Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Newer Tricks
Our dear Delilah is getting another year older and we are looking at adding some newer tricks to her repertoire, like behaving well around other dogs and not showing her fangs and snapping at others unprovoked. Wouldn’t that be nice?
I don’t know if we will ever get around to convincing her not to bark at thunder or bolt off in the direction of gunshots, but at least those involve pretty obvious and relatively infrequent triggers.
Cyndie is trying out another training class at a pet store in Hudson in a pay-as-you-go plan for now. After 1 session, she reported that Delilah was an “angel dog” in a text on her way home, (a message which arrived to me as “ninja dog” after autocorrection).
The biggest opportunity right now is getting her to accept some guests that are living with us. George and Anneliese are here with their dogs while they are between homes. Our neighbors are moving to central Minnesota. For now, their dogs are behind baby gates and confined to the basement.
We are moving slowly and letting them know each other exist, but not having direct contact. We had all the dogs out on the back yard grass together yesterday, but each on a leash. They seem to be just fine about the general proximity.
I think it will be a heck of a trick to get Delilah trained to a level where we have control over her natural instinct to inflict her dominance over any other creature around her.
But it’s a goal.
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Bitter Discovery
There is a tree beside the shop garage with a canopy that overhangs a significant portion of the roof. There is no mistaking that it is a nut-tree, because this time of year it starts dropping its fruit with a bang. If they hit just right, it can make a sound like a shot from a rifle. Even if they don’t hit just right, the clank is unpleasantly startling if you are close, and surprisingly loud if you are further away.
That initial report is followed by an amusing rattle as the seed pod rolls down the slant of the metal roof. You can hear them gaining speed as they approach the edge, where they then drop down to another metal roof that covers the entry door, before rolling off that surface to the ground.
The driveway in front of the garage is getting littered with nuts, so I decided to collect a few of them. I was under the impression that this tree was just like the many other nut trees on our property, butternut trees. Since the nuts of the butternut tree are known for having a good flavor, every fall I feel like we should be collecting them for use somehow.
We did take a crack at it the first year we were here, but while waiting for them to dry out, they got all funky and we threw them away. I wanted to try again. I encouraged Cyndie to start collecting them and look up ways to prepare them for consumption.
A day later she was asking me to look into it, because these didn’t look like the pictures she was finding for butternuts.
Sure enough, I quickly discovered these were not butternuts. This tree is a bitternut hickory, providing just the opposite of good flavor. I think it is funny that it took me this many years to figure out it was a different nut.
While researching a comparison of the two types of trees I stumbled upon an alarming detail about the butternut tree. It produces a toxin that can stunt growth or even kill certain susceptible plants in the vicinity of its roots.
Included in the list of susceptible plants: white pine and red pine.
Could that be what has been taking out our pines?
Plenty of the details match what we have witnessed in the last few years.
If I find out cedar trees can tolerate the toxin, that’s what I’d like to plant in place of those lost pines.
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More Love
Picking up where I left off yesterday, on the subject of love…
I had a moment —well quite a few moments, actually— of being overwhelmed by simultaneous competing demands on my attention at the day-job yesterday. In the midst of the crazy-making, I felt an urge to be standing in the energy of our 4 horses.
I think they were sending me love.
I made a mental note to get myself down with them when I got home from work, rain or shine. This region has been under siege by downpours of heavy rain lately. My late departure from the cities turned out to be mostly trouble-free, both from traffic and precipitation.
When I got within a mile of home, I spotted standing water in some of the farm fields. As I pulled into our driveway, I saw water running in our drainage ditch. We had obviously received a significant amount of rain just a short time before. Cyndie confirmed it had poured hard.
The rain gauge contained 1.25 inches. The horses seemed entirely calm and collected with the situation. I needed to dig out a run-off route that had filled in and caused water to flow where we don’t want it to go.
Working there in the paddock put me right where I wanted to be among the herd. Legacy was particularly friendly and approached me to connect in a way that seemed a little uncharacteristic of him.
I think he knew it was just what I was hoping for.
Standing with them, breathing, loving, and feeling loved.
Horse medicine for what was ailing me.
I loved it.
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Trying Not
I’m trying not to succumb to the outrage. Outrage may well be deserved, but it doesn’t serve me well. I have to choose a different path. I strive to avoid getting my feathers stuck in the tar of controversial opposing opinions, but maybe venting about some of the insanity will bring about an inspiration to counter the inherent despair.
Does any of this make sense?
How did Wells Fargo bank get away with years of creating bogus accounts without customers’ consent?
How did the Sugar Association get away with paying off Harvard scientists?
How do political campaigns succeed by only focusing on the perceived bad things about other candidates without providing any substance of their own in ads?
How did we get to a point where there are only two unpopular primary candidates for President of the United States?
How do people feel comfortable publicly supporting a candidate who demonstrates such contemptible characteristics?
Why do people allow religious ideology to lead them down a path of choosing to injure and kill others?
What if creative people like Lennon & McCartney were able to write songs about peace and love for all of the world to hear?
What if that made all the difference?
All you need is love.
Love is all you need.
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Pequenita consoling me while I distract myself with word games… That’s love.
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Like Artwork
Cyndie shared a scene of the horses out in the hay-field that she captured on Sunday evening and my first impression was that it looked like it was a painting.
There’s a filter for that. I dipped into the effects toolbox and came up with an oil painted version of the same view. Sometimes living here feels like being in a 3-D gallery of fine art.
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Anniversary Thirty-Five
Happy Anniversary today, Cyndie. Thirty-five years in a blink. How’d that happen?
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At the same time, today is also Julian’s birthday. Thanks for sharing this day with us, my other jwh, and making it even more special than it already was!
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How Many?
If you know me at all, it may not come as a surprise that I am having trouble deciding how many icicle prisms to hang on our cherished family heirloom lamp over the island in our kitchen. Cyndie surprised me on Thursday with the gift in honor our upcoming 35th anniversary.
When I first got the lamp hung in that spot a couple of years ago, we felt the addition of the dangling crystals might improve the way the light distributes, as well as create a better finished look for the variety of viewing angles available.
At that time, I did some shopping for the prisms, but they weren’t readily available in person and there were so many different shapes and sizes to pick from online that I was overwhelmed by the exercise of choosing.
I went with my usual solution to this dilemma and ended up doing nothing about it.
Like so many times before, Cyndie has come to the rescue. I think she made an excellent decision about what size to get. Regarding how many to buy, let’s just say there will be some spares left over. The question of how many spares is still in limbo.
As I started hanging them, it felt right to go for the max. The picture at the top of this post shows what that looked like. We loved it.
It creates a flare out that is taking me some time to get used to, making the bottom look wider.
I wondered if that might be related to the high number of icicles we used. My intuition told me, less could be more. Adding a little space between each prism was easy to do.
Deciding which I like better is proving to be not so easy. I like them both.
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Winch Works
I discovered that my problem with the dead winch on our ATV wasn’t the winch or the solenoid. It all works just fine if the wires are properly segregated. What would mess with the wiring?
RODENT invaders!
What is the deal with mice and chipmunks that they choose to chew on wires? Does the plastic coating taste good to them? Are they trying to get more copper in their diet?
The other question I have, from driving past farm after farm with equipment parked outside year round, is how they deal with the constant threat of damage from nesting critters.
We leave our truck parked outside most of the time, and now when we lift the hood there is the disconcerting sound of collected acorns rolling down inside the lid.
The heat tapes that our gutter installer put in the problem spots of our roof and routed through the downspout and into the garage to the AC outlets only lasted one year before rodents chewed through both of them.
Maybe this explains why one of our neighbors has so many outdoor cats. A way to keep the rodents at bay.
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It’ll Do
I have seen perfection. This is not it. I have witnessed the results of master craftsmanship next door at the lake place. First you flawlessly prepare the logs, then you apply coat after coat of tung oil to get a beautiful finish that will protect your logs from the elements.
I don’t have it in me.
Currently distracted with trying to do the necessary lumberjack work around here, tend to the all-too-frequent lawn mowing requirements, manage the unending supply of manure to be composted, fix fences, maintain trails, replace the ATV winch, cut the over growing pastures, rake the round pen, fill in the growing ravines in the paddocks, and work the day-job, I have elected to try getting away with doing an almost embarrassingly perfunctory job of patching the most needy bad spots on the house and shop garage.
If I actually execute this plan, it will be a big accomplishment of overcoming my perfectionistic tendencies.
Yesterday after work I ran a little test to see if putting the least amount of effort toward the task will produce a passable result. We have the advantage of already having plenty of cans of stain that were left by the previous owners, but I have no idea about the shelf life of this stuff, so the advantage comes without providing much in the way of confidence.
I followed up on a tip to use compressed air to help remove the old flaking finish, but quickly found my tank isn’t designed for the task. The pressure drops rather quickly, greatly reducing the effectiveness. After testing a few other methods, I settled on doing a rather superficial job of surface cleaning.
I was excited to find a stirring apparatus stored with the stain that I can connect to my drill for thoroughly mixing the product. The one half-filled can I opened looked fine to my untrained eye, so after a good stir, I dipped in a brush and started painting the stuff on the siding.
It may not look ideal and it probably isn’t going to provide maximum protection, but it is better than doing nothing at all, which was the option we went with last fall.
All things considered, I’m hopeful this effort will suffice for getting through another winter, at the very least.
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Entryway 2.1
Back in the first week of August, I posted about the bush at the front door of our house dying an unexplained death. A few days after I published the picture, I arrived home from work to find the dead branches all gone.
Cyndie had cut it back to the main trunk, saving that for me in case I wanted to balance some rocks on it.
That was all the invitation I needed.
I didn’t actually believe this would last as long as it has. When I pass by with the lawn tractor while mowing, I fully expect the stone to topple over from the vibration, but it has survived multiple mowings thus far without falling. There have been a few rainy and windy days, too, but it continues to stand.
I never expect balanced rocks to last, but when they endure for long periods of time, I grow increasingly attached to them. It becomes hard to try something fresh after they come down, because I get more interested in trying to get back what we had before.
That’s probably a good metaphorical life-lesson for me right there.
I’ll ponder that as I gaze a while longer at the mesmerizing balanced stone.
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