Even Frostier
Yesterday morning, Wednesday, September 28th, was even colder than the day before. Instead of a few random spots of frost, our entire back pasture was white from ice crystals on the grass.
It was a hard enough freeze to quickly dispatch some of the plants in the labyrinth. The leaves of hydrangea plants had begun to turn black and shrivel by the afternoon.
Once the sun got high, the temperatures were ideal for toiling in the late September rays. We were on the final stretch of weeding around the rocks lining the paths of the front half of the labyrinth. First, we rolled the rocks away to make it easier to pull weeds. Then, using a guide stick to determine proper spacing, I repositioned rocks to define the lanes again.
Having started at the center of the labyrinth where the distances of each circuit are short, dealing with the increasing spans of the much longer outer rings began to grow a little tiresome. Upon reaching our goal, we rewarded ourselves with a second session of the day hanging with the horses as they freely checked out the barn.
It was their second opportunity of the day and every indication is that our plan is working wonderfully. We placed a small amount of feed in each of the stalls as enticement and by the end of the last session all but Mia had ventured in and out of different stalls to nibble. Swings was taking advantage of the water available in hanging buckets in each stall.
It’s looking like we are making good gains toward adjusting their attitude about coming inside the barn during harsh conditions.
Compared to last winter, they are certainly giving us a much less “frosty” reception to the opportunity.
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Advance Preparation
While people in Florida have been preparing in advance for the threat of hurricane Ian, yesterday we took a first step in preparing for cold weather that will be impacting our lives in the weeks and months ahead. We’ve been planning for a while to try something new to see if we could adjust our horses’ attitudes about the inside of the barn. The last time we put them inside the stalls during harsh weather they were none too happy about it. More precisely, downright panicky over it.
The weather yesterday morning served up added inspiration for executing our plan by presenting our first confirmed frost of the season.
Didn’t really see that coming. The air temperature was 37°F up at the house. That much colder down the hill, obviously.
On a perfectly sunny morning, we opened access to the barn to let the horses freely explore on their own initiative while we lingered nearby to provide a calming presence. With the four stalls all open and stocked with food and water, they had a chance to come inside and check out the entire space or step in a stall for a nibble, yet they could also go right back outside whenever they wished.
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There was plenty of apprehension and a few instances of being startled but overall they behaved as well as we hoped and inspired us to continue the exercise many more times in the days ahead. It’s a little akin to having four bulls in a china shop to have them loosely meandering in the cramped space around the stalls. Mix was the only one to figure out there was something to eat in the stalls and grabbed a mouthful of feed before quickly darting back outside to munch. Then she came back in and repeated the routine a couple times.
Any quick movement from one horse triggers all the others to follow suite which is a little nerve wracking when suddenly they all have to make it through a narrow door at once.
They were obviously unsure about what we were up to and wary about the strange access we had granted. We are hoping their uncertainty will diminish with future iterations of the drill. Eventually, we will want to get them used to coming inside during darkness since that is often the situation when we end up bringing them in during stormy or super cold winter weather.
As often as possible in the days ahead, we hope to allow them to come and go as they please inside the barn in hopes of creating and strengthening feelings of comfort with being in the stalls.
Back when we had the Arabian horses our experience was completely different. Those four would line up and beg to be allowed in during nasty weather and seemed thrilled to each have their own protected spaces with unchallenged access to food and water.
I’m not expecting to achieve a change to that level from our rescued Thoroughbreds, but just getting to a point where they don’t show signs of triggered PTSD when we bring them inside during bad weather will be a great relief.
I like being prepared in advance, just in case we experience any bitter storms this winter.
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Changes Underway
There is no denying the trend that is underway. Our trees are beginning to reveal what their true autumn colors will be as the change inches toward its peak.
Will it be a week or several? Time will tell. We often get hit with strong winds just when the colors are about to be their best, which knocks much of the glory to the ground sooner than we want. Yesterday’s wind wasn’t as dramatic as I feared. Brought down more twigs and sticks than leaves, probably because not many leaves have changed yet.
I walked past the willow tree in the paddock and realized that I’d only seen a horse eating a branch one time yet the bottom of the branches end perfectly at the height they can reach. They are keeping it trimmed. Look at the willow tree in the background to see the difference of one beyond their access.
We gave up trying to protect the one in the paddock and didn’t expect to see any new leaves on the branches this summer so it has already outlived our expectations. The horses chew on the bark and roots in our presence, but I guess they wait until we aren’t around to prune the growing branches.
I think they will miss it when the tree no longer provides much in the way of shade. We have been trying to nurse along some new shade trees we transplanted just beyond the paddock fence but they won’t be providing much shade until a decade from now. I mean, if they even survive this first-year shock of having been moved.
We’ll find out next summer whether any of them might have a future of someday adding colors to our glorious autumn seasons.
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Outstretched Arms
As if reaching for a hug or stretching to embrace the world before me, arms wide and heart open, I stand and gaze up toward the sky with lyrics from all my favorite songs strolling around in my increasingly foggy memory bank.
Can it be so hard
To love yourself without thinking
Someone else holds a lower card?
Free to Be, 1977 Bruce Cockburn
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Holding a sense of wonder has got to be one of the great secrets of living an enlightened life. Hah! Brings to mind the great darts episode of Ted Lasso:
“Be curious, not judgemental.”
In which the main character apparently misattributes the quote to Walt Whitman.
What does the world hold for me today? It’s mostly blue sky now but that’s changed twice already since I woke up a half-hour later than usual this morning. As I was getting Delilah into her harness for her morning stroll through our woods, the sun was shining brightly into our front entrance. I grabbed my sunglasses and off we went into the not-too-cold morning air.
Halfway through the woods on our way around toward the barn to feed the horses, I fumbled to stash my sunglasses in a vest pocket. The sky was filled with clouds.
Now the clouds have disappeared again, about as fast as they had shown up a couple of hours ago.
Last night’s weather forecast for today promised high winds but they haven’t kicked up here yet. I’ve left the barn doors closed in anticipation of avoiding the dusty turmoil that blustery days can kick up in there.
Here’s to being open to whatever insights the universe happens to provide for our further enlightenment on a sunny Sunday with no firm commitments demanding our time or attention.
I’m feeling a certain pull to lay down and stare up at the clouds while listening to a random shuffle of my music library.
Imagine that.
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Admittedly Isolated
I’m home alone with the animals again this weekend and contemplating the incredible peacefulness and beauty that I enjoy the luxury of experiencing here every day. This morning the horses radiated peacefulness under a foggy wet blanket of sound-dampening air. It was Delilah who disrupted things every so often with her random barks of alarm over imagined threats that really don’t deserve to be barked at from my perspective.
As I methodically made my way around the paddocks to scoop up recent manure piles, my mind meandered through so many trials and tribulations that we aren’t facing.
Our country has not been invaded and bombed by a bordering nation that was pretending to be doing our people a favor. Our region has yet to be torched by wildfires or swamped by unprecedented flash flooding. Extremist politicians haven’t maliciously trafficked hapless immigrants to our doorstep. We are not experiencing a shortage of food or potable water. We are not struggling with the debilitations of long-COVID infection.
The much more benign burdens directly impacting me this day include two issues that aren’t happening as swiftly as I wish. I’m wondering if the technician who will splice our fiber optic cable at the base of the utility pole across the street from our driveway works on Saturdays. Nobody showed up by the end of the day yesterday even though the cable to our house was buried last Tuesday.
I’m also anxious to receive a promised bid from our favorite excavating business regarding the landscaping of the slopes on either side of our new driveway. We’ve decided the job is too big to accomplish on our own and will require a truckload of dirt they can provide. It’s been a week since he was here to discuss the issues.
It’s pretty easy for me to preach about having a positive attitude about how great it is to be alive when I reside in a sanctuary of natural beauty and affluent comforts. I am sensitive about boasting too assertively from our admittedly isolated circumstances in the world, but my perspective is coming from having successfully treated a depression that shadowed much of my earlier life.
Our daughter is enduring the stress of knowing a vulnerable adult who walked out of her music school before his father did and has now been missing for days. Our hearts ache for those who are suffering.
I walk through our woods to a soundtrack of calling birds and water droplets coming down from wet tree leaves, the autumn aromas of fallen leaves just beginning to become noticeable. The horses huff a big sigh as I show up to clean the area beneath the overhang and serve up their pans of feed.
What can I do but send the love I experience out into the universe to flow toward all who face difficulties that I struggle to fathom, recognizing the privilege of my isolation.
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Slow Gardening
Not unlike the methods we have employed on the driveway, chipping away at a big job in small portions, this week we have been giving the labyrinth a thorough going over. So thorough, we have been moving and replacing each of the rocks while weeding and trimming the grass around and beneath them.
At the pace of this level of detail, it will be amazing if we finish before the labyrinth garden gets covered by snow. Each morning before we start, I have been giving the driveway project ongoing attention, moving a couple loads of composted manure by wheelbarrow to create a gradient beyond the gravel shoulder.
So, both projects continue to hold our attention.
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The long hours in the sun had Delilah patiently hiding in the shade while we toiled. When I broke for lunch yesterday, I brought her up to the house with me while Cyndie continued to work. As I was gobbling up some sustenance, I glanced over to find Delilah laid out on the tile floor, her head placed precisely in the glaring spot of sun shining in through the skylight.
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Apparently, it wasn’t as hot as the bright sunshine she worked so hard to avoid down by the labyrinth.
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Alternative View
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This photo begs a caption but I’ve got nothing. Feel free to share your ideas by posting a comment.
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Fiber Buried
The ongoing waiting game notched another step closer to having a fiber cable internet connection in our home when the crew showed up yesterday to run the cable from the pole on the street up to the side of our house.
I found it fascinating to observe the techniques of burying cable from close proximity. They had to bore under the road to bring the cable from the pole to our property. I learned they use a jet of water to carve a path for their piping. There was a rather large crew who took turns doing a fair amount of waiting between moments of busy activity.
They actually start at the house and bury the cable back down to where it gets pulled through a protective tube they install beneath the road.
Wherever they cross a gas line or the buried electric supply line, a hole is carefully shoveled to provide clear visibility of the depth they must avoid.
I attempted to schedule the last step of the in-home connection but jumped the gun because there is one more task that needs to happen first. Today’s crew simply buried the fiber optic cable and mounted a box on the outside of our house. A different person will show up to splice the connection of the cable routed under the road from our house to the feed that comes off the telephone pole.
I’m told that once the splice is done a tag will be hung on our front door with instructions to call to set up an appointment for the technician to run the cable from the box on the outside of the house through the wall to where we will connect the modem they provide.
It shouldn’t be long now until we take a leap forward into the present-day state of streaming content on the internet.
We will finally be able to allow our devices to download software updates whenever they become available, along with other high bandwidth activities. Streaming music threatens to command my attention for more hours a day than I should allow. I may need to actually practice some self-discipline or something.
Before I get to start worrying about that, somebody needs to show up and splice the connection across the road. But, it sure is sweet to have the cable finally buried up to the house. That is a milestone for which we have long awaited.
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Our Day
A day after we celebrated Julian’s birthday with a family dinner at a Bloomington restaurant, Cyndie and I claimed yesterday for ourselves in honor of our 41st wedding anniversary. Our animal sitter, Grace, was on the calendar to free us up to do whatever we wanted. In the end, we both wanted to stay home and work on our property.
I am thrilled that our first accomplishment involved clearing small stumps, roots, and rocks in our north loop trail that have prevented me from being able to mow that section as low as desired for our walking trails. I’ve been wanting to take care of this nuisance issue for two summers.
In the afternoon, we focused our attention on the labyrinth. I brought down our new favorite tool, the electric push mower to give it a fresh cut.
We rearranged rocks and pulled weeds, addressing only a fraction of the total that is deserving of attention. The progress looks so good it has us both wanting to get back down there again soon to continue the beautification.
Just as we were about worn out for the day, we looked up to find the horses had wandered back to hang out in our proximity. That was all the invitation we needed to stop what we were doing to go hang out with them.
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Throughout the day we reminisced about our wedding day back in 1981, an outdoor service on a day with very similar weather to what we were enjoying yesterday. I remember the trees were starting to turn colors, similar to what is beginning to happen here this week.
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Relative Something 