Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Lethal Precision
My goal of policing our land for signs of the invasive scourge, common buckthorn, is in full swing this time of year. Yesterday, I headed back to an area by the road where I had already made a first pass through a few days ago. I was aware of several spots well into the thicket where sprouts of buckthorn remained.
Soon, I found myself on my hands and knees, doing battle against a tangle of branches to reach the swaths of still-green leaves. Some are very short and get gobbled up into fistfuls as I pull them from the dirt.
Taller shoots that I’m able to yank up by the roots get treated like trophies and as such, I hang them upside down in the branches of other trees to display the awesome dominance we have over the invader.
Actually, hanging them like that started as a way to ensure that the roots dried out and make it easy to see the unwelcome leaves had already been dealt with. If I just drop them on the ground, the green of the leaves continues to catch my eyes for a few days, making me think more attention is needed when it’s not.
I thought this effort would become easier every year, but I’m finding that hasn’t been the case. I don’t have to deal with large trees anymore, but the new little sprouts show up in new and different places every year, many of them deep in brambles and hard-to-reach places.
Basically, anywhere that birds like to perch since they are spreading seeds after eating the berries. They definitely like sitting in the protective confines of thick tangles of branches.
Keeping our land from being overtaken by this invasive nuisance is worth the effort based on the way our property looks compared to properties around us where we’ve never seen any effort made to address it. The buckthorn on surrounding land only gets thicker each year, while our property will become progressively more impressive in comparison.
I say more impressive because, in addition to removing buckthorn, we are also nursing along every volunteer oak, maple, poplar, cedar, elm, butternut, hickory, and several versions of pines that we find with equal precision.
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Sweet Treats
Just three days to go until the great trick-or-treat traditions burst forth on countless doorsteps. In the twelve years we’ve been here, only one time did someone show up at our door. It was a neighboring couple and their young son from a mile or two down the road. After that, silence for all the years since.
This is just fine with me. It’s a good event for kids, but there aren’t many kids I know about in the surrounding vicinity. It would be an extra burden on my sugar addiction to have an excess of candy in the house for possible giveaway. I have not been very diligent about managing my daily sugar intake lately.
Just a few repetitions of allowing myself to cheat triggers the return of cravings that are so much easier to succumb to than exterminate. I am my own worst enemy.
Since we don’t keep a lot of candy in the house, my brain simply points me to alternative carbs that I love dearly and will happily binge in excess. The healthy choice of snacking on unsalted nuts, which I am also a fan of eating, interestingly becomes less satisfying when my good practices lapse.
Bagel chips have a much greater allure to my addicted brain.
My mischievous mind lets me think I’m getting away with a few days of consuming an increased percentage of unhealthy sweetness until an expanding paunch around my middle soon exposes the inevitable outcome. When my mirror reveals the return of a growing belly, my awareness of the relentless craving comes back into focus.
Thankfully, I don’t fool myself indefinitely.
If we somehow do get surprised by a costumed trick-or-treater Thursday night, I have a half-bag of bagel chips left that I’d happily share.
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Home Vacation
It’s been a little over a month since our adventurous trip to Iceland, and the thrills of the experience are still resonating. As I was sitting in our newly established lookout knoll with the horses grazing nearby yesterday, I recognized a feeling in me that matched those thrills of standing in the presence of incredible waterfalls or striking basalt columns or the spectacular ice formations of a glacier.
Listening to the quiet natural sounds of distant bird calls, feeling the combination of the warm sunshine and the cool breeze, and watching the little details of how the horses were behaving filled me with a sense of gratitude for the moment.
In Iceland, after flying for hours across an ocean, we drove long distances and walked for miles to reach amazing sites that presented a similar sense of awe. I only need to open my door and step outside to find myself in a place that offers me equivalent satisfaction.
It is as if I am on vacation at my very own home.
Plenty of people prefer travel adventures for fulfillment. I am not one of them. An occasional road trip serves me just fine, but more often than not, I prefer to stay home and soak up my immediate surroundings.
It is not lost on me that we are living in a place of exceptional natural beauty.
With our log home on the top of the hill surrounded by forest and fields, combined with the magnificent energy of the herd of four horses, this place makes me feel like I am on vacation every day.
It probably doesn’t hurt that we’ve put a lot of sweat equity into improving and maintaining some of the features. That’s just part of my nature. I saw several opportunities on trails in Iceland that I felt an urge to tend to as well.
Taking care of the land fits into the kind of things I like being able to do. It’s pretty great I get to include that in my vacation life on our glorious acres at home.
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Tit Tat
Being inclined toward contrarianism, I frequently find myself wishing for some version of equivalent retaliation against news making headlines. I’m rarely successful in coming up with anything that fits just right but that doesn’t stop my urge to imagine a good counterpunch.
What would the opposite of Russian-driven falsehoods about American politicians look like? What could Americans make up about Russian leaders that would have any equivalence? I’ve seen a lot of parodies of a bare-chested Putin in various situations, but they never feel as if they are the least bit influential.
How about a flip of stories about “millions” of criminal immigrants flowing unchecked across our borders? I’d like to see a flood of online shares about news of an equal number of unsavory Americans invading Iceland and demanding more gas and convenience stores be built along the ring road.
Here’s one that proves how futile this whole contrarian mindset is for me: campaign lawn signs. I practice the complete opposite. I don’t post any signs on our property. Ha! I sure showed them!
Doesn’t work.
The best I can come up with is countering hateful news and actions with pure love.
In a way, it doesn’t work either. Not without extra effort. Loving people can be a lot like not putting out lawn signs. Who really notices? How does it make an influential point like a good meme image with a catchy turn of phrase might?
I need to put in mental energy to overcome my desire for instant gratification of exposing objectionable acts or intentions and redirect that urge to induce a loving smile and beams of hopeful goodness upon deserved targets.
Because the world deserves better.
Plus, after I send out that love, I can still imagine miscreants slipping on a banana peel in front of people they were trying to impress. Lovingly, I mean.
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It Rained!
Real rain fell on the land last night. It was glorious. Adding to our excitement, there were moments of spectacular lightning bolts flashing across the sky. It’s been over a month since we received any measurable precipitation, and the ground was as dry as I’ve ever seen it.
I’m actually looking forward to the possibility of some mud in the paddocks this morning, although it would be a surprise if the ground didn’t fully absorb all the water like a thirsty sponge.
Despite the two nights that dipped below freezing last week, there are still places where the grass continues to grow, and Cyndie just found new blossoms on the hollyhocks she got from Liz. I don’t know what to expect next after this dose of life-giving water.
Maybe a period of normal weather. Wait, what is normal weather?
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Try Listening
One of the clearest ways for me to recognize being awake at night is when I start hearing sounds. Usually, it’s the change from not hearing anything that I find noteworthy. Think about it. When I suddenly notice a sound, it reveals that I wasn’t hearing anything before that.
There is a different version of not hearing sounds, too. When they are too familiar to us, sounds begin to be filtered out. But that is not the same as hearing nothing at all.
Have you ever noticed how frequently TV and filmmakers include sounds of distant dog barking in their soundtracks? What that’s done for me is to cause me to notice when I hear that same distant bark in the real world. I’ve decided it’s as common as those filmmakers make it seem.
The other day, a large flock of migrating birds showed up in one of our trees for a short pause in their journey, making a fantastic racket. Suddenly, for no reason we could detect, they fell silent in an instant. That was something to hear.
I wish I knew who among the thousands of birds in that tree triggered the stoppage and how they all picked up on it and shut up as quickly as they did. Seconds later, they all started chattering again.
There is something that nobody should be listening to this time of year. Well, any time of year, really. Ridiculous lies of desperate people. Whether it seems too good to be true or irritates deeply, don’t give what is said any credence until it can be proven it didn’t come from foreign interests with skills in AI audio or video manipulation.
Assume it is malicious first, and then allow the truth to be revealed in due time.
With Halloween approaching fast, ghoulish drama is all the rage. All those sounds in the dark of night suddenly seem spookier than usual. I’m not one who fears mean ghosts are lurking in my house and making mysterious clicking, creaking, and sighing noises. We live in a log house. As the air gets dry and temperatures drop, the structure makes sounds like it must be coming apart at the seams.
Moving my body across the floor of the bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom at 2 a.m. sets off so much structural groaning, clicking, and popping that I feel like I must weigh three times more than I do. I’m always surprised the sounds don’t wake Cyndie or Asher.
Back to what I hear when falling asleep, I can tell when slumber is imminent when I notice the only thing I’m hearing is my own blood flow moving with each heartbeat.
When you reach that point, it’s handy if your hearing automatically filters out any sounds of barking in the distance.
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Past Sunset
By the time I pushed my tired legs up the driveway toward the house, the sun was already below the horizon. It had been a very long day of unplanned effort, starting with the discovery of a huge tangle in Mix’s tail.
While Mix was eating from her feed bin, Cyndie worked to detangle the dreadlocked knot. I stood and watched for a while but eventually couldn’t resist reaching out to grab a portion and comb away snarls with my fingers.
I was very impressed with how Mix tolerated all the tugging on strands of her tail without complaint. It was easy to interpret this as her understanding we were working to remedy the problem in her tail.
We spent so much time on that tail that Asher was able to set a new record for digging after rodent tunnels in the dirt floor of the barn. This triggered an unplanned goal of moving accumulated debris being stored in there and putting dirt back from where it had been dug.
The project had no formal boundary, so we found ourselves progressing to layers that hadn’t been touched in probably a decade. Once you’ve gone that far, may as well continue to the bitter end.
We pulled out the shop vac and cleaned dusty cobwebs off the walls. I began to worry that all the crap that had been dragged outside created a new dilemma about what to do with it. I didn’t want it all getting piled back inside again.
In the middle of all this, I received a message that my gutter downspout was ready for pickup in Hudson. That was an opportunity I didn’t want to delay and ultimately provided the highlight of my day.
I was hoping to also purchase a piece of angle iron for our fireplace while I was out. The staff at the home improvement store moved my query up three levels of people with knowledge on the subject. Ultimately, I was sent off with ideas but no iron.
Since it didn’t seem like I could buy exactly what I was after from a store like theirs, I decided to act on a whim. There is a very industrial-looking little shop on the highway out of River Falls called “Steel Towne.” I’d driven past this place twice a day during my years commuting to the day-job and always wondered who their customers were.
Found out they serve walk-ins. I pulled in and described the problem I was trying to solve. Five minutes later, I was handed a two-foot piece that cost me $3.00. I left with a whopping sense of elation.
Cyndie had worked non-stop to keep cleaning while I was gone, so I jumped right back into the barn project we didn’t know we were going to do when we woke up that morning.
There are some things that simply got moved to storage in the hay shed or the shop garage, but we agreed to throw out a fair amount of other stuff.
We were getting wobbly-legged at the end and did move several objects back into the middle of the barn temporarily so we could close things up for the night.
As I shuffled toward the house and enjoyed the orange glow in the western sky, I contemplated the gutter downspout project and the fireplace fix, which are actually planned work that is on the agenda for today.
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Felt Hot
Yesterday was day two in the 80s and combined with the drought we are experiencing, it felt rather unsatisfying around here. Admittedly, being unsatisfied with warmth in October isn’t something we usually express, but it’s because the warmth was actually annoyingly hot.
At least we enjoyed the benefit of having our windows open overnight, so the hoots of our forest owls were easy to hear.
If I was still tied to a day-job, I would have called in yesterday and claimed a mental health day. Instead, I just showed up for chores a few minutes late. Maybe it’s because it was a Monday, even though Mondays are no longer the dreaded burden like they were for 40-some years of my gainful employment.
Of course, for Sunday sports fans, football game losses and Championship WNBA game 5 losses can easily cast a pall of gloom that carries over into Mondays. That is something that doesn’t affect dogs, horses, or spouses who can take or leave team athletic competitions with zero residual impact.
“Honey, our unbeaten streak is over!”
“Oh? Can you unload the dishwasher for me?”
Asher just wanted to go outside and run after his favorite yard ball with a rope through the middle of it. That is a game in which he requires a person to act like they want possession of the ball more than he does.
Yesterday, I would have preferred to unload a dishwasher.
Eventually, despite the heat, I managed to drag myself down by the road to do battle in some of our thickest undergrowth to eradicate more buckthorn shoots that had sprouted from stumps I had cut the year before. I coerced Cyndie into coming along to help point out locations because when I get in the middle of things, I tend to overlook opportunities that are often right behind me or practically underfoot.
After lunch, I made my way down along the fence line on the far side of the hay field with the pole chainsaw trimmer to clear out low-hanging box elder tree branches that were beginning to droop too close to the top wire. My desire to have those branches cut down has increased every day that I’ve walked Asher along that pathway for the last few months.
It feels so great to have them finally dispatched that I find I no longer care about what happened in Sunday’s sports competitions.
Although, carrying the heavy pole saw all the way back from the far side of the field in the high heat kept me from feeling too much in the way of jubilance.
The first thought I had when I eventually returned to the house was that it was too hot to be wearing socks. I’m hoping the local meteorologist’s claim that yesterday would be the last time we reach 80 this year proves accurate.
I am very ready for some weather that deserves warm socks.
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Clever Disguise
It took Cyndie’s curiosity to draw proper attention to a volunteer tree growing by the driveway a couple of days ago. I had noticed it recently and wondered what it might be but didn’t give it any more thought than that. Cyndie handed me Asher’s leash and pulled out her phone with an app for identifying plants.
To my surprise, it showed Common Buckthorn as a result.
I went back for a closer look. Sure enough. It even had berries on it, the curse that attracts birds to help spread its seeds. How did I let this grow all summer long?
One reason is the absence of the classic dark green coloring of the leaves. This time of year, it gets much easier to spot the new appearance of buckthorn by the deep green that lasts much longer into the fall season when surrounding growth is fading.
Just a short distance away, I came upon these shoots that had sprouted from a spot where I had cut out growth a year before.
Much easier to notice and positively identify.
That tree by the driveway was cleverly disguised by leaf coloring that had it looking like any other innocuous growth present in the surrounding area. If Cyndie hadn’t taken notice, I probably would have ignored that bunch of sprouts for a least another season.
Speaking of seasons, as in years, we are now into our thirteenth year living on this property in western Wisconsin. Last week, Cyndie and I looked back at the posts I wrote in October 2012 when the moving truck came to our old home in Eden Prairie, MN, and relived some of the drama around the failed attempts to easily close on each property.
A LOT of things happened in the ensuing years. Our first spring here, we received 18” of snow in the first days of May. There was a lot of activity to change the fencing and build the paddocks in preparation for getting horses. We put a few years into starting a little business with the horses.
When that dream faded, it was replaced by a focus on providing a retirement home to four rescued thoroughbred broodmares. We’ve annually hosted a peace walk on World Labyrinth Day every May and improved or maintained various trails through our woods.
Every fall, I put my focus on eradicating every hint of Common Buckthorn that I can find within the borders of our twenty acres. This year, it is warmer and dryer than most Octobers here, which seems to be aiding some of the buckthorn in hiding from my view.
That doesn’t worry me. I’ll find it next year if that’s what it takes.
Our clever disguise is that we are starting to look like we’ve always lived here. We are happily forging ahead into our thirteenth winter at Wintervale. Despite 80°F temperatures yesterday, logic tells us winter will show up eventually.
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Pile Processed
It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t quick. However, our do-it-yourself solution of relandscaping the area of our walkways along the foundation of our garage saved us thousands of dollars that it would have cost to have professionals do the work. When covered in dust and mud with wet shoes, soaked pant legs, and tired backs, my cheerleading often involved reminders of all that money we were saving.
Maybe it was a residual impact of my three vaccination shots from days earlier, but my stamina for the project of processing the pile of river rock did not match Cyndie’s. Her tenacity to remain on task kept us going until the tarp was rinsed clean yesterday.
To my credit, it was my idea to modify our shoveling and rinsing by pulling out the grate we had used weeks ago when trying to clean up the old existing rock for reuse. Placing that grate on the tarp and rinsing through it freed us from the tedious effort of trying to scoop rocks off the top of the pile in avoidance of the unwanted wet, sandy gravel that became increasingly prominent as we progressed.
Suddenly, I could simply scoop shovelfuls mindlessly, and the detritus would be washed away with ease. We then used the small stones that filtered out to fill spaces between the big slabs along the walkway.
I would say the results lack the look of a job done by professionals. It needs time to settle before it will look more natural. We will be kicking stray river rocks off the slabs for months, I expect.
Each time I do that, I will think of the money we saved by doing this ourselves. I’ll also remind myself that we used that saved money to take an adventurous trip to Iceland with our friends.
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Relative Something 