Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Sleeping In
Not much of a blog post this morning because I am sleeping in. We are at the lake! No animals to care for, no Delilah dog to wake us up. We are going to make the most of this mini-vacation.
I am resurrecting a picture for you in compensation for my shallow collection of words today. It is one of the deck posts here at the lake place, taken 2-years-ago. Quite a balancing act, eh?
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Between Season
Every day this week, on my way home from work, I’ve seen more and more exposed ground due to receding snow cover. Twice, on the way into work, I have driven through new falling snow. This time of year, those light snow showers don’t add much to the snow pack, so we have continued to lose more than we’ve gained.
Cyndie’s daytime view of melted snow
The days have only offered a spattering of minutes where the sun shone through enough to cast definable shadows. The rest of the time it has looked pretty gray outside, and not very conducive to melting much snow. It hasn’t mattered. Forces are at work to create a mystical disappearing act of our snow.
It feels very in-between seasons. We are certainly not getting anything that looks like the winters we have been known for, and we have yet to see enough sunshine to want to put the top down on the convertible and go for a joyride. The snow and ice is no good for winter sports. The dryer ground and inviting warm sunshine of springtime have yet to arrive.
So what are we going to do? We’re gonna head to the lake. One of our favorite house & pet sitters announced her availability for this weekend and we are taking advantage of it to make a rare visit to Big Round Lake. With friends Mike and Barb joining us, we will be exploring creative ways to enjoy the outdoors at a time of year when most of our usual activities are unavailable.
I guess it’s not all that unusual for me to be taking pictures, and that is something for which the ‘between-season’ actually offers extra opportunity. Around home, I keep seeing some amazing natural art where leaves and other dark debris laying on top of the snow will melt intricate outlines of their exact shapes as they make their way toward the ground, multiple times faster than the rest of the snow around them.
I have yet to capture any good photos of this phenomena, because the depth that is a huge feature of the visual is very difficult to convey in the limitations of a 2-dimensional image. The live perspective we get through actually seeing for ourselves is worlds beyond what a lens can offer. Of course, that makes it all the more enticing to want to try.
More significantly, I haven’t gotten any good pictures yet because I have been finding them too late, after I have tromped all over the place and kicked snow on the potential candidates.
So maybe it will be a weekend of photography. That, on top of the always incredible good eating we enjoy, the lounging around a fireplace, and the playing of a few card games while listening to music.
I’m finding myself also between the season of wanting to dig into any real projects that produce worthy results. I’ll save that motivation for a warm and sunny spring day, just in case one of those finally shows up.
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Cat Love
For the last ten minutes, when I could have been typing with two hands, I have instead been thoroughly preoccupied by a certain cat who plopped down on the corner of my laptop, strategically beneath my right hand. In our house, I appear to be the cat magnet.
Our little tortoiseshell, Pequenita, always comes to the door to greet me when I get home from work. If Delilah happens to be in the house, ‘Nita waits for a turn, but she makes a point to visit. She has this wonderful/terrible habit of reaching up my leg for a stretch, and flexing her cute little front paws so that her sharp claws pass right through anything but my heaviest Carhartt jeans to make startling contact with my delicate flesh.
I know she means well, but the reaction it involuntarily evokes involves spontaneous reflex flinching, some yelling, occasionally cursing, a bit of anger, a dash of sadness and hurt feelings, and perplexity over her lack of sensitivity to my plight. That all leads to my questioning why we have a cat.
Then I remember, we have a cat so we will have something to clean off the coils under the refrigerator whenever we get around to checking it. I assume, as ironic as it would be, the mice around here are thrilled over the vast resource of nest material that piles up in every out-of-sight nook and cranny in our house.
After the ten-minutes of head scratching and full-body massaging that she gets from me when I crawl in bed and she arrives for her session, there is a small blizzard of cat hair sticking to me, my keyboard, the comforter, her back, and floating in the air currents of the heat vents.
What can I do? She loves me.
I’m her pin cushion and her masseuse.
I must admit, it is kinda nice to have one pet in the house who doesn’t go into barking fits over sights and sounds outside these walls. Maybe I should work on getting the cat to try out the stretchy clawing maneuver on the dog every time there is an eruption from Ms. Barksalot.
The old stimulus / response model thing.
Delilah’s smart. She’d probably figure out she shouldn’t go all panicky barking at squirrels after a few sessions from Pequenita, don’t ya think?
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General Goodness
It’s been a quiet day in Lake Wo-Wintervale-begon. The weather was mild all weekend, the trail cam continues to capture rabbits and squirrels, and progress on my wood sculpting art project has advanced, but not enough to stand out in pictures. Trust me. I considered showing them here today, but the results were too emphatically underwhelming.
The horses have been emanating incredibly peaceful vibes, Delilah is mostly behaving, and Pequenita endlessly seeks hands-on attention from me. Cyndie has been extraordinarily productive with creative abundance from her kitchen. I stand around wondering how to at least be ‘above average,’ never sure how to achieve the ‘good looking’ descriptor that Mr. Keillor tosses around.
We’re at one of those points where, in my past life, I would respond with a multitude of reasons for a gloomy outlook. It is a precious thing to have forged a path above and beyond that inclination, and to be able to relax and absorb the absence of dilemma today; to actually feel joyous, in fact.
Sure, the Check Engine Light still comes on in my car after every time the shop resets it, but I’m not stressin’ that. It is what it is. Things are mighty fine in general, and being able to appreciate that goodness, without struggling so to do, is icing on a cake that I get to have, and eat, too!
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Trail Cam
We finally got ourselves a camera to monitor the animal activity on our trails. The big challenge will be figuring out where the best vantage point is for capturing activity. I took a first crack at it over the weekend and hit the jackpot.
Two different species of ferocious forest animals were captured in their travels across our trail. We now have a clear explanation for why Delilah gets so worked up, because we have photo-evidence of the threatening intruders that have been encroaching on her turf.
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Hey, don’t laugh. Don’t you remember that scene in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail?”
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Wood Speaks
Sometimes, wood speaks to me, but I don’t always know what it says. I can’t say that I’ve ever heard words from a piece of wood. It’s more of a mysterious attraction to the visual. This piece has me wondering what it would look like smoothed.
I have envisioned it both completely flat or smoothed with contours. I think contours is going to win, because there’s already too much material missing to sand it flat and still have much of the branch left. The branch is really the key element that makes this special.
Imagine how complicated it can be to stack firewood when every other piece seems to grab my attention for its potential to be beautiful in some form other than burning flames.
Luckily, I receive great pleasure from the visual presentation of stacked firewood, too, so it makes it a little easier for me to leave the split logs on the pile where they belong. That just leaves a chosen few that occasionally get pulled for more permanent duty.
I decided to take a picture of this one for reference, and now having posted here, I guess as incentive. I make no secret of my difficulty with finishing art projects that I start. It’s rather curious that my inspiration to become engaged with this new piece would occur so soon after discovering a handful of others in a box that had sat unopened since we moved here 3 years ago.
Why haven’t I become fixated on finishing the others, instead?
I don’t know. It’s something ripe for analysis, I suppose. I wouldn’t have to dig too deep to discover an issue with perfectionism and a fear of failure, I’m sure. Being unfinished, their imperfections are judged differently. Being unfinished, they still hold the potential to become even more beautiful than they already are.
Or it could simply be that I am wanting to improve my techniques and tooling, and hone my finishing skills to a point I will feel more prepared to take those unfinished pieces the rest of the way to completion, in both aesthetics and function.
Yeah. That’s why I’m starting another new project. It’s for practice. That’s it.
I’ll chronicle the progress for you here, so I have added incentive to actually make progress.
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Ash Wash
One day when Elysa was hanging out with us, I wondered out loud if there was any use for all the ash from a fireplace. She suggested we Google it.
Turns out, yes, there is. Or more accurately, there are.
Two that I clearly remember: An additive to soil for growing tomatoes, and as a cleanser for washing smoky glass fireplace doors.
Smoky doors, we got. This solution is so plain and simple that I don’t understand why it isn’t more widely known. There is no reason to use some manufactured chemical when such a natural resource is so handy and works so amazingly well.
How about a demonstration? I don’t mind if I do.
All I need is water, some newspaper, and ashes to quickly clean the doors for a crystal clear view of the main attraction of our winter nights. I wish all projects were as easy and rewarding as this.
In case it isn’t inherently obvious, this chore should be done before you start a fire, when the ashes and doors are absent of any heat from a fire.
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Not Hot
This is one of the not hot compost piles in our paddock. Not much in the way of decomposition happening there. Maybe that will change this weekend when the mega-melt of February is expected to arrive.
The frozen compost piles aren’t hot, but the temperature of the air will be. Add a chance for some rain in the mix and our lawn may become visible by the end of the weekend.
Mud season!
I suppose I ought to think about getting the garden tractor tuned up and ready for battle.
This early warmup in interesting, but warmth at this time of year is a fickle thing. One moment it feels all summery and promising, and a day later we could be socked in by a foot or two of heavy, wet snow. Do. Not. Remove. Winter. Accessories. From. Your. Vehicles.
The odds of needing them stays high through the first week in May around here. I’m inclined to wait until June before finally choosing to store them someplace safe, where I will never remember to look the following November when I am desperate to scrape frost off a windshield again.
This past Monday, the horses were enjoying the last hour of our increasingly longer daylight while I was tending to the frozen manure pile closest to the barn. I have a sense that they are going to enjoy a warm spell, despite the messy footing it promises to provide.
With their coats still winter-thick, I expect it may feel downright hot to them.
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Runaway Chores
The last few times we ran the dishwasher, we found some wetness on the floor in front of it. Most recently, it turned out to be a lot more than just some wetness. We had a leak.
Fearing the worst, I hustled downstairs to check the ceiling. The dishwasher is located above our storage room, which has a finished ceiling. There was a light stain on one of the tiles. Curses!
We have some history with leaking dishwashers. In our previous home back in Eden Prairie, the leak went undetected for a long time, because it was located in the drain hose. Mice had chewed a hole in the plastic hose and the leak was not visible from the kitchen.
My fear was that it had happened again, and I prepared myself for pulling the dishwasher to look behind it. I didn’t really want to tear into that project, so I decided I should make sure the drain wasn’t blocked by debris, first. The only problem with that plan was the fact that I didn’t know how to gain access to the drain.
While I was sitting on the kitchen floor, peering at the inner workings of the dishwasher, I got a close view of the nasty buildup of gunk that had accumulated around the edge of the door and on the gaskets around the door. Could it be?
I gave them a thorough cleaning. While I was on the floor peering under the appliance, I got a scary view of places that never get cleaned. We have a cat, so areas that don’t get cleaned become an incredible mass of cat hair, which then becomes a super absorbent net that catches dog hair.
Cyndie got the small shop-vac for me and I started cleaning under kitchen cabinets. Cat crawl spaces. While I had the vacuum and was lying on the kitchen floor, she suggested I clean under the stove and the refrigerator, too. I couldn’t argue with that logic.
I pulled the drawer from beneath the oven and found enough items to feel like an archeologist discovering an ancient tomb. I had to ask Cyndie whether they were from us or the previous owners. She said it looked like a little of both.
After the stove, I moved on the refrigerator. Again, my first thought was, we own a cat. Those coils should be cleaned about 10-times more often than we are accomplishing. It was nightmarish under there. While I was grunting over that project, Cyndie started giving the oven a heavy dose of scrubbing.
I asked permission to remove some screws so we could get to the space between the windows in the oven door. There was a cobweb in there that has bothered me for a long time. Soon, we had all the kitchen appliances in pieces, and we were cleaning nooks and crannies that have probably never been cleaned before.
Delilah was incredibly patient with us, as we toiled away the entire evening on this runaway series of cleaning chores, though she failed to mask how forlorn she felt over being neglected the whole time.
While we were busy dealing with the mission creep of the oven door and the refrigerator coils, the original problem of a leaking dishwasher appeared to have gone away. After cleaning the gaskets, we put it though a test run while we worked away in the kitchen.
There was no sign of any leaking whatsoever. Problem solved? I will be keeping a skeptical eye on it for the foreseeable future.
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Hot Compost
I continue to enjoy with fascination how much heat is created by the microorganisms in our compost pile, especially when the outside air temperature drops to double digits below zero (F). I took a picture of the thermometer reading on Saturday morning when the polar vortex had us in a deep freeze.
Our sh*t is cookin’!
That pile consists primarily of what has been cleaned from the barn stalls.
We are also collecting manure in the paddocks and piling it in several spots out there. Although I attempted to swiftly establish healthy sized piles, hoping I could get them to also start cooking, they are all frozen solid.
I’ll be experimenting to see how long it takes for me to bring ’em to life as winter wanes.
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