Archive for the ‘Images Captured’ Category
Three Images
I was looking through images I captured during the week of the bike trip, thinking about the possibility of a ‘Words on Images’ creation, but instead, I ended up with three pictures that I liked together, without any words. Here they are, for no other reason than I liked how they looked together…
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Back Live
I am back with live posts today —not pre-written and scheduled— having successfully survived and returned from the most challenging of bike camping adventures that I have ever done. We made plenty of jokes about planning a bicycle trip in a region that has been selected as a good place to have a wind turbine farm.
The challenge of riding daily into unrelenting gale-force headwinds was compounded by the addition of a surprising wave-after-wave of severe thunderstorms, drenching this region that was previously enduring a drought. The unprecedented amount of rain in that short time seriously flooded farm fields, creating flash floods that over-ran banks, flooded homes and washed out roads.
For some reason that I don’t understand, I had the unfortunate luck of adding to the misery by getting sick with a sore throat, stuffy head, and congested lungs. I don’t know if it was just a bad coincidence of timing or whether the weather conditions and close proximity to a large group of people happened to be the trigger.
Last week was one tough vacation. At the same time, it was as fun as ever. I hope to tell you more about it in the days ahead. Right now I am faced with the burden of deciding if I can go back to bed to repair my ailing health or get after the mowing and manure management chores that are in dire need of attention.
The same storms that dominated our bike week moved across the state and soaked Wintervale Ranch. We’ve got additional trees tipped over that I will need to cut up and move, just to get to the manure pile.
The bed is looking more and more enticing as my current preferred option.
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Gone Shedless
I received the greatest gift from my family yesterday. Since I will be gone on Father’s Day, riding the Tour of Minnesota, we celebrated a week early. The kids came over and helped with chores around the property. Most significantly, we dismantled the toppled woodshed.
I had been considering ways to pick it up again, thinking it might still stand on the six support posts. After we cleared away everything that had been stacked inside, closer inspection led to a decision to just take it apart, one leg at a time. Having the extra hands made the project infinitely more simple for me. Getting that shed taken care of was high on my list of desires, but I never imagined we would be able to get as far with it as we ended up accomplishing.
I am so very happy to have that damaged structure dismantled. Thanks, kids!
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Flowers Show
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Not far behind all the fast growing grass we have around here, flowers are beginning to display their best selves for our delight. Like so many things this spring, it seems like they have just appeared out of nowhere. If we neglect to walk around the house and property for one day, we miss the grand entrance of some plant or another.
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Unfortunately for me, the weeds grow just as fast and get just as tall as some of the desirable flowering plants. I’m never sure which is which, and therefore am unwilling to be very zealous about weeding our landscape.
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The emergence of the flowers is matched closely with the appearance of pestering flying insects, several of which have a taste for blood. While stepping in close to capture the little blossoms on this flowering tree, I fell under attack from a swarm of tiny flying things, a few of which seemed to be driven toward burying themselves in my hair. That’s a joy.
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Speaking of that kind of joy, while working to clear trees from the drainage ditch along our southern border last weekend, I was sure that a mosquito almost large enough to pass for a humming-bird was responsible for the giant welt that swelled and itched when I came in for the night. I showed the welt to Cyndie right away to see what she thought of it. Inconclusive response. It had quickly gotten bigger than any mosquito bite I had ever experienced before.
In a few days, it became painfully obvious that it was not a bug bite. I’m guessing I unknowingly handled some poison ivy down in that ditch, then directly transferred it to my neck when trying to wipe off dripping sweat. The swelling and wide area of reaction is so distinctly different than the usual itchy spots that appear on my skin, I believe it suggests the level of exposure was an order of magnitude higher than my usual experience.
I remembered that my doctor advised I try an antihistamine to control the reaction, before resorting to a steroid prescription. That seems to be working for me, to suppress the swelling and itching, but it doesn’t necessarily shorten the average two weeks duration like steroids will. That’s okay. I dislike the prescription stuff enough to be willing to endure the duration of the process using antihistamines alone for now.
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Latest News
Lest anyone be oblivious to the special significance of this day, let me make it known that June 4th happens to be Cyndie’s birthday! I can’t think of anything more appropriate to give her this year than a new riding saddle. It’s a complicated purchase, so I already told her my idea and she will begin the process of getting the horses measured to see if it will be possible to get one saddle that will fit more than one of our horses.
She has received a few tips on recommended retailers, so we will be visiting a couple of them as soon as we have the measurements. Looks like I better stop dragging my feet about getting the trails in order around here. There are still downed trees in two places obstructing our main perimeter trail through the woods. Just as important, I need to increase the height of clearance throughout all the trails, to make it safe for someone traveling on horseback.
Cyndie reported that the vet said we can start increasing the time we allow the horses to graze freely by a half-hour every other day, up to a max of about 5 hours per day. That’s great news. The horses received good reviews and were given whatever shots were due this time of year. In about a week they will have their feet checked and hooves trimmed by our farrier, neighbor George Walker.
Speaking of George, I stopped by to check on him on my way home from work yesterday, and discovered he was out cutting hay using three of his horses to pull a rig with a sickle bar mower. What a beautiful sight. I pulled over and he gave the horses a break while we chatted about things like the weather, his hay-field, if it was going to rain, how much hay he should cut in case it was going to rain, and whether or not it might rain.
Obviously, the biggest trick to cutting and baling hay is finding enough consecutive dry days to pull it off during the months of May and June when things are growing the fastest.
After that visit, I headed home to do some cutting of my own: I mowed our lawn. The grass was so thick, it looked like I had created windrows for baling!
If you can decipher it in this picture, the pine trees that suffered so much from dryness last fall, followed by the extremely harsh winter, are sprouting new growth, except for one. The one on the left that looks the most rust-colored is the one that tipped over last year. It didn’t survive. Next time I have the chainsaw out down there, he will get cut down.
We are looking forward to seeing the new growth pop open soon, to bring the trees a healthier glow. As you can tell by the image, everything else around them is bursting with green life.
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Got Rocks?
Our neighbors are slowly getting familiar with our peculiarities, and don’t seem all that fazed by our interest in collecting rocks. It is an easy request for them to fill, because farmers are always trying to get rid of rocks. I got a call yesterday afternoon from the man who lives just south of us, and he said the guys who rent his field have a truckload of rocks for us. They just needed to know where we wanted them.
The options on where they could deliver on our property are pretty limited by the wetness, so he had to stay on the driveway. I had him dump them on the edge of the new loop that runs around the hay shed.
There were two skid loader tractors maneuvering in the fields next door all morning, collecting rocks. One had a mesh drum that rotated, which could dig out large rocks that were still half-buried. When it got the rock up out of the ground, it would spin to drop the dirt and hold the rock.
The man who delivered the rocks said some of these have been underground for a long time. He had broken up the hard ground last fall and these rocks pushed up as a result. It will take a couple of good rainstorms (just what we need [end sarcasm]) to wash them off and allow us to see what we’ve really got here.
There is a good chance a lot of them will end up being used under the opening where that culvert is visible, in the background of this image. The others will need to be given a ride in the bucket of our tractor, back toward the area of the labyrinth.
It is a great feeling to value material that other folks are constantly trying to get rid of.
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Exhaustion Accumulates
It happens every time I have been up at the lake. For a week following, my mind is pulled away from the here and now, continually yearning to return to that precious body of water. Our lake has a special allure that is definitely lacking from the otherwise idyllic surroundings of Wintervale.
It has been a tough week for me at the day-job. I’m so exhausted that I struggle to stay awake during the commute, and my mind has noticeably lacked focus. Poor Katie has had to repeat things multiple times for me, and even then, I’m not sure I’ve properly tracked the pertinent facts.
The added responsibility while Cyndie has been convalescing from her hip procedure has definitely taken a toll on me, and I’m noticing that the effects have been accumulating. I am so looking forward to my vacation of biking and camping with my cycling clan in a couple of weeks. I will be more than ready for the refreshing reset that will provide.
After work yesterday, I was taking care of some mowing. It was a simple enough task, but I found ways to complicate it. The grass is growing so fast now that it had gotten too tall between mowings and I ended up with unwanted rows of clippings laying on top of the grass. I have been long overdue to figure out the sweeper attachment that the seller included in our purchase of the lawn tractor, so I decided to give it a shot.
It actually seemed to work pretty well, until I got stuck when trying to force the tractor over some of the deep ruts that still haunt us from the skid loader tracks left by the fence installers. I had to get off and disconnect the sweeper and then push the tractor out of the ruts. When I went to re-attach the device, I didn’t have the clip that locks the pin through the hitch.
I have absolutely no memory of where I put it when I disconnected it. In a pocket? No. Dropped it on the ground? No sight of it. It vanished into thin air.
As I pulled the sweeper forward over the ruts to bring it up to the tractor again, it dumped all the grass clippings that had been collected. I decided to laugh at the absurdity of my situation and forge on.
I connected the sweeper without the locking clip. At the first jarring bump, of which there are so many they are practically continuous, the pin jumped out and the sweeper fell behind as the tractor got stuck in another rut. I left the sweeper there and drove back to the garage to get a trailer to haul away the grass. That done, I came back, with a borrowed clip, to retrieve the sweeper and bring it back to the garage. In front of the garage, when I disconnected the hitch pin, two metal bushings that the pin passes through both dropped to the pavement. I picked up the one that landed in plain sight and began searching for the other one.
It had vanished. Did it roll? I hunted far and wide. Did it land on the mower deck? Not that I could find. Where the hell…?
Exasperated, I threw in the towel for the night. Simple tasks had gotten just too darn complicated for me.
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Relative Something 