Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Driving North
It has arrived! Today is the day of departure for this year’s Tour of Minnesota biking and camping adventure. I might almost be ready to go by the time I plan to leave the house. Really, the only thing left to do is overlook something I had intended to bring and leave without it.
Just to add a little drama to my packing and planning, the temperatures up north dropped into the 30s Wednesday night. Do I pack another layer of warm clothes? I added one extra overshirt. In addition to my wool hat, chopper mittens, Sorel boots, and North Face parka.
I’m ready.
I mowed the lawn last night, cutting a notch lower than usual in hope of buying me the full week until it needs to be cut it again. I programmed my work email with an away message. Can’t think of anything else.
I tried to tell Pequenita that I would be gone for a while, but would return. I doubt she comprehends my warning. Poor Cyndie will be a victim of that cat’s angst over my absence. On the other hand, I will relish the absence of wet-nosed cat head-bumps bashing into my face at too-early-o’clock in the morning.
As the sun was getting low enough that the back pasture of chest-high grass was cast in shadow, I came around the bend on the mower and spotted a deer leaping in reaction to my sudden appearance. Behind those big leaps was an almost invisible fawn whose head didn’t clear the tall grass as it struggled to keep up with mamma.
I sure hope they don’t decide to bed down in that field when our neighbors show up to cut hay.
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Trimming Trail
Our property has been getting spruced up in preparation for a workshop Cyndie is hosting today. In the middle of my workday yesterday, I received a message from Cyndie that there was a tree leaning across one of our trails that she wanted me to clear when I got home.
Oh, yeah. I remember neglecting to take care of that for the last three weeks.
The tree was actually small enough that I decided to use a hand saw to bring it down the rest of the way. It just took enough forethought to finally have a saw in my possession when I walked deep into the woods.
The walk to get there was difficult enough through areas of the trail that were getting overgrown that I switched tools after the trees and branches were dispatched and got to work with the Stihl trimmer.
It brought to mind that moment six years ago when I was shopping for that trimmer with very limited knowledge about what I wanted to buy. I suddenly realized that I had lucked into a salesperson at the hardware store who was less into selling and more into how things worked.
I was talking to the mechanic who fixes equipment, not some kid who works the cash register and helps people find things in the store. I remember telling the guy about the property we recently moved to and how that quickly led him to the size trimmer we should have. I took his word for it.
He said we would be able to run this motor full speed all day long and it wouldn’t suffer one bit. I didn’t imagine we would ever need to push a tool that hard.
Now, when we spend hours upon hours running that trimmer at full tilt, I understand where that mechanic was coming from. He steered me to the right machine for our needs.
When it was new, that guard piece was bright orange. Not so much anymore.
As too often happens, I was within about ten yards of the end of one trail when the trimmer engine ran out of fuel. I took a break for dinner.
It’s not easy to discern the vast level of improvement in this shot of one section I completed, but after Cyndie and Delilah took a walk toward the end of the day, I received a pretty good rating about the freshly cleared pathways.
I’ll take that as a win.
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Getting Close
Departure is just two days away for the Tour of Minnesota biking and camping week. I spent much of my time last night pretending to pack. It’s kind of a dry run, where I pull out clothes and biking gear I think might be smart to have. Then I labor over deciding whether I’m taking too much or leaving out something vital. I am not inclined toward finding a laundromat on our day off from riding.
Will it be a rainy, wet week? Cold? We are going north. Hot? That happens up there, too. Hard to know for sure, so I’d like to be prepared to be comfortable between the hours on the saddle. At the same time, I really don’t want to be hauling around extra clothing that I don’t end up using.
I’ve taken enough flak over the years for having a heavy duffle bag that I’ve become determined to travel lighter. The best way I can think of to accomplish that is by not bringing clothing I don’t need. The rest of the gear in my bag is a given. The tent. Sleeping bag and pad. It should be a cinch to stay well under 50 lbs, especially with the new lighter sleeping bag my kids bought me for an early Father’s Day/Birthday gift.
My bag weighed in the upper 40s the years I was being chastised most by the gear haulers. I would like to find the magic weight that will feel noticeably different, but I have no idea what that is.
I suppose I could leave out the large bag of dark chocolate peanut M&Ms that I claimed out of the treat drawer in the kitchen, but this week of extra exercise is one time when I allow myself to splurge a little on my strict daily limit of sugar intake. Jettisoning treats might be taking this weight concern one step too far.
I’m really looking forward to sleeping in the great outdoors again. In honor of the early morning experience of waking up in the tent, I’ve retrieved a Words on Images from three years ago called, Daybreak:
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Another Test
My previous test to learn if I can create posts on my phone to achieve my desired result taught me a few things. Yes, it is possible, but it doesn’t match posts I create on my laptop. No, I haven’t found out if I can format the text as “justified.” My images appeared, but not as a clickable link to the full size, like I want.
So, I am trying again. I am importing a full-sized image that I successfully transferred from my camera to my phone over WiFi.
The app didn’t ask the size I want the image to appear, so I need to hunt for that setting somewhere.
I chose this image of my lock in case someone can offer advice in dealing with a forgotten combination.
(Oh, I also learned how to add text to my images.)
My idea with the lock was to start at 0-0-0 and spin in a sequence that counted up to 9-9-9.
That would hit every possible number combination.
It didn’t work.
Thinking it was possible that I goofed somewhere along the sequence, I tried a second time. I started at 999 and worked my way down.
It still didn’t open.
Am I missing something?
Too bad I can’t just click a link for a forgotten combination which would then allow me to reset it to a number I might remember.
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Final Touches
With the big job of moving the gazebo done, thanks to our kids’ help, Cyndie and I made some final tweaks yesterday to complete the new setup. As so often occurs, a plan with one thing in mind expands to several others that need to happen first, to reach the ultimate goal.
Our main objectives were to level the base beneath the bench seat and move the hydrangea tree by transplanting it to a different spot around the labyrinth. We quickly agreed that the place where we put a gracefully rotating section of a tree trunk to stand as a visual attraction would be ideal for the hydrangea.
That old trunk was starting to disintegrate anyway, under the combined pressure of many woodpeckers and natural decay. When we struggled to pick it up, we discovered it hadn’t lost as much mass as appearance led us to suspect, but it looked beat up enough that we didn’t feel bad booting it from its prominent spot.
In the image above, you can see the trunk is now farther out on the left. The hydrangea tree is front and center, garnished with a fresh mulch of wood chips I made on Friday.
Before we transplanted the tree, we wanted to have water available, so I needed to get a hose and turn on the spigot up at the house. That required that the four-way splitter that was removed from the spigot last fall needed to be found. I’m sure we thought we were being obvious when we stowed it away eight months ago.
I was proud of myself when I remembered to grab a level for the bench at the same time I was retrieving a hose from the shop garage. Unfortunately, I needed to send Cyndie back up to find the hose splitter for the spigot.
While she was gone, I trimmed the golden weigela bushes that were on either side of the bench, and now being crowded by the gazebo.
Relocating the hydrangea tree was the most rewarding, as that completely opened up the primary access to the gazebo and bench, which also just happens to serve as an archway entrance to one of our trails into the woods.
It looks odd to no longer see the gazebo in its old spot above the round pen, but we are very happy with the new location beside the labyrinth where it is bound to get much more use.
In addition, this opens up the old spot to easier cutting and raking for hay. We have connected with neighbors who were thrilled with the opportunity to cut and bale our fields for their growing herd of llamas. For a while there, we were a little worried that all the effort we had put into improving our fields would be lost if the weeds were given a chance to return unchallenged.
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Testing Mobile
I’m thinking about taking another crack at posting from my phone next week while on the bike trip.
So, today I am typing with one finger, adding photos, and fumbling with formatting to achieve my desired look using icons I don’t understand.
Things may look different than usual on your screen.
Yesterday, I got out for my longest training ride so far this year. Topped out at a whopping two-hour jaunt.
The scenery may not be as beautiful as riding up at the lake, but it gets close once I get beyond the farmland.
I rode down into the river valley where the trout fishermen play. Hit 40 mph on the way down and 3 mph crawling back up.
The kids came over yesterday and provided gift labor in honor of Cyndie’s birthday. We chose moving the gazebo from the round pen over to the labyrinth.
It was a grand success of design collaboration and task cooperation.
Since I don’t know how to tweak images to my liking on this tiny mobile device, I will point out that Julian provided the gazebo images.
Thank you to our wonderful children for a really meaningful gift of time and energy!
Here ends today’s test of the alternative posting system.
I still don’t know how to customize image frames like I usually do, nor justify text, but I’m ready to look at this on my computer to see how it compares.
Thank you for reading!
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Twice Happy
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, there is no project around here that is as satisfying as chipping a pile of branches. The ability to accomplish two things at once is very rewarding. The unending accumulation of downed branches get piled up for removal and we have an unending need for wood chips on our trails and gardens.
In comes the most useful purchase I have made in our time on this land.
I pulled out the diesel tractor for the first time in months and attached the big blue chipper for a session of munching branches. By the time I finished, I had reduced two tangled piles into a filled wood chip station down by the labyrinth.
The only thing that would have made it easier would be an ATV trailer to move the second pile of branches over to the chipper. I had to make several trips to haul them by hand because I’ve yet to replace the trailer Cyndie mistakenly sold at her barn sale.
I don’t remember paying over $200 for shipping when I bought the first one, and I balked when shopping for the replacement. There is an imitation trailer that I can buy locally to save a lot of cash, but I am wary of the quality. It very much looks like a version of “you get what you pay for” in this case.
I’m waiting around for some magic solution to appear.
Maybe I should start visiting yard sales in the area for someone willing to part with a used trailer.
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Too Tired
My middle-of-June biking and camping week begins one week from today. I am looking forward to being able to ride first thing in the morning when I am fresh and surrounded by more than a hundred friends sharing the experience with me.
I resumed my forced preparation cycling yesterday after work, alone and exhausted before I even started. The good news is that my butt appears to be toughened up by last weekend’s riding. The bad news is that my 90-minute ride was far short in terms of preparation for the days and many hours I will be on the saddle in a week.
After the day of work and the drain of a long afternoon drive home, I was more interested in a nap than a ride, but I got out there anyway.
This morning, I am too tired to think and write. Here are a couple of images from my adventures up north last weekend to distract you…
I’m going back to bed to catch a few more winks of beauty sleep.
Talk amongst yourselves.
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Little Love
So, yesterday’s lesson was that hens might lay a “Fairy Egg” that has no yolk and is a fraction of the usual size. I had no idea. Funny how easily we jump to our own conclusions on what a situation might be, while being entirely off base.
I was also convinced that our property had been walloped by damaging wind and flooding rain Tuesday night, but that wasn’t the case at all. Apparently, my intuition is a little out of calibration.
That doesn’t surprise me. There are many disparate issues rattling around in my wee little brain of late, and I’ve not stopped to clear thoughts and ground energies in quite a while. If I can improve my sleep schedule and achieve a better feeling about several challenges taxing my peace of mind, I could focus better on preparations for a week of vacation in the great outdoors. That will do me some good.
Then I just need the government to start functioning in a productive way, the climate to reverse this race toward disaster, the human race to get over its ugly in-fighting, and love to fill the world. Wouldn’t that be nice?
What if we actually learned from mistakes and never repeated them?
What if people purposely took action to invert a pyramid of increasing mental and physical ills and converted it to a pyramid of increasing health and wellness?
What if governments and societies never allowed interference from financial entities (corporations or individuals) that seek to influence solely for their own gain at the expense of any others?
Fifty years ago this month, Jackie DeShannon sang it.
Put a little love in your heart
And the world will be a better place
And the world will be a better place
For you and me
You just wait and see
Send some love out into the world today. And while you are at it, put a little in your own heart, too.
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Memorable Birthday
Yesterday was Cyndie’s birthday, and she thinks she will remember it for the stormy weather we ventured out into to pick up our kids and join her parents for a nice restaurant dinner in downtown Minneapolis. Tavola was the destination, and man, was the food tasty. I ordered a side of brussel sprouts that were fabulous, if you like brussel sprouts.
The radar looked threatening and the radio warning reports were disturbing, but our drive and our home were spared the worst of the severe weather, despite how ominous it looked as we drove toward Hudson.
That weather front’s bark was worse than its sight. I’m not complaining.
We have no idea how wild conditions were at home while we were at dinner, nor how much the storm riled Delilah. She seemed cool and collected by the time we got home, a couple hours past my bedtime. <yawn>
The other thing Cyndie might remember about this birthday is the surprise egg that showed up in one of the nest boxes.
One of these things is not like the other. That small, shinier egg in the middle is not from one of our chickens.
Who’s been sleeping nesting in my bed nest box!?
There are frequently small bird visitors to the coop throughout the day. Apparently, one of them has been paying attention to the morning activity of the hens and decided to follow suit.
That egg’s not going to make a very large omelet.
UPDATE: 7:26 a.m. 6/5/19
Cyndie just informed me she learned it wasn’t some other bird intruding on the coop, based on new information. It is a “Fairy Egg.”
The learning never stops… It’s all new to me!
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Relative Something 