Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Name Withheld
Among the many things on the always-growing list of tasks we would like to accomplish, there was one that caught our attention before we even owned the place, during one of our early visits with the sellers. It grabbed my attention immediately when I first laid eyes on the barn. There was a bright green shamrock sign on the wall, and the name “Cleary” on the peak of the roof line.
I was so uninformed about Cleary Buildings that I actually asked the seller if they were Irish, thinking they had put their own name on the barn. He seemed embarrassed for me, as he explained that it wasn’t a name from their family.
Since the shamrock and name were both more prominent than Cyndie and I cared for, it became an early item on our list of things to be fixed. The shamrock was within easy reach on a ladder, and I took that down right away.
The name would have to wait. For three years.
I don’t know why some things take that much longer. For a while, I thought about swapping the end cap with one on the shop garage, since that one is all green. Recently, upon closer inspection, I discovered the roof pitch is different between the two structures and the parts were different sizes.
Plan B was to simply paint over it. When I finally took care of the project, it ended up being only a matter of minutes before it was accomplished, which only served to further confound the question of why it took so long to get it done in the first place.
No disrespect intended to the Cleary company. We are happy with their product. At the same time, we are even more happy to have the first impression of the barn come from the structure, itself, in contrast to the overly prominent company name that used to shout from its peak.
.Of course, we might feel a little different about something on the side of the barn if it happened to be the Wintervale Ranch logo…
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Disappearing Delilah
My inability to master the art of dog training is revealed in our lovely canine’s increasing confidence in behaving any way she pleases. Just two days ago, I was lamenting our failure thus far to stop Delilah’s behavior of jumping up on people engaged in hugs during greetings or departures.
She just wants to participate in the hugs, of course, but her nails on unprepared backsides are not something we feel our guests should have to deal with when they are otherwise occupied. Both Cyndie and I recognize that we have failed to gain the upper hand on demanding compliance with our instructions. The formula of training by way of rewarding good behavior, as opposed to a focus on punishing bad behavior, evades us when it comes to the current challenges.
Cyndie has been doing a heroic effort of conditioning Delilah to stay close to us when we allow her the freedom of being off-leash, frequently calling her back for check-ins and rewarding her with treats when she promptly complies. It had been working well for quite some time, until I distracted Cyndie in the barn yesterday when I sought her assistance installing my first half-sized slow-feeder box in Cayenne’s stall.
That brief period of our distraction from Delilah’s whereabouts led to the hunter girl wandering off in search of irresistible prey beyond the borders of our property. Cyndie didn’t want to give up without a fight and scoured our trails, blowing her whistle and calling Delilah’s name.
She even drove the truck in a search of the roadways immediately surrounding us. The only thing that came out of that effort was a texted greeting from George, after he saw her drive past their place. Once again, Delilah was in the “dog house” with us. From past experience, I knew our dog would eventually show up at one of the doors, happy as could be, covered in burrs, and clueless to the level of transgression she had pulled off.
After a long spell, just as I expected, Delilah did return home. We treated her matter of factly, allowing her a long drink at her water bowl, after which, Cyndie took her outside to remove the burrs.
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I don’t know how, but she seemed to recognize our displeasure. Her behavior for the rest of the day and evening was akin to her having put herself on a “time-out” all on her own. She didn’t demonstrate any of her usual playful behaviors, repeatedly seeking attention by bringing a ball or other toy to us, or simply walking up and putting her head in our laps.
She demurely laid low the whole time. I can only hope she was using that time to think about what she had done wrong, and was feeling entirely remorseful. Sadly, the other possibility is that she was just so exhausted from having had such a fantastic getaway that she needed the rest and was saving up her energy for the next opportunity to do it over again.
Trust me, she is back on full-time leash protocol again, and will be for the foreseeable future, whether she understands the correlation, or not.
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Enticing Trail
During the transition of seasons we are rewarded with a mix of lingering green complimented by the new colors of changing leaves.
Golden sunlight bathes the distant slope on the far side of the shadowed tunnel through a short section of woods between the back pasture and our house.
It beckons the curious soul to investigate.
Now multiply that by 10, because all of our trails are equally enticing right now.
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Happy Horses
I’m beginning to think that access to our hay-field could be what makes our horses happiest. This past week, Cyndie took down the barriers that kept the horses out of the hay-field. Early in the week we experienced the first bit of frost in a couple of low areas and it had become clear that we weren’t going to be able to enlist George’s assistance in cutting and baling the field, so we gave the horses full access to graze out there.
They didn’t hesitate for a moment and they’ve been out there pretty much non-stop ever since, except for brief stints to the paddock for a drink of water and servings of their feed pellets.
Despite our desire to get a second cut of hay off that field, which didn’t happen either of the first two years we were here, either, there were enough reasons to give up the wait and put the horses on it now, that it was an easy decision to make.
For one, not cutting and baling it would be the least amount of work. I’ve got plenty of other things available to occupy my time, so I’m more than happy with getting out of tossing bales.
Secondly, where would we toss them? There isn’t much in the way of room in the hay shed. That leads to the third reason this was an easy decision: We already have enough hay stacked up to get through the winter.
My primary interest was in cutting the field to discourage weeds and encourage more grass growth. It would be a shame to simply mow it down and not bale it, and getting bales to feed the horses at a later date is a real bonus.
We started to give the horses limited access so they would “mow” it down uniformly, which works great, but to continue moving them would require more temporary fence work than either of us was wanting to deal with right now. Easiest just to open it up in its entirety, and most fun for them, too.
It’s a treat to be able to give them something that makes them so happy.
If they are happy, we’re happy.
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Natural Results
Despite all our efforts to influence outcomes toward results which match the visions in our heads, the universe continues its reluctance to conform to our exact specifications.
A year ago I paid an excavating company more money than I really wanted to part with, to have a drainage swale shaped across our property. The plan was to have me plant grass in the new spillway to control erosion, but the excavation didn’t happen until too late in the year and my effort to cover it with grass was only partially successful.
Meanwhile, the earliest series of spring rainstorms testing the new swale turned out to be extreme gully washers that initiated a distinct washout crevice. The topsoil that flowed down stream from then on began filling in the swale, spoiling the plan to have a clearly defined trough to constrain runoff and drain water from our property without obstruction.
Maybe I could apply for a partial refund.
The good news is that the desired flow of runoff still seems to happen well enough, despite the deviations from the ideal we envisioned. However, I prefer to not have the growing canyon in that pasture and would like to reclaim the originally planned swale from the sediment that has accumulated.
I’m considering the possibility of digging it out myself next summer, and bringing the soil from below to fill in the crevice. I would want to wait until later in the summer, in hopes of finding a time when there is a reduced likelihood of heavy rains, but early enough that I would have plenty of time to get it covered with newly planted grass.
Another option is to leave it go to nature’s design, until such time that it fails to function as we want. It might just be an exercise I need to experience: allowing it to be a little rough around the edges and not so refined as I envisioned.
It seems odd to me that I find myself wrestling with the different extremes that I am drawn toward. On one hand, I prefer to have things be as natural as possible, so the naturally carved drainage ditch should be appealing. On the other hand, I don’t want things to look neglected here, or function faultily, so digging it out, filling in the crevice and covering the entire length with new grass would appeal equally well.
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Spooky Creepy
Is October the spookiest month of the year? Possibly. Maybe it was in honor of that, that our September ended last night with a nauseating amount of creepiness.
Feel free to stop reading right here and save yourself from reliving our horrors.
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Couldn’t do it, huh? Well, don’t say I didn’t warn ya.
So, I was back at the ranch again last evening after work. Changed clothes and headed out to do some chores. First up, check the mouse traps that hadn’t been looked at for a day. The house garage was all clear. The shop still had a funky smell to it. The trap on the workbench was fine and the water bucket trap that had a chipmunk in it the other day was also untouched.
On my way back to the door, I smelled it. My brain flashed a memory of having placed an additional trap by the door! How many days had I been looking at the other two traps and completely forgetting about this one?
There was no question in my mind about there being something in the trap. It was behind a waste basket, on the floor beneath a small built-in bench. When I moved the basket, my eyes detected what looked like a wet spot around the trap. Yep, the rodent carcass was liquefying.
I carried the trap out toward the trees and tried to fling it as I squeezed the jaws of the trap open. It stuck in the trap. A second try got it to release, but it probably didn’t go as far as it should have. When I placed the trap back down on the floor to reset it, I spotted the pile of maggots on the wet spot.
The smell doesn’t really need description. Go ahead and imagine it yourself.
When Cyndie took Delilah out for a final walk of the evening, I headed downstairs to clean Pequenita’s litter boxes. We strain the litter and dump the scoop into a bag inside an empty plastic litter bucket. Once a week, we toss the collected waste. Last night the bucket was just one day short of full for the week.
As I was scooping, some movement in the bucket caught my eye. Yikes! It was the spookiest, nastiest, Halloween-end-of-October-looking spider I’ve ever seen indoors. It was the size and had the look of a kind of spider that I do not want to be anywhere near. With extremely impressive bravery, I snapped the lid tightly on the bucket, made kind of a whimpering squeaky sound, and dashed a hasty exit from the laundry room downstairs.
When I got upstairs, I found Cyndie had come back inside with Delilah. Cyndie was standing in the front sunroom with her hand over her nose and mouth, breathing funny. I paused, waiting for her to sneeze. The sneeze didn’t appear, and she held this pose and made that breathing sound long enough that I had to ask what was up.
She furtively was able to explain that she was trying not to throw up. Delilah had found something disgusting over by the shop.
Oops.
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See Ya
We’ll see ya later, September. It was nice knowin’ ya! Somehow, when I blinked, the whole month of September slipped past me. How can it be the last day of September already? I must be having fun, because time sure is flying.
I definitely had fun last night. Since I didn’t drive all the way home after working extra long at the day-job, I had the opportunity to take in a movie on the big screen before heading to Cyndie’s parents’ house to sleep. It’s been a long time since I was in a movie theater, and this one had been recently renovated, making the experience something special.
When I asked to purchase a ticket, the gentleman asked me what seat I wanted. He had a map of available seats on a monitor, from which I was to make my selection. I’ve never had to do that before. It was kind of strange. It was like picking a seat on a plane when purchasing a ticket to fly, which is becoming standard practice, but for some reason the standard didn’t translate in my head when it comes to movie theaters.
They boasted that one of the obvious advantages was the ability to buy your ticket in advance and show up right at the time of the movie. Your preferred seat would be open and waiting for you.
The reserved seat was just the beginning of the fun. The real wow-factor was when I stepped into the theater and discovered the seats were like giant leather Lazy-Boy recliners, with built-in cup holders.
The only things missing were a little lap blanket and maybe a dog or cat to snuggle with during the feature presentation.
With the month of October perched to begin tomorrow, that lap blanket idea has some merit, if you ask me.
For the record, I saw the latest Mission Impossible movie, which I found perfectly entertaining, but little more than that. Rather typical fare, which is not a knock against it. I didn’t actually expect it to be something beyond what fans of the Mission Impossible series want.
Probably the best part for me was being introduced to the beautiful face of Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson. That definitely added to the fun quotient.
Hopefully, her movie acting career will hang around a lot longer than the months of the year seem to. Seriously, September is closing out today. The best month of the year, gone, just like that. What a shame it has to end.
See ya later, September.
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Random Miscellany
My writing may not seem very well thought-out plenty of times, but composing a post with some manner of a theme or point does involve a fair amount of mental exercise for me on a regular basis. Let’s see if there is any difference in the result if I purposefully neglect any planning whatsoever for today’s post, and allow myself freedom to spout off on whatever comes to mind.
Trust me, there is a part of me that genuinely fears the possibility there will be no noticeable difference.
It is normal for me to oscillate between doubting everything we have decided to do here since our move from the suburbs, and feeling like the last 3 years are a destiny that we couldn’t have avoided if we tried. That’s probably not an uncommon thought process for a person to experience. It does tend to make me feel a bit schizophrenic on occasion.
For me, it is easiest to just continue to plod along in the general forward direction during the periods of doubt and confusion, so there isn’t much worry that I will panic and bail out all of a sudden.
Sometimes it helps to have Cyndie support my decision, or encourage me when I hesitate to come to the conclusion myself, to give in and call a professional on tasks that frustrate me. I am relieved we have elected to seek out a plumber to look at a leaky frost-free hydrant on the house. It enables me to have our whole-house filter installation verified, because it appears to be in backwards to me and has always bothered my sensibilities.
Another task that is frustrating me is getting our hay-field cut and baled. We have been relying on the generosity of our neighbor, George, for the most part in the past, but that’s not reliable because his availability is limited. It stresses me to not have control over the harvesting of our field, but I haven’t reached a point of finding a solution, so I plod along with that on-going stress simmering in the back of my mind.
Once again, Cyndie comes to the rescue with a wonderful gesture(s) of supporting my interest in being mindful of eating a healthy recommended amount of sugar in my daily calories. Last night she baked a banana bread after researching recipes that had low glycemic index numbers. It tasted great to me.
Too bad I won’t get any of it tonight, because the day-job is so busy I will work late today and spend the night in town at her parent’s house, instead of driving the long commute home.
I noticed Cyndie checking out a mail-order catalog last night, and it struck me how much life has changed for us lately. Now she stays home to manage the ranch and scans the FarmTek “wishbook” that arrives in our mailbox, and I spend too many hours distracted with demands of the day-job.
It is lucky that I paused my drive up the driveway yesterday afternoon, to drop off a few supplies I picked up on my way home. Opened the door to the shop and was met with the distinct odor of dead rodent. There was a drowned chipmunk in the water trap that would have been extremely unpleasant by the time I get back home on Wednesday.
It definitely feels like I’m not in Kansas (*Eden Prairie*) anymore.
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Turning Trees
Despite the mid-summer-like temperatures over the weekend, the trees are starting to reveal the onset of fall. They aren’t in concert with each other by any means, nor even with themselves, as you can see by this picture.
I was feeling a bit of disappointment last Thursday when I looked at the edge of our woods from a distance and got the impression that the leaves of many of the trees were beginning to just fade to brown and drop off.
There was evidence supporting that on the trails, which are becoming increasingly paved with dried brown leaves. Where is the color?
It is not unusual that our trees change colors at different times, but I am always a bit surprised by the significant difference in timing of the variety of maple trees we have. I suppose it wouldn’t be confusing to me if I would simply figure out the identity of them all. That would likely allow me to discover the typical behavior of each to the changing seasons.
On one corner of the hay shed there is the tree with several limbs already a deep red, while the one beside it on the other corner of the shed, remains all green.
The green one made more sense yesterday, when the mid-day heat felt like it might still be June. I won’t even get into details about how much the grass continues to grow.
I have no complaints about the incredible comfort this weather affords. When we stepped out last evening to watch the spectacle of the full super-moon becoming eclipsed by earth’s shadow, the air was marvelous.
The universe put on quite a show.
We walked down to the gazebo in the back pasture to sit in chairs there and enjoy the view. I was hoping the horses might wander over and share the moment with us, but they opted to stay off in the distance.
On top of all the excitement of the beautiful night and shadowed moon, I spotted two shooting stars. The only thing that could possibly have made it any more impressive would have been a display of Northern Lights (aurora borealis) showing up.
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All Here
Focusing on the concept of being “all here” is akin to the moment when uttering the phrase, “I’m all in.” To say you are “all here” reflects something of a simultaneous conscious and meditative state. It is a practice of experiencing a hyper-awareness of everything you feel within, in conjunction with the sights and sounds of the environment surrounding you.
It is an exercise of recognizing the energy radiating from your very core, realizing how far beyond your physical boundary it reaches, with attention to the external stimuli imbuing influence. In a moment, you can be aware of your breathing while sensing the involuntary flexing of your toes as a bird’s tentative song wafts through an open window.
Our horses are brilliant at helping me slide into a place of feeling “all here.” Silently standing among the herd in a mode of total relaxation, while also practicing the art of keen awareness to everything, provides a unique equine experience that most of our visitors miss out on, due to the natural tendency of people to be excitedly verbal.
Of course, I have the benefit of being alone with the horses. Experiencing the herd in this unique way can be achieved with a group of people, as long as there is coordinated attention of all present toward focus on the exercise.
Cyndie has a different opportunity to be “all here” with the horses when she is riding them. Here she is with Cayenne in a photo taken by Rachael Walker during a lesson earlier this month.
I feel richly blessed to be learning to practice this relaxed awareness the horses have shown me, even when away from them and involved with other activities. It is an exercise of aligning with my authentic self, breathing into being “all here.”
It generates a feeling of wholeness that feels divine, with echoes of the equine.
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