Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Perfect Day
I’m going to assume that you all guessed we are up at our lake place. We were able to secure coverage in caring for our home and animals for a few days, so we scampered up to our favorite getaway to spend the weekend with Cyndie’s parents and some of her brother’s family, in addition to the many other wonderful members and friends of our unique community up here.
We enjoyed an absolutely perfect summer day yesterday. Spent the majority of it on the beach of our lake, with friends and family, plenty of rambunctious kids frolicking on floating devices in the water, warm sunshine, gentle breezes, and an opportunity for a nap on a lounge chair during a lull in the activity.
The lake temperature was ideal for summer refreshment, without being too cold to get used to easily. I flirted with getting too much sun, choosing to forgo the sensible solution of applying sun screen, by limiting my time of exposure out in the water. I was able to enjoy the day without feeling greasy, but probably put myself at a bit of a risk. I could feel it on my skin last night, but it was short of actually being painful.
I put in a fair amount of effort to not perseverate over the work that was not getting done at home, but found myself unable to avoid fretting over the need to get home early today to mow the grass. I will be up against the challenge of somehow getting the job done in the short time left in the day after we arrive home, and despite a threat of likely showers and thunderstorms.
Time runs out when evening comes, because I have to return to work tomorrow.
It’s a problem that I am willing to accept, given the pleasure we enjoyed in being up at the lake for a couple of perfect days at the beach.
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Guess Where
Guess where we are this weekend.
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Taking a little break from everything, including writing, for a couple of days. It’s a tough life, but I’ll find a way to soldier through.
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Learning Opportunities
Of all the projects we have undertaken since we moved here, I never imagined that gutters would become the significant issue that they have. Yesterday we had a visit from our gutter guy, (really, we have a gutter guy —how sad is that?) to have him give us a quote to improve the gutter on our barn so that it actually works during anything heavier than a light drizzle.
They installed the gutter for us originally, per my request, but it has never provided the solution we were seeking. Last fall’s addition of lime screenings on the ground in the paddock has served to very visibly reveal the shortcomings of our current set up. We have some major rills that have been formed by the water that pours off the roof, over the gutter, and flows down the slope below.
Sounds like my decision to now add metal “blocks” on the steel roof to hold snow in place will actually serve us well in making the gutter more effective. They originally mounted the gutter low to protect it from being damaged by ice and snow sliding down the roof. With the blocks in place, the gutter could be raised up and that would help, so I’m told, in catching more of the water that flows over the lip of the roof line during heavy rain.
Where were they with that brilliant suggestion when they did the first install? Especially since I did order snow blocks for the back side of the barn at that time (where there is no need for a gutter), because I didn’t want the massive pile up of snow occurring on our roadway back there. I had seen what happened the year before, with no blocks, and was wary of how difficult it would be to keep that passageway clear of snow if we did nothing.
On the front side of the barn, the roof gets enough sun exposure that it usually melts before creating a giant accumulation like what would happen on the back side, in the shade.
So, we bought a gutter once, and now we are going to buy the gutter again. It’s kind of like getting 1 gutter for the price of 2! What a deal!
This is so not how I want improvement projects to go. I get to chalk it up as one more lesson to me about getting over my thing with perfectionism. Oh, and my thing about frugality. And my thing about making smart, informed decisions.
I take solace in the fact these lessons come to me in this most beautiful place that we now call home, surrounded by fields, forest, our horses & dog & cat, wild animals and many critters galore, gorgeous sky views day and night, and a peacefulness that is garnished with songbirds, mooing cows, occasional barks from neighbor’s dogs, and the wonderful sound of rustling tree leaves.
It all helps soften the blow of the next brilliant (F@#$!*%&) learning opportunity destined to come my way. Perfection.
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Tractor Time
Yesterday I put in a double shift, first working the day-job and then immediately after getting home, hopping on the tractor to knock down weeds in our north pasture with the brush cutter. No rest for the weary.
Fortunately, time on the tractor can be meditative, especially if I am on a task that doesn’t require my full attention. Unfortunately, yesterday’s task was not one of those times. The fence around the north pasture is a temporary one of t-posts with webbed poly-tape fencing strung between them. It is not something I want to touch with the tractor or mower.
I made contact twice. Oops. Luckily, only minor, repairable damage. The second time, though, I needed to stop and climb down to pull the post out of the way so I could get moving again, without doing further damage.
In addition to needing to be careful of the fence, I also had to navigate a significant slope next to the driveway, as well as many pine trees throughout the field.
I honestly didn’t get much in the way of meditating done during yesterday’s tractor time. At least the field looks much better now without all the giant weed growth sprouting every which way.
I took Delilah for a walk in the field after I was done and in no time she located a small critter that had lost its hiding place. Speaking of hiding places, there were a couple of flattened spots that looked like a few deer had been napping near the middle of the field. With how tall the grass and weeds had grown, I’m sure the deer were well hidden while they were doing some meditations of their own.
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Lily Show
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We are enjoying a period of wonderfully comfortable summer weather. Our variety of Asian lillies are popping open like a July Independence Day fireworks show.
The dew point temperature is in the refreshing 50s (F) and we are well-between rainfall events. The sunlight still lasts summer-long, but the grass has finally slowed to a reasonable rate of new growth. I hesitate to mention that I have spotted some leaves on the ground under one particular tree that has already decided to start the change process from green leaves to yellow.
It is the pause of breath before the big exhale toward fall. The raspberries have yielded a bumper crop this year, but the bushes now look like we’re arriving at the end of berry season. In contrast, the plum trees are just starting to reveal their fruit, cherry-sized green orbs becoming apparent.
Down the path a ways, one of our volunteer apple trees in the woods has decided to drop its fruit a little early this year, providing a trigger for another passing thought about the relative shortness of our growing season.
This time of year I find myself mystified by the incredibly extreme amount of change that happens across the span of seasons where we live. The number of what seem like endless winter days trekking along the frozen trail that Delilah and I stomp into the snow around the perimeter of our property becomes a surreal memory in relation to the lush green landscape and warm breezes we are treated to in July.
The colorful explosions of flowers like our lillies become an icing on the cake that is summertime.
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Uninvited Supervisor
Cyndie and I were working on a little project in front of our house yesterday and I looked up and spotted someone spying on us. It looked like we were being supervised over the lip of the gutter.
The reason I suspect the little critter was checking us out is that after we moved on to other things, he left. Cyndie had wanted to get a picture with her camera, but by the time she got out there, he had disappeared.
Something tells me the gutter covers we bought aren’t guaranteeing that I won’t need to occasionally clean the gutters. Down at the barn we’ve had birds creating nests in the downspout, and now on the house we have amphibians making themselves at home in the channel.
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Got Shade?
We’ve got shade by the round pen now!
Yesterday, Cyndie stepped outside with Delilah and the dog made a beeline for a spot where there was another rabbit’s nest. It is pretty obvious that they breed like rabbits, because Delilah keeps finding new nests filled with babies.
In this case, Cyndie tried to rescue a couple of them from becoming Delilah’s next meal, but I don’t think she had much success. She walked back into the house and said, “I guess that’s why they call them ‘dumb bunnies’.”
Apparently none of them were smart enough to evade the resident predator.
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First Test
Despite my desire to get the already too long grass mowed yesterday, due to an all-afternoon soaking precipitation on Thursday that delayed getting started early, I ended the day without ever having turned the key on the lawn tractor. As so often happens, activities unfolded with total disregard for my feeble plans.
Knowing we had an appointment scheduled for George to trim the horse’s hooves at noon, I chose to dip into a project down at the barn, finally assembling the shade gazebo that we purchased over a year ago. I threaded nuts on bolts for hours on end throughout the intense afternoon heat.
Cyndie provided valuable support, including going to the trouble of making a temporary fence to enclose the horses on some of the too-long grass outside the paddock, so they could do some “mowing” for me.
At the end of the day, we decided to save the work of stretching the canvas over the top for this morning when we would have fresh energy. That turned out to be a really smart decision, especially since I have yet to drive the anchors into the ground.
In the middle of the night, we were startled awake by an incredibly intense storm. We both fully expected to find the spindly frame tossed into a tangled mess, pressed up against the round pen rails nearby. Lightning flashed at a shocking rate, wind stressed our house, and the power went off for a couple of hours.
The generator kicked in perfectly, but the sound of it tended to fuel the dramatic feeling of alarm over the significance of the storm raging outside. Alarms chirped occasionally within the house, at the sudden absence or intermittent return of AC power during the outage. There are only a few essential circuits that the generator maintains, so much of the rest of our electronic devices remain at the mercy of the power grid.
Getting back to sleep was a challenge. I always think about how the horses are faring when the level of intensity of thunderstorms is so extreme. By the time we find them in the aftermath, they always seem so unperturbed.
This morning they were happy as could be. I wondered aloud if Legacy knew that today was his birthday. The elder statesman of our herd turned 19 today.
To our joint surprise, as we came around the woods and the new gazebo frame came into view, it looked exactly like the way we left it last night. It survived its first test with an excellent result.
Now we need to walk the trails and see if all our trees held up nearly as well.
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Dust Busting
It’s funny how much clutter we tolerate, until we can’t. Or we don’t have to. Sometimes the tolerating is born of a necessary survival mechanism of prioritizing.
When Cyndie was working her previous day-job, her efforts often overflowed the office hours and consumed vast amounts of her time in the evenings and on weekends. Putting energy toward areas of personal interest became a luxury that she rarely had time to indulge. She has been home now for less than a month and in that time has begun to shake the dust off a surprising number of things and places.
The dustiest of them all is, without a doubt, our barn, with its sand floor and the lime screenings surface under the overhang, toward the paddocks. Daily, the horses kick up dry clouds of dust that waft into the barn, covering absolutely everything. Keeping surfaces clean is a losing battle in the barn, so I rarely bother trying.
Last Sunday, late in the afternoon, when I was winding down toward gathering my thoughts of returning to work the next day, Cyndie began moving things out of the barn. We definitely operate on different schedules of inspiration. The hose came out and the barn received a serious makeover for the next few days. 
All that remains outside the roof now appears to be objects she left as a hint to me that she’d rather we find a different place to store.
Last night, about the time I was considering turning in for the night, Cyndie began moving things out of the over-packed storage room in the basement. Dust and clutter are no longer safe around here. Cyndie is home!
It has been a rude awakening to me of how much I was comfortable tolerating during the time I was home full-time. I had no problem overlooking clutter in some locations while I focused on projects in other areas of my interest.
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Thrilling News
We are giddy with anticipation over our good fortune to have our friends, the Morales family, returning to visit us again in a few weeks. Since we have adopted each other as family, it is like a reunion of precious relations. Cyndie has unleashed her irrepressible inspirations and fearless energies toward making plans and preparations that have me questioning how she intends to bend time and space in her physics-defying scenarios of everything she wants to happen while they are here.
If you are one of the crew of local followers of “Relative Something,” this is your chance to get in on the action! For those of you who won’t be able to join us, you can trust that my stories and images describing the summer spectacle will be the subject of posts in the days that follow…
.We feel incredibly blessed to live in this wonderful place with our special animals, and it brings us immeasurable joy when others are able to be here to share in the experience along with us.
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