Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Great Greeting
When you haven’t seen your dog for a week, it’s hard to contain your excitement when you arrive home and see his sweet face again. If we get too amped up, so will he, and that’s not a behavior we want to encourage.
It was lucky timing that Cyndie walked in the door in the middle of Asher eating his serving of dinner because that made for a perfect distraction. He stopped eating long enough to check on Cyndie and then got right back to finish his food.
No overexcited jumping involved.
After he finished eating there was plenty of time for Asher to say hello to Cyndie’s mom and lean up against me for a massive dose of scratching, but he was perfectly well-behaved throughout all the greetings to a degree that has us feeling really pleased.
We took him for a short walk in the heat to check on the horses and found things in satisfactory order and the herd calmly spread out around the fence under the overhang.
They were spaced apart as if in an attempt to keep away from each other’s body heat. Their reaction to our return wasn’t so much a greeting as an acceptance of the realization their caregivers were changing back to the usual people.
When we stopped in Hayward to fill Marie’s car with gas before the drive home, Cyndie spontaneously hustled into our favorite pizza place right next door (Coop’s [though under new management]) and quickly grabbed a couple of frozen ones to go.
The pepperoni pizza dinner last night at home felt a little like we were still up at the lake, despite the lack of a lake.
Gee, but it’s great to be back home.
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Heat Remedies
Does anyone know when the climate crisis will become a crisis? I have no idea. Be careful to not fall down in places where the pavement is so hot it will burn flesh this week. I am very thankful we were able to spend the beginning of the week at the lake.
A breeze across the water is a wonderful gift of natural air conditioning. I spent a fair amount of time floating in the lake yesterday but I have no photos of those glorious hours. Cyndie sent me a picture from the pontoon cruise we took with some Wildwood folks and guests on Monday.
Her mom took a picture of Cyndie, Mike, Barb, and me on the deck with fancy appetizers before dinner yesterday.
I didn’t stop eating in time to offer my usual smile. Figs and Brie on toasted French bread slices. Can you blame me?
A week free of training Asher to behave has been a welcome respite. It was an unplanned bonus to have the weather be so hot the lake was the best place we could ask to be. I’m trying hard to hold a positive attitude about the fact we are leaving here today and heading home just as the heat is expected to max out for a couple of days.
I saw a headline last night that reported the seawater of South Florida was reaching hot-tub temperatures. I suspect the coral considers this a crisis already.
It won’t surprise me if Asher starts begging us to take him back up to the lake real soon. In the past, we filled a kiddie pool with water for Delilah when it got really hot but it’s not proving to be an attraction for Asher. We tried hard to coax him in there last week to wash off the fresh horse poop he smushed all over his vest and body. He chose to stand beside it instead.
Maybe today’s high temperatures will change his mind.
If not, I will probably end up being the one laying in it to experience a vague reminder of the big lake we’ve been enjoying up in Hayward for the past week.
It’s been a wonderful time but I won’t deny there’s also a part of me that will be happy to get back to my familiar routine, sweaty chores and all.
Our house has a great geothermal air conditioning feature that will be serving us well as our heat remedy in Beldenville.
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No Storms
It’s occasionally startling to get an alert on my phone about an imminent storm threat and then find out it is for home when we are at the lake, or vice versa. Yesterday we had our minds prepared for the possibility of a brief burst of stormy weather near Hayward in the afternoon but the radar showed cloudbursts appearing more to the east and we never received any precipitation, dramatic or otherwise.
Meanwhile, the warnings I was getting for Beldenville had me regularly monitoring the radar down there and though some instances looked pretty intense, it never appeared to zero in on our property. Reviewing news headlines before turning in for the night revealed stories of serious damage in Hudson with a building losing its roof, many large trees toppled, and thousands who had lost power.
The path of many storms over the years has been Hudson–River Falls–Beldenville, so I asked Cyndie to text our animal sitter, Grace, to see what she had to report. Thankfully, she wrote that a little thunder and rain was all that occurred. I’m happy we didn’t get any hail, as there were many images posted of large hail that had fallen from other storms in the area.
Thanks to the good weather we enjoyed at the lake, our day was filled with a morning walk, paddle boarding, kayaking, swimming, and a ten-person happy-hour pontoon sightseeing cruise around the many bays of Round Lake.
The last few days have been getting sequentially worse in terms of air quality but we are clinging to hopes for a predicted improvement today or tomorrow. My understanding is that the days will continue to grow hotter for the rest of the week and the chances for thunderstorms to suddenly appear remains likely.
We’ll keep an eye on the weather apps and spend most of the storm-free hours either in or on the water when not up on the deck enjoying meals and beverages to fuel our adventures.
It’s a hard life, but we will give our all to luxuriate in it to the fullest degree in honor of those who are committed to actual income-producing engagements during weekday hours.
Before the week is over we will be returning to real life and more than enough work is waiting for me at home to quickly jolt me out of my summery vacation dream life. Thus, the zeal with which I seek as much time soaking in my favorite lake as I can muster while time allows.
Storm-free hours are greatly appreciated.
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Evening Thunder
In that cabin 3 bedroom, just inches from the open window, the peals of rumbling thunder were an almost spiritual meditation lulling us into slumber last night.
After a brilliant day of pickleball and swimming followed by a nap and a fabulous dinner out, we finished the night with five of us around the table in the porch for a card game.
I had no inkling that a mellow thunderstorm was coming until a notice appeared on my phone. Cyndie had already made her way over to the little cabin and was almost asleep when I shuffled over before the rain arrived.
It didn’t show signs of getting windy so we left all the windows open wide and let the symphony of rain and thunder serenade us to sleep.
My Tour de France entertainment is over for another year, freeing up my morning hours for a return to normal routines, except for days when the Women’s World Cup soccer tournament games of primary interest happen in Australia and New Zealand during the wee hours of our local time.
Being a sports fan can be demanding sometimes. [play tiny fiddle of sympathy here.]
Company’s coming today! Our friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus are due to arrive this morning, launching a few days of added lake place bliss for us. Blessings abound and we humbly revel in the friends, family, and experiences we are able to enjoy this week.
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Different Sleep
A change of perspective is always a valuable experience for me and this weekend up at the lake we have been residing in the old cabin #3 beside the main log house above the water. It is one of the original cabins of the former fishing lodge that Cyndie’s family saved when the Wildwood Association transitioned to families owning individual lots.
The Friswolds moved cabin 3 to a new foundation farther back from the lake to make room for the new log home they had built back in the early 1980s. When our kids were young, we spent most of our time up here in the old cabin, granting people in the big house respite from the clamor of infants waking early and the occasional outbursts of either glee or angst associated with that age.
Currently, there are no young ones of the next generation in the family and cabin 3 gets used less often, primarily as overflow accommodations when attendance numbers swell for a weekend.
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Cyndie and I are really enjoying the throwback to a time when our primary experience up at the lake was from the vantage point of the old, and much smaller cabin.
I have been sleeping deeper than in recent memory and with Asher left back in Beldenville with a sitter for this visit, we have no reasons to rise early. This morning the 8 o’clock hour had arrived before we got up. I had woken early and read the whole paper in bed on my computer and then faded into a morning nap that felt rather decadent.
The small rooms and close proximity to the ground (in the big house we usually sleep in the loft) make it feel like we are almost sleeping outdoors.
The view out the back window is one I relish for the trees and forest floor I’m most attracted to for a natural environment.
It’s as if I’m forest bathing all night long as I sleep.
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Positive Outlook
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Wishing for the worst possible outcome not to happen
is not the same thing as
wishing the best possible might.
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Different Showroom
On Wednesday, the asphalt crew showed up promptly to work on sealing the surface of our year-old driveway pavement. Since we wouldn’t want to drive on it for at least 24 hours, we moved both cars out of the garage. I parked mine down beside the barn and Cyndie put hers by the road, knowing she would be leaving right in the middle of the time they were working.
I hadn’t considered the fact she would be returning home with a car full of groceries. That wasn’t a big problem because we always have the ability to drive through our fields if need be. While the horses were up by the barn, I opened the hay field gate by the road, pulled inside the fence, and closed the gate behind me.
As I crested the hill in the middle of the field, I watched for a reaction from the horses to a car approaching in the middle of their grazing territory. For whatever possible reason, they were surprisingly unfazed. I had Cyndie open a paddock gate so I could drive right through and the horses didn’t even look at us.
That should have been it for the night. By early yesterday afternoon, we could drive the cars up to the house. However, stormy weather showed up. Threats of big wind and large hail loomed large. We pondered the situation while constantly updating weather radar images.
If we did nothing, we feared the one day both of our cars were parked outside would be the day it would hail something awful.
The best way to make sure it wouldn’t hail was to move both cars into the barn. I wish I knew what the horses thought of us turning the place into an automobile showroom for a day.
Of course, the move worked wonders. Not a single hailstone fell from the clouds while the cars were protected. It did, however, provide us with ease of mind as multiple waves of cloudbursts passed overhead throughout the evening.
On a completely unrelated note, we have recently given Asher several opportunities to be outside with us without tethering him to a leash, mostly without incident. He dashes away into the surrounding woods on occasion but returns soon enough.
“Mostly without incident” indicates there was one situation that I will call an ‘incident.’ While he was off on his own, Asher took unwelcome liberties with the freshest composting manure pile, rubbing his chest, the vest we make him wear outdoors, and his collar thoroughly in the stinkiest green horse shit dumped on the pile earlier that morning.
Seems to me he is making a statement that he wants to be a full-time outdoor dog.
I didn’t expect this would become one of the problems with wanting him to be able to roam untethered on our property.
Just yuck. Really, really yuck.
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Returning Again
This saga continues… The replacement rainfly that I was so excited about receiving from The North Face warranty department last year needs to be returned for the same reason I sent back the original rainfly. The seam sealing tape is coming loose.
I used the rainfly for just one week while on the Tour of Minnesota trip in June and discovered a few drips as proof that it leaks.
Not wanting to deal with shipping the rainfly back to face unknown odds of their ability to solve the problem, I pulled it out of storage yesterday to assess how bad the delamination really is. Would it be possible to buy some sealer and brush it on the seams myself?
It didn’t take long to decide I wasn’t up for the challenge. There are just too many places where the original tape has lost contact with the fabric. Also, I’m not certain which version of a seam sealer would match the fabric. Urethane or silicone?
The label on the rainfly says- Fly: 100% Polyester, Canopy: 100% Nylon. Huh? Canopy? I have no idea how to interpret this information.
I sent an email to The North Face warranty department seeking advice, even though it was after hours there. What did I have to lose?
That company impressed me once again. I received a reply 14 minutes later, at 6:12 p.m. from their Customer Care Team. They reminded me that items must be returned for assessment and provided a label for shipping.
I don’t know if they will be able to help me or not since my tent is obsolete, but I’m impressed enough with The North Face to give them another try. It’s my guess that the replacement rainfly they sent me was on a shelf somewhere for nearly as long as I’ve owned this tent. Even though it hadn’t been subject to harsh weather, time alone was tough enough on the materials they use to degrade the adhesive of the sealing tape.
Since the tent is obsolete, I doubt they have any fresh versions of this rainfly laying around in their warehouse. And since they didn’t see fit to reapply seam sealant to the original rainfly I returned, I am suspicious about the likelihood of them deciding to do so on this one.
I’ll give them another chance, just in case I’m wrong. It buys me more time to kick and scream against solving my problems by simply purchasing a new tent that was manufactured in this century.
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Flexible Scheduling
One hard and fast rule that is good to keep in mind is that scheduled events aren’t necessarily hard and fast or guaranteed to play out as planned. It pays to be flexible. Yesterday, Cyndie and I got out of bed a little earlier than usual because we were expecting a visit from a veterinarian who was going to check the horse’s teeth and give them required rabies vaccination shots.
We closed gates to confine the horses and put halters on all four of them in preparation and then headed up to the house for breakfast. It wasn’t long until Cyndie received a text that the vet would need to reschedule due to an unplanned emergency call.
I headed back out to open gates and remove halters.
Later, as I was filling a wheelbarrow with composted manure for our driveway landscaping project, I got a call from our asphalt company asking if they could reschedule sealing the driveway from July 27th to tomorrow (now, today!). That call was soon followed by news of a plan for the vet to come at 1:00.
Shortly after noon, Cyndie received a text that the vet had another emergency call and wouldn’t make it until some future day to be determined. I don’t know if that will be soon because there was a month-long wait to get the first appointment.
Asher had a pretty good day of testing his off-leash limits. Cyndie decided to use a lot of bribing with high-value treats to entice him to stay close to home and that seemed to pay off. I didn’t like him having free access to the compost area where I witnessed him eating manure from the freshest pile on two different occasions.
Cyndie let Asher help her out where she was pulling weeds.
I’m not sure if he got that one by the roots or not. Can’t see to the bottom of the resulting hole.
It will be interesting trying to keep his paws off the driveway while the seal coat is fresh. Hopefully, Asher is flexible about our schedule of off-leash practice because it will be on hold for at least a day starting this afternoon… if all goes as planned.
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Modifying Finish
We have not discovered the secret to convincing our favorite gravel guy to come landscape the bottom half of our driveway. Since we have reached the point of not even receiving callbacks from him, I’m assuming we will need to look for another source of landscaping help if we’re not able to do it ourselves.
In the interim, we are taking a crack at applying an improvement to our original thinking about how to finish the edge of the driveway asphalt in the sections where we already tried smoothing the grade with some composted manure.
The limiting factor in this plan is the relatively small supply of our manufactured soil currently available for the task. I wrestled with the decision of using what little material we have in places where none has yet to be applied or using it to improve the areas landscaped last summer.
I went with the latter, for now.
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I have settled into a pattern of creating piles roughly 1 meter wide by 1m deep by 1m high. The small pile on the left in the foreground of the first photo is just getting started and receives new, fresh manure daily. The pile in the foreground on the right is no longer getting any new material added and it is cooking at a perfect composting temperature.
The pile just behind them is in the final stage of composting. Just beyond that one is an area shown in the second photo where I just removed two composted piles to use for the driveway landscaping project. In the background is a large pile that was created over the winter and never got turned in order to fully compost.
I will use that for fill eventually but it needs to be broken apart to dry out because the majority inside is a stinky green mess due to never having been regularly turned to promote the composting process.
My attempt to finish the driveway edge last summer using the remaining exposed gravel left me with a rocky lip that I now want to eliminate. The new plan is to pull down the gravel to form a more even slope and to cover it all with dirt or compost right up to the asphalt.
We will need to plant grass to provide some competition for the weeds that absolutely love an opportunity to sprout in freshly exposed soil.
I had originally envisioned the possibility of having a gravel edge along the asphalt. Now I want to just cover the rock completely. Driveway edge landscaping two-point-oh.
If I find this latest plan works, I will probably order a load of black dirt and do this the rest of the way down the driveway.
I think I could convince our favorite gravel guy to at least deliver a truckload of dirt and dump it down by the road if they don’t have to spread it. Time and labor seem to be their main shortage and that is something I am able to provide.
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