Archive for August 2025
Receiving Notices
For almost 13 years, we have taken our trash and recycling bins down to the end of our driveway on Thursday nights. It has been a good marker for the day of the week, especially since we are no longer employed and struggle to distinguish between weekdays and weekends.
Our trash hauler recently decided to switch the day of the week that they will service our street. It is now one day earlier. No big deal, right? Well, it shouldn’t be, in my mind. However, readjusting a habit that has been in practice for so many years is causing me to feel more confused than ever in sensing where we are in the days of the week.
The weekend keeps feeling one day closer than it actually is. Today is only Thursday, and our trash bin is down by the road, ready to be picked up.
I was busy all day yesterday, mowing grass and weed-whipping around the edges. Toward the latter half of the afternoon, my eyes were driving me nuts. I had to stop several times to remove my sunglasses to rub and wipe my eyes. When I got in the house at the end of the day, my phone had an alert from my weather app. It indicated that any eye irritation occurring during the day was likely due to a high pollen count.
Noted. I was impressed that the app specifically addressed the situation I was dealing with.
We received a notice yesterday that our iCloud storage is getting close to full for the plan we are on. Apple conveniently offers options to address the issue, including ways to delete files we may not need to keep.
It was very easy to eliminate duplicate images in our photo storage. I found it painfully difficult to delete videos. I needed to watch many of them to figure out what they are. After watching a few, I didn’t want to delete any of them.
I’m pretty sure we will end up buying more storage capacity. The declutterer in me scoffs over the thought of paying for a garage space to store excess stuff. Apparently, I don’t hold myself to the same standard when it comes to digital data.
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Shouldn’t Compare
We had a wonderful lunch opportunity yesterday. It was a first-time visit to the home of friends who live just a few miles north of our place. It’s not fair to compare our worlds, but it is hard not to, and it has given us a fresh perspective about everything that we have accomplished on our 20 acres.
It feels like they have achieved a dizzying amount more on their 40 acres, particularly in the realm of landscape plants and an incredible garden of vegetables and flowers. After lunch, we got a tour of their gorgeous log home –with an impressive finished basement that they did themselves– and then walked some of their property.
They hired a crew to burn one of their fields to replace it with a variety of healthy prairie plants. Many of the grasses and beneficial pollinator plants are as tall as me or taller. It is beautiful.
I am humbled by how many impressive improvements they have achieved on their land, even though they have lived there half as long as we have been at Wintervale.
I was particularly inspired to see the number of new plantings they’ve put in, including quite a few apple trees that are producing fruit for the first time this year. The produce in their garden, and the developing squash and pumpkins out beyond their modest stand of field corn, look bigger and better than anything I’ve seen in a grocery store.
When it came time for us to go, they loaded us up with pickles, green beans, carrots, purple cauliflower, basil, cucumbers, and two varieties of apples, plus an arrangement of flowers.
As soon as we got home, I went out and mowed some grass. Suddenly, that feels like much less of an accomplishment to me than it did the day before.
If it ever seems like we get a lot done around here in terms of upkeep, just know that it’s a drop in a bucket compared to what plenty of others around us out here in the country are doing.
The best takeaway for me from the revelations we saw yesterday is that I am not alone in tending to a little piece of this planet by nurturing nature. We are both helping desirable trees and plants succeed and controlling the spread of troublesome invasives.
It is great to have found such a close neighbor with a similar mindset. It will be good for me to keep in mind that it’s not a competition.
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Return Assessment
Our drive home yesterday took us through one downpour that lasted about two minutes, after which I needed to switch the wipers on and off to intermittent for the rest of the way home. The total in the rain gauge upon arrival at Wintervale read five inches.
Our grass was desperate for a cut, but it was soaking wet. Cyndie’s brother, Steve, met us at our house to pick up their mom and transport her the rest of the way to her place in Bloomington. We were thrilled to see that he brought along his new Havapoo puppy, Vern, for us to meet.
I’m sad we didn’t take any pictures of Asher timidly inspecting the little pup. He showed no concern over the appearance of a strange creature in his territory and acted as if he recognized that this young dog deserved special respect. Before they left, Steve let Vern explore a bit in the grass, and the little guy appropriately used the opportunity to poop.
Cyndie said Asher investigated that spot after Steve had picked up the droppings and left it alone to walk over to the other side of the driveway to pee. I think he already senses that Vern is family.
Before I headed to the barn, I stopped by the piles of composting manure to see how things looked after a weekend away and multiple downpours of rain. It was easy to turn over the most active pile and reshape the others to bring everything up to my overly-tended standard.
The paddocks and the horses weren’t as much of a muddy mess as we feared possible. Paddock Lake was full to overflowing. The friends we employ to stay at our home and care for our animals while we are away do a fantastic job of maintaining order regardless of the challenges the weather throws their way.
This week, we have a time scheduled to meet a new volunteer willing to feed the horses for us when needed. That would be a real boon if she chooses to accept the responsibility.
Mix appeared to be telling us about how well the shade sail stood up to all the wild weather that bombarded the place over the weekend.
I am so happy that we don’t need to panic and pull it down every time there is a threat of high winds. I think that having it nestled in a low spot between the barn and the hill of the hay field protects it from suffering the brunt of harsh conditions.
The only issue reported as a result of the heavy rain was a couple of dripping spots from the ceiling of our bathroom. It reminds me that we should be shopping for a roofing company to quote replacing our 15-year-old shingles.
They aren’t completely shot, but they’ve suffered a bit of abuse over the years. We think the leak over the bathroom might be related to the plumbing vent or exhaust fan coming through the shingles there. It only appears during exceptionally heavy downpours and has never amounted to much.
Overall, our assessment of things upon returning home was rewarding. We are very grateful to have superb house sitters who take such great care of our home and animals.
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Sunday List
Yesterday, we enjoyed a classic Sunday at the lake… forgive me for choosing to simply list the ways:
- wife on the deck powering her way through to the end of a book
- an inspiring song popping up on the random shuffle of my entire music library
- the success of a reply to a broadcast message seeking volunteers to occasionally feed horses
- hummingbirds returning to the freshly filled feeders
- the ping of an alert informing us of a flood watch issued for overnight at home
- acorns randomly bouncing on the deck from the branches of the oak tree overhead
- dew point in the 50sF and air temperature in the low to mid 70s
- a single loud and clear loon call in the middle of the afternoon
- meditative progress on sanding out tool marks from a sculpted wood shape
- using up all the food we brought from home without needing to shop or eat out
- allowing ourselves an exception to buy fresh corn cobs from a street vendor on the way up
- mentally winding down a weekend at the lake
- not leaving until Monday morning to avoid Sunday’s usual travelers returning to their homes
- sheets and towels washed in advance to facilitate an early morning departure
We head home this morning, where we will learn how wet it got after the series of deluges that rolled over the region while we were up north. Only one of those downpours made it to Hayward. The rest of the time, we enjoyed pleasant mid-August at-the-lake weather.
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Dream Driven
I haven’t got a clue. I’m feeling a little shaky about trusting my intuition after the dream I experienced last night. It was classic in how real it seemed compared to how obviously unreal it proved to be upon my waking. The way it mixed time and locations should have helped my sleeping mind to recognize it was a fabrication.
It has left me wondering if I will be savvy enough to sense when I am reading a message from a Russian bot or a genuine American citizen with a hairbrained opinion lacking any factual basis. If the President of the United States looks like he is buddying up with Putin, can anything healthy possibly result from it?
My dream had nothing to do with world politics. It involved someone with whom I am close. It involved death.
What is up with that? I’m not sure. I don’t want to delve into it.
Nothing to see here. Carry on.
I spent a little time shaping my latest wood piece yesterday while sitting on the shore of the lake, listening to the sound of the water lapping against the sand.
It is a cutting from the Y of two branches of the oak tree section that crashed to the ground in front of our eyes on an otherwise calm morning. We don’t know why it fell at that time. It was the kind of thing that could have happened in a dream.
As is often my style, I am leaving the bark on one side of my sculpture. I try to come up with words to explain the symbolism I assign to this, but I’m not entirely sure it isn’t just a way to get out of needing to finish all the surface area. Although, a smooth side and a rough side can be a pretty easy metaphor for a lot of things/people/situations.
Meanwhile, I hear the fearful leader has called out our military to control D.C. Talk about a disconnect between some people’s dreams and reality.
The delirium of this kind of thing happening in our country is a travesty. No wonder I find myself drawn to intense focus on precisely shaping a heart out of the solid wood of an old oak tree, bringing out the splendor of the beautiful woodgrain.
The symbol of a classic heart shape is a universal representation of love, and genuine love is the only thing that will get us out of any mess the world is in. When enough people of influence get around to fully embracing that, we might see that our best dreams can actually come true.
My dream last night has me wanting to soak up as much of my immediate reality as possible today. Maybe even hug the ones I love. Retune the vibrations of my intuition. Hold a heart-shaped piece of an oak tree and feel its strength and the love it symbolizes.
It’s our last full day at the lake this weekend. We drive home tomorrow morning.
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Lazy Daze
We are missing out on the wild thunderstorms pummeling the Twin Cities and Wintervale over the last 24 hours because we are up at the lake again. The mass of wet weather is large enough this morning that we are getting a dose of thunder and lightning to start our day, but yesterday was a long, slow, lazy, eventless day up here.
After lounging in bed for longer than I have in a long time, the rest of the day included a leisurely visit to the beach, a perfect nap before dinner, and not much else in the way of activity.
The rain this morning is moving in very slowly, and the air is ominously still. Most notable at this point is how surprisingly dark it is at 9:00 a.m. Cyndie moved the car into the garage under Cabin 3 just in case we get any hail. The weather app on my phone is pinging me with warnings for both Beldenville and Hayward.
These super-sized thunderstorms are the new norm in this ever-warming climate swing. Multiple inches of rain in short spans of time are becoming a common occurrence.
It’s looking like today may be just as lazy as yesterday for us, and that’s just fine. Has us feeling a little sheepish about leaving our horse-sitters to deal with all the weather drama, though. At least Asher doesn’t have a problem with storms, so they won’t need to worry about him.
My motivation for the day hasn’t changed much from yesterday. Maybe I’ll see if I can fit two naps in before dinnertime.
Feeling lazy and only mildly dazed.
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Months Later
You could call it “John Standard Time.” Sometimes it takes a while for me to execute. Here is a pretty good example…
The story has a background that goes back years. Many years ago, in fact. The old day job in manufacturing had a small bandsaw purchased from Harbor Freight for cutting metal. One day, the switch burned out, and the owner opted to simply replace the saw with a new version of the same model.
I’m not sure what got into me, but I told him I could take the old one off his hands to save him from figuring out how to dispose of it. I found a replacement switch and had myself a very inexpensive saw for my shop. In the last decade, I’ve used it to cut metal only once or twice. A couple of times, I used that metal-cutting blade to cut wood. It was slow, but it worked.
That inspired me to look into buying a bandsaw blade intended for cutting wood, even though that wasn’t what this saw was designed to do. The speed wasn’t as fast as it should be, but since I had some success misusing the metal-cutting blade, I figured it was worth trying to undercut the specs on a wood-cutting blade without a major loss if it didn’t work out.
Not knowing anything about what I was doing, I called to speak to a blade expert at a company I found online. He was kind enough to educate me to the point of being able to pick a blade for my experiment, even though he knew I didn’t have the correct bandsaw for the job.
By Christmastime last year, I was pressured to come up with a wish list of ideas for gifts I’d appreciate, so I put the blades on my list. Surprise! I got a box with two perfect wood-cutting bandsaw blades.
It took me another five months or so to get around to installing one of the new blades on the saw. That exercise was not a pretty sight. I had no clue what I was doing and fumbled my way through several failed attempts, and gained multiple irritating cuts on my fingers.
Then, I ran into a problem when I tried to move the belt on the pulleys to the fastest speed. The two pulleys in the diagram on the saw appear to be installed in opposite orientations, but the actual pulleys on the saw were installed identically to each other.
I let another month pass until I had a chance to ask the advice of friends with mechanical knowledge. One of them knew the exact bandsaw. They agreed that one of the pulleys was on wrong and told me it was easy to fix.
Two months after that, I got around to trying to find the set screw that holds the pulleys on the shaft of the motor. It took some tenacious hunting, but I found it, and after many tries in low light, found the Allen wrench that fit.
A few days ago, I made my first attempt to cut wood. It worked like a warm knife through butter. Merry Christmas!
Look out world, I’ve got a whole new weapon in my low-tech woodworking hobby.
Why, in a few months or twelve, I might finish making another snazzy woodgrained something-or-other.
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Planting Corn
The other day, Cyndie was taking Asher for a walk, and they ended up having a corny adventure. There was a corn cob lying in the middle of the trail, and Asher trotted right for it, instantly snatching it in his teeth.
It is not uncommon for scavenging critters to rob the farmers of the occasional ear of field corn and then drop it somewhere on our property. I have seen Asher completely ignore them many times. I don’t know what made this one special.
He clenched that cob in his teeth for the rest of the North Loop trail.
He held onto it up and over the first hill of the driveway.
It was still in his jaws as they passed the hay shed and headed up toward the shop garage.
When they reached what he decided was the perfect spot, he stopped to dig a hole.
Then he dropped the cob in and pushed the loose dirt back on top to bury it.
I’m not sure it’s the best time to plant corn, but if a stalk sprouts from the ground in that location anytime in the future, I will be duly impressed with his technique.
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Dragonfly Swarm
How many can you find?
I would say there are more than 10 and fewer than 20 detectable in the image.
Cyndie happened upon a swarm of dragonflies and tried to capture the spectacle with her phone’s camera in a split-second reaction. Even if there weren’t tiny specs of other dragonflies, I think the one with the obvious four wings makes her photo worthwhile.
There is a fair amount of symbolism associated with dragonflies. A swarm of them amplifies the significance. It could also simply be that there were a lot of mosquitoes in the vicinity at the time.
I didn’t really notice a reduction in mosquitoes the next day, though.
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Body Condition
The horses were reasonably less rambunctious yesterday morning when the Nutritionist appointed by This Old Horse showed up to assess the herd. With the dwindling number of Swings’ teeth newly evident and signs of quidding (dropping partially chewed food from the mouth) in Swings and Mia, the Vet questioned whether we were giving them Senior feed.
We aren’t. Yet. This Old Horse scheduled a visit with the nutritionist to help with deciding whether or not to change their feed.
We were very happy to meet Michelle, the nutritionist, and to receive a refresher on how the equine body condition score is evaluated. Horses are scored 1-9, with 1 being poor and 9 being extremely fat. Most horses should be in the 5-6 range.
The main thing I noticed is how much room there is for subjective variation in the observations and measurements. Even something as simple as a change in position by the horse while measuring can alter the numbers.
If you can see their ribs, that is a lower score, but if you can’t see them, you should be able to feel them, or the score will be higher than ideal. Michelle used five places on the body to observe for visible mounds or bulges of fat and to feel for the squishiness of fat (as opposed to the firmness of muscle).
Our herd of rescued Thoroughbreds received very good body condition scores in the range of 5.
I was most impressed by Michelle’s technique for determining a weight for the horses. With a tape, she measured their girth, neck, height, and length and then entered the measurements into an app that calculates the result. Previously, the weights for these horses have been determined using a specially marked tape that bases the result on just the girth measurement.
In the end, it sounds like there are multiple reasons supporting a change to Senior feed, but discussions still need to be had based on financial factors and utilization of the full pallet of bagged grains we just received.
For now, there are no concerns about the horses getting enough calories to maintain their health. Can’t say the same thing for me. I’m pretty sure I most often tend to be somewhere beyond the level of “enough calories.”
Here is a photo Cyndie took of a bee visiting her dahlia blossom to balance the dry discussion of horse scores. A wonderful spectacle. It was too precious to leave unused. Enjoy!
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Relative Something 