Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
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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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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Relative Something 