Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Rocking Out
That pile of river rock was not going to move itself. Despite an onslaught of blowing leaves infiltrating our futile efforts to keep them out, we washed, shoveled, and dumped rocks around both the front and back entryways of the house yesterday.
For those of you who have ever witnessed Cyndie’s ability to fill endless hours in the shallows up at the lake, scanning for rocks worthy of being picked up, imagine what this project is like for her.
They’re just rocks, you might think. Not to Cyndie. She was enjoying this project in a way similar to how I enjoy putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
“Look at this one!”
I lost count of the number of times I was invited to check out one of her noteworthy finds.
Something tells me there is no such thing as “just a pile of rocks.”
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Serious Frost
There have been a handful of mornings recently when there was a hint of frost on blades of grass in low areas, but yesterday morning, we stepped out to find a serious frost on everything. If there is any sense to be found in this world, this should finally mark the end of our growing season.
The air was dead calm, and I got the impression the cold snap had triggered trees to jettison leaves in a spectacular cascade. They were falling like raindrops and sounded a bit like them, too.
I eventually pulled out the mower to (hopefully) make the last grass cut down by the road and along our driveway.
Since it has been so dry for many weeks, I’d not bothered to cut several areas where most of the grass had gone dormant. However, in that amount of time, the swaths where the grass was growing got pretty tall. It feels good to now have it all cleaned up and ready for winter.
It was a day or two later than probably should have been done, but I also hauled the compressor over to blow out the buried water line that runs from the house down to the labyrinth. As long as I was taking care of winterizing chores, I pulled the ATV out from the back of the garage and parked the riding mower in its place.
The Grizzly is now parked front and center and ready to have the plow blade mounted for when it will be needed.
Of course, having done all this because of that heavy overnight frost, now the next six days are forecast to be in the 60s to mid-70s(F) for highs and the 50s for lows.
I just hope another warm spell won’t be enough to inspire grass blades to have one more growth spurt.
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Three Shots
Why did I get three shots at once yesterday? Because they were offered. I laugh at myself when thinking of people who refuse to get vaccinations and here I go accepting multiple at once. As a person who has made a choice to use my thoughts to support my physical self in being as healthy as possible, I am not inclined to imagine bad things resulting from vaccinations.
I frame the pain in my arms as my body getting busy identifying the threat and doing the good work of preparing to fend off any future contacts. The fact that our bodies can deal with three different instances simultaneously impresses the heck out of me.
I’m a fan of the medical advances that have come with our understanding of microscopic interactions in the biological world. We don’t experience outbreaks of diseases because some invisible deity chooses to seek vengeance against humans.
I don’t recall my parents demonstrating any concerns against vaccinations, and that probably influenced my willingness to accept modern medical advice. Somewhere in my collection of family memorabilia, I have the “Quarantine” sign that hung on my dad’s front door when he had polio.
How great is it that virologist Jonas Salk developed a successful vaccine against poliomyelitis in 1953? How about Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming finding the antibacterial effect of Penicillion mold in 1928? I lived on Penicillin through most of my youth, treating strep throat.
In the past year, I was subject to a bout of COVID-19 and, more recently, pneumonia. Today, I am armed (get it?) with fresh defenses against both, plus the current version for influenza.
I’ve entered that age bracket, you know. Goodness me, now I have to pay attention to the myriad health advisories for people 65 and older.
At least they aren’t concerned about giving old folks three shots at once.
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Middle October
You wouldn’t know by looking, but November is just a couple of weeks away. Terror movies, scary costumes, and campaign lawn signs will only intensify between now and then, but soon, it will all be behind us.
For much of my life, I have practiced the fine art of ignoring most of the crafty ways marketing whizzes attempt to grab my attention. When it comes to several house-sized monstrosities erected in and around River Falls with the name of a felonious candidate, I feel a significant dose of smugness in successfully averting my gaze to avoid looking at them every time I drive past.
Conversely, I take great pleasure in rereading the tiny little sign in one farmyard near our home that says simply, “HATE WILL NOT MAKE US GREAT.”
I see what I want to see.
I’m afraid that by the time November arrives, we won’t have any trees with leaves left in them. They are falling fast and furious now, even though some leaves are still pretty green.
I’m a little sad about how many of the leaves have just turned cardboard-brown before dropping to the ground.
One thing about the warm weather that we have enjoyed lately is having our bedroom window open to hear the hoots of our resident owls reverberating through the forest.
We’ve also noticed some instances where wailing sirens from emergency vehicles in the distance have triggered packs of coyotes to respond in kind.
I think the dwindling foliage is leading to sounds carrying further.
It sounds like fall. I think I can even hear the frost forming on the pumpkins.
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Leak Repair
The person who installed our horse waterer works for the excavating company that delivers rock and gravel for our needs. Yesterday, we accomplished two goals that have lingered all summer through his delivery of river rock to finish our landscape upgrade and then his replacing a cracked valve in the waterer.
We started our landscape project in the spring and it has dragged on for months. It is very satisfying to finally have the rocks delivered which puts the completion of this project entirely in our control.
When the rocks poured out of the tilted truck bed, they created a cloud of dust so thick I couldn’t see the truck anymore. Their supply of river rocks had sat collecting all that dust for more than a month due to the absence of rain that would normally provide a periodic rinse.
Due to the incredibly wet spring and summer months this year, it wasn’t obvious that the waterer in the paddocks was leaking. With the arrival of our current drought, the ground dried up everywhere except the area around the waterer.
I don’t like knowing that the cracked valve that was found yesterday is probably related to a freezing event (maybe the first time the barn lost power) and has been leaking for half a year.
The Ritchie waterer needed to be disconnected and removed, and water pumped from the hole in order to confirm the cracked valve and replace it.
Of course, like so many projects of this type, the fix required a trip to the hardware store for parts, which prolonged the time the waterer was out of service to the horses.
I had closed gates to keep the horses out of the small paddock while the repair was underway, but they had full access to the fields through the large paddock. When they wandered in from grazing and showed interest in getting a drink, I hustled to provide a large bucket under the overhang that I filled from the spigot in the barn.
The repair was taking much longer than I expected. Taking advantage of the waterer being disassembled, I was able to scour moldy nooks and crannies that were otherwise unreachable, making good use of time while our favorite repairman was off buying parts. I looked up from my scrubbing and found all four horses lingering around the bucket like a bunch of people bellied up to a bar. Cute.
With Asher napping patiently in the barn, I’d spent the entire afternoon until horse feeding time on this project. When the valve had been replaced and the waterer reassembled, my feeling of satisfaction doubled for the day.
Even though it’s sad to see how dry the ground is in most places around here, I’m really looking forward to the wet spot in the paddock finally drying up for the first time all summer.
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Still Blooming
Nearing the end of the second week of October in my part of the world didn’t used to involve rose blossoms. These days, this kind of outdoor plant behavior is not all that surprising.
Asher and I were visiting the labyrinth to top off the water bag around the maple tree when I noticed the flowers. They stood out against the drought-influenced fading life and fallen leaves all around them. I was struck by the fact the rose bush was able to do so much with so little moisture available in the ground.
I must admit, it feels somewhat futile to try giving one tree a tiny bit of extra water while the rest of the growth in the surrounding woods is left wanting.
The fall colors have been less spectacular than some other years but it is changing.
As dusk settled in and the half-moon stood out brightly in the sky, the uncharacteristic warmth of a summer evening on this October night was simply the new normal.
While other parts of the world are coping with floods, our little nook in Wisconsin, USA, is warm and dry.
With rose blossoms.
No Fix
It’s official. The splice in the power wire to the barn was not the point of failure. Where does that leave things? Right where I didn’t want them. The electricians were unable to tell me where the break in the buried wire might be occurring.
For the time being, I have chosen to continue to rely on one “hot” line providing 120VAC to all the circuits in the barn. That is the way we have been operating since the problem initially occurred in January, and it has proved to be sufficient.
Since we haven’t been able to come up with an explanation for the failure of the one line, I’m concerned about the potential risk of the other line suffering the same fate, which would leave us with no power at all in the barn. The guys said they see this kind of thing with a surprising regularity.
Apparently, there is a lot more going on underground than I realized. The causes they’ve seen include tree roots, burrowing critters, and rocks pushing their way into the wires.
My plan, at this point, is to live with the risk. If the remaining power line suddenly fails, we will run an above-ground extension cord until we can get scheduled to have new wires bored beneath the driveway. I asked for a quote for the expense of this work and learned that although it wouldn’t be cheap, it would be less than I anticipated.
We will be saving up for that eventuality. Hopefully, we’ll have years to tuck away the funds.
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Authorized Destruction
Elysa gave Asher a new toy a while back that quickly became his absolute favorite. It was an interactive “Tearrible” stuffed creature with limbs attached by Velcro strips.
He starts right away with the frantic “kill shake” that often immediately dismembers one or more of the Velcroed appendages. Then he stomps a paw on the body and emphatically rips the remaining arm/leg/tail/ears loose and spits them out to the side. This is all perfectly by design and is as rewarding for him to do as it is for us to observe.
Once he gets down to just the body, Asher runs around with it like a prize, usually pushing it up against one of us in hopes of instigating a tug-of-war game over the now-damp stuffed toy.
It is at this point that he begins to take the dissecting a little too far. If we don’t take it away, his next favorite thing to do is chew vigorously at the edges of the Velcro strips and eventually shred the fabric enough to start pulling the stuffing out of it.
Cyndie has sewn up the wounds countless times and worked hard to salvage the body despite the dwindling functionality of attaching limbs after the shape has become distorted and the Velcro less functional. Since Asher loves the toy so much, Cyndie has replaced worn-out ones with brand-new purchases several times.
A little while ago, she decided to write to the company and share her experiences with trying to keep the toy functional. Cyndie offered a suggestion they try making the body out of a tougher fabric for dogs like ours that like to play extra rough.
She received a wonderful response thanking her for the information and was invited to sign up for announcements of their occasional fire hose version that always sells out right away. The company also asked about the size versions we have and offered to replace the bodies at no charge, after confirming that all the detachable pieces are still good.
Boy, did that make Asher happy! And a happy dog makes for happy owners.
It’s hard to describe how much fun it is to watch Asher having such a good time getting the Velcro to come apart with that rewarding riiiiipping sound and the way he loses no time in tossing the freed piece to the side and instantly chomping down on the next rippable limb.
He definitely has the predator gene driving his instincts when it comes to plush toy play. Is it weird that he seems to develop a smile whenever we give him a chance to “kill” his toy?
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More Digging
What’d you do yesterday? I dug through dry, packed gravel that was as hard as concrete to uncover even more of the AC power wires to the barn. With Cyndie’s participation, we worked together from two ends and met in the middle.
The owner of the Electric/Plumbing company we use for service stopped by in the morning to assess the situation. He was concerned there could be an additional splice and convinced me to dig up the rest of the lines all the way to the barn.
That was easy for him to say and a heck of a lot of work for us to do. At least we now know there are no other splices, at least not in that direction. I have very high confidence the patchwork that was done over ten years ago did not involve any more than the bare minimum repair to solve (and bury) the problem they had created.
What still remains unanswered for now is whether or not the splice is where power is actually being lost. I have notified the company that the cables are exposed all the way to the barn, allowing them to schedule an electrician to (hopefully) verify the splice is the problem and then redo all three splices with a much higher-quality up-to-date process.
I’m looking forward to that work being done so we can put all that class 5 gravel and thick clay soil back where it came from.
I don’t know what today’s projects at Wintervale will be for us, but I’m going to make every effort to avoid anything that involves digging.
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Water Woes
I’m beginning to feel that water is the real “can’t live with it; can’t live without it” element in our world. It’s obvious that we need water to survive. It’s a little odd that I’m choosing to dis water during a phenomenally dry period of more than a month. This current stretch of dry weather has taken us from an unusually wet spring and summer into problematic drought conditions.
Cyndie added a water bag around the trunk of the young maple tree in the center of the labyrinth yesterday to help it cope with the water shortage.
One of the pesky water issues that triggered me yesterday has to do with the inspection of our chimney. I learned different ways water is the culprit we need to fend off constantly. The 34-year-old “crown” at the top of our chimney is flatter than it is crowned and the masonry is cracking. The rain and snow that lands on those cracks can seep in and become problematic in various ways.
One thing I didn’t consider is how condensation inside the chimney can contribute to the degradation of masonry or corrosion of the metal of the damper or firebox components.
Looking closely at the masonry around the stones on the outside of our chimney reveals a few cracks forming and has me resigned to adding a sealer to extend the life of the structure.
We just finished re-sloping the landscape around the garage foundation, and I’ve rerouted gutter downspouts, all to protect our house from water. The logs and deck have been sealed to protect them from the abuses of water. The integrity of our roof shingles is a constant concern to protect the house from water damage.
Cyndie just got home from the lake, where she spent the weekend dealing with a water leak in the basement laundry room, where signs of mold along the baseboard are already evident.
I’m anxious to find out if the potential failure of an electrical splice is somehow water-related. I uncovered the three splices yesterday and didn’t see anything obvious. I chose not to mess with it so the electrician could observe the condition they were in when uncovered.
I truly hope this old repair proves to be the problem. If not, the alternative may require burying a whole new run of wires the full distance from the circuit breaker box on the shop wall down to the barn.
That would involve a long pathway beneath the large expanse of asphalt in front of the shop garage.
Please let the fix be in the splice I’ve dug up.
Back to water problems, my brain is hurting from the ongoing news reports about the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, and now Hurricane Milton is winding up with a scary level of intensity bearing toward Florida’s Gulf coast.
Water, water everywhere. It gives us life and it can be the bane of our existence.
For the sake of all our growing things, I sure hope it rains here pretty soon. And when it does, I also wish the water would stay out of all the places we don’t want it to go.
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Relative Something 