Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Rock Up
When I was mowing the back pasture a couple of days ago, I was startled by what almost sounded like a gunshot when the brush cutter struck I rock that I didn’t know was there. In pure reaction mode, my foot hits the clutch as my right-hand grabs the lever to lift the mower.
I hopped down off the tractor and checked everything over, then walked off to grab a step-in stake to mark the hazard. With the blades looking no worse for the wear, I resumed the pasture cutting and finished without further interruption.
Yesterday, I grabbed a shovel and a pry bar to bring the troublemaker up out of the ground, not yet knowing if it would even be possible. All that was visible was the freshly nicked tip of a proverbial iceberg. What could be lurking beneath the surface might be so large it would require a backhoe to dig out.
Luckily, that wasn’t the case and I was able to employ my solo technique of bringing large rocks up to the surface where I can scoop them up in the loader for relocation.
While the horses grazed nearby, I began probing to find the edges of the rock. Relieved that the borders seemed reasonable, I began shoveling scoopfuls around the perimeter until I got deep enough to use the pry bar to get some movement of the rock.
It’s a slow but completely effective process of tipping the rock enough to shove dirt under it. At first, it seems ineffective but after enough iterations, the progress speeds up. Alternating back and forth on opposite sides of the rock, I pry it up and shove the dirt previously removed to fill the small gaps that open up.
If I had a time-lapse recording it would look like the rock “rocks” back and forth, gaining a little height each time.
The white portion is what the brush cutter chipped off. The darker portion around it is the area that was above the surface. The rest was the mystery encased in dirt.
It looks suspiciously shaped as if it had been formed at some time for a particular purpose but I have no idea why it was buried out in the middle of an open field if that was the case.
Now I am left with a significant void on the surface of the pasture. Before I come out to retrieve the rock with the loader bucket on the tractor I will need to fill the bucket with some replacement soil. Now, where will I find some natural fill around this place?
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Cutting Pasture
It feels like I have been cutting grass non-stop for days. I used to think that growth slowed to a crawl after August but I saw a chart at the State Fair this year that indicated grass growth in September can be compared to what happens in June. There is a slump in July and August when grass might even go dormant before reenergizing in September.
It used to confuse me that September was a recommended time to seed new grass but now I can understand why that is.
Our land is still overly dry but we have had just enough rainfall between dry spells that the greenery looks pretty lush and the grass seems as happy as can be. The reason it feels like I’ve been doing a lot of mowing is that I have been playing with our new electric push mower, and I cut grass in the labyrinth, then used the brush cutter pulled by the diesel tractor to mow the hay field, and yesterday, the back pasture.
In addition, I have been cutting beneath the fence lines with the power trimmer. On top of that, I knocked off the second phase of a twice-a-year mowing of the drainage ditch along our southern property line.
When it’s dry, the mowed ditch becomes an alternate trail for Delilah to explore. In that image, she has her nose to the ground exploring any animal trails hidden beneath the mass of cuttings. The months of growth in the ditch were four to five feet tall and it is a blind cut on the first pass. My foot is poised to hit the clutch to interrupt the power to the mower if anything that wasn’t supposed to be mowed is encountered.
I back up the full length with the brush cutter tipped up a bit and then lower it for the return trip in the forward direction toward where I started. It isn’t a straightforward simple cut because there are washouts where fast-moving water has eroded the soil and they meander back and forth so the tractor wheels occasionally drop down or the mower bottoms out as travel progresses.
So, it is a blind cut on a completely unpredictable terrain. It is a great relief when that task has been fully accomplished.
It is also extremely satisfying to have both big fields mowed. If you’ll recall, it isn’t so much the grass that we need to cut as much as the weeds we want to prevent from going to seed. Cyndie and I don’t want to use toxic chemicals so mowing is our chosen method of control. We also pull a lot of weeds but that is similar to trying to empty a lake of its water by removing a spoonful at a time. Although, it is very satisfying, psychologically, to yank a weed out by its roots.
The horses took great interest in my activity in the back pasture and gave me the impression they wished I would hurry up and finish so they could get back on it.
I’ll keep the gates closed for a couple of days to dry out the cuttings and give the grass a little time to sprout new growth before giving them access again. Meanwhile, they have the entire already-mowed hay field at their disposal.
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Confidently Incorrect
It was a simple mistake. It could happen to anyone. They look so much alike.
The farrier appointment was scheduled for 1:15 yesterday afternoon and I had gates closed and halters on all the horses by 1:08. She showed up on time and I was ready to hold horses while she trims and files hooves.
However, at the very same time, a very large pickup pulled up, and a person from the cable installation company hopped out with flags in his hand to mark the route for burying fiber cable up to our house.
I excused myself briefly from the barn and talked fiber route as I walked the guy up to our house, pointing out the buried hazards that must be taken into account.
As soon as I could, I returned to the paddocks to find the farrier trying to deal with Mix, who had allowed only one hoof to be trimmed before deciding the flies were too annoying for her to remain standing still. A little fly spray on the legs and my hands on the lead rope allowed Heather to get on with trimming Mix’s other three hooves.
Next was Swings and everything went flawlessly for her turn. Meanwhile, two staff from This Old Horse arrived to provide additional support. While holding horses, I noticed one car was coming up our driveway as the cable guy was driving his truck out and they each decided to drop one wheel over the steep edges to pass one another. Not the way I’d have solved it, but it avoided either one needing to back up. (Backing up is what I would have done.)
I’m feeling increasing pressure to have the driveway shoulders sloped by the excavating company that raised the base so high in the first place. But that’s another issue.
As the trimming progressed, I was still holding horses for the farrier, now working on number three of four. That’s where I screwed up. Somehow I mistook Mia for Light. They are both very similar-looking chestnuts with the main difference being their blaze.
I thought I was holding Light, who usually stresses out over the trimming process. Heather and I were so impressed it was going as well as it was. Of course, she had no clue who she was working on and was relying on me to identify them. Then came time for me to get the last horse, who I mistaking still thought was Mia.
She did not want to come up under the overhang. Sometimes Mia can be like that so the behavior supported my confusion. But it was Light and she really did not want to stand and have her hooves worked on. I got subbed out to let Tom from This Old Horse hold Light and I went to calm Mia (still thinking it was Light) who had been removed from the workspace and was temporarily trapped between paddocks.
Are you following all this?
At this point of the increasing panicking by Light, I figured out my mistake. It’s funny, I first noticed the name on a halter and assumed I put the wrong halters on each of the two. Then I took a closer look and realized the halters were correct, I was completely convinced which horse was which for the longest time, but I had been confidently incorrect.
I blame the distraction of simultaneous demands on my attention from the fiber cable installation guy and horse duty. Oh, and the fact my lovely wife wasn’t present to catch my goof and correct the identifications.
We eventually gave up on trimming Light this session. I feel bad because we probably would have handled it better if we all knew precisely which of the two chestnuts were being trimmed at the time.
My mistake. A rather humbling misidentification.
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Latest Addition
We have another new tool for managing our landscape. I have tried three different methods of cutting the grass path of the labyrinth, starting with a reel mower. The grass grew too fast for the spinning scissor mechanism to keep up. Next up was the Stihl power trimmer. It worked well enough but took a long time (hours) and used up a fair amount of plastic line and multiple tanks of gas. It was a real workout.
The new tool, a 21″ electric push mower, seems like it will be the winner for this job. The third time’s the charm.
I couldn’t stop smiling after I finished the job in just 40 minutes, exhausting only one of the two batteries it holds.
There are a couple of spots where I hope to adjust the rocks to optimize the exercise. There is one small portion that is probably an inch too narrow and several where the width is wide enough I needed to back up and make a second pass. Most of the curving pathway is perfect for an easy walking push directly along the route. Adjusting the entire distance for a perfect width will make the job even more fun than it already is.
I’ve been contemplating a push mower as an alternative to the yard tractor for areas in our front yard where there are obstacles and slopes that are tricky to navigate. When I found an electric model that would fit well in the labyrinth and got Julian to bring one he owns for a test, the decision became pretty easy to make.
By the way, this manufacturer offers riding mowers, too. Hmm. No more oil changes, dirty air filters, spark plugs, fuel…
It’s tempting.
Even though there are other things I was hoping to accomplish today, all I really want to do is mow the tricky part of the front yard with the newest addition to our collection of yard maintenance tools. Somewhat reminiscent of a boy with a new toy.
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Cool Morning
Having noticed the outdoor temperature was in the 40s(F), I was already wearing a long-sleeve hoody sweatshirt when Delilah and I made our way down the big hill trail in the woods into the increasingly cooler air. I pulled the Buff® head gear that was around my neck up so it covered my nose. Having just climbed out of a warm bed, I wasn’t mentally prepared to face such cool air against my skin.
Evidence is mounting that I have lost my robust preference for dealing with cold temperatures over warmth.
The low-lying areas held a haze of water vapor that added a visual perception of a cool morning.
A vocal flock of geese flying in the classic “V” formation punctuated the underlying obvious sense that we are in the season that follows summer.
Some of the visible water vapor in the air was coming from the four exhaling horses. It seemed so cold that I felt a need to bend over and touch a couple of blades of grass to confirm the very white-looking dew wasn’t frozen.
Every time the seasons swing from one extreme to another I marvel over how our sense of the temperatures differs. What was feeling so cold to me this morning would feel almost tropical at the end of winter.
Dealing with the change to cold air is getting increasingly more challenging for me as I age. Time to bring out my obligatory fleece vest everyday wear fashion statement again.
It offsets my increasingly gray hair impeccably.
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Anticipating Delivery
We were expecting a delivery of hay bales yesterday but by the time rain reached our region I assumed it wouldn’t happen. A chain of four people communicating, including Cyndie who was on a flight to Boston, revealed it was being rescheduled to today or tomorrow.
That was fine with me. I got some reasonable work accomplished while waiting in the morning, cutting the grass along the fence line down the driveway with the power trimmer. By the time I had exhausted the first tank of gas, a mist was beginning to fall.
I took Delilah for a walk and took advantage of an opportunity to take pictures of the aftermath of conquering the leaning poplar tree up near the road.
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That is the one that took me five angled cuts to bring the top portion vertical and then required I head back to get the pole chainsaw to finish. The job is not complete yet. I need to split the cut wood and haul off the branches to either be run through the chipper or tossed on the natural border fence along our north property line.
That will wait for another day. It isn’t raining right now, and I have just received a message that hay delivery will happen this morning. I am a little anxious about how the steep drop-off of our narrow new driveway will work for the turns required to come off the pavement at the roundabout of our hay shed and then back on again afterward.
I hope to be out there before he arrives to talk out a plan that should work best. Overshooting is a given, so I’d like to pick the most forgiving spot.
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Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth II.
She was the UK Queen for most of our lives, making it a struggle to grasp how things are already different.
There are a vast number of images of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary appearing in memorials to her. This one is a favorite for me:
May her positive influence in the world reverberate forevermore.
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Weed Control
We had two primary goals in mind when we plotted a strategy for what we would focus our efforts on yesterday. The first was something I hoped wouldn’t take a lot of time to accomplish. There were two tipped trees with upper branches hung up in surrounding trees. Using knowledge gained by watching the tree professionals who worked for us last spring bring down similar “widow-makers,” I readied our chainsaw and headed into the woods.
With my mind focused solely on the task at hand, I failed to take any pictures of the leaning trees or the keen aftermath of my success in bringing them down. The big poplar near the road took a lot more time than I anticipated. After five successive cuts ultimately eliminating the lower trunk that had been leaning at a 45° angle, the remaining upper portion of branches stood vertical and was still tangled in the branches of surrounding trees.
I needed to go back to the shop to get our pole chainsaw to finish the job. By the time we finished cutting trees, the day was more than half over.
The second goal was to get the hay field mowed, a job that I knew would take more hours than I really wanted to give to the task.
The growth wasn’t excessively tall but there were plenty of weeds maturing and we didn’t want them going to seed. I finally finished around 7:00 p.m. after almost 5 hours out on the tractor. At one point, feeling like it was taking too long, I tried running in a higher gear to speed up progress. The bouncing and jostling were a bit too much and the high gear made backing up hard to manage. All I could do was plod along at a steady pace in the lower gear and keep making passes until the entire field was finally cut.
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Cyndie took pictures as I headed toward the gate upon finishing. For a relatively small field, it sure is bigger than it seems.
The horses were relegated to the unmowed back pasture for the day. They are doing a fair job of grazing the good grass in that pasture but there are enough unwanted weeds in that field that it will need to be mowed soon as well.
In a day or two, they will be allowed back on the grass in the hay field. Then I will spend the better part of a day mowing the back pasture.
As much as I dread doing the mowing, the fields sure look great with all the weeds knocked down. For now, in our minds, mowing is our preferred method over chemical applications for reducing weeds that are toxic to horses. It may not be as effective, but mowing doesn’t leave a weed killer residue in our soil.
I can live with giving two afternoons of my precious time to bouncing along on the diesel tractor a couple of times a summer.
It’s easier than chainsawing widow-makers!
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Season’s Bounty
As always, we arrived home yesterday with a royal greeting from our animals. After unpacking the foodstuffs that made the trip home with us and then gobbling up some of it for lunch, we granted Delilah her wish and headed outside to survey the grounds.
The first thing I noticed was how much some of the grass has grown since I last cut it. At the same time, the ground seems incredibly dry. Parched and cracked enough that I don’t understand the hearty growth of some areas of grass.
The next noteworthy thing that caught our attention was the incredible buzzing sounds of a striking number of bees busy in the yellow flowering tops of goldenrod beside one of our trails.
Cyndie did a great job of capturing a photo of a couple of the happy visitors.
Not far down that same trail, we made another surprising discovery. Tucked behind a large viburnum nannyberry bush was a volunteer apple tree with an impressive amount of fruit on its limbs. It’s the first time I noticed it, which is surprising because we usually pay a lot of attention to the volunteer trees showing up beside our trails.
We made our way out into the pastures to say hello to the horses and quickly decided they were telling us the flies were bothering them. Cyndie went back and got their fly masks. The growth in the pastures is a mixture of good grass they looked very happy to be munching and a disturbing number of problematic weeds.
I will be mowing the pastures to a pretty short height as soon as I can get to it in attempt to control some of the weed propagation.
I re-stacked the dwindling number of hay bales in the shed to make room for the next delivery, now expected to arrive on Friday. By then, Cyndie will be on her way to Boston with her mother to visit Barry and Carlos. I will be stacking bales by myself.
The last stop for Cyndie on the tour of our property was her garden. She came in with quite a bounty of a photogenic variety of vegetables.
She thinks some of the growth was stunted by how dry it has been, but the overall variety of produce sure looks impressive. Pretty good for a year when her planting was hindered by knee replacement surgery back in the spring.
We’re just happy to have any bounty at all.
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Leaving Us
It’s Tuesday after Labor Day and plenty of fall activities that haven’t already kicked off will be starting today. Our guests left us yesterday for the next leg of their journey in a vehicle that looked to be packed with everything a college freshman would need to get started.
The Birgens awoke in the morning to the news that the Kenyan Supreme Court has ruled that the candidate, William Ruto, was properly elected President in the 2022 general election. One less thing to be concerned about for them at a time their oldest son is starting a new job and the youngest is starting college.
I find myself thinking about how nice it is to be well beyond the years of taking kids to their first year of college. Feels similar to when I began to appreciate getting past the years when September meant “back to school” during the K-12 phase of our kids’ lives.
The few connotations September holds for me now are the onset of fall colors, Cyndie’s and my anniversary (41 years!), Julian’s birthday, and the start of MN Vikings football –despite my best efforts to stop caring about anything having to do with the modern-day NFL. Nothing about getting prepared for school.
I have already noticed the return of school bus traffic on our road at home twice a day, but the impact from that on my life is negligible.
I tip my hat to all of you who have school-age children starting a new bus and/or classroom experience today.
My time with access to television coverage of the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament is ending today as we leave the lake place and return home.
For some reason –probably related to wanting to witness Serena Williams make one last attempt for a major victory at the end of her illustrious career– I was inspired to watch as many live matches as I could this year. I was lucky to have captured a few dramatic matchups that were really exciting and very competitive.
A couple of them were almost as exciting as the end of the Florida State vs. LSU college football game I stumbled upon Sunday night during a break in the tennis.
It’s probably a good thing we are leaving the lake place and all the cable sports channels I have access to here so I can take a break from spectator sports and get outside and give this gorgeous September weather the proper respect it deserves.
It’s my favorite time of year, right up there with my other favorite, winter!
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Relative Something 