Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Animal Escapades
I don’t think I’ve written much about the success we’ve been having with Asher mostly staying in contact with us when we let him be off-leash outside. We’ve been training him with an e-collar, but I don’t think he is as influenced by the collar so much as he’s just maturing and becoming ever more aware of our routine and understanding our property boundaries.
He is frequently content to sit and watch the scenes across our landscape, taking in all the scents that pass his way.
Yesterday, he was taking a particular interest in the horses. I looked up from a project I was working on when I heard the thundering sound of hooves and caught a glimpse of Mix running in from the hay field.
Asher didn’t even twitch. He just watched her approach. I don’t know what got into Mix, but she then ran right back out again. It was as if she just wanted the exercise, but I knew that wasn’t true.
Although, she did then run right back in one more time. That was too much for Asher. He jumped up and ran to the paddock fence to meet her energy. Of course, he didn’t have any plan once he got there. They just stood for a moment, looking at each other with blank expressions.
Meanwhile, the other horses showed no concern for the excitement and stayed up on the high spot of the hay field, calm as ever.
At one point, Mia lay down to nap. As soon as she was done, Swings took a turn.
It was a humid day that had started out foggy. We had received over two-and-a-half inches of rain overnight from a very raucous thunderstorm. Other than the weird burst of running from Mix, the animals all seemed unfazed by the weather.
Mix had been a little gimpy for the last week, and Cyndie has been giving her something for pain relief. I wondered if the running was because she was feeling better. Later, I decided that wasn’t the case because it looked like the running might have left Mix feeling a little more achy than before.
Maybe Asher wanted Mix to stop running around because he realized she might hurt herself if she kept it up. Mix is the youngest in the herd, so it seems odd to have her appear the least comfortable.
We are in the process of slowly transitioning from feeding the horses grains to giving them a manufactured “Senior Feed.” I don’t think Light likes it. She has been dumping a lot of the feed out of her bucket in apparent frustration. Last night, both Cyndie and I noticed an audible increase in gut sounds in all four of the horses.
I think the new feed is giving them rumbly tummies.
Asher doesn’t seem to mind the change. He tries eating what they spill, regardless of what it is. When he refuses to obey the “Leave it!” command, he ends up back on a leash in the barn. We are disinclined toward using the e-collar to train for those violations.
We reserve that for more serious escapades.
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Officially Autumn
At approximately 1:19 p.m. CDT today, the sun crosses the celestial equator, marking the autumnal equinox for the Northern Hemisphere. Shorter days and longer nights become the reality around here for the next three months. In addition to the noticeable change in sunrise and sunset times, we are finding that the hummingbirds are becoming scarce, and box elder bugs are appearing in giant globs in spots of warm sunlight.
Yesterday, we found a batch of ten or fifteen Monarch Butterflies hanging around in our north loop field.
Only one of which I was able to fit in the frame of this photo. Might they be amassing before a migratory journey?
Some of our trees are actually beginning to show a little color. Fall is officially here. Have they broken out the pumpkin spice yet? Oh, yeah. That happened in August. Well, now I suppose Christmas-themed advertising will be starting soon, if it hasn’t already. We don’t get much exposure to ads these days.
I look forward to discovering how soon the grass will stop growing for the season. In the good old days, I was able to put away lawn mowers when fall arrived. Now, mowing in October is no longer an unlikely occurrence.
Time will tell. Today, I have a lot of grass that needs cutting. I’ll wave goodbye toward the sun as the afternoon hour of the equinox blows past.
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Following Through
After writing my thoughts yesterday about protecting the small volunteer Cedar tree from the risk of having its main leader chewed off by deer, I figured it would be prudent to follow through without procrastinating. It’s funny how simple it can be to take action, yet my natural inclination aligns more with not doing things until action cannot be avoided.
The first thing I did after breakfast was to gather the materials and install a protective fence around the little tree. Now I will have a good reference for measuring how much height it gains in the next growing season. The other volunteer Cedar tree located on the far end of that field is about twice the size of this one. It’s big enough that it doesn’t need protection.
While in that field, taking care of desirable trees, I spotted three invasive common buckthorn trees that quickly became the focus of my next efforts. Two of them had obviously been cut before and were now more like a bush. I should have done this in the first place, but this time I went to get tools to dig the roots up and eradicate the nuisances once and for all.
The third troublemaker turned out to be a female with berries. I don’t know how it went unnoticed until now, except maybe because it was in the middle of a significant poison ivy area. I forged in there regardless and dug up the plant roots and any poison ivy shoots tangled within.
I’ll find out tomorrow whether I washed away any oils thoroughly enough to prevent a rash.
Two more highlights of the day involved an interview with a potential new animal sitter and then a dinner out with family to celebrate Julian’s birthday.
We got a nibble from a post Cyndie put on a job board at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls. There are students studying to become Veterinary Technicians who are perfect candidates for taking care of horses.
The woman we met yesterday is also a skilled softball player, so we will need to work around practices and the schedule for that sport if she chooses to help us out this year.
For dinner, Cyndie found a gem of a restaurant in Stillwater with a lean toward a Greek menu that none of us had known about before. Phil’s Tara Hideawy is a little off the main drag and looks like a rather unassuming log lodge from the road.
Once inside, it was bustling with energy and very busy. We were wise to have made reservations. The food was delicious and plentiful. After sharing three appetizers, we all had leftovers of our entrees to bring home afterwards.
It was a wonderful place for celebrating another family milestone and sharing memories of our years gone by.
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Helping Trees
With the intense growth of summer beginning to wane just a little, we can better see into the woods to spot vines that are climbing our trees and uproot them. This week, we have been noticing them while walking Asher in the morning and pausing only briefly to tend to one or two near the trail. It tells me that the chore deserves a more focused trek through the woods to address any less obvious others away from the trail.
I’ve also been thinking about the young volunteer trees we discovered growing in our north loop field, and wanting to check on them. I did a little research on ways to best help young trees and found that nurturing root growth with water and mulch was a frequent suggestion. This gave me a fresh use for the composted manure stockpile I’ve been wanting to distribute.
After a recent turning of an old pile, I was thrilled to see the temperature had climbed back to over 150°F in the middle, indicating the microbial breakdown activity was far from complete.
The piles that are no longer cooking need to be distributed to make space for the daily new loads cleaned out of the paddocks. I decided to haul some up to use around the base of the young trees in the north loop field.
The first thing I discovered is that the poison ivy in that field is spreading farther and farther away from the spot where it was originally established. The second thing I found was that there are little oak trees showing up all over the place.
There are so many that I gave up trying to put mulch around all of them. Some trees will just have to fend for themselves. We get a fair amount of pressure from deer in that field, and I’ve known that young trees are all at risk of getting munched on, but since there are so many things growing there, I’m willing to sacrifice a few for occasional deer treats.
Among all the grasses and weeds growing around and over the volunteer oak trees popping up, there are also a few pine trees, many poplars, and two specific known cedar trees. I trudged back and forth many times in search of the smaller of the two cedars, using a huge pine tree as a reference.
It was hiding well, but when I finally came upon it, I was standing right where I thought it would be.
It doesn’t look much taller than it was last year when we first found it. It remains at risk of getting chomped. That might be enough to inspire me to offer it a little protection, since I’m fond of the added species variety it brings us.
Gotta protect the top as much as the roots down below!
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Not Colorful
The leaves are changing, but not into the glorious reds, yellows, and oranges one expects in the fall. No, this year we are getting a predominant dose of browns.
I don’t know if it’s due to dry conditions or something else, but trees that have been brilliant in past autumns are simply transitioning to shriveled brown leaves this year.
It’s hardly the glorious spectacle we wanted when Cyndie and I chose September to be our wedding month. That just so happened to occur 44 years ago on this exact date. I believe we had a fair amount of color in the trees in 1981. I don’t think I paid a lot of attention to the fall colors, what with my beautiful bride commanding all of my focus that day.
Seven years after that, our son, Julian, was born on the same day as our anniversary. So today is a day of celebration in the Hays family. Tonight, Cyndie and I have reservations at the Shady Grove restaurant, about 4 minutes away from our house. Tomorrow, we meet our kids for dinner in Stillwater to toast Julian.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some colorful trees on our drive along the St. Croix River.
It’s a Happy Birthniversary Day!
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Plant Fireworks
I have probably posted on this subject multiple times in September over the years. I didn’t go back to check. This is the time of year when our Variegated Japanese Silver Grass bursts forth with seeds.
It reminds me of fireworks popping open in the sky.
I moved in for a closer look.
Those kinky waves resemble a few hairstyles I’ve seen.
Meanwhile, the willow tree in the paddock that should be dead has made it through the summer looking pretty damn good.
I don’t know how it is feeding those leaves because the horses have chewed the trunk and the exposed roots to shreds.
Nature is mysterious and fascinating.
For the record, the maple tree we transplanted to the center of the labyrinth eight years ago is still dead. I have tried not to dwell on it, but the frustration continues to simmer under my surface. In order to avoid dealing with it, I haven’t touched it all summer. Part of me wondered if the roots would try to sprout new growth at the base. Another part of me is waiting to see if a mushroom fungus will appear on the dead wood. I’ll take anything at this point that would make some sense.
Speaking of the labyrinth, we haven’t put a lot of energy into it this summer, and when I mowed it the last time, I found myself wondering if there might be another way to define the path. The rocks we chose have two primary shortcomings. The ground tends to swallow them, and weeds grow up around them that the mower can’t reach.
It’s a little intimidating to imagine reworking the entire length of pathway borders to a completely different structure. I originally envisioned more of a low rock wall than what we have now, or something resembling a wall to define the path. It would look really cool to get to that level, but we have barely collected enough rocks to fill the pattern with one rock after another.
We would need a lot more rocks than we currently have, and a low wall wouldn’t preclude weeds from still growing up among the rocks. For now, we carry on as is and wait for new inspiration to strike.
Maybe a new idea might burst forth like exploding fireworks in the night sky.
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Gifted Art
What can we say about friends who agree to house-sit and care for our animals, and then leave us gifts of spectacular art pieces to find in unsuspecting places? My friend, Pam (whom I met on the Himalayan trek in Nepal with Jim Klobuchar’s Adventures), and her husband, John, take wonderful care of Asher and the horses when Cyndie and I travel. They both also have a keen eye for creative endeavors.
This wall hanging of pressed flowers and pieces of the never-ending collection of emptied bags that the grains of feed for the horses come in is a wonder to behold.
I was completely oblivious to this beautiful creation hanging in the barn when I showed up to do the “housekeeping” in the paddocks and only learned about it later, back at the house, when Cyndie showed me this picture she had taken.
We will be devising a more robust method of hanging it in the short term, while waiting for a frame with glass to arrive in order to preserve it long term.
While the humidity teetered between 75 and 100 percent yesterday, I sweated my way through an attempt to catch up with the manure composting details that get a little neglected when we are away. We don’t expect others to do things the way we do. Instead, we ask that they simply clean up manure from under the overhang when it’s time to feed the horses.
That means there is always a little catching up to be done when I return to take over equine fecal relocation duties. While tending the composting piles in the sweltering tropical conditions, I noticed how much I wished I wasn’t in the middle of doing it. The non-stop sweat on my face and in my eyes was driving me crazy.
No, I do not particularly like tending to the piles of composting manure. What I truly like is the times when the piles have been fully tended. I don’t necessarily enjoy doing it, but I thoroughly enjoy it when it’s done.
The compost piles almost look like works of art. It’s a gift that I give to myself.
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Brothers All
In a single day, we were with all of Cyndie’s brothers as well as her mom yesterday. We started the day with Barry and Carlos in Maine and then had dinner in St. Paul, Minnesota, with the rest of the clan for Marie’s 88th birthday celebration.
The snapshot above is a photo I took when Barry was showing Cyndie where the many volunteer shoots of birch trees were available for pulling. Why would she pull up their baby birch trees?
Never one to be intimidated by logical limitations about packing live plants in a plastic bread bag to stuff into an already full carry-on bag that gets crammed below the seat in front of her on an airplane, Cyndie brought home trees from the garden in Maine to plant somewhere around Wintervale.
I will not fixate on the long odds for her success, but instead plan to help scout out a new location where we can nurse the new transplants toward some percentage of actually surviving.
After hugging Barry and Carlos one last time as we dropped them off at their condo, we returned the wildebeest to the car rental company and boarded a shuttle headed toward our gate. Have I mentioned how much I would prefer to avoid air travel?
Mike got a ping on his phone about a delay in our flight home. As he attempted to navigate the information on the app, Barb’s and his tickets mysteriously disappeared. Cyndie still had our boarding pass screens on her phone, so Mike called the Delta service for preferred customers to work on solving the mystery.
It was a good thing we had arrived with time to spare, because it took a nerve-wrackingly long time to fix whatever had just gone wrong. In the end, their seats were re-established, and we were safe to proceed. However, the flight delay remained, and we lost precious time on our tight schedule to leave Boston and get home in time for dinner with the family members who would be gathering to celebrate Marie’s birthday.
We got to our car in St. Paul roughly a half-hour after the time of our reservation at Holman’s Table restaurant. Luckily, we were only 15 minutes away. Our daughter, Elysa, texted that the appetizers were just arriving at their table.
We showed up before they had even given their dinner orders. A family birthday celebration for the matriarch is a pretty special finish to our adventures of the previous week.
Some silliness ensued. Happy Birthday, Marie!
Dinner with the family wasn’t the final treat of our big day, though. After driving another 50 minutes in the dark to get to our house, we were rewarded with the cutest puppy-like reception from Asher when we got inside.
Gee, but it’s great to be back home…
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Return Flight
It’s been a grand time at Barry and Carlos’ camp on Colcord Pond, but this morning we need to pack up and drive back to Boston to drop off the rented wildebeest and get to the airport for our flight home.
We made the best of our last full day at camp yesterday by hiking to the top of Bald Ledge, which overlooks the lake. Before heading out for the trek, Mike and I walked down to the water, where I snapped today’s featured photo. Soon after, I noticed our shadows and took a picture. Mike provided me with the classic bunny ears.
The trailhead is within walking distance of their cabin, allowing us to hike for about an hour to reach the summit at 1185 ft.
The sky changed from clear to cloudy several times during the hike and throughout the rest of the afternoon, casting shadows over the treetops covering the landscape all the way to the horizon. A clear overhead view of Colcord Pond is impossible to miss. It is an interesting contrast to the picture I took when standing on the shore just over an hour earlier.
It won’t be long until the color scheme changes from green to shades of orange, yellow, and red. The coming transition is already visible around the edges of the crowns of some of the trees. Down below the canopy, where the trail meanders over roots and rocks, the change doesn’t seem as imminent.
We sustained ourselves with a light lunch upon our return to the camp before taking a refreshing dip in the lake one last time. After a little siesta, the masters of food preparation rustled up a first-class spread of crackers, cheeses, spreads, olives, and salami, accompanied by some before-dinner beverages.
Neighbors John and Bethany joined us for a feast of grilled burgers, baked beans, and corn-on-the-cob. Laughter and lively stories flowed joyfully along before we entered into some friendly competition with playing cards.
Now we must stuff our suitcases and load the SUV to begin another day of travel. Look out, airport security, here we come. I can’t wait to receive my two cookies with a cup of water mid-flight. If there are no delays to mess up our plans, we will be having dinner with family to celebrate Cyndie’s mom’s birthday soon after we land.
It shouldn’t shock you to read that I am really looking forward to reaching our home again a few hours after that.
Massive beams of love to Barry and Carlos for allowing us to clutter up their living spaces and for their gracious hospitality to the nth degree in every aspect of our visit. Also, to Mike and Barb for being wonderful travel companions once again.
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Around Cornish
Pausing outside Barry and Carlos’ place for a moment, waiting to load into the huge rented SUV for a jaunt to Cornish, I balanced some rocks. How long until they’ll topple becomes a subject of interest each time we pass.
Before we reach Cornish, the closest hub of commerce for the summer camps in this area, the vehicle that we’ve been referring to as “the wildebeest” (as in BEAST) made a stop at the waste transfer station. Carlos carried the bag of recycling in one direction, and Barry took the bag of trash somewhere else.
Carlos returned directly, and Barry didn’t. After a brief delay, he reappeared with an apology. He ran into someone they knew, and they had a chat. This was a hint of what we soon learned is common wherever Barry and Carlos go in the vicinity of both their place in Boston and here in Maine.
Mere seconds after Barry parked the beast in Cornish, we were standing in the road, being introduced to someone they knew. Most of the antique or craft shops we browsed included a pause for Barry and Carlos to catch up on news or introduce us to someone with whom they have a connection.
It felt a little like we were enjoying the honor of walking around with the local mayor(s).
After walking the shops, the wildebeest made a stop at the grocery store so we could augment our food stores in preparation for hosting neighbors for grilled burgers tonight. The highlight of that stop was Mike’s noble deed of quietly buying a batch of bananas to gift a mom and her son after he overheard the boy’s request get turned down because she couldn’t afford them. Mike said he got a hug from her as she mentioned that tariffs are killing them. Ouch.
Back at camp, we ate a light lunch, saving room for our early dinner reservation at Max’s Restaurant & Pub at the romantic Snowvillage Inn located in Eaton Center, NH. Cyndie and Barry decided on an earlier-than-usual timing to allow for daylight viewing of the majestic Mount Washington and the White Mountains out the window of the dining areas.
Before settling down for a short pre-dinner nap, Barry guided us on a walking tour of the neighboring camps, describing all the owners and relationships to a degree worthy of a scholarly genealogist. I’m afraid I would miserably fail if there were a test on all that we might have learned.
Since dinner was early, there was plenty of time for a frivolous card game on the porch after we got back. Snack almonds were designated as a method to tally our losses. When you lost a hand, you ate a nut. Luckily, the bag was close by for Carlos to replace his “chips” each time he accidentally ate one in the middle of a hand.
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Relative Something 