mouse droppings in the past.
Oh, yeah. About four-fifths thistle to one-fifth turds.
I found some old-style mouse traps in the basement mud room, and we baited them with thistle stuck on peanut butter after some intense sweeping, vacuuming, and scrubbing.
After pizza and some ice cream (not necessarily in that order) and the movie, “Conclave,” we were ready to turn in for the night. I climbed in the crisp, cool sheets and Cyndie went to get another blanket. She came back with the quilt sewed by Hays seamstresses many years ago up here when we brought my family for a Wildwood getaway.
Then she spotted mouse turds. Uh oh, again. Did they come from the quilt? She gently carried it out to inspect over a tile floor. I climbed out of the sheets and found more turds. Moving the pillows, it was obvious they hadn’t come from the quilt.
“How many mice have been sleeping in this bed?!”
Sheets were stripped and the bed was remade. I presented the option of sleeping in the loft, but we’d already settled in, and the bed would need to be remade anyway, so we soldiered on.
Cyndie eventually checked every other bed in the house, and the one we picked was the only one that had been messed up.
I checked traps this morning, and they hadn’t been touched. Birdseed is all moved to the garage and stowed in metal canisters. A load of garbage has already been dumped. Here’s hoping that’s the last of the stashes of thistle seeds.
The temperature outside right now is 2°F, and the wind chill is below zero. Only the edge of the lake has started to freeze, and the open water is steaming up thick clouds over the surface.
We are definitely up at the lake.
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Turkey Feast
In classic Cyndie fashion, we did not have one turkey for our Thanksgiving feast; we had two. She soaked one in brine and purchased a smoked bird from a local barbeque joint.
A Thanksgiving feast deserves to be served on a royally set table so Cyndie pulled out family heirloom china and silverware and augmented them with her hand-crafted dried leaf place markers.
Speaking of leaves, we put all five extending leaves in the old Hays family table to provide generous elbow room for our modest-sized gathering.
While dinner was cooking, I guided a group down to the barn to offer the horses a few Thanksgiving carrot bites to brighten their day. I was greatly impressed with Light’s quick acceptance of my message that I had no more treats for her. She is prone to prolonged, insistent begging for more when we start offering treats. In this case, she reacted as if she totally understood what I was communicating and turned around to walk away and stand beside Swings, who had already given up on a chance for any more bites of carrot.
When we returned to the house, there was time for a little word-guessing game in front of the fireplace before Chef Cyndie made the call for “hands.”
Much feasting ensued.
All visitors were sent home with generous servings of leftovers, but due to some strategic pleading by me earlier, they made sure to leave a little for me, as well.
Today, Cyndie and I are heading north to spend the weekend at the lake, because we can. Our leftovers will be going on a road trip along with us.
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Thin Ice
The first extended freeze of the season has finally arrived. Could it be an indication we might get a return to a more wintery weather pattern than we had last year? Seems like it barely got around to freezing last winter, and when it did, it was quickly followed by a thaw.
I checked out the ice on Paddock Lake yesterday morning and found it wasn’t thick enough to support my weight yet.
No skating allowed.
By the time I went out for the afternoon feeding, the edges of that puddle were beginning to disintegrate by sublimation. If we continue to experience a prolonged dry spell, it may just disappear without ever melting.
I don’t think the horses will mind that one bit. In reality, they are intelligent enough to be very wary when it comes to ice. They probably don’t even like me joking about them doing figure skating jumps and spins.
Cyndie is in the midst of double-duty activities to rain Christmas decorations down on our living quarters while also preparing to host Thanksgiving day for our kids and a few smiley folks from her clan. I alternate between following requests to help and staying out of her way as best as possible.
Just to add a little excitement, our clothes-washing machine produced an error code in the middle of a load, related to it not draining. Several go-rounds of bailing water out and re-trying proved fruitless, and we opted to call an appliance repair service.
When I saw on a YouTube video that accessing the drain pump meant tipping the washer and working through the bottom, I bailed out (pun intended) on trying to do the repair myself.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving will be spent waiting for a repair person to disrupt life in our utility room downstairs.
My sanity is on thin ice while turkeys are thawing, green beans are flying around in the kitchen, pots and pans are getting used faster than they can be washed, both ovens are doing double duty, pie fillings are dripping, smoke alarms keep pre-beeping close encounters with full panic mode, and all the while Cyndie simply floats around like a principal ballerina as cool as a cucumber, glowing like an angel while doing the work of 10 Chefs plus two.
Basically, it’s just a normal November Wednesday.
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Top Drawer
The top drawer of my dresser does not store any clothing items. If residential kitchens are known for having a household “junk” drawer, the first drawer in my dresser is my personal junk drawer. All too often, when I cover the flat top surface with too many things, and Cyndie wants the room cleaned like a hotel getting ready for new guests, it all gets shoved into that top drawer.
Yesterday, with the weather being rather unfriendly for outdoor activity, I took the bold step of pulling that drawer out of the dresser and unloading the entire contents onto our bed to be dealt with in one way or another. One of the reasons this task has been neglected for years is my knowledge that it wouldn’t be easy to know what to do with everything.
I also knew it would take more hours to complete than I wanted to dedicate to the project but I decided the best way to deal with that was to force the issue by dumping it all out and using our bed so I would be forced to finish what I started.
Did you know a lot of retail receipts have disappearing ink? I found several of the funky paper strip receipts that seemed worth keeping at the time weren’t even legible to know what was purchased. I found a very readable receipt for the chainsaw purchased in 2013. I actually do have a file in the den for what I call “long-term save receipts” where that should be filed.
It felt good to fill a bag of trash and one for recycling with stuff that was beyond their useful dates. When one enters ‘decluttering’ mode, one can easily part with things that were once deemed worth saving, and the momentum becomes a positive feedback loop.
For a person who never needed glasses until about my mid-forties, I found a surprising amount of eyewear had accumulated. I also uncovered no less than four digital pocket cameras, revealing the evolution of my camera hardware over the years.
I have charged all the batteries and verified basic function enough to allow me to look into ways to release these back out into the world for the purpose for which they were designed.
Is there a subset of the population that doesn’t have cell phone cameras? It’s probably small, which is why the cameras all ended up being stored in the drawer in the first place.
Around lunchtime, I wished to be done with the project but pushed on after a break and brought it to a close before the dinner hour arrived.
Topping off my satisfaction is the fact I moved no more than two small things from my top drawer to the kitchen junk drawer. I’ve got a bag of stuff to put back into circulation, a filled small bag of trash, a fair amount of recyclables, many odds and ends knick-knacks relocated to logical places, and the rest returned to the drawer with room to spare.
Special shout-out to Cyndie for her moral support and willingness to find new uses or storage locations for items that would have stumped me.
Here’s hoping I don’t allow the drawer to become overstuffed again anytime soon.
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Talkin’ Sh✴︎t
Not really talkin’ shit, but that was an irresistible two-word title. More accurately, I’m talking compost, but since it is made from horseshit, that’s not far off. In the many years that I have been experimenting with ways to compost and reuse the horse manure produced by the herds living with us, I’ve developed a pretty reliable system.
The main variable that I have neglected to control effectively is the moisture level of my piles. The area I have chosen for composting piles is not covered by a roof. If it rains too much, my piles can get so wet it disrupts the thermophilic decomposition.
My composting methods are far short of academic control of the carbon/nitrogen ratio or covering the piles with a tarp to control moisture. Honestly, the primary goal is to reduce the volume of manure by getting it to break down. The fact that it produces wonderfully fertile soil in the end is a welcome bonus.
By simply piling the manure and turning it as needed, I’ve been achieving desired results.
Throughout the summer months, I create individual piles in the spot just behind the barn, visible in the photo above. Yesterday, I moved out the last of the season’s composted piles, leaving two active piles in the back and plenty of space to dump more if needed over winter.
Once the winter freeze sets in, I look for alternate places to dump the wheelbarrow since the manure piles won’t break down and shrink, and there have been years I’ve run out of space. One place I have resorted to has begun to produce more impressive black dirt over time than any of my individual piles ever have.
There is a spot in the large paddock where the end of the buried drainage tile from the spigot in the barn comes to daylight. After trying several unsuccessful tricks to keep the horses from stomping around in the area where the drain tile is close to the surface, I got the brilliant idea of covering it with a mound.
The most readily available fill material we have is horse manure, so I piled up frozen wheelbarrows full during winter months and left it throughout the year to settle. The horses can’t leave anything alone so their curious kicking around on the pile through the summer helps break it up and conveniently aerates it.
Every time they mess with it, I rake it back into shape and make sure the deepest part of the mound stays over the drain outlet. This week, I’ve started adding to the mound again because the piles in the composting area are bound to stop being active soon, and mornings have been freezing the manure.
Adding fresh manure to the pile made for a sharp contrast to how very wonderfully soil-like the previous seasons’ dumpings have become. If I keep this up, that little mound will become a fine horse-compatible rise offering safe cover to the drain outlet.
Ain’t that the shit!
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Something Happened
When I passed the milestone of 65 years of age, something happened. Something more than the change of health insurance to Medicare. It was something much more subtle and has been worming around in my unconscious insidiously in the mere five months since my last birthday.
I’m losing momentum in my determination to tick away at something that builds strength, boosts stamina, and generally improves overall health each and every day. Last week, I opted to stay in bed instead of getting up to do my planking and stretching routines.
I’ve been telling myself that it was just a break and I could get back on track any time, but the number of breaks in that routine has been occurring with frighteningly increasing frequency in the last year. Similarly, I’ve noticed I don’t pay as close attention to the daily percentage of added sugar in my diet choices.
I think my mind is accepting the natural changes occurring in my body as joints grow arthritic and hormones and metabolism gradually and progressively fade. Being disinclined to seek hormone therapy options to combat natural aging, the best thing I can do involves exercise and diet.
I know the solution, but I’m losing the oomph to address it.
It’s like a football game where you play great, and the team pulls off some spectacular plays to keep the game close, but in the end, you lose by 1 point.
All that effort, but without a desired result.
I’m willing to accept I might not maintain my zest for the routines I’ve established with the intensity of my previous decade, but something happened with my motivation that I will need to address. Luckily, I haven’t replaced my good health practices with new habits like smoking or becoming a problem drinker.
Basically, I think I’m battling the feeling of becoming a tired old man before I actually am one.
The something that is happening is, I’m letting the gradual changes of aging get to my head.
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Winter Hints
Can’t complain when the first vestiges of winter show up in the latter part of November. If you were worried that Paddock Lake might dry up before all the horses got a chance for a good mud pack, we can report the opportunity is still there for them if that urge strikes.
It’s uncertain whether it will last long enough for the coming drop in temperatures below freezing. Today, the forecast indicates daytime temps will stay below 32°(F) starting in three days and could dip into the single digits overnight by next Sunday. If the water holds, that would be more than enough cold to create a skating rink for the girls.
The mares just had their hooves trimmed, so they should be able to fit into their figure skates without too much difficulty. It’s pretty comical watching them try to tie the laces using their teeth. Is there anything more beautiful than a gorgeous Thoroughbred doing a camel spin or Lutzes and toe loops out on the ice?
Up in the house, there are no skating shenanigans happening despite the potted Bird of Paradise leaking enough water lately to fill a skating rink. We have no idea what triggered this event, but after Cyndie slid the huge pot away from the window to allow access for professional window washers to show off their mad skills, I think maybe the saucer under the pot cracked.
That’s only part of the mystery. The real unknown is where all the water came from. We honestly began to wonder if someone from the cleaning crew dumped a bucket in there. Cyndie reports that for months when she watered it, excess flowed into the pan where she could soak it up per instructions.
In the last month, she noticed that no water was coming through into the saucer, so she tried increasing the frequency to twice a week, but no water was showing up in the pan anymore. Meanwhile, the plant appeared to be thriving. We’ve been surprised and thrilled with the new growth in the time since Elysa gifted us this gem.
Maybe it likes soaking more than we knew. Yesterday, we replaced the saucer with a brand new one, and this morning, we verified the old one had a leak because the new one is holding. Unfortunately, it is still mysteriously draining in unbelievable amounts that we are sopping up with a sponge.
Cyndie found a moisture scale and measured the soil this morning at the middle of the range of dry to wet. She won’t be adding any more until the scale shows movement to dry.
It’s possible the drain path was plugged and opened up when the pot was moved, but the plant is doing so well that it has us thinking it liked being that wet, despite information that Bird of Paradise does not thrive in soggy soil.
At least we learned how slanted our floor is by the length the leaked water flowed toward the fireplace when we first discovered it.
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Dear Rob
Dear Rob,
Just a note to say I am beginning to think you are insanely desperate to buy the property on Ravenscroft Ln that you seem to think I own after several years of texting my number despite the resounding silence you get from me in return.
I’m writing to ask if you might know Kristen who keeps leaving me messages that sound like she is fixated on buying my property for cash. Any chance you two happen to live under the same roof?
Sorry, I’m just teasing. I know that you are both some guy named Vlad who lives in his mom’s basement in a country that doesn’t even bother putting basements under their metal-roofed shanties.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that if you actually used the correct names and addresses of people and places that you wish to extract tax-free income from, the chances of fooling people have got to go up by some fraction of a percentile. Also, a lot of other schemes are employing the fine art of making the number that comes up on the caller ID of their targets show the local area code. True genius when it first started happening.
If you look it up on the dark web, I’m sure some bot would be happy to sell you the details of that fancy trick.
Don’t lose any sleep waiting to hear back from me about that delivery from US Postal for some imaginary package that can’t be delivered because the zip code is incorrect. I accidentally deleted it while I was tripping in front of running horses from the falling tree that was about to kill us all since Asher’s leash was tangled around everybody’s legs and the cloud of pigeons taking off from all the commotion was obscuring our view and I was looking down at my phone anyway in case it was an urgent call from someone I love.
Just kidding. I thought it would be funny to show you I can make stuff up, too. But if you want to call me back and give me your account numbers, I can help you pay us for a therapy session we are going to need after that imaginary scare about the tree falling and almost killing us.
Back before you were born, the running joke about pranking the snail mail solicitors who put postage-paid return envelopes in their offerings involved sending them a brick with their convenient envelope taped to it. No one believed that would work, but we all got a good yuck out of imagining it could.
Hey, tell “Kristen” that if she (you) shows up at our door with the cash in hand, it’s possible I might consider a swap, especially if the offer is significantly over market value like the pitch hints at. Don’t let Asher’s ferocious bark cause your knees to buckle. He only attacks people who are trying to take advantage of innocent victims.
No response necessary. I’m sure you are very busy with your cybercrime enterprises. Just mark this message as “Junk” and block my address. If you need any help doing that, I can show you. I’ve got the steps memorized.
Insincerely,
Everyone you harass
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Bird Dog
In the last couple of weeks, our dog, Asher, has turned into something of a bird dog. It started simply enough one day when a pigeon in the barn underestimated Asher’s speed and jumping ability. As soon as Asher gets prey in his mouth, he executes a perfect “soft carry” and paces around with notable purpose.
Cyndie recognized it right away and let him out of the barn to find a place to bury his prize.
Asher demonstrates a classic nose push to cover his treasure.
Soon after bringing him from his foster family to our home, we discovered Asher’s natural inclination to bury bones that we were hoping would occupy him for hours of gnawing. Asher has mad skill at burying things.
After that first capture, I noticed Asher developed a singular focus on returning to the barn for another chance. When we would head out on an exploratory walk around the property, I could only distract him with my agenda for a few minutes before he redirected our heading toward the barn from any point we were at.
Eventually, I began taking advantage of his compulsion and left him alone in the barn while I accomplished other tasks. He could run to and fro in there and bark while the pigeons flapped around in the rafters. I expected him to get bored with the game, but he’s pretty persistent.
I can’t blame him. His persistence paid off. Of the 18 different breeds identified by his DNA, he seems pretty tuned in on the 16% Labrador Retriever in bird dog skills. Cyndie texted me that Asher got another pigeon. I don’t know how the birds are losing this battle with him, given their wings and the many high perches available to them.
It sounds like the third one he got yesterday afternoon was surprised by the back door entry into the dark barn by Cyndie and the dog. She said she could feel by his actions in the dark that he probably had some critter in his mouth as they walked the length of the barn to reach the light switches.
Sure enough, he caught another pigeon.
We aren’t complaining because the number of pigeons has been increasing exponentially of late, and there is pigeon shit accumulating everywhere, inside and out. However, Cyndie ends up interrupting her horse services to give him a chance to bury the birds. She prefers that he bury them rather than begin devouring them on the spot.
I’m hoping some nighttime predator will dig them up and take the bodies away before Asher ever gets around to remembering that he buried these little bird-dog trophies.
Maybe that 5th breed on the list of his DNA percentages (he’s 6% Chihuahua) will distract him enough from remembering where he buries them. At this point, he seems much more interested in the hunt and the reward of another fresh capture.
His persistence indicates he believes there’s always potential for one more to be snatched.
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Relative Something 