Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Snow Shortage
There are plenty of reasons I lament the disappearance of snow, especially when it happens in JANUARY! Obviously, the inability to make a decent igloo is high among them but the onset of melty temperatures brings an additional complication. As the ground softens in the paddocks, we enter mud-saster season. For a period of time at the end of snow season, being able to scrub boots clean on the way to the house after horse chores is a real plus.
Too bad the mud always outlasts the snow. By all indications, we will likely lose the majority of our snow-cone-quality crystals by the end of today. A few stray piles will remain along the edges of areas shoveled or plowed which will allow for scraping boots. They become treasured resources for a dwindling few days.
It’s little things like this that we allow to make special moments in otherwise routine days.
.
.
Ice Growth
With overnight temperatures hovering close to freezing during this January thaw, we are waking to interesting conditions outside. The most notable surface has been the asphalt driveway. Yesterday, instead of the smooth glaze that occurred the day before, we experienced alien-looking ice formations peppering the pavement. It made walking interesting because some areas were simply wet while others were surprisingly slippery.
As so often happens, capturing the full visual impact of the ice shapes by way of a photograph is a no match for the naked eye but that rarely stops one from trying.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
After just a few hours, the driveway surface changes to just being wet. I’ve read that our winter weather is becoming much more like what happens in places 500-600 miles (800-965 km) south of here. This sure isn’t the winter weather I remember from back when I was a kid.
Above is a view of our place’s appearance on January 25 this year. I don’t like the non-winter-like weather but I am counting our blessings that we have, up to this point, been free of climate-related wildfires or floods. Our growing season is getting longer, we are saving money on heating the house, and I haven’t had to shovel or plow much snow. All good, no? Well, we are always at risk of getting hit with extreme downpours, high winds, hail, and tornados since storms are becoming more intense.
Some strange ice growth on the driveway in the morning is hardly problematic. We find it rather interesting, although it’s hard to do it justice in photos.
.
.
Blessed Calm
While it lasts, we are currently enjoying the blessings of calm serenity with the horses. The temperatures have softened, blankets have been removed, no illnesses or injuries to speak of, and all four have settled into a smooth routine of eating their feed out of hanging buckets.
Yesterday, they even got all of their hooves trimmed without incident. Cyndie was away for the day and I was responsible for getting each of them into their halters. For the first time in my experience, not one of them backed off and made me try multiple times for cooperation. Each horse stood firm and allowed me to fumble with straps, latches, and my limited reach around their tall necks.
I think they were being nice for my sake.
They have also been behaving surprisingly well at feeding times. The four of them take up positions in the spots they originally chose for their feed buckets, with only an occasional need for us to coax some relocating.
It is particularly rewarding on days when they step up in advance and calmly await their buckets. That usually coincides with no-fuss eating, devoid of shenanigans or excess spillage.
It’s a scenario where everyone wins.
While things are all well and good with the horses, our dog Asher has gotten himself into a little trouble at the doggie daycare place. We’ve been happy about him having somewhere to occasionally go where he could interact with other dogs and free us for a few hours. He has spoiled that with a second offense of not playing well with others at the place in Hudson.
As a result of his aggression against another dog yesterday, he has been banished for good from the facility.
Not everything was as calm as it seemed.
.
.
Glazed Asphalt
The smooth black surface of our driveway is great for melting snow that remains after plowing. It’s not so great when moisture condenses overnight and freezes. We need to get a sign that warns, “Slippery When Glazed!”
Luckily, the warmth visiting our region as the day progressed made that glaze disappear entirely. We lost more snow on Sunday than yesterday but the trend is obvious and feeds itself. Each day we get above freezing will advance the evaporation to greater degrees (pun intended).
On a day over the previous weekend when the clouds weren’t as opaque, I captured this view directly overhead:
A cloud gazers delight. Do you see the dolphin? I’m intrigued by the contrast of shadowed clouds compared to the ones glowing bright white. I wonder what it looked like from the window of an airplane flying close to the same elevation.
Not much sky watching happening when walking on our driveway in the morning hours. Waddling along like penguins are we.
.
.
Remembering Mischief
Scanning headlines yesterday, I saw the following from NBC News: “Fake Joe Biden robocall tells New Hampshire Democrats not to vote on Tuesday.” My first thought was to personalize it and wonder if I would fall for a fake robocall telling me to do, or not do, anything. Who goes through the effort to create such a scam and do they think it will succeed in whatever it is they are hoping to accomplish?
Foreign rabble-rousers probably hoping to sow seeds of doubt in U.S. elections. Good-for-nothing troublemakers, whoever they are.
Now, I’m not entirely innocent when it comes to clever shenanigans. There was a time when I took great pleasure in using the lowest-tech of kluges to pull off my own –I think harmless– ruses.
My siblings may remember when I made a copy of a legitimate news article on the subject of Frito-Lay products and altered the wording to claim Frito corn chips smell like dirty socks. We were on a road trip together and the subject had come up in one of our conversations. Don’t ask. I don’t even remember the details, anyway.
Everyone knows it’s true, that is what Fritos smell like. Especially if you’re not the one eating them. But it’s not something you expect to read in the Business section of a newspaper. That’s why I thought it would be hilarious to tweak the article by altering one sentence and creating believable evidence supporting the assertions I posed in that road trip conversation.
They didn’t buy it. None of them fell for my keenly crafted perfection in matching the font.
Didn’t change the truth, though. Dirty socks. Go ahead, try to eat some Fritos without thinking of that now.
For some reason, a different font-matching ruse from my past is the first memory that came up after thinking about the robocalls yesterday. The company I worked for in the 1980s and 90s came up with a contest for the employees. It was a treasure hunt of sorts with a series of clues provided over time. I don’t recall the reason for the “adventure-tainment,” but it could easily have been an HR idea for team-building or a morale boost of some sort.
Doesn’t matter. I was eager to solve the puzzle for my group of Engineers and we gobbled up the clues to combine our analytical skills and beat everyone to the prize. Our critical sleuthing led us to a cover over an air vent but there was no new clue there. I figured other treasure hunters might come to a similar conclusion and look in that same place.
I knew where the gold paper used for clues was stored so I decided we should make a fake clue and leave it for others to find in hopes of leading them astray. Once again I used my novice font-matching skills in hopes of making the game more interesting.
Except that the game didn’t get interesting. As far as we knew, nobody ever looked for that fake clue. I was so entertained by messing with the game that I think I lost interest in the real clues. Somebody else found the treasure. We went back to thinking about what we were supposed to be working on.
A fun memory. At least my mischief wasn’t aimed at destroying democracies. Don’t fall for fake Biden robocalls!
.
.
Still Life
I’m not always looking at the sky for photo subjects. This solitary leaf on the thinly snow-covered driveway made for a good still-life image.
Back indoors, I spotted the collection of zippers on my layers of winter wear in the mirror.
In the barn, we are down to the last bag of feed, which is in glaring contrast to the stack of feed that usually covers that pallet.
I sent this picture to our handler at This Old Horse to remind her we were due for delivery and since she was coming on Wednesday for a hoof trimming appointment, the timing would be just right. Cyndie was gone overnight Saturday and offered to tend to the horses in the evening yesterday since I was watching NFL playoff games. When Cyndie noticed the last bag, she took a picture and sent it to our TOH handler, as well.
Oops. How’s that for classic husband and wife failure to communicate with each other about this kind of thing? I meant to tell Cyndie that I’d checked in but I was too late. When I told her, she said she had done the same thing: taken a picture of the last bag and texted our handler. The reply informed Cyndie that I had already sent the same picture.
Great minds think alike, though, eh?
For good measure, I’ll throw in one of my classic filled-frame close-ups featuring the texture of tree bark from our woods.
In reality, there was very little that was still around our place yesterday with winds blowing between 12-20 mph most of the day. That’s the way warmer air arrives in January, on winds blowing in from the south.
I should be able to keep my complaints to a minimum, thank you very much.
.
.
Conditions Soften
The winter months this season have been about as soft as I’ve experienced in this region compared to all the years my somewhat feeble memory has retained while living in what is described as the upper midwestern United States. The previous week has been the only period of dramatic cold temperatures and that bone-chilling Arctic blast has already begun to release its stinging grip.
The relaxing of the horses’ energy is palpable. They are stoic beasts in the face of the worst weather that nature manages to conjure up. They may display a bit of shortened patience while we stumble around to complete our tasks in minus thirty-degree (F) wind chill, but they stand firm and resolute against the oppressive pressures of extreme cold.
When the temperature climbs back to positive numbers, we can feel the release of tension their bodies have been holding in defense against the elements. That’s when I noticed the same thing was happening to me this morning.
I can breathe without frost forming on my whiskers, bolstered by the knowledge a January thaw is on tap in the days ahead. The only catch with the arrival of above-freezing temps is that any precipitation that might show up at the same time could fall as rain, my absolute least favorite winter condition.
Winter rain just leads to winter ice. Yuck. And the horses agree with me on that assessment.
I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying fancy winter lighting in the sky recently.
Always remember to look straight up in the sky to capture some great views.
I don’t know how to find a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, but it was a treat watching the light play in the wisps of clouds in the sky.
A day or two later, an unexplained streak of cloud (remains of a contrail?) caught my eye because of the fiery refraction of sunlight at the end.
Something tells me the warmer air moving in won’t offer daytime light shows like the icy skies just did.
.
.
Impressive Recovery
It’s hard to know for sure how long ago the top of this tree snapped off. One possibility that I find believable is a reported tornado that occurred in 2010, two years before we moved here. We could see plenty of evidence of severe chaotic tree damage when we arrived. In fact, there were so many large trees in various stages of fracture that their shattered remains grabbed attention much more than the wild sprouts of new growth that began to emerge in the aftermath.
The other day, while trying to keep up with Asher as he bushwhacked through our woods in pursuit of whatever critter scent he was detecting, one of those [no longer] new sprouts caught my attention.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
How did this growth succeed in getting that large at that remarkable dangling U-turn off the side of the original trunk? It has me wondering how much bigger it will be able to become.
There is a large opening at the bottom of the main trunk that reveals the center has been hollowed out by homesteading wildlife in the intervening years, as well as decay and fungal growth up above where the storm damage first occurred.
The odds of a long future for this tree don’t look all that promising, but the significance of that limb soaring straight up sure says something about resilience.
I love being able to witness this kind of resilience every time we wander through the woods. Now that I’ve spotted this tree clearly, I’ll be checking on it regularly through the seasons to keep track of its progress. Who knows which of us will outlast the other?
.
.
Learning How
Every day I am learning how to do something. Some days it’s as simple as figuring out how to identify what I want to do next. Sorting out wants from needs and determining priorities. We do that our entire lives but I feel like I am still learning how to do it with each new day’s parameters.
None of us have been to January 19, 2024, until now, under today’s circumstances. It wouldn’t hurt to take a humble and inquisitive view of whatever tasks we face each day, whether they are familiar or not. We might learn something. For one example, we all need to learn to adapt to the ongoing changes of our warming planet.
Lately, I find a lot of my learning has to do with our dog, Asher. My life would be a heck of a lot easier if he spoke words in my language.
“Just tell me what you want!”
That usually gets me the tilted-head blank stare or just continued whining.
One thing that he seems very happy with is heavy physical play from me. I’m not always in the mood, but when I am, I try to give him a strong dose of roughhousing.
His foster mom told us he liked to play rough with their other dogs so I use my hands like a dog’s mouth and grab at his neck and ears when we do battle. Sometimes I push him away (he charges right back at me) and sometimes I pull him in to keep him guessing.
You can see in the pictures that Asher has a ball in his mouth. That is the object we are battling over for possession. If there is no toy to occupy his teeth, my head and hands become the next target for a grasp by his jaw.
The matches are no-holds-barred and I need to be sure to remove my glasses because I get punched a lot when he is trying to reach out and get a leg up on me.
The struggle I have with this game is that he never seems to get tired of it. I need to learn how to nurture a transition to a cool-down activity when I’m ready for a break in the action.
There is no tapping out, although he is sensitive enough to back off and check on me if he notices I got hurt.
The easiest way to switch his focus is to produce a dog treat for him to eat. Asher has learned an impressive level of command compliance indoors with training drills. I wish the offering of treats carried the same power in the great outdoors.
We both are learning more about each other every day.
.
.
Relative Something 