Reuse Wrap
We got a start on the great idea that keeps us from throwing our scrap bale twine into the trash. After making a few long strands of braided scraps, yesterday we wrapped our first post to create an improved surface for the horses to rub against. I wish we would have known about this trick sooner because it is not uncommon to find lengths of the horses’ manes or tails snagged in a splinter of wood grain on the edges of the vertical boards of the posts.
It was cute having the horses be only mildly curious about the strange new decoration in their environment. They took turns approaching to sniff the braided twine and I wondered if they could smell that our hands had been working the twine. They definitely witnessed us working on braiding multiple sets of twine scraps over the last few weeks. After giving it a sniff, they seemed perfectly satisfied that our project was harmless and we could be left to wrap uninterrupted.
When we stopped back at dinnertime, I noted there wasn’t a single hair of evidence that any of them had rubbed up against it yet. There was plenty of hair on the ground where one of them had laid down and rolled around, so there is no question they are still heavily in spring-shedding mode.
I really like the new feeling of happiness each time we cut another bale open and pull off the twine as compared to the old feeling of frustration over what we were going to do with the mountain of cut pieces proliferating non-stop. Now, it’s more like a perception of not having enough twine to braid.
I want to offer another shout-out to Kim Hallin of Unbridled for posting her helpful video about the concept of putting our old twine scraps to good use.
We are looking forward to our horses developing an appreciation for this upgrade to their hangout space. I’m particularly hopeful that they will like rubbing up against it a lot more than chewing it to bits.
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Peaceful Meditations
I had plenty of time to meditate on the gratefulness for a warm bed during a fever yesterday, and the luxury of having Cyndie be able to give me a full day pass from outdoor chores. This morning dawned much friendlier with sunshine replacing the gray skies of the previous wet days.
On Friday afternoon, I laid down on the driveway to capture a view of the precipitation falling that was flirting with the difference between sleet and hail. Today we have the bright sunlight amplifying the increasing green of our fields. You know the philosophy of meditating on what you want in order to manifest desired results?
Mia was showing a Zen-like focus on the acres beyond the paddock fence this morning. Even though it is sunny today, it is way too wet to be walking on our turf, as can be seen in the amount of hoof-traffic abuse the surface inside the paddock is suffering. The poor horses can’t help damaging the very grass they would love to be eating.
Soon, the situation will improve and the horses will peacefully be grazing in the pastures again. And, soon we will be walking the circuitous path of our labyrinth again.
In less than two weeks we will be hosting an event on World Labyrinth Day at Wintervale. My favorite global meditation for peace happens every year on the first Saturday of May as people all over the world create a wave of peaceful energy by participating in their time zone at 1:00 p.m.
World Labyrinth Day at Wintervale
I’m going to visualize May 6th as a beautifully sunny day with the ground dry enough to support foot traffic without becoming a mess. No matter what, it will be a day bursting with love and peaceful vibrations flowing around us from one time zone to the next. Cyndie will bake scones to serve with coffee and we will encourage meditations start before 1:00 and continue well beyond the official hour.
We will already be feeding the meditation of peace before it arrives and continue after the crest rolls away to the west for as long as there are people present to stroll.
If the weather is bad, well, we will make peace with that, too.
You do what ya gotta do.
Peace!
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Oops, Snowy
You’d think I would know better. In my post yesterday I gushed about the fact we had dodged the snowfall that places north of us were getting. Sure it was a day of messy, wet precipitation with temperatures hovering so close to freezing it felt challenging to set foot outside. But, at least it wasn’t snowy, I wrote.
Such a naive suburban fool. (Tim Curry lyric, Paradise Garage, 1979.)
Reality was hard to ignore this morning.
Thank goodness, Cyndie offered to allow me to stay in bed while she did horse chores this morning. This is the first time she has taken on the morning routine all by herself since she broke her ankle last November. I’m experiencing a feverish reaction to my shingles vaccination shot administered yesterday morning.
On Thursday, I received notice via email that it was time for my annual health checkup with my doctor. Using their online system, I found an available appointment for the following day and filled out all the questionnaires remotely in advance. I was in and out with ease in about 45 minutes but walked away with a jab in each arm. One was to draw blood for my glucose and cholesterol level checks and the other was the first of two shingles shots.
I am thoroughly impressed by the efficiency of our clinic. They sent notice before the day was out that my test results were already available to view. Blood glucose and cholesterol numbers continue to run a little high, which is normal for me, but I am pleased that all of the cholesterol readings had improved since a year ago. My methods are slow but progress in the right direction serves as validation that my good habits are paying off over time.
Knock on wood.
I don’t want my choice to write about the good fortunes of my health status to go the way of my rejoicing over not getting more snow in April.
Who knows what tomorrow might bring? How about we visualize sunshine and warmth for a little change of pace for a few days. And continued good health, too!
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Not Snowy
At least it hasn’t been snowy on the ranch the last two days. It has been rainy, however. Wednesday night we experienced a thunder and lightning storm that had me sounding stressed in my slumber. Cyndie spoke soothingly and I recall hearing her voice, but not what I had been dreaming at that moment. She said I quieted right down and my breathing soon returned to normal sleeping mode.
When we stepped out in the morning to feed the horses, I asked Cyndie if she had arranged the rocking chairs under the tree by our driveway.
She said she hadn’t touched them. That meant the way they were laying in the image above was accomplished by the wind. Previously, the chairs were upright, sitting side by side, and facing downhill.
The chilly rain is keeping the horses under the overhang space where they can munch hay while staying out of the wind and keeping dry. When they aren’t chomping bites of hay from the net bags, it appears they are using them as a surface to rub against. I found a mat of horse hair coating the outer surface of one.
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This serves as a good incentive for us to get our newly braided strands of old-cut twine wrapped on one of the posts for them to rub. We are making decent progress in converting individual lengths to reusable bundles!
It’s not as fun to do braiding when it’s so cold and wet but while waiting for the horses to finish the food in their pans, I twist up a section to pass a few extra minutes. When it is sunny and warm, sitting under the overhang braiding while the horses watch is a lot more fun and we get a lot more done at once.
Before the rain got intense, Cyndie and I stepped out to pull our custom netting from the top of the landscape pond. It’s proved to be a convenient way to keep leaves out of the pond over the off-season.
I hadn’t gotten around to putting the pump and filter back in before the rain picked up. I ended up moving on to something else and the pond stuff sat out in the rain for a couple of days before I remembered about it all and moved the buckets back into the garage –after pouring out the water they had collected. It reminded us to put out our rain gauges.
The last few days of spring weather have been messy, limiting our outdoor accomplishments, but at least none of the precipitation coming down on us has fallen as snow. Thank goodness for that.
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Getting Excited
Straight out of the “fake it ’till you make it” playbook, I am pretending to be excited about how nice the weather will be once the weather stops being so dang crappy. Cold, wet, & windy are not my favorite conditions to be doing anything outside in April. Cold that hovers so close to the freezing point that some materials turn solid while the rest just get slippery, muddy, or miserably anything-but-frozen, is a surefire recipe for grumpy.
Not that I am getting grumpy. No, not at all [humph!]. I’m really excited! Just because the horses are acting all grumpy over the conditions this week doesn’t mean I’ve been influenced to the point of wanting to yell at Mix for being such an a**hole unkind member of the herd.
Was that suspiciously specific?
I mean, who runs other horses off and then comes back, turns herself around, and poops where the food was served? Who would do such a thing?
Mix.
After she kicks the fence separating her from Light.
We ended up splitting the herd in two in hopes of reducing intra-herd shenanigans that tend to leave one horse [read: Mia] out in the rain. I think the separation made Mix grumpier because it left only one horse as a target for her grumpiness. She and Light began to have their own little spat from either side of the fence between paddocks.
I’m getting excited for the day when they all mellow out because it is warm and dry again. Honestly, I’m finding it a struggle to remember that it reached 80°F for a few days last week. Seems like so long ago now.
The tiny wildflower blossoms are probably thinking the same thing.
Those blossoms are few and far between so I guess the majority of growing things didn’t fall for that unusual burst of warmth that came and went like a mystic dream. I’m nurturing my ongoing excitement for the real warmup of the season that will allow for vigorous raking of our grass areas around the house.
Opportunities to play with my new mower won’t be far beyond that.
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Feathered Alarm
Busy birds are building nests and doing their courting dances this time of year. Some of them need to establish their territories and discourage competition from other possible suitors. This year, more than any other previous time, more than one bird has taken to facing off against their reflections in our windows. The first year we were here, there was a cardinal that the sellers warned us about. He came back annually enough times that they eventually named him.
They named a variety of wildlife that made repeated visits, so that wasn’t so strange. Rodney the Cardinal showed up for about two years after we arrived and then vanished.
Now we are getting both Robins and Cardinals clacking their beaks against our windows. And not just the males.
Yesterday morning, a female Cardinal showed up at the door in our bedroom that opens to the back deck. Fluttering wings and a pecking beak tapping away at its reflection.
The sun wasn’t up yet, but the songbirds were. This one was tapping up and down on the full glass door as I was checking my phone for results from the MN Wild hockey game that went into overtime and forced me to go to sleep without knowing the result.
Cyndie’s morning sleep cycle was interrupted by the feathered alarm. That ultimately paid off for me because her earlier-than-usual start contributed to her feeling ready to join me in the morning feeding of horses for the first time since breaking her ankle last November.
I was really glad I had chosen not to keep watching the playoff hockey game after the third period ended with the score tied around 11:30 p.m. They ended up needing more than half of a second overtime period before one of the teams got the puck past the opposing goalie. The game ended at 1:00 a.m. and I had been in dreamland for an hour and a half by that time.
Happily, it was the Wild team that triumphed in game 1 of this best-of-7 first-round series of the Stanley Cup playoffs against the Dallas Stars.
Game 2 happens tonight and I am hoping it gets decided in just 3 periods. As it is, games ending at 11:30 at night are already keeping me up past my healthy bedtime. Also, I’m not feeling up to the stress of watching the drama of sudden-death overtime hockey.
The Gopher hockey team losing their NCAA Championship game against Quinnipiac just 10 seconds into overtime did me in. I no longer have the fortitude to watch overtime playoff hockey. Not for a while, anyway.
Not while the wild birds are feeling a need to peck against our glass doors and windows at too-early-o’clock in the morning.
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Temporary Reprieve
Yesterday morning’s wintery start was a bitter pill to swallow but the afternoon arrived with just enough sunshine to make the snow nothing but a memory.
We get a day or two of reprieve from a threat of more snow until the chances go up again by Friday. Ooh, I can’t wait… said no one ever about more snow in April.
Last week I pulled the inserts out of my insulated work boots and transferred them to my non-insulated boots. I didn’t switch them back just because of one little snowstorm and wore my summer boots to feed the horses at the start of the day. It proved to me how well my insulated boots work in keeping my feet warm. It didn’t take long for me to get cold feet in the non-insulated boots.
If you look closely at the fence in the image above there are clues of a spring project that is high on my priority list. The fence in the foreground is leaning from what I fear may be the weight of horses leaning into it to scratch their itches. In the board fence near Light in the distance, there is a high post that needs to get pounded down. Actually, there are a lot of posts that deserve to be pounded down. They get pushed up by the freezing and thawing cycle.
I’d love to have the ease of simply pressing on the posts with the weight of the loader bucket on the diesel tractor but the ground is too soft for driving that heavy machine around. It would do more damage than good. That leaves the task of hand-pounding with the tool I customized for just this purpose. All I need is a yardstick, a step ladder, and a spotter to read the pounding progress on the ruler.
As long as the post keeps moving, I keep pounding until we reach a target height. If it stops moving beneath my pounding, I need to save my energy and not waste effort that isn’t producing results. Some posts have moved easily in the past and others not so much.
Upper body workout ahead. Arms day is a-comin’.
It’s a great feeling when fence posts are all re-seated before the ground dries out and becomes rock hard again. Not that different from how it feels to have growing things trimmed and shaped prior to the spring growth spurts.
Everything in its time.
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Weather Whiplash
We had been warned but I just didn’t want to believe the weather would swing as far as forecasts suggested. From almost 90°F to a blizzard of blowing snow in a matter of days. It was bad enough that the snow finally began to get the upper hand and cover everything white yesterday but the startling blasts of intense wind gusts last night had us flinching even though we were witnessing it from the comfort of being tucked under blankets in our bed.
At least the drizzly rain we received on Saturday was quickly bringing our green grass to life before it got covered in snow.
The white stuff started to stick in the woods first.
When it gets hot, it gets too hot. When it gets cold, it gets too cold. When it rains, it rains too hard. Every day we aren’t being pushed up against one of these extremes is a day we should celebrate and cherish. With abusive weather getting more oppressive, there is an increased importance for us to take full advantage of calm days when we have that chance.
Especially, when the swings between extremes are happening more often and with shorter pauses between.
There wasn’t a lot of good news to be had in the two PBS Nova episodes we watched last night about extreme weather and Arctic sinkholes. Ruh-roh.
No melting permafrost feedback cycles happening at our house. The structure suffered some scary creaking under the gusts of wind overnight though. I’ll need to do an inventory of the deck furniture that I recently put out on the deck when it was as hot as a day in July last week.
My brain feels whiplashed just thinking about the quick weather switches between extremes. I will wholeheartedly welcome the next span of boring weather days that arrive after this latest wintery blast. Bah, humbug.
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No Accumulation
The following are random snippets of no particular relation beyond being composed in the last hour…
When it snows in April, two of the best words to hear are “No accumulation.” Thank goodness we are not being subjected to a return of the white blanket covering everything outside today. In fact, the precipitation of the last two days has turned our fields much more decidedly green. After so many days in a row last week where it was downright HOT outside, switching back to snow would be a tough pill to swallow. It’s hard not to feel like I’m just getting too old for this.
The horses didn’t seem very happy with the weather this morning, pacing back and forth around the overhang grumpily while I tried to take care of the housekeeping before setting out feed pans.
My spring primping of our landscape is happening in fits and starts. The last trimming I did of bushes and trees is all laying on the ground pretty much where it fell Friday, waiting to be hauled off to some bush pile out of sight. I guess, the truth is there is a significant accumulation of trimmed branches piling up outside.
we are not allowed
to know exactly why
the simple wink of an eye
from someone who is incredibly shy
fails to overtly imply
the end of a sentence
that never got properly finished
In the last few days, there has been news of swift justice demonstrated for a person who leaked top secret documents. Arrest him! Lock him up! Press charges! Why does it take so much longer for some crimes than others?
As much as I enjoy local spectator sports, I have had a difficult time catching our MLS team, the MNUFC Loons, in one of their glory moments. I saw last night’s broadcast of their home game against Orlando City where the Loons scored the first goal. YAY!! Then they allow a tying goal and in the last few minutes of game time, a go-ahead goal to lose. That’s not a spectacle I enjoy so much.
It feels a bit like a cold and drizzly Sunday after a warm and sunny week. However, on the bright side, NO ACCUMULATION of snow!
Thus far.
Afternoon Update:
The snow has gained enough momentum it has turned the surface of our deck furniture white but we are fighting snow with fire to cope.
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Not Money
For several days in a row this week, we were able to give the horses more attention than they have gotten from us in a long time. I think Cyndie’s increasing mobility has paid off for our horses in boosting morale. They have never given us any indication that they like to be brushed. Actually, just the opposite, but after Swings finally reacted with such whole-body acceptance to Cyndie working her mane the other day, we have fresh hope that we can teach them all this same appreciation.
Yesterday, we did some bale-twine braiding while the herd munched a noontime snack. We figure it will help them accept our plan to wrap posts and hang braided strands if they’ve watched us making them. I am so happy to have discovered this simple reuse option for the polypropylene twine since I didn’t come up with a local recycler that collects used bale twine. Keeps it out of the waste stream for a while longer at the very least.
While I was noticing the horses looking so happy to be watching us, I was reminded again that this retired phase of their lives is the first time their existence wasn’t related to making money. The reason they were born was that people wanted to make money off of them. The reason they were trained to race was money driven. After their racing days ended, all four mares were repeatedly bred in hopes their foals would become money-makers.
We don’t know for certain but based on the horse’s behavior, we imagine the grooming they received previously could have been rather business-like as opposed to focusing on the emotional needs and desires of the animal.
I don’t mean to imply that the treatment they are receiving from us isn’t rainbows and lollipops all the time. I wrote yesterday about working on disciplining their bad behavior. We have also recently taken the annual step of closing off access to the pastures. Mia so sweetly showed up at a gate Cyndie had just closed and forlornly gazed out at the field as if to ask for a pass.
Sorry, no can do.
At this point, it’s for the good of the grass. We need the turf to firm up a bit and the grass to grow at least six inches so the field will become robust enough to support the pressure of four heavy and hungry beasts.
So, we are giving the horses a dose of our own “This is for your own good whether you like it or not.” The difference is that our decisions aren’t based on making money off them. I would like to believe they can sense the distinction.
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Relative Something 