Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Sail Down
Since we seem to be on a roll lately of preparing in advance for the coming winter, we decided to take down the shade sail yesterday. By saying, “in advance,” I am referring to how we have been taking care of things while the weather is pleasant instead of waiting until it starts getting nasty outside and we are forced to do it without delay.
I’m relieved that we barely had any wind to deal with because when a slight breeze occurred, the loosened sail suddenly pulled with surprising force. I can’t imagine trying to take the sail down every time the wind appeared to be getting too strong. Luckily, Mix showed up to hold the ladder for me when I started spinning the first turnbuckle.
When I moved the ladder to the opposite corner, Mia joined us to see if she could help, too.
It’s rewarding to see the horses remain calm while we are behaving in unusual ways. Yesterday, it was our working with the ladder and gathering up the large sail in our arms right in their midst. They showed a healthy curiosity, but didn’t startle over our strange activity.
For winter storage, I decided to hang the sail by its corners inside the barn, like I had done in the beginning, before the posts and framing were in place in the paddock.
I tightened the turnbuckles up to suspend it out of the way over our heads. It helps that Cyndie and I are both short people.
Without the sail, the framing still looks pretty good to me. It’s got character.
The extended weather forecast currently mentions a 30% possibility of a frozen mix of precipitation on Saturday. Having the sail taken down frees us from any concerns about how it will fare if that happens. It also allows us to keep our attention on how the horses will be coping in the event of cold, wet, and freezing conditions.
This time, they may be getting blankets instead of the rain sheets if it’s going to get as cold as is being predicted. The high temperature on Sunday may not even rise above freezing.
Oh my, that’s almost like the normal November weather of the good old days! Bring it on. This year, we are about as ready for winter weather as we’ve ever been. It’s kind of a reverse psychology thing. If we prepare for the worst, then maybe it won’t happen.
Especially since we also always hope for the best.
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Good Life
We woke yesterday morning with a glee hangover from our amazing David Byrne show Monday night, and it lingered throughout the day. Blessed with a fabulous climate-warmed summery-feeling November morning, we danced our way through the woods with Asher before approaching the barn to feed the horses.
We found the mares luxuriating in the emerging sunlight and mellow as ever. It got me thinking about how they stand so stoically to endure the miserable conditions when the weather is gruesome, as if they are aware that it never lasts, and that there will eventually be rewarding days like this as compensation.
Lately, mornings as nice as this one was –when the horses are calmly munching their feed and the natural world is as peaceful as ever– serve as a balm, soothing and comforting us. Coming on the heels of our evening of super special entertainment, it felt like we were getting a double dose of feel-good medicine.
Asher seemed to be enjoying the unusually nice weather as well, and it had him romping playfully all over the place. When I decided to try raking some leaves, he behaved like I was making piles for him to race through and kick all over the place.
For what I hope is the last time this year (never say never), I got out the riding mower to mulch the leaves in the backyard grass. Most of the trees that drop leaves have finished doing that, so it seemed like a reasonable time to finish tending to the grass in back.
When I put the mower back in the garage, I moved the ATV to the front and parked the mower behind it, a symbolic gesture in anticipation of the change from mowing season to snowplowing season.
After that, I started picking off little nuisance tasks that had been nagging at me for a while. I drove my car to the shop garage to put air in the tires. Then I brought our three most-used wheelbarrows up from the barn to inflate tires on those. I attached a recently purchased battery manager to the diesel tractor battery. It instantly kicked into “charging” mode. That tractor doesn’t get driven enough to keep the battery charged.
Cyndie cleaned and mended horse blankets. I moved a fresh batch of hay bales from the shed into the barn. We moved her picnic “door table” and chairs from beneath the big oak tree in the woods into the barn for winter storage.
Working outdoors felt like we’d been given a gift to accomplish all these things on such a pleasant weather day. With all of our animals showing irrepressible joy and contentment, it felt like we were living the (really) good life.
If only I could train my brain to retain the sense of this goodness with more weight than it does with the challenging days of harsh weather and difficult problems, I would be ever so grateful. That would be living an even better life.
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Fabulous Show
Last night, Cyndie and I met our friends, Pam and John, for dinner and a show in Minneapolis. We picked them up at their house after feeding the horses and Asher a little earlier than usual in the afternoon. We ate downtown at the Clay Oven restaurant for Indian food. They offer a huge selection of freshly prepared options, and luckily for us, they ask what level of spiciness you prefer for each choice. Delicious eats!
It was just a short drive away to the Orpheum theater to see David Byrne’s first of two nights on his “Who Is the Sky Tour.”
The show was fabulous. The dramatic stage projection images were really powerful. Their opening song was “Heaven,” and it looked like they were performing on the moon. Much to my liking, he performed a good number of popular Talking Heads songs throughout the set.
The visual imagery was striking. Seeing the show from the balcony allowed for a great view of the floor scenes as they changed from the lunar surface to grass, then a dirty city street, a rooftop, and even a shot of his actual apartment in New York City.
The thirteen members of the ensemble backing him up were completely mobile and moved around the whole time like a precision marching band. During the song with their names, the words followed them around wherever they went.
The packed house gave him many rousing ovations, particularly after one impressive visual extravaganza. When he stepped forward to speak after the song, the roar of the crowd picked up and was sustained for a minute or two before he could say anything.
It was a wonderful night, and the fabulous spectacle put a smile on everyone we saw leaving the theater. We had purchased our tickets late, so we were seated individually across the balcony. Waiting to meet up again after the show allowed us to stand and observe most of the folks on their way out.
David Byrne’s artistry is a welcome balm for what ails the country these days. In addition to all the smiles, it seemed like everyone had a little more hop in their step, too.
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From Nowhere
Luckily, I don’t bet on my sports fan hunches. I didn’t expect the Gopher football team to snatch the victory in their game Saturday afternoon. I didn’t expect the Blue Jays to lose Game 7 of the World Series. I firmly doubted the Vikings were going to get the better of Detroit yesterday.
I was not surprised that the order to once again change the clocks back an hour to Standard Time would disorient activities associated with my sleep, the feeding times for animals, and bedtime for Asher. It seems to me that an agreement will never be reached to settle on a year-round, consistent time rule in the USA.
Humans are so intelligent, we should leave the clocks alone and change the hours of our activities if there is a need to do things only when it is light outside. Another option would be to put a big mirror out on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere to reflect sunlight on our population centers for the hours when natural daylight is shorter than our lifestyles demand.
We had some fine-looking moonlight glowing through the clouds last night after the hour-earlier sunset had transpired.
Cyndie and I spent the middle of the day yesterday seeing Jeremy Allen White’s impersonation of Bruce Springsteen in the movie “Deliver Me from Nowhere.” I went in with little knowledge of the storyline and came out much better informed about the Boss’s struggle with depression in the heyday of his early success.
It was a powerful depiction of how the weight of childhood stress can become too much to carry as adults if never addressed.
A lot of improved health can be achieved when seeking help from professionals sooner in our lives. I sure wish I had recognized my condition a lot earlier than I did.
Having successfully treated my depression has helped me immensely to cope with common stresses, like twice-a-year clock changes, for example. I might whine about it, but it doesn’t push me into the dark world of dysfunctional thinking that was a hallmark of my experiences.
Being delivered from nowhere is a precious thing, indeed.
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Bursting Hearts
Latest heart shape update: I find myself wrestling in my mind over leaving the natural imbalance of the two sides or working more intently to bring greater symmetry to the piece.
This is from the third large tree that fell last summer: the oak. It can roughly be compared to the size of a soccer ball, and as a result, it is a pretty heavy hunk of wood. Another option I’m keeping in mind is that shrinking it down to reach a more symmetrical shape would likely eliminate the remnants of the inner bark that have yet to be sanded away.
That inner bark does add some unusual aspects to the overall look, but it also obscures the appearance of the classic oak woodgrain that might be hiding just beneath. The next time I get my hands on it, I expect I’ll go with whatever my heart tells me to do next.
Yesterday afternoon, Cyndie and I gave our hearts to friends who host an annual Gopher football tailgate party memorial in honor of their daughter, who was a passionate fan.
We didn’t have tickets to the game, so our visit was just for the pre-game festivities. As soon as we located our friends, we were accosted by a loud bear of a guy from an adjacent gathering who kicked over his son’s drink in his zest to wrap us in a wonderful, loving hug.
Our next-door neighbors at the Wildwood lake place up in Hayward were tailgating right beside us. On top of that, Cyndie was able to facilitate a special introduction between the two. Her friend, Lisa, and our Wildwood friend, Tom, had yet to meet in person, even though they had worked remotely together on a memorial garden for Lisa’s daughter.
While we were all enjoying the festivities, it occurred to me that my cycling friend, Doobie, would likely be tailgating, too. I shot off a text to him with our faces in front of the Gophers canopy and learned he was already inside the stadium, volunteering at the M Club. He kindly invited us to join them because they had tickets to spare.
It was an embarrassment of friendship riches.
We had to pass up the chance to watch the game in person because we already had a date for the afternoon with our kids to hang out together for happy hour at a pub conveniently located between their two homes. So, it was a combination of friendship and family riches, for which we are greatly blessed.
We were able to achieve all this fabulous socializing due to the help of local UWRF students, who we have hired as short-term animal sitters for just such occasions.
It’s no wonder I find myself wanting to sculpt bigger-than-life heart shapes. My own is bursting with goodness via the connections with lovely people!
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Sound Carries
Continuing with the theme of how serene it can be in our little paradise, particularly in the early morning, Cyndie and I caught ourselves being the “loud family” yesterday on our walk with Asher on the way to feed the horses. Sounds carry, we know that. Our immediate neighbor to the south has a phone ringer on one of his outbuildings that must be out of an old Bell Telephone rotary dial model. When it rings, it seems like it’s coming from within our paddock fence line.
When we emerged from the woods yesterday morning, the cloudy sky was particularly fascinating with a dramatic swirl directly overhead. I knew a photo wouldn’t capture the full essence of what our eyes were perceiving, but snapped a shot anyway.
When we walk and talk in the morning, it is common that one of us will get ahead or fall behind, pulling a weed or vine, so the projection of our voices picks up a bit as we carry on conversations. Suddenly, I’ll become aware that we are shouting at each other on an otherwise silent outdoor morning in such a way that the neighbors and the horses wouldn’t be able to miss.
Anybody outside yesterday would have heard us marveling over the spectacle in the sky, or how Asher was about to chase after a deer that had waited until he and I were only about four feet away before it bolted off through the trees, and our boy perfectly responded to my command to “Leave It!” and stayed with me.
The kind of conversational stories that a person can be so involved in telling that one loses track of how loud their voice has become. Yeah, way too many mornings, we are the loud family marching through the woods and along the back pasture to the barn, carrying on at the top of our lungs in the otherwise blissful serenity of our little valley.
“The Hayses are up and about,” the neighbors will announce.
With a chance of rain in the forecast and verifiably chilly temperatures, we put rain sheets on the horses yesterday morning while they were eating from their feed buckets. The precipitation didn’t show up until much later, but Light had made her own decision about being covered by the time it started to fall.
Cyndie found the blanket wadded up on the ground in the middle of the afternoon, bottom straps still clipped, and nothing ripped open. It must have been a fascinating sight to witness her Houdini performance of getting herself free of that. I’m confused about whether she pulled it up over her head or down off her butt. Had to be over her head. There’s no other way.
I’m glad to have missed it. Catching her in the middle of that would have been frightening. I wonder if she made a lot of noise while wiggling and wrangling it off of herself.
The way sound carries, the neighbors probably knew about it before we did.
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Foggy Scenes
Blocking out any problems in the world, life at Wintervale is filled with beauty, even when the weather conditions are frosty and foggy.
Ice crystals created an attractive white border around the edges of the leaves.
Did I mention it was foggy?
Despite the horses continuing to show fondness for the old willow tree in the small paddock, there continue to be signs that they are chewing it to shreds.
I used to think they were going to push it over by rubbing against it, but now I’m inclined to believe they will give it the beaver treatment and chew through the base.
Silly horses.
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Harvest Rumble
After dark Tuesday night, the familiar rumble of a harvest tractor at high RPMs revealed that we have entered the time when the neighboring farmers are bringing in their crops. They do not pause for darkness, giving evenings a sort of mythical energy not normally present.
It’s weird to walk out in the morning and see the landscape abruptly scraped clean to the soil.
I watched yesterday afternoon as they finished a field of corn just to our south. The high RPMs of the big engine reverberates across the distance when the tractor turns, pointing the raw sound directly toward us. It dulls again as the combine swings around for the next pass. A dusty cloud follows behind.
That harvest rumble is both annoying and comforting at the same time. It’s not unlike the roar of a vacuum cleaner in the house. It’s great that our floors are getting cleaned, but each additional minute of the loud, droning VROOM! ratchets up the involuntary tightening of neck muscles, inducing an unconscious angst.
It feels soooo good when that noisy motor stops.
The tractor left that field, and the sound resumed from the next one down the road. A fading harvest rumble.
While we were feeding the horses, I lingered for a moment to listen to the four of them munching away and realized the tractor rumbling had stopped. It was remarkably serene.
With the low sunshine of late October illuminating the tops of the colorful trees on the horizon, the incredible quiet settling over the land now that the rumbling had stopped, and the calm, contented feeding mares radiating their peaceful energy, it was perfectly blissful.
The harvest rumble is a good thing, but an even better thing is the sound of the silence when it stops.
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Unplanned Accomplishments
We expected yesterday to be a rainy one, so I didn’t have it in my mind to tackle any big outdoor projects. In the middle of the morning, I grabbed a pruner and took Asher for a walk in our north loop field to trim a sprout of growth that looked like a willow tree in bush form. I am trying an experiment to see if I can cut off the outer shoots to push that energy into one main trunk to get it to become more of a tree than a bush.
That took mere minutes, as anticipated, allowing my attention to turn to Asher so I could burn off some of his energy before we got stuck indoors while it rained. However, it didn’t rain. After some running around and tug-of-war, we hung out and watched the horses taking a rest out in the hay field.
After lunch, I came out thinking I’d head to the shop to work on some heart carving, but it was nice enough that I decided to hop on the mower. I’ve been wanting to make one last pass around the inside of the fence lines this season, and just needed a time when the batteries were charged and the rest of the grass wasn’t the higher priority.
Bang. Check that off the list.
The horses spent most of the day out in the fields, so there was hardly any manure to clean up in the paddocks when we showed up to serve their afternoon feeding. I took advantage of that and moved my attention to clearing out a dormant compost pile. That is another task that is rarely urgent and thus lingers in wait for an opportunity to get around to it.
We often hear comments of wonder over how we are able to take care of all the work that needs to be done around here. It occurred to me yesterday that all of the things I accomplished were unplanned, and that becomes the secret. Take small bites of the large pie of things that need doing whenever the chances arise.
The rain finally showed up after dark while we were snugged in watching the 4th game of the World Series. I was smugly enjoying unexpectedly getting multiple things done and checked off the mental to-do list.
It’s a little sweeter because none of that was in my vision when I started the day.
Truly Gorgeous
We were blessed with about as nice a day for bike riding in late October as one could hope for in our part of the world. Afternoon temperatures rose into the 60s(F) yesterday, and we enjoyed every bit of it.
Our gang of intrepid pedalers reached Stillwater in what felt like a blink of time. When we arrived at the photo frame, a mom was taking a picture of her daughter. Bob volunteered to take a picture of them both. In turn, she agreed to take a picture of us. We asked Lilly to stay and be in our picture, too. Her mom said Lilly smiled bigger for ours than when posing with Mom.
Before stopping for some lunch, we rode up and over the Hwy 36 bridge, pausing for a portrait in the middle, overlooking the beautiful St. Croix River.
On the other side, we were in Wisconsin for a short loop before dropping down a big hill to cross the old lift bridge that is now limited to bikes and pedestrians. This delivered us back to the bustling energy of families with young kids in Halloween costumes, enjoying festivities along the riverfront.
Navigating our way to a little market where a few of us purchased something to eat, we took advantage of public tables to consume some sustenance.
I brought my own lunch.
Bob gave me a thumbs-up of approval.
While sitting there, I caught sight of a very attractive woman approaching from the market with her arms full and visibly gushing with a glow of love. She was looking at an equally handsome man who was cuddling a tiny bundle that I knew had to be their beautiful baby.
I couldn’t help myself as they tucked the blanketed cherub into their pram and prepared to move on. I approached them to let them know how truly gorgeous it was to witness their obvious love and joy radiating so unmistakably. Their baby was 9 weeks old. Their happiness was such a delight to see.
I’m glad to have intruded on their space because they seemed really delighted with my gushing over them, and that rewarded me with a burst of their love energy.
The ride back to our cars was a continuation of superb cycling weather and scenery, and we reached just under 30 miles ridden by the time we finished.
I wonder if my legs will feel stiff in the next 24 hours. I hadn’t been on the bike since we did the Mickelson Trail in South Dakota.
I’m really grateful I didn’t pass up this opportunity to get out and enjoy the fabulous day and my fabulous cycling friends.
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Relative Something 