Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Holiday Spirit
Even Delilah is getting into the festive spirit lately. We received a gift of hand-me-over dog toys from Katie at work, and I couldn’t wait until Christmas to see how Delilah would react to them. The strange scent was definitely cause for a thorough analysis, but then she succumbed to the irresistible instinct to chomp.
Actually, the squeaky red and green candy cane didn’t draw out teeth until I kicked it away. She initially walked up to inspect it, and then stepped right over the toy as if it didn’t exist. That’s when I gave it a kick across the floor and she ran to get it.
After that, it was just like her squeaky yellow monkey. She wants us to chase after her and try to grab the toy so she can shake it loose from our grip.
Santa’s elves have been working long hours to deliver packages to our door each day this week. Must not be any names on the naughty list, based on the number of things waiting to be wrapped in the “don’t-go-in-there” room.
For the record, there are no children living with us, so I think we just play this game to maintain the spirit of the season.
I don’t mind being free of the burden of conjuring up believable tall tales to keep the myth alive in innocent eyes. Such a weird combination of love and deceit.
Cyndie and I don’t actually hide any intentions from each other. We tend to celebrate the holiday by jointly selecting an item that will be a treat for both of us. This year it just may end up being new bar stools for the kitchen island. We tried doing it once before, but were overwhelmed by the expense of getting what we really wanted.
Sticker shock times four.
I don’t expect that prices have gotten any better, but we are hoping that either our standards will have relaxed, or we will have gotten over the shock of the costs, to possibly propel us toward finding something that can work.
The ones that were here when we bought the place are in need of some tender loving care by someone who knows how to weld. I hope that person happens to browse Craigslist.
Today, at the day-job, staff have decided to modify the annual company potluck lunch between Thanksgiving and Christmas by having Famous Dave’s BBQ restaurant do all the cooking.
Works for me.
Ho ho ho.
The holiday spirit is feeling very merry and bright, indeed.
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Dawning Colors
I couldn’t pass up Cyndie’s offer of pictures she took yesterday morning. One special thing about the short days of winter, morning chores align nicely with spectacular views of predawn light shows.
While I was inside brick walls, Cyndie and our animals had a front row seat for some of nature’s best.
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I sure wish I could have seen it live.
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Frosty Landscape
Not just frost, but rime ice from a day of freezing fog! When I left work yesterday afternoon, I needed sunglasses due to the bright sunshine.
As I approached the border where Minnesota ends and Wisconsin begins, the color palette changed significantly. I had to lose the shades.
It looked like the fog I had driven through on the way to work in the early morning darkness must have lingered for most of the day. The last twenty minutes of my commute home was a glorious spectacle of varying degrees of frosty views against a dark gray sky.
It was fabulous. It reminded me again of how clueless I was as a kid when I vehemently trash-talked white-flocked fake Christmas trees because they made absolutely no sense to me. Why would anyone paint a tree white!?
Apparently, I hadn’t yet seen the real thing in the wild for myself. I totally get it now.
I tried capturing a few shots at home before the daylight entirely vanished, even though our property wasn’t quite as spectacular as the landscape I saw along the ridges between River Falls and our place.
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There was just a hint of sunset color showing through a thin spot in the cloud cover as the big orange orb was reaching the tree line.
How pastel.
And all of it, beautiful.
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Cookies Galore
She’s done it again! Cyndie moves like magic in the kitchen when her weekend of Christmas cookie baking arrives. She made a noble dent in the project all by herself on Saturday to start, then, with the help of friends and family yesterday, achieved a record number of total recipes baked when the flour dust finally settled.
It was a sight to behold, but don’t take my word for it. See for yourselves. (Thank you to Melissa Williams for sharing pictures she took of the extravaganza!)
For the first time ever, Cyndie baked meringue cookies from her gramma’s recipe. They come with a memory of being told, as grandchildren, that they needed to be very calm and quiet while meringue cookies are baking in the oven or the cookies would be wrecked.
After her first try success, Cyndie is inclined to think the strict constraints placed on them back then could very likely have been a ruse by her grandmother, taking advantage of an easy opportunity to command good behavior.
More power to her, I say.
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Early Light
While the intense winter storm that moved out of Texas is pummeling the Carolinas and Virginia this morning, our region is bathed in calm. The air was so quiet this morning, I felt compelled to open the gate in the paddock by delicately palming the chains to avoid the usual clatter of metal on metal, while I was whispering greetings of love to the horses.
It was a perfectly brisk winter morning, but not biting cold. The chickens put in extra energy to balance on one foot, picking up the other and tucking it in their feathers to protect from the frozen tundra. The horses had frost on their whiskers, but otherwise look completely acclimated to the season of long nights.
They are contentedly munching on morning rations in that image, while the first rays of sunshine begin to paint their sides with a promise of warmth to come.
Hello, sun!
Our day will be filled with holiday projects, Cyndie in the kitchen, baking so many varieties of Christmas cookies it makes me dizzy with visions of sugar. I will be in the shop, putting sandpaper to wood, between making appearances in the house to be sociable with our kids and other family and friends who have expressed intention of showing up to be present for the great holiday bake-athon.
Every cookie I can convince them to take home with them will be one less for me to avoid.
The fire is radiating in the fireplace and the colored lights are on the tree.
Bring on the day!
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Lone Straggler
Apparently, a pattern is developing with one of our Buff Orpingtons, that she lags behind the group when it comes time to return to the coop for the night. Cyndie describes a funny scene that happened the other night when she was feeding and cleaning up after the horses.
The chickens tend to congregate under the overhang at times, but we don’t want them in the barn, so it becomes an added hassle to navigate the door while going in and out during chores when they are present. Cyndie had shooshed them out, but one Buff stayed after the others wandered off toward the coop.
After the sun had disappeared below the horizon, that Buff showed signs of wanting to return to the coop, but acted rather timid about trekking through the snow to get there. She would get only so far and turn and run back to the preferred confines with the horses under the overhang… several times.
Cyndie finally made the trip herself, and had to coax the hen to follow her the whole way.
Silly bird.
Last night, I went down to shut the chicken door for the evening, and when I got there in the dim light of dusk, it was all quiet, but for occasional sleepy cooing from inside. I spent an extra minute or two clearing the track for the door so it would slide all the way, and that was enough time to give me the feeling all was settled in there for the night.
It was a pleasantly quiet time and the fading gradient of orange glow transitioning to blue-black of night on the horizon was gorgeous. I was just about to head back to the house when my conscience urged me to truly confirm all were present and accounted for before leaving.
Thank goodness for that.
I opened the big door to peek in and counted eight bundles of feathers. Luckily, in the low light remaining, I could tell it was a Buff that was missing. Not thinking of Cyndie’s recent tale, I feared the worst. I had already lingered long enough to know she wasn’t anywhere near the coop.
Where would I look for her body, I wondered.
I stepped away from the coop, toward the barn, and what do I find?
That lone straggler timidly trying to decide if she wanted to walk all the way back to the coop all by herself. Silly bird.
I can’t help thinking how sad it would have been for her to finally make it all the way, only to find the door sealed for the night, if I had dashed back to the house without looking inside to count them first.
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Flat Fix
I found out how to get the tractor with a flat, fluid-filled tire out of the garage… Yesterday afternoon, I got a call at work from the guy I had contacted to solve my tire problem. He asked me if I still needed the repair done.
After assuring him I did, and that I was anxiously awaiting his opportunity to show up, he told me he was standing outside my garage, wondering how to get in.
From my workplace, an hour away, I was able to direct him to the button for the garage door opener. I then contacted Cyndie, who was busy on another phone call inside our house. She later told me that Delilah was barking incessantly at the strange truck in the driveway, but Cyndie needed to finish her call.
She was eventually able to get out there and move the ATV out of the way, so the guy could work on the tractor. He didn’t want to make a big mess in the garage, so, he opted to make just a little mess and simply drove the tractor on that flat tire to get it outside.
Why didn’t I think of that?
Oh, probably because I know next to nothing about large tractor tires.
I wish I had been there to watch him work, so I could learn more about what’s involved. Even though I left work as soon as possible after finding out he was ready to do the fix, by the time I pulled up the driveway, he had already finished all the work, parked the tractor back in the garage, closed the door, and was in his truck writing up the invoice.
If the timing is right, I may have another chance to witness the process. He didn’t have enough of the non-corrosive fluid to change out the caustic calcium chloride in the other rear tire, so he will need to return later this week, if circumstance allows. He told me it depends on whether the local farmers get back into their fields to finish combining the corn that is still standing.
Tractors that develop tire problems during harvest get the highest priority attention, and automatically move jobs like mine down the list to be dealt with later.
If I get lucky, maybe he will show up on Friday, when I’m at home. I’d like to see how he breaks the seal, pulls out the old tube, and then gets the new one in and filled with both fluid and a little air.
This is a long way from changing a flat on a bicycle, that’s for sure.
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Two Perspectives
This weekend’s snowfall was certainly a pretty one. There was an interesting combination of stickiness and blowing. The tops of the trees didn’t hold the snow, but the lower trunks and branches sure did.
If you’ve watched my photographic tendencies for a few years, you are probably familiar with my penchant for close, full-frame images, as well as my pattern of including one feature for accent.
Especially, leaves.
This little specimen was irresistible for the fabulous character of the fancy edges.
That wonderful leaf caught my attention because of the way it blew across the top of the snow and then just settled down in this spot, as if it was waiting for me to take the picture.
Thankfully, it stayed around long enough for me to capture it from a second perspective, which brings those fancy edges to life with added dimension.
I don’t think these two should ever be displayed one without the other. Two wonderful perspectives on one fancy leaf.
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Red Marks
For months now we have been walking past trees in our woods that are marked for removal with a red spot. It was more subtle when the forest was lush and green. Now that there aren’t any leaves on the trees, those red marks are impossible to miss.
When our local DNR agent responded to our invitation to walk our woods, we learned our most valuable trees are the oaks, and that they will be kept healthiest if we remove competition growing directly beneath their canopy. I mentioned it would be a challenge for me to identify what is good and what is bad.
You know how much of an aversion I have to cutting down live trees.
He was quick to volunteer to return later and mark trees for removal. Most of them are relatively small diameter and will be easy to bring down. Cyndie and I decided yesterday was a good time to start on the project.
Heck, I can’t drive the tractor anywhere yet, so we may as well create piles of branches to be chipped at a later date.
About those red marks… When you get a chainsaw in your hands, suddenly trees with red dots show up at every turn. Maybe that is because I just chose to start with the trees right below the driveway. Some of our biggest oaks are right there (hence the thick carpet of leaves that land on the yard) and that meant a lot of trees to be culled all the way around each of the large oak trunks.
I took some solace in being able to see visible evidence of just the problem our DNR forester described. Oak trees stop feeding lower limbs when other growth begins to encroach from below. That can lead to a lopsided or top-heavy oak.
When we pulled down the smaller trees, it was easy to see the number of bottom oak branches that had already been left for dead.
Unfortunately, we grew weary after just a couple of hours of cutting up and piling branches of the easiest trees felled. Several substantial sized red-marked trees remain. That will be a project for another day.
I may just move on further into the woods where I know there are a lot of small (easy) red-marked trees, before returning to take down the larger diameter encroachers by the driveway.
That project will be delayed a little bit now, though, as the more immediate pressing need is for plowing and shoveling snow. We received a decent amount of sticky flakes yesterday afternoon and overnight.
So much for easily spotting those red marked trees…
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For Sibs
This one is for my siblings. First of all, if any of you have seen the movie, “The Meddler” and not told me about it, I will be very surprised. Second, I am tempted to urge you to watch the flick, but Cyndie and I both experienced such conflicted reactions to it that I’m inclined to suggest you use the hundred and three minutes of your time for something more constructive.
Our general reaction was along the lines of, “Meh.” We like Susan Sarandon and J.K. Simmons a lot, so their acting was a reward. We chose to add this to our Netflix queue after the trailer for it caught our attention in the previews segment on another movie we had rented. The premise wasn’t particularly gripping for either of us, but we thought it looked like a light and funny flick.
The movie was okay, but we didn’t love it, except for this: a bullseye.
Not just the bullseye, but for us, it’s also what led up to the penultimate scene that had us so gobsmacked over what we were seeing that we couldn’t contain ourselves.
We were basically tolerating how the movie was plodding along for us until J.K. Simmons’ character mentions his chickens. He pulls an egg out of his pocket to show Marnie (Susan Sarandon). They go back to his place and walk in the chicken run where he introduces his hens by name.
Eventually, he offers her a half-carton of eggs to take home. This resonated because Cyndie has cut cartons in half like that to facilitate picking the four to six eggs at a time that show up in our nest boxes throughout the day.
We were tickled by all this, but had no clue what writer Lorene Scafaria had in store next. In this case, the slow development of scenes which had underwhelmed us in the first part of the movie made us sit up in awe over what we were witnessing.
Now alone at home and contemplating this new “friend” Marnie has met, she opens the little carton of eggs and pulls out the blue one. Cyndie and I already know what this is all about, but we had no idea it was going to be conveyed so brilliantly.
Butter in a frying pan. A slice of bread. She picks up a glass and presses it on the bread to cut out a hole. She fries up a perfect version of what our family called a bullseye.
Then she stands at the counter and takes the first bite. Obviously, this is an egg like no other she has ever tasted before in her life. Lorene Scafaria directed a perfect depiction of savoring every bite. Susan Sarandon knocks it out of the park, sopping up every last drop of that egg with the fried bread.
Now that I write this, I think the whole movie is worth that one scene.
You guys should check it out.
p.s.: Guess what we had for breakfast this morning.
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Relative Something 