An Idea
I’m thinking of trying something different for posts next week while on my annual biking and camping trip.
I will post a picture a day using my phone. The last time I tried posting by way of the small touch screen it frustrated me to no end, but hope springs eternal and I will give it another try.
So, today -while my internet connection is still throttled to almost useless speed- I am constructing a test post to see if this idea seems workable for me.
Maybe I’ll learn a thing or two about effectively navigating my nemesis the touch screen.
That is a photo that I mined from the archives made available to me after following prompts.
If this works for me now, it’ll give me confidence to try it again on the road next week, subject to signal availability and battery life.
Just an idea for continued daily chronicling of my ongoing adventures.
Beautiful Adventures
It was another beautiful day in Wintervale-be-gone yesterday where the dog and cat are strong, the horses are good-looking, and the scenery is above average. I was able to get out for a short bike ride into the wind in a test of my bike with no battery installed. I finally purchased the cover that replaces the battery on the down tube. It required a call to Trek to learn it was only available from the distributor QBP (Quality Bicycle Products) and only able to be ordered by bike shops.
I kept telling myself the bike was so much lighter, that it would be noticeably less effort to pedal it up the hills without electric assist. I think it almost was.
Cyndie has done an absolutely heroic job of working to stop the spread of leaf rust fungus on our wild black raspberry plants lately. Inspired by success from the daunting project last summer, she set out to continue this year, fighting the spread of this highly infectious threat, diligently bagging infected plants she digs up and then cleaning and disinfecting her tools, boots, and clothes afterward.
While she was busy finding a nest of eggs nestled in the middle of the bushes, I set out to cut one last trail that had been passed by the last time I was out with the power trimmer. Just a small distance that wouldn’t take very much time. Was that why I may have been less attentive to every step I was taking?
My foot landed on a protruding root and my ankle rolled severely enough to drop me in a heap of anguish and pain. I have strained my ankles so many times in my life that this was an all-too-familiar predicament.
I stayed flat on my back for a long time, holding my foot in the air above me while waiting for the initial sharp pain to calm and trying to think through my options. It felt like a medium level of severity but I wanted to be overcautious in hope of recovering from this little misstep as soon as physically possible.
I phoned Cyndie but she didn’t answer. I tried texting. I propped my boot on the trunk of a tree and stayed on my back to ponder my next move. I could wait for her to find me. I tried my loud shrill whistle to see if it would trigger her to look at her phone. I thought she could bring down an ankle brace or crutches or, worst case, help me get back up to the house if it seemed so bad when I finally stood up that I didn’t want to put weight on it.
I laid long enough for the pain to calm and the mosquitos to find me so I decided it was time to stand up and make an assessment. I could put weight on it but walking was quite a hobbling limp. All part of the adventure in this beautiful place that is our home.
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Struggling Here
Our connection to viable speed internet has been hit and miss for much of the last ten years since we moved to our central location in Pierce County, WI. We are not very far away from more populated communities but we are decades behind in digital connectivity.
There are options we could have paid for that would improve our situation but over a year ago we resigned ourselves to waiting for a promised fiber-optic connection currently being installed in the community by our local power cooperative. It seems now that as the fiber gets closer to our driveway, our usage has become increasingly taxing on our current limited bandwidth service.
This month has been particularly frustrating because I messed up and wasted gigabytes transferring documents and updating an application in the first days of our 30-day period. Coincidentally, our house sitter unknowingly used up data just days before. In the days since, I have been relegated to trying to navigate at the equivalence of 1980 dialup speeds to load 2022 page complexities.
It’s all based on overall traffic. Sometimes it works for me, and other times I can’t even get a page to load to read it.
It is also constricting my ability to create posts, so that gives me an incentive to see if I can pick a temporary option to get us through the next week and a half. All the while watching the end of our driveway for utility trucks to show up with our future.
A good connection is a luxury. Enjoy it if you got it.
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Activism
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does activism activate?
guts wrenched again
and again
and again
against the grain
of actual activation
same result
breeds similar results
insanity reflected
in hoards responding
by pouring their dollars
into the deadly profit machines
selling automatic weapons
with a wink and a nod
no questions asked
while activists wail
in anguish and pain
attempting to breathe life
into the void of humanity
holding positions
of congressional control
ka-ching
ka-ching
tilting at injustice
against gales of greed
and an infinite devaluation
of real human lives
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Very Summery
No complaints from us with the weather pattern we have been enjoying this week. Warm and sunny during the day and cool and comfortable overnight.
Here are some scenes reflecting the bliss:
A butterfly on our lilac bush and the four horses out grazing in the hay field as the sunlight was about to disappear below the horizon.
One summer trait the horses are not enjoying is the harassment by flies. We put out a fan to provide a minor assist in blowing the pests away.
Swings tends to claim that spot as her own and the others need to ingratiate themselves with her to earn an adjacent position that she will tolerate. I saw Light squeezed in there for a little while earlier in the day.
I claimed a few hours of the warm sunshine for a bike ride through our “Driftless” terrain, which means I sped down some fast descents and struggled to climb up the other side.
I made it out to Elmwood and back, but I wasn’t successful in my quest to ride the entire distance unsupported by battery assist. Honestly, I would have needed to call Cyndie to come pick me up if I didn’t have the motor to help me deal with the last ten miles. I’d lost track of how many river valleys remained and faced an unexpected steep climb that almost broke my spirit.
However, I survived and did so under some of the best weather at the best time of year our latitude has to offer. We live in a very beautiful topography that provides wonderful vistas of rolling farm fields peppered with wooded valleys and gorgeous trout streams where whitetail deer romp and fly fishermen cast their lines.
Very summery, indeed.
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Caught Up
For a day or two now, we are caught up with mowing all that is growing at the peak rate typical for June. Yesterday was a perfect day for cutting grass with the lawn tractor. It was dry with a nice breeze and the grass wasn’t overgrown. I was able to mow at high speed, there were no piles of clippings, and the finish looks top notch. I will enjoy it for the rarity it was because I regularly find myself facing one or multiple versions of cutting complications.
Cyndie raked the clippings in the labyrinth after giving them a day to dry out and it is looking its best, as well. Did I mention that, after a good night’s sleep, Cyndie was feeling back to her healthy old self?
I tried wearing my earbuds under the earmuff hearing protection I wear while mowing because I am caught up in a Kris Kristofferson song from 1976 that I just heard for the first time. I’m contemplating trying to memorize it so I can create my own version to play and sing.
“There ain’t nothing sweeter than naked emotions
So you show me yours hon and I’ll show you mine”
I heard Shannon McNally’s version first and then searched for the song origins and found both Kristofferson’s and Willie Nelson’s two versions. It amazes me that I haven’t come across this song sooner in the 46-years since it was written.
All credit goes to MPR’s “Radio Heartland” on the HD2 subchannel of KNOW’s 91.1 MHz. I rarely pursue music beyond my personal library collection anymore, so exposure to new music is mostly limited to what I hear on the radio when traveling in my car. My tastes have begun to age out of MPR’s “The Current” at 89.3 MHz FM so more and more I find myself migrating to the primarily acoustic, singer-songwriter, folk, and Americana offerings on “Heartland.”
“And I wish that I was the answer to all of your questions
Lord knows I know you wish you were the answer to mine”
I am enjoying that this song has finally caught up with me after all these years.
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Trimming Minutiae
There is no drama about our activities yesterday and little in the way of specific goals. The hours passed as the earth rotated and shadows moved while Cyndie and I toiled on a variety of rewarding tasks.
I made the dreaded trip to buy gas for all our small engines and the diesel tractor. Ouch. That’s a burden on the pocketbook.
One way I reframe the harsh rise of the cost of fuel is to remember the time we had been shopping for a while and Cyndie grabbed a 20 oz. bottle of Aquafina water at the checkout counter. It added the paltry amount of $1.68 to our over $500 bill at Lowe’s. It was a purchase of convenience, for sure.
That price for 20 ounces of water is equal to $10.75/gallon. Think about that.
With all gas cans full, I was able to resume using the power trimmer. I had completed all our fence lines over the weekend so the next crucial need was the labyrinth. It didn’t give in without a fight. The stones defining the pathway wreak havoc on the nylon line of the power trimmer.
One technique I attempt to employ to reduce the abrasion of the line against the rocks is reducing the speed of rotation. Maximum speed is not required to achieve an adequate cut. Still, the spinning will deplete line and require the bounce against the ground to advance more length. I can’t count how many times I would release more line and almost immediately the trimmer would catch an edge and torque right up to a rock and eat the new line I just bounced out. Aaarrrrgh.
Just when things are going smooth, the engine runs out of gas. At least I was wise enough to bring the can of gas along this time. I also had a spare spool of line with me, just in case. I needed to use both.
The challenge always seems to be coming out even in completing the intended cutting goal before running out of either line or fuel. When I finished the pathway of the labyrinth, I moved on to the firepit next to the labyrinth, as long as I still had both line and gas. After finishing that, I decided to hit the trail in the woods for as long as the trimmer would run.
It lasted a lot longer than I expected. I cleared a large section of the perimeter trail where the grass had gotten very tall. A bonus accomplishment I didn’t anticipate achieving.
After too many days in a row of trimming for hours, my throttle hand was letting me know it had had enough. That’s a good reason to stop using that tool for a while. Today my hands will be on the lawn tractor steering wheel.
We are in the month of never ending mowing, which is putting the job of never ending sawing and wood chipping on temporary hold.
Somewhere between those two, I keep intending to add never ending bike rides, but that keeps failing to happen.
Could someone slow down the earth’s rotation a little bit, please?
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Feeling Crummy
Imagine you have been out of town, traveling on a commercial airline, attending graduation events with throngs of others who have traveled from far and wide and you arrive home feeling less than your best in the third year of a pandemic.
Out of an excess of caution, Cyndie chose to wear a mask when she got home until she verifies by test whether she was feeling crummy because of the dreaded virus or simply some other easily possible reason. Allergies? Travel fatigue?
A nap was enough to get her out walking the dog and pulling some dreaded invasive garlic mustard plants while I was trimming and hauling away more branches from the lower portion of evergreen trees along the driveway.
I can never tell when she is truly ill because she tends to maintain her activities regardless.
After catching up with some news headlines, I was feeling kind of crummy until I happened upon the tidbit about the small trial for cancer treatment that resulted in an unheard-of complete remission in all patients.
Imagine hoping your treatment protocol might help some patients and then learning it made tumors vanish in all 18 participants.
I believe that would be the opposite of feeling crummy.
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That Close
I knew I might not finish trimming the grass along the fence line before the gas ran out but the closer I got, the more I hoped I might make it. My decision to leave the plastic gas can behind probably doomed my chances of not needing it.
There were one and a half lengths between posts left to cut out of the entire distance of our fencing when the motor sputtered out on me. Nothing to do but walk back to the shop garage and bring the gas can back with me.
We haven’t always been proactive about trimming the grass along the fence before it gets problematically tall, especially during the time when there were no horses on the property and we didn’t need the electricity activated. When the fence is electrified, contact with the growth around it puts a load on the circuit that pulls down the voltage.
The first time I used the power trimmer along the fence line, there were several areas where woodier stems of some plants would break the plastic cutting line. This time, around the entire length of our fences, I did not run into anything that the plastic line couldn’t cut. It was very rewarding to discover that we’ve been cutting it enough times now that there is no longer anything robust trying to grow under there.
It fits with what I was writing yesterday in that the job of keeping the growth off the fence is getting easier to manage over time. It would be just fine with me if eventually, nothing tried to grow beneath the fences and I didn’t need to cut it anymore.
I could intentionally neglect it. 🙂
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Intentional Neglect
After my recent effort mowing the back pasture to control weeds and improve grazing for the horses, walking past the grass field in the area we call our north loop has me wondering what to do there. We don’t graze the horses there but it has been cut for hay the last few years.
It’s possible the person I’ve offered the main hay field this year will also be interested in baling the north loop again, but not a certainty. Whether he wants it this time or not, I’ve been wondering about a longer-term plan for that area.
My first preference would be to allow it to become an untended natural field of native growth, something I tend to think of as intentionally neglected growth. The challenge for me is becoming well enough informed about what is desirable native growth and what is invasive and problematic. That foils the part about neglect.
Honestly, I wish we didn’t need to intervene in any natural growth on our land. It would be a lot less work. My dream is to manage our fields and forest in the present so that they get healthier and require less effort in the future. Admittedly, neglect isn’t the correct term for my intentions, but it’s more dramatic than saying “do less work.”
I like having some treeless fields to complement our wooded acres but planting trees comes more naturally to me than nurturing a meadow. At the same time, it is fun to pop out of the woods on a walk with Delilah and cruise down the path mowed in the tall grass.
Since my neighbor to the south is one to mow a larger and larger majority of his land, having some natural grassland on our acres for the benefit of the wildlife it supports feels like it holds added merit.
I intend to neglect taking any immediate action, mainly because I can. I’ll keep thinking about the fields’ future while walking along the grass path and enjoying it as it is today.
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Relative Something 