Archive for the ‘Images Captured’ Category
Rafters Reign
This is an image that I am going to let speak for itself. Maybe I need a category called “Wordless Images” to offset my other efforts of combining my poetry with pictures I have taken…
Big Bone
Over the weekend, Cyndie reported that Delilah had dragged a carcass out of the woods. I was in the shower when she came in the house, looking for a camera. I asked what it was, but Cyndie said she couldn’t tell.
“It’s something big!” she announced.
It’s funny how our minds quickly conjure up images of what it might be. I stood there, washing my hair, imagining a variety of gory scenes of dead critters with dangling legs being dragged by our dog. A possum? A porcupine? How big was Cyndie’s “big?” How badly decomposed was it to be unrecognizable by Cyndie?
I offered her my camera, when she couldn’t locate her own, and continued to ponder whether it was something Delilah killed, or the remains of some other wild circle-of-life event that took place in our woods.
Delilah has a big fondness for bones. Cyndie has purchased several chunky bones, like pig knees from Fleet Farm, that Delilah carries around, often burying them, and sometimes crunching them to pieces. There was a time, a few weeks ago, when Delilah showed up with a long bone that looked like a leg bone, that she had found in our woods. That became a prized possession for several days, beating out all others for her attention.
When Cyndie returned with the camera, I got my chance to see what she was talking about. Yeah, it was big, but it isn’t what I’d call a carcass. My guess is that it came from the same source as that leg bone. I believe it is probably from the skeleton of the same deer that I discovered in our woods last fall.
That skeleton made quite an impression when we found it last year, and it’s still having an impact to this day. I’m actually a bit relieved that it wasn’t a new carcass that showed up. This one seems familiar, and we have made our peace with the loss of life that occurred.
New What
It’s time again for everyone’s favorite Relative Something image guessing game called, “What”! You have been missing it, haven’t you? Well, wait no more. It’s simple. All you need to do is guess what the item is in the image below. Do you trust your first impression, or ponder the possibilities? Can you hold off long enough to wait for the answer to come to you, or will you look right away? You are in charge, but it is strongly recommended you come up with some kind of guess before you click on the image to have the answer revealed. Enjoy!
Grand Day
It was a beautiful summer day yesterday for us to showcase our place for friends. Delilah got loads of attention, and was a charm the whole day. I walked our trails several times, guiding tours. I noshed and nibbled all afternoon, to my heart’s delight. Unfortunately, I didn’t pull the camera out more than once or twice, because I was so occupied with having a wonderful time that I kept forgetting to capture all the fun in pictures. Here’s a collage that samples some of the atmosphere of our grand day.
More Fence
Yesterday, our fence crew pounded the last posts for the paddocks, and put up a lot of boards. After boards, they will mount one line of wire along the top, which will be able to be electrified. This will discourage horses from chewing on the wood of the fence. Next, they will attach gates, and then complete the installation of the automatic waterer, and we will be out of excuses for not having horses here.
I guess it is time to take care of all the little details we have neglected to worry about until after the fact.
This afternoon, Cyndie is expecting a visit from a person with the local extension service who will review our situation and offer advice on best practices and available resources to support our efforts here. It’s another step in our effort to learn more about what we have gotten ourselves into, even as we forge ahead with plans to establish the infrastructure from which we will operate.
We have stumbled here and there, seeming to get ahead of ourselves sometimes, while allowing a few important details to fade into the background, but the progress we make is part of the way Cyndie works. It gets us moving toward our goal, and forces us to learn on the fly. It creates a bit of mental stress for me, but I can accept it, because if it were up to me, I think we’d be stuck before we even started.
I’d be hung up trying to answer the practically unanswerable questions, trying so hard to avoid a misstep that I’d end up not taking any at all.
Here’s to Cyndie’s brilliant capacity to bring our dreams to life, and our amazing progress thus far!
Day Off
Recently, I was able to return to a schedule that provides me an extra day off from the day-job, and Monday is the day I choose. However, even though it was a day off from going into the Cities to work, it isn’t quite a day off from actually working on things. We started the day slowly, by current Wintervale standards, and did some indoor chores. My first priority was contacting Canon to get authorization to return my PowerShot camera for repair. They informed me I needed to write a letter describing the issue and then box it up for shipment.
I made a quick trip to Ellsworth to deposit my package at the UPS drop box in town. It didn’t fit in the drop box, so I stepped into the insurance office at that location and asked if there was a way to get it picked up. The young man working the reception desk said to just leave the box on a chair in their office, then he gave me a pen and note pad to write a note to the UPS driver indicating there was something to pick up in the office. I walked out to this drop box, with my little post-it note, and then tried to imagine how I could attach it so that it wouldn’t blow away, or get melted by a rain shower. It’s a cute little system they have here. I hope it works.
Afternoon view, taken with my old camera
Cyndie and I combined our efforts to finish off the final details for the wood shed I built. She drove the tractor down to one of our brush piles to dig out some dirt for me to finish filling around the foundation stones. I caulked the seams of the roof panels with silicon sealant. We cut down a branch that was growing over the roof line of the shed, by way of me climbing a ladder to reach with a pole saw, and her pulling on the branch with a rope we had thrown over it. It was pretty large, and way up there. A nice feat of accomplishment.
I got out the chain saw, to cut up the branch, and since we were in that mode, we decided to head down the trail in our woods to finally begin clearing the debris left from the damaging snow storm last May. Instead of heading straight to the biggest timber, and using the chain saw, we chose to start with the first obstructions we arrived at, and use other tools we had brought along. Cyndie cut down the tall growth with her battery operated trimmer, and I cut back the smaller branches that drooped in the way, using our ratcheted pruner.
Eventually, I found opportunity to cut larger branches with the chainsaw, but I had gotten way out ahead of Cyndie, and left to my own devices, I started to get careless and impatient. I stepped right into the needle-sharp point of a wood thorn on one tree branch. It punctured the side of my knee and left me in a lot of pain. I checked more than once to make sure the tip hadn’t broken off in there. It didn’t look like it, but it sure hurt like something was still in there.
Then I got the saw pinched. Time for me to call it a day. I walked back to find Cyndie, needing her help to lift the limb so I could get my saw out, and then headed back to wind up our work day, while she finished off cutting away the small stuff with the pruner.
Today, I am back at the day-job, which is great, because now I could sure use some days off from the work we do at home.
Relative Something 