So Happy
We were only away a few days but Pequenita seemed extra happy over our return yesterday. It seems as though she understands the routine of our leaving for days at a time and so maybe the occasion of our return is becoming something of an increased expectation for her.
She was rather comically clingy for the first part of the afternoon and then again when I sat on our bed and opened up my laptop.
I don’t mind giving her extended scratches when she shows so much appreciation for the touch, despite the limitations it creates for getting any real writing done.
The horses weren’t what I would describe as clingy when we showed up at the barn. Mix was in “bossy-mare” mode and preferred to pay amped-up attention to the two chestnuts, Mia and Light. They all looked noticeably more shaggy as their winter growth is filling in nicely.
Our weather is holding in “uneventful” mode while vast swaths of the country are experiencing events. The precipitation spinning around the low-pressure center in the middle states is staying just to our south. This buys us time to continue the process of winterizing Wintervale.
Today we plan to pull the pump from our landscape pond and cover the water with netting to capture leaves during the off-season. We also will remove the plastic awnings over the windows of the chicken coop and place solid plastic panels over the screens. Even though there won’t be any birds in there, we still want to keep it from filling up with snow.
We pulled in our plastic rain gauge to keep it from getting cracked when water freezes in it. We’ll be in the “in-between” season for a while, where precip can fall as rain and snow on any given day.
I’ll be happy to stay inside and give Pequenita scratches during weather like that, thank you very much.
.
.
Glorious Days
We have been blessed with three incredible sunrises as well as glorious October weather days at the lake this weekend.
The crisp morning air was colder than the lake water and produced mesmerizing steamy accents to the brilliant colors of the sunrise.
Most of the boats and docks have been pulled out of the water, but this poor orphaned catamaran was still awaiting attention.
It made for an appealing subject for a photo.
We didn’t spend much time near the water because there was so much fun to be had creating the new labyrinth path in the woods.
I was able to successfully route the path around the trees to form a shorter rendition than the 11-circuit Chartres pattern we made at home. Cyndie worked tirelessly to dig up rocks and move them to the edges.
There remains a fair amount of time needed to position more rocks and branches to better define the pathway in a manner that will endure through the seasons. Next spring, I envision a need to selectively remove ferns and trillium that cover the ground here in order to preserve the visibility of the path.
Since we usually are trying to transplant trillium from up here to back home in Beldenville, this has the potential of providing plenty of plants for the task.
Before we get to that point, this labyrinth will need to survive the winter, so I guess we’ll just have to make sure to get up here for the glorious days of the snow season and walk the path frequently enough to maintain the definition.
A labor of love.
.
.
Forest Fun
Notice: This post includes content of carnivorous canine detail.
Walking in the woods at the lake is easy now that all the undergrowth has gone dormant for the winter. Allowing Delilah to explore every scent is a spectacle of mania. She can hardly contain herself in a rush to discern and follow the myriad options. Eventually, she did come upon one smell that overrode all others, a recently detached leg of deer.
After she closed her jaws on that prize, nothing else mattered.
We let her gnaw on it for a while and then I took her for a walk to see if she might decide to bury it somewhere for safekeeping. It was a long walk while I explored the wooded slope near the driveway in search of remains from a fort the kids and I constructed out of branches some twenty years ago.
I never found any evidence of our creative efforts now decades past and Delilah never let go of her prize.
When we finally made our way back to head indoors for a drink of water, I negotiated that leg out of her mouth and covered it with leaves beside the driveway for her.
Content with that for the moment, she gladly led the way inside. The next time we took her outside, we figured that would be the first thing she headed for, but we were wrong.
Now with both Cyndie and me setting out for a stroll with her, she seemed very willing to leave those bones for another time. We strode into the deep leaves covering the ground in search of the next great find among the trees. What we came upon this time was a new idea.
We want to create a small labyrinth path around existing trees in an area that is almost level.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
There are a lot of rocks available and a fair bit of old trash to clean up that contributed to our urge to pursue the possibility. It appears the old fishing lodge that existed here originally may have used the woods as their dump for trash at some point.
I stepped out dimensions and aligned an initial orientation with the four directions north-south/east-west and with each accomplishment, our idea gained merit. Late last night, we scanned labyrinth design options for something simple yet interesting and now will try to visualize fitting one of them around the trees.
This will likely be a project that develops over years to become fully established as we intend to keep the woods as natural as possible and have the circular pathways be noticeable, but subtly so.
A forest bathed meditative walking labyrinth seems like a very fun idea. Here’s hoping we can bring it to fruition up at our favorite place.
.
.
Respite
.
leave work early
pack last minute things
ride in the back for hours
surrounded by how many bags
only going for the weekend
to the usual place
how much do we really need
doesn’t matter at this point
the scenery is terrific
all the way to the lake
pick up a home-bake pizza
from our favorite pizza place
multiple hauling trips inside upon arrival
build a fire for ambience
heat up the oven
put up our feet
with a sigh of relief
being right where we want to be
a gift beyond measure
oozing with pleasure
joyous
peaceful
lovely
happiness
we will never take for granted
respite from the grind
perspective refresher
inspiration injector
refueling hope in each of our minds
living our dream
broadening our scope
strengthening our abilities to cope
our beds beckon
and we gladly accept
seeking the best-est of rest
eager to sleep
the deepest of sleeps
in order to wake
exponentially refreshed
delighted to once again be
at this most spectacular of all special places
we are definitely absolutely up
at
the lake
.
.
One Thing
Or another. I was thinking about writing “The Thing” for the title of this post in a riff off the idiom, “Here’s the thing.” My software indicated I’d already used that title once before on Relative Something. I try not to reuse titles if possible. Seriously, though, I was thinking, “Here’s the thing…”
Did you know Alec Baldwin hosted a public radio show and podcast interview series by the title, “Here’s the Thing?” I didn’t.
Makes sense though. That’s a great title. I tried a couple other pairs of words and found I’d already used them, too.
I prefer the pattern of holding my titles to two words, but after more than ten years of blogging, it gets hard to come up with a unique pair.
Whether it’s one thing or another, here’s the thing… I never expected that one day, I would live in Wisconsin.
Maybe I should have titled this post, “Never Expected.”
There are innumerable things I never expected to experience in my lifetime. I never expected I would witness stupidity being proudly espoused as publicly as is common in this day and age.
I never expected the burgeoning of private military companies into global powerhouses offering services to nation-states.
I never expected that I would be alive during a years-long global pandemic that would cause the amount of death COVID-19 has, even though I had read books and watched movies about similar biohazardous calamities.
I never expected private companies would create space crafts with reusable propulsion modules that make pinpoint landings on floating platforms in the ocean, especially modules with video capture abilities allowing public viewing of the feat from multiple angles.
I never expected to find out microplastics are everywhere, including inside both animals and humans.
I didn’t expect that so many things imagined for science fiction stories would become realities, ala Star Trek communicators and today’s smartphones. I never imagined that mobile phones would be able to rival cameras to the level of making professional-quality movies.
I remember thinking touch screens would never work. Folding screens? Not possible.
I don’t want to think of how many other things I deem not possible will become reality in my lifetime.
During my technical career in industry, I was on a development team that designed a custom machine for making coated optical discs that the customer boasted would be able to fit an entire volume of encyclopedia for viewing on a computer screen. Even as I worked on the electronics and vacuum chambers of the machine that would make this possible, I struggled to fathom the enormity of digitizing all the information in those books.
I never expected to come to the realization about how much human suffering results from religious conflict when simply loving others solves conflicts, heals wounded souls, and sows peace for all.
I never expected so many of you to read the words I write.
Here’s the thing, overcoming depression opens a world of possibilities.
This I know: It’s always one thing or another, whether you expect it or not.
.
.
Color Gradient
It caught my eye right away as I passed by and after a few steps beyond I realized I needed to stop and go back.
Look at the color gradient happening here.
Nature putting on a show, plain and simple.
These spectacles are dwindling. There is now a lot more brown on the ground than colors on the branches, which makes these little surprises all the more special.
Our days of summery October are numbered I’m afraid. Near-term forecasts suggest high temperatures in the 50s(F) and lows below freezing.
In preparation, yesterday we flushed the water out of the buried line to the labyrinth and rolled up the last of our long garden hoses. Getting that chore done while still being able to wear a T-shirt outdoors in October is a rarity.
It’s so odd to know the warmth is ominous for the planet while it is also making it more comfortable to work outside this October.
.
.
Nine Years
Nine years ago this month we were attempting to close on the purchase of our new home in Beldenville, Wisconsin. After twenty-five years in our Eden Prairie home, it was quite a leap to pack up all our possessions and head for the countryside without having locked in the legal papers to make anything official.
We hadn’t signed off on the sale of our EP home or the purchase of our new horse property in Pierce County but the moving van was en route.
Each year since has been remarkable, but the power of those days of transition was possibly greater than everything that’s happened since.
Scroll over to the “Previous Somethings” and select the month of October in 2012. Roll down to the posts for Steps 1, 2, & 3 to read what it was like to have our dream complicated by real difficulties.
Obviously, everything worked out for us in terms of ultimately taking ownership and making Wintervale the place we’ve called home for the last nine years.
It is a real blessing to now be entering our tenth year here.
.
.
Full Advantage
Taking full advantage of the summer-like weather on a Sunday in October, nine cycling comrades and I rode bike trails to Stillwater and dined for lunch outside on the patio of the Freight House Restaurant. It was absolutely beautiful under the blue sky of the great outdoors.
I took very few pictures while on the bike due to very heavy traffic in both directions on the trail.
Rich captured a good shot of me sporting my pumpkin-orange, perfectly Octoberish cycling jersey.
My choice for lunch was a crispy shrimp po-boy sandwich.
A passerby kindly took a picture of us all posing with the St. Croix River behind us and the edge of Wisconsin beyond.
It was good to see so many people out and about on this gorgeous afternoon. There were oodles of people walking their dogs. I saw a skateboarder who looked a lot older than you’d expect, a young woman on roller skis racing toward us on the trail, hordes of people lined up waiting to board the paddleboat. Walkers, runners, and a significant number of e-bikes.
We rolled along at a comfortable pace for all and chatted the miles away.
Can you say, “Pleasant?”
Yeah, it was.
.
.
Just Being
So, I never did get around to draining hoses yesterday, but I did get to hang out with the horses and eventually wrestle with an unfamiliar image editing program.
After the horses finished cleaning their feed pans yesterday in the cold morning air, I noticed the three dark mares position themselves sideways against the sunlight to soak up some warmth. Mix, being a gray, didn’t seem to receive the same reward and thus showed no similar tendency to assume that position.
As the day warmed up, the tables turned. The horses have a good start on their winter coat, which is nice in the morning when it is cold, but when the temperature gets summerlike, those brown coats head for the shade.
Mix didn’t seem to be bothered at all.
Still, when nap time started to come upon them, Mix was quick to join the herd under the tree. They looked so peaceful there, I decided it would be a good time to stand among them.
I recorded a bit of my experience so you could enjoy a taste of what it was like.
.
.
No wonder I didn’t get around to draining hoses. I did end up mowing some grass for another last time this season. Today, I am going for a bike ride with friends.
When summer temperatures linger into October at our latitude on the globe, it invites all sorts of summery behaviors.
.
.
Little Motivation
This morning I dug out one of my winter hats –the one that is actually a Buff® made of half thick pile fabric/half ultra-stretch polyester microfiber– for the first time in over half a year. There was frost coating much of our fields. Cold temperatures feel so much colder this time of year.
Yesterday, I fell asleep on the ground in the sun while sitting with Delilah in wait for an appliance repair person to appear in the allotted window of time between 9 and noon. The warmth was soothing until Delilah would stand in the way and cover me with her shadow. The chill that instantly resulted was irritating.
The repairman showed up around 12:45, spun the basket of our washing machine by hand, and immediately pronounced the bearings were in need of replacement and that would require a new appointment on another day. Cyndie is wondering if we should bother with the expensive work or simply replace it with a new one for a little additional expense. I don’t have a good answer for the question except for my strong aversion to disposable devices.
I don’t know what it is but I am feeling little motivation to pursue any productive effort the last few days. A strong pull to just stand among the horses, or as I did yesterday, lay around with Delilah has become my most appealing notion.
It is warming up nicely and the sun is shining brightly so I am hoping to muster the energy to drain water from hoses and roll them up on a day when the weather is pleasant instead of waiting like I almost always do until it is ridiculously cold and the hoses stiff.
I’m wondering if getting my body in motion will result in it staying in motion for the bulk of today’s daylight hours.
I have recently updated system software which has rendered my old familiar image editor inoperable. Time to pick a new program and learn how to use it. That project doesn’t require my body to get in motion but it does beg for some motivation. Right now, that motivation comes from having initiated a 10-day free trial with the first potential replacement.
I loath the frustration of not being able to do what I want to in manipulating software, especially when I am unable to discern whether it is because the software simply doesn’t support the feature or just that I don’t know how to operate the program yet.
My primary life motivation leans toward avoiding frustrations as much as possible.
The lure of visions of standing among horses is strong. It would be frustrating to fight against that.
Draining hoses can wait until later this afternoon when it is even warmer. Software exploration can wait until after dark.
.
.
