Archive for May 2026
Getting Grumpy
Don’t mind me, I’m just grumpy because the Minnesota Wild are getting thumped by Colorado in this second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. If the puck had bounced in just a little bit better direction for us last night, things might have turned out differently. The Wild are now trailing 3 games to 1 in the best-of-7 series. I will not be anticipating a 3-game sweep to happen in our favor to keep our season from ending in the second round.
Or maybe I’m grumpy because I have been unable to solve a problem with my electric riding mower that regularly shuts down the PTO with an over-temp error code after a very short period of use. I have a thermal imaging device that indicates the actual temperatures are barely warmer than normal room temperature.
I spent a lot of time on the phone with the manufacturer and a designated service provider yesterday, but have made little in the way of helpful progress. Negotiations are ongoing. Too bad the grass doesn’t take a break from growing while I’m dealing with mechanical issues.
Thankfully, the asphalt repair crew showed up as promised and did a bang-up job of making cracks disappear.
It was intriguing to watch them scrape off the upper layer of material after heating it with torches. They brought chunks of old asphalt and melted them down to make an almost good-as-new patch. Asphalt artists, those guys.
The bonus on the day was finding the controller for Asher’s e-collar that had come unhooked from Cyndie’s pocket a few days ago. We’d thought it was lost for good, and Cyndie had even purchased a different version of collar as a replacement. We hadn’t figured out the more complicated controls on that one yet, so we will now happily return it and go back to using the one we are all familiar with.
Those were just enough happy outcomes to balance out the grumpiness over the hometown hockey team loss and the error-prone riding mower.
At least I’m not entering a new decade of years today like someone else I know. Happy Birthday, Marbare!! That number sounds a lot older than my age. Hope you will be celebrating in the least grumpy of ways! Love to you!
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Just Ask
My curiosity was genuine. A year ago, we had the asphalt company that put in our driveway come back to patch cracks and reseal the entire surface because it seemed the original protection hadn’t lasted as long as expected. Over the winter, those same cracks just opened right back up.
I was a little disappointed, but surmised the natural freeze/thaw conditions were the culprit, not necessarily a bad job on the sealing/patching quality. It seemed to me that hiring them to come back and give it another try would be throwing good money after bad.
But after weeks of walking over these disconcerting cracks and moping about them each time, I finally decided to call the owner to ask if he would come look for himself and to offer his professional opinion about the crack repair not lasting. Mostly, I wanted him to know exactly how the driveway they installed looked after only four years.
You never know how this kind of call will go, but to my surprise, my timing was perfect. They were finishing a driveway in the area, and he would be able to come look at it that very afternoon. Doubling my surprise, two company trucks pulled in together. He brought two of the guys who do the work so they could all see it and put their heads together to come up with a solution.
Oh, I forgot to mention, before they even arrived, he texted me that he intended to make any improvements necessary at no additional cost. This all happened on Friday. The crew is coming today to repair any cracks that need attention.
All I needed to do was make the call and ask the first question.
“Could you come out and look at it?”
I give some credit for the fortunate results of my query to the fact that I wasn’t trying to get something for nothing. A form of altruistic reverse psychology, maybe? Something like that.
Meanwhile, here’s a shot that reveals how dry it’s getting around here:
Like the static formed by rubbing a balloon on hair, Mia’s swishing tail was building up a static charge.
If she would just ask, we could wet it down for her. Maybe that is why the horses seem so happy when Paddock Lake has water in it.
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Mower Issues
Just when I thought I had figured out how to resolve an error code on my Greenworks riding mower, the problem has now been recurring after about five minutes of use. The code hints at overheating, but I am very suspicious about whether or not that is what is happening.
Service support alerted me to the fact that a single blade of grass can get caught in the space around the motor spindle and trip the sensor. They recommend frequent use of compressed air to blow from beneath the deck. That solved my problem the last time I was having issues.
When it wasn’t helping with the current rash of problems, I resorted to pulling the blade, thinking I was working toward removing four more bolts to get at the motor. What I found stopped me from going any further.
There was a thin plastic line wrapped around and around on the spindle. If a blade of grass can be a problem, that surely must be what was triggering that motor sensor. I bolted the blade back onto the spindle and turned the key. The error message was gone.
I triumphantly set off to resume mowing. A few minutes into it, the PTO snapped off, and the error code was showing on the display.
It was late, I was tired, and lacking the spirit to continue doing battle, I parked the mower and hit the shower.
I’m happy to have the distraction of Mother’s Day this morning, which I can use as an excuse to ignore the mower problem for a while longer. We are headed for a brunch to honor several mothers for a few hours.
That’ll give the mower more time to think about what it’s doing wrong.
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Showing Age
It feels like a Saturday morning around here, for no obvious reason, especially since weekend days are rarely different than the rest of the week for us now that we have no employment responsibilities. The weather, the horses, the music we put on during breakfast; they all influence in some way, but I suspect it is something deeper in my unconscious.
I composed an email yesterday to kick off planning for my high school class’s 50th reunion next year. Funny, how it triggers recollections and reminisces of people and places from so many decades ago, even as I carry on with my current routines, tending to our property and animals with hands that look like an old man’s.
My long-term effort to use the winter accumulation of manure in the paddocks to create a rise over a drain tile is coming along nicely.
The horses haven’t paid much attention to it lately. Some years, there has been a lot more evidence of them messing around along the edges of the pile. I look forward to them doing that to break up the dried manure that rolls to the bottom, to mix it into the existing, predominantly clay, soil.
We are in a bit of a dry spell that has finally put an end to standing water in the low spots of our trails through the woods. It has also dried up Paddock Lake.
The horses have been working on expanding the borders by their antics of stomping and kicking around to get back up after they lie down in it. Their interest in it seems to disappear as fast as the water does.
They reached a fresh level of shedding over the last couple of days. This morning, we watched Mia pushing her butt so hard against the almost completely dead willow tree that it looked like it was going to topple over. She succeeded in scraping out massive clumps of hair.
A wild turkey gobbled in the distance, and the sun popped out for a few seconds between a sky full of thick clouds. The day seems like a Saturday with a mostly open agenda. A guy could go for a bike ride if he didn’t have a log home guy stopping by at some undetermined time to quote a wood maintenance project. Both the logs of the house and the log-looking siding on the shop garage are showing their age.
I can totally relate.
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Pushing Abilities
One moment of losing focus on the task at hand can have unwelcome consequences. I took a blow to the leg when I least expected it; a smack hard enough to bruise bone and break the skin. No, it wasn’t while using the chainsaw, nor the string trimmer or hedge trimmer. I stubbed my leg against one of the rocks along the front of our fireplace.
Is this why running in the house is frowned upon? I was fully engaged in Asher’s favorite indoor pastime of pursuing him and the toy in his mouth as he ran laps around the spiral staircase and the furniture in the living room.
The game came to a screaming halt, with the screaming coming from me as I wailed over the sudden crippling pain. Cyndie worried I’d seriously injured myself, not having a clue what had caused my outburst. I worried I might never walk again.
Okay, that is an unnecessary exaggeration. Some quick first-aid in the form of an ice pack from Cyndie and elevation had me back functional in about 30 minutes. The extent of the wound serves as an indication of just how fast I can get moving on two feet, so I see it as a badge of my athletic prowess. Still, I wasn’t fast enough to catch Asher.
The bruised leg didn’t prevent me from making some impressive progress on pushing the abilities of my Greenworks riding mower to mow along the fence line from inside the pastures.
It’s asking a lot from the machine to cut such tall, thick grass where the surface is dramatically uneven with divots from horse hooves, piles of dirt from gophers, and some unavoidable piles of manure. The effort is compounded by the occasional plugging of the mower exit chute and the fully understandable interruption of the PTO when a blade motor over-temp sensor is tripped.
I learned from a Greenworks support technician that a blade of grass can get up inside a gap along the spindle to cause the error that trips the sensor and shuts down the blades. The only time that has been a problem for me is when I try mowing where the grass is too much for this mower, so it’s not the machine’s fault.
Since I now know how to solve the issue, it’s not that concerning, and I find myself more willing to push the machine beyond its limits. I stumbled a little bit the first time it happened yesterday because I was getting a second error code that had me walking back to the shop to charge a battery in hopes of limping the mower back to the garage. Reviewing the manual for error codes alerted me that I hadn’t reset the PTO button to “off” after the blade motor sensor tripped.
The mower won’t start with the PTO in the “on” position. D’oh!
As soon as I resolved all the issues, I was back in business. It worked so well the rest of the way, I continued to mow pasture away from the fence. The area around the round pen is a hassle to navigate with the diesel tractor and brush hog, so the more I can do with the little riding mower, the better.
It’s as impressive as heck that the Greenworks zero-turn riding mower is up to handling everything I push it to do.
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Chilly Spring
Alright, homeowners, can you identify what you are looking at in this image?
I did not have this bathroom under-sink repair on my bingo card of small projects two days ago. As soon as I successfully pulled off one thing, another popped up to remind me that nothing lasts indefinitely. I think I was bragging to Cyndie about finishing one of my recent fixes when she reported that the stopper in the bathroom sink pulled out, revealing the pivot rod supporting it had rusted to the point of disintegration.
I’m really hoping under-sink issues do not come in threes. I’ve had enough of that unpleasant contortioning for the year.
On the bright side, it gave me an excuse to work indoors while the weather outside is uncomfortably cold. For the umpteenth time in the last two weeks, Cyndie needed to cover her flowers to protect them from freezing.
A cardboard box over one of the planters was a quick and easy method. There are bags and blankets and plastic pails scattered over growing things all around the property, and no sign of a warmup visible in the 10-day forecast.
Having lived through 67 years of changing seasons, I still find myself surprised by how much our sensitivities to temperatures vary at different times. In March, air temps in the 40s (F) feel warm, but in May, the same temperature can chill to the core. Yesterday, I struggled to get my body to warm up after morning chores, and I felt uncomfortably cold for the rest of the day.
I suppose my reluctance to change back into winter wear could explain a lot of my problem. It’s May, dagnabbit! I don’t want to go back to insulated layers again. Relying on the high sunshine to nudge things up to a tolerable level was a failure yesterday because we only enjoyed a few moments of sun before a blanket of clouds took over for the rest of the day.
There is hope for a small improvement today. If the predictions hold, we might see a little more sunlight, and the air could warm into the mid-50s (F).
I should probably dress in layers –several of them.
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Project Successes
Lately, I’ve found myself tending to a variety of small projects, with varying degrees of luck in achieving the desired outcomes. One that felt the luckiest and, as a result, the most rewarding involved replacing the mechanism for the kitchen under-sink garbage pail slideout.
When the mechanism we’ve had for years quit working –it had been losing bearings for a while– we ordered a similar one I found online. When I removed the old one, I discovered the particle board was busted up around the back screws from when the trash pail was pulled out with too much weight in it, and it had popped the screws out.
I visualized a solution of mounting the replacement rails to a piece of sheet metal and then screwing that sheet metal into the wood in new, undamaged areas. I only needed two flat-head machine screws to attach the rail frame to the sheet metal, but I couldn’t find anything except wood screws lying around. I imagined I’d have to buy what I wanted from the hardware store, figuring that would be a frustrating search.
On a day when I would be driving past a store, I decided to make one last survey of the shop to look for screws before trying to buy them. That led me to two small cabinets of drawers on a bench in the back that I have no recollection of ever having seen before.
I methodically began cycling through the drawers and was rewarded with exactly what I wanted to find.
I have no memory of where they came from, but I’m happy to have them, and this allowed me to finish the installation of the sliding rig for the under-sink trash bin. Boom.
My less successful endeavor involved replacing a bathroom fan at Elysa’s house. Without being able to find an exact replacement, we were left trying to make something reasonably close work. I couldn’t get the old box out because it had been installed before the ceiling sheet rock was finished. There is no access to the tiny space above the ceiling, so it is going to be a bigger remodel project than I want to tackle.
My project yesterday had me dabbling in my first-ever tubeless tire change on a bike. I had purchased new tires that are more gravel-compatible to replace my road slicks. It has been a long time since I dealt with the challenge of stretching a tire bead over the wheel rim. It got easier with each attempt, thankfully, but my hands and thumbs suffered a beating from the exercise.
Based on the success that I ultimately enjoyed, I’m feeling like I’ve now got the hang of dealing with tubeless tires and the liquid sealant they require. That’s a dramatic difference in experience from a year ago.
Knowing what hardware is stashed in the shop and getting some practice with tubeless tires can surely improve the odds of small project successes.
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Chiming
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from a tone
bravely accosting the silence
the stuttering steps
of apprehension
peal ceaselessly
in the gentle breeze
that wasn’t there
a moment ago
chiming a song
bounce by ricocheting
bounce
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Lazy Sunday
The ground cover in our woods is making impressive progress in spring growth. It has already reached the point where it’s almost impossible to find Asher when he wanders away as we walk through the woods. I have an obvious fondness for finding trillium, both where we have transplanted it and in surprising places it shows up organically.
Those flowers are probably carpeting the woods up at the lake place, or will be soon. Ours are few and far between at home.
The busy, energy-filled day on Saturday gave way to a very low-energy Sunday for me. A little extra time standing quietly with the horses and lying down with Asher outside in the shade. A short nap early in the afternoon. Some puttering in the shop to tend to long-neglected clutter before making a little progress on a project.
I ended the evening watching Stanley Cup Playoff hockey. That ended up being the most stressful part of the entire day.
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Great Event
The usual calm and quiet has returned to Wintervale this morning. I think the horses sense that Cyndie’s and my energy has significantly changed, moving from the hyperactive tensions of preparation mode to a serene afterglow now that World Labyrinth Day 2026 is in the past. The beautiful weather with bright sunshine helped to create a perfect setting for visitors.
Asher kept me company while I set up the Wintervale flag near the road to give first-time visitors a sign they were at the right place. For some reason, my phone camera made that view look like our entrance is a U-turn from the road, which is not the case. The angle is much less than 180°.
Cyndie turned our storm door into a sign for anyone who arrived while we were both down at the labyrinth. I was too busy gabbing away with folks to take a picture of the spread Cyndie set out on the center island of our kitchen, but you can be assured that there were plenty of scones, cookies, vegetables, cheese & crackers, grapes, and a couple of versions of flatbread pizza square bites for good measure.
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We moved Cyndie’s precious door table down near the labyrinth with a tub of beverages that turned out to be very popular. She also provided cards with some guidelines for maximizing one’s experience walking the roundabout pathway into and out of the “not-a-maze.”
A mix of friends, family, and acquaintances participated in trodding during the appointed hour of meditation on all things peace-related. One of my favorite aspects of peace is joyfulness, and there was plenty of joy expressed in the congregating of like-minded souls.
I couldn’t help myself lamenting the event happening so early in our growing season that it looks barren compared to the lush growth that will be obvious in a few more weeks. It was agreed by a variety of others that my idea of holding our own local version of a meditative walk on the topic of LOVE could happen later in the summer, to allow people to enjoy the scenery at its best.
It would take us less preparatory effort if people just came to enjoy our sanctuary as their opportunity arose. I expressed that to everyone I spoke with in hopes they would take me up on the offer in the future.
Every time we have visitors, it clarifies the fact that our property is so much more rewarding when we get to share it with others. It’s a win/win when someone who experiences great joy being here ends up doubling our joy for being able to welcome them.
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Relative Something 