Scary Moment
If I haven’t already ranted enough about how long the grass had grown at home while we were up north for ten days over the Independence Day holiday, let me add one last exclamation point. After I completed a second round of mowing, there were still enough leftover grass clippings to rake into windrows for making yard bales.
While I was playing around in that small plot above the barn, I heard some knocking on one of the horse’s feed buckets. We try to bring the buckets in after the horses have finished their grain, but I had left one out because there was a portion uneaten, and Mia was showing interest in it. If we leave the buckets indefinitely, the horses have a history of messing with them, and the metal handles get all bent out of shape.
After three knocks, I decided I better retrieve that last bucket before it gets wrecked. To my surprise, when I stepped through the door to the overhang, I saw it was Swings who was knocking the bucket in the spot where Mix usually eats, and she was standing with one foot in it.
Thankfully, she appeared totally calm with the situation, but at the same time, in a somewhat precarious position. Concerned that things could quickly take a turn for the worse, I bent down to assist her in getting out of this predicament. I reached through the fence boards and grabbed the sides of the bucket with each hand to hold it down, hoping she would then simply lift her foot out.
It didn’t work that way. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t want to pull it out or couldn’t pull it out. I got the impression her hoof might be wedged in the bottom, but it wasn’t clear since I couldn’t tell if she was pulling up or pushing down. The bucket was moving around and eventually pinned my gloved hand against the fence board hard enough that I began to bellow at the pain as Swings appeared to try standing on the hanging bucket with all her weight.
It was a scary moment. In my increasing panic, I tried to determine what was going to give. The bucket needed to be lifted upward to come out of the latch on the strap it was hanging from. I had no way to cut the strap in that instant. The metal handle looked like it was bending a bit, but the heavy plastic bucket wasn’t looking near its breaking point. It pretty much depended on what Swings was going to do next.
Luckily, she still seemed totally calm about the mess we were in, even with my screaming. Somehow, she shifted just enough that I was able to get my hand free, and it seemed undamaged. The residual tenderness of the bruise didn’t show up until later. Just as mysteriously, the two of us did something that allowed me to finally pull the bucket down while she moved to get her hoof out.
I don’t know how she got her foot in there in the first place, and if it was intended or not, but it occurred to me that she might have been unable to lift it high enough again to get it out. I’m still not clear about whether it was wedged in or if it was just her not taking the weight off that kept it stuck.
Thank goodness for the happy ending. I was home alone at the time, so that heightened my distress during the peak drama. And hooray for the other three horses remaining chill throughout it all. Once Swings had all four feet back on the ground and I was standing there holding the mildly reshaped bucket, it was as if they were all thinking, “What was all the fuss about?”
Nothing to see here. Carry on with your normal healthy horse routines. I’m going to go back to raking up grass clippings.
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Like New
One thing about having a nice paved driveway, you need to maintain it. With a long driveway, you need to maintain a lot of it. I often check out the state of rural driveways in comparison and wrestle with the decision of having asphalt on ours, but since it was paved when we bought the property, we decided not to go back to gravel.
Last winter, cracks opened up across the full width in two places, one of them just below the area where water drains from the shop garage. Neglecting that would lead to much bigger problems. I applied a superficial patch using a sealant from a caulking gun, based on the advice from my driveway guy, to buy time until they could do a professional fix.
When they first laid down the new pavement, I asked how often it would need to be re-sealed and was told every 3-5 years, but that it would help to start at the 1-year mark. Seemed excessive to me, but with such a big dollar investment, I wanted to give it the best shot at a long, healthy life as we could afford. We’d been dealing with the hassles of a failing asphalt driveway ever since we moved in.
I expressed my frustration over the first-year sealing not looking sufficient and not likely to hold up for the 3 to 5-year span. This led to a promise to return and fix the cracks, applying a heavier coat of sealant over the entire length that should last. Should, because it’s all weather-dependent, and no guarantees can be made.
Given the abuse of frequent winter thaw cycles we now face as a result of the ongoing climate calamity, maintaining a long asphalt driveway may never reach a span of five-year intervals.
At this point in my life, I’m satisfied with giving this 900-foot run of asphalt the best start possible before letting it turn into a patchwork of repairs like so many of the roads around us in this county.
On the advice of the guy applying the sealant, I was offered two regular coats instead of one thick one. Makes sense to me. He said it is difficult and messy to attempt a thick coat. When they do large parking lots, it is common to seal them in two coats, he told me.
Have at it. They plan to return tomorrow afternoon to apply a second coat. It already looks like new after just the first pass. It’s strange to see it without the usual mats of grass clippings lining the edges.
I guess you get what you pay for. It makes the place look like a million bucks, which is what it feels like we will have spent on it every five years or so.
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Busy Morning
It’s the time of year when my mornings get jumbled up by live broadcasts of the Tour de France bike race. No time to play my usual morning word games. Conflicts with trying to write blog posts. And this morning, I need to prepare for the potential arrival of a crew from my asphalt company, who will be filling the cracks that appeared last winter and sealing the pavement overall.
That means I need to get the mower out early, and Cyndie needs to get her car down the driveway before they show up and keep us off the surface for a couple of days.
Enjoy this photo Cyndie captured last evening on her last walk of the day with Asher. I gotta go…
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Not Exactly
Imagine my surprise when I was mowing along the fence line and came upon an unfamiliar sign attached to the top wire of the hay field fence.
To the best of my knowledge, we don’t have a donkey. This would be one of several types of wonderful surprises that tend to appear whenever we leave our property in the capable care of our friends, Pam and John. Such whimsical good fun.
Somehow, the eleventh day of July has arrived while I wasn’t looking. Minutes, hours, days, and weeks pass in a blink when you are having fun. I don’t have a clue how I coped with working a day job on top of everything else in life, since I am having trouble keeping up with daily life in retirement.
I’m on a swingset that goes all the way around, and all I get are glimpses of my surroundings as I sail past. My body feels older. Like it’s no longer mine. My mind and my body are on two different treadmills that roll along, each at a different speed.
Everything that I have learned over my lifetime tells me that the separation between opposites is so much more delicately thin than too many people are willing to accept. Often, things might not be exactly as they seem.
We don’t actually have a donkey, but if we did, I’m pretty sure it would be highly trained.
If I had a logical train of thought, you might find it easy to follow along to wherever it is I am headed. One thing that might help would be my having any idea where it is I intend to go. Quite honestly, I don’t. It’s not exactly a fine science.
It could benefit you to think of this post like the lyrics of a song. As you follow along, some portions might speak to you, and others just seem to fit the verse. Of course, this idea may only serve to detract from any sense of logic that may have existed before I started rambling.
If I were to somehow wrap all this nonsense up with a bow of intelligent thought, it might be this: I had no idea what I was going to write about when I started this post, and that does not exactly lead to a stellar composition.
Happy Eleventh of July!
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First Pass
We had a blast yesterday morning connecting with people currently living in the area who share a history of growing up in old Eden Prairie. It is reassuring to find there are like-minded folks who are actively working to make life better locally. I liked it when one of them said his contributions to helping people around here were a way to get back at the current President, who is constantly busy making things worse all over.
Amen.
When we got home, I hopped on the mower, hoping to complete a first pass cutting all the spaces that needed mowing by the end of the third day.
Conditions were ideal, but the exceptionally long grass necessitated a change in tactics, resulting in everything taking longer than normal. Some of the finished results were not pretty, but at least it looks better than not being mowed at all.
I decided to work late in order to finish the last of the mowing for this first pass of the long, long grass we faced on our return from a 10-day stay at the lake. Why do I always save the labyrinth for last? Now I can start the whole place over again, cutting reasonably long grass this time.
Working late down at the labyrinth brings an additional challenge, as the mosquitoes were becoming active in the shade, and apparently, I made for an appetizing target.
When I finished mowing, I stepped into the woods to check out the downed oak limb that Cyndie has been “nibbling” away at with the hand chainsaw.
It’s made it much easier to see what I’m going to be up against when I get around to cutting it up with the big chainsaw. You could say that Cyndie has made the first pass on the oak limb.
I think I’m going to let the tree cutting wait until I’ve finished using the hedge trimmer along the sides of pathways and the string trimmer along the fence lines.
There will be no rest for the weary during the growing season.
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Nonstop Mowing
When the order of the day involves cutting the grass or trimming the sides of our trails, there isn’t much in the way of adventures to write about. It was hot in the direct sun, the mower worked perfectly, I accomplished a little more area than I thought I would yesterday, and I still have over a day’s worth left to finish. That’s not counting the fence line trimming that usually takes several days to fully complete.
Even though I have so much groundskeeping work to do, we won’t get anything done this morning because we have a brunch date in River Falls with some old Eden Prairie acquaintances. To my family and old EP friends, the names Herzog and Westerhaus might ring a bell. You never know who you might come across in life after a move to the country like we did over twelve years ago.
That’s about it. Since that’s all I’ve got, I’ll throw in a photo Cyndie took of the horses grazing in the freshly cut hay field.
One added note: Cyndie just described a successful exercise with Asher off-leash while she was trimming small branches from the large oak limb that fell. (We don’t see much of each other on days when I mow and she is busy with other projects. I hear about her adventures later.) She said he busied himself exploring the woods for a while as she worked, then eventually wandered over to sit upright nearby on the trail and waited until she finished.
Good dog.
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Detail Oriented
Someone made a reference to me being anal in some of the things I do, in this case, related to my methods tending to the horses’ emptied grain feed bags. I’m not going to argue with that assessment, though I might use other words to describe my proclivity for order. I can come across as rather particular about how I want things to look around here. Maybe even fussy. Meticulous. Discriminating. Fastidious?
I can be detail-oriented. The height of the unmowed grass when we arrived at our driveway was rather shocking. That was a detail that was hard to miss. A less astute person might not pay attention to the grass growing in the seam of the concrete apron of the shop garage.
Was I being anal when I got on my knees and plucked all of those out before setting off on the riding mower? At least it looks like someone actually lives here again.
The grass blades were ten inches tall in some places along the driveway where I started cutting as soon as we got home yesterday. I needed to let go of my usual fussiness about achieving a clean-looking cut and settle for a version I’ll call: at-least-it’s-been-cut.
The mower balked a little at the complications of such long grass, but I think it still did an impressive job for an electric. The exit chute plugged once, and one of the blade motors overheated a couple of times. I needed to use the higher blade speed setting, which drains the batteries faster than normal, so I didn’t get as far as I wanted before quitting for the day.
There was a thunderstorm last night, so I don’t know if the grass will be dry enough to start mowing right away this morning. If it’s not, there is plenty of trimming to be done with the string trimmer and the hedge trimmer that I don’t mind doing when it’s wet.
I’ll be playing catch-up for a few days before starting over without pause to get a more reasonable, cleaner second cut before it has a chance to grow much.
The freshly cut hay field looks great, but that makes the tall grass left along the fence lines stand out that much more as needing to be addressed. Beyond that, the work of cutting up the giant oak limb remains as a large burden on the to-do list.
Lazy days on the lake are definitely over. For a couple of weeks, anyway. We plan to head up again for a 4-day weekend in the middle of the month. Then, again, the week after that, so don’t feel sorry for me in the least.
I look forward to seeing what the remains of the lodge destruction will look like upon our return. I like paying attention to the details of the work they are doing.
Before we left yesterday morning, we stopped down to watch the start of the serious demolition getting underway.
Might be time for an update to the song I wrote about Wildwood.
The old lodge don’t look the way it used to look…
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Pickling Around
Opting to remain at rest since my body was already at rest when yesterday’s post-4th-of-July pickleball tournament was held, I wandered down to observe as a spectator after the competition was already underway.
They achieved a good number of participants who did an impressive job of keeping games close, providing plenty of entertainment for the gathered crowd, made up mostly of other players waiting for their next game.
After I’d witnessed at least one game by most of the teams, I made my way back to the house by way of the beach, where I paused to hang for a bit while Cyndie, Elysa, and Ande were floating on or soaking in the lake. After so many days away from home, I’m finally getting the hang of doing nothing without needing to convince myself I can get away with it.
In fact, it feels a little daunting to contemplate revving my energy up again to tackle all the projects that will be awaiting me back at Wintervale. We expect to be on the road before noon today for the drive south to Pierce County, where we will find the hay field has been cut and baled, and the lawn grass about two weeks tall.
Yesterday afternoon, I took on a challenge I’ve been skipping over for a long time. I keep an old floor pump for inflating bike tires up at the lake place, ever since I bought a nicer one to replace it at home. The thing is, the old one leaks air on every stroke. One of the reasons I haven’t dealt with it is that I couldn’t easily deduce where the problem was, nor how to get the lower pieces apart to get a look at what was wrong.
Finally, yesterday I was prepared to give it a go. First off, I did some research to see if I could find an exploded view or service information on this old model. I could not. I surfed through a few YouTube videos, but didn’t find any answers there. I did find some replacement parts that looked identical to my model, but nothing that revealed how it came apart.
I tried pulling with increasing force, but wasn’t making any progress. Then, I had a lightbulb moment of insight. One of the replacement parts I had seen included a hose. I searched for that image again and zoomed in. The end of the tubing had a threaded fitting on it. That was the secret. I needed to find a pliers because the rubber boot over the mating part did not budge against my finger strength. Knowing it should turn allowed me to grab it using pliers with much more confidence.
It came loose easily. All the subsequent connections unthreaded with ease as well. The broken gasket at the bottom junction became glaringly obvious.
I felt pride in having used my mechanical sense and a good dose of patience to work out the problem without breaking something in the process. It just took a little pickling around with the parts before I eventually reached the desired result.
I’m taking the ripped gasket home with me to see if I can find a suitable replacement. If not, it will be time to make one myself, probably by cutting up a discarded inner tube. Wish me luck.
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Wildwood Picnic
The big event of the holiday weekend was to be the recent tradition of a pickleball tournament up at Wildwood Lodge Club, but the persistent on-and-off rain sprinkles were enough to keep the court surface too wet for safe combat. The tourney has been given a second attempt with whoever remains available starting at ten o’clock this morning.
My competitive gene is not feeling up to the effort, so I may become a member of the spectator benches to offer appropriate heckling support as needed.
In the absence of the tourney drawing all the member families together yesterday, the evening picnic feast became the focus of the day. Since the lodge and its surroundings are currently in a state of transition, Cyndie’s family became the host location, which meant the afternoon involved moving a lot of tables and chairs from down by the lodge.
Since the number of people from the association families attending was expected to be between 55 and 60, we were desperately hoping the troublesome rain would take a pause long enough to pull the whole thing off.
As an in-law to Cyndie’s family, I try to keep my opinions about how to proceed to a minimum while watching the three planners-and-doers work their magic as hosts in providing a stellar social event of the highest caliber. It becomes its own form of entertainment as each person takes on all the tasks at virtually the same time to do and re-do steps of gathering this and placing that just right.
It goes all the way to arranging cars in the best out-of-the-way places, which involved at least three tries to ultimately reach a settlement that worked.
I rode along with Cyndie to pick up enough ribs to feed an army. The restaurant selected for this catering job was conveniently located on the other side of the lake. When we arrived at peak business hours, it looked like it was going to be a serious challenge to navigate all the traffic of vehicles and people competing for a meal.
With luck on our side, we drove around all the cars that were stopping to park along the driveway and found an open spot right in front. Meandering past the throngs outside waiting for their names to be called for a table, we stepped to the host podium like we were VIPs checking in.
The woman managing Cyndie’s large order appeared and was thrilled about our parking spot. She was obviously in high-gear coping mode, reporting they were even busier than how busy she had expected it to be this holiday weekend Saturday night. They opted to bring us around to the back door of the kitchen to transfer the precious, hot cargo to the car.
With only one near-calamity of acceleration on the drive back, we delivered the ribs, sauces, and beans successfully without spilling a drop.
Soon, folks began arriving with arms full of appetizers, salads, and sides to fill out a menu that could sustain double the number of us in attendance. I took no pictures of the spectacular spread because I was either too busy gabbing with someone or munching on finger foods.
When the ribs were served, my hands were too sticky with barbecue sauce, and I got too engrossed in catching up on other people’s life adventures. When I finally thought of taking pictures while in the middle of a conversation, only by handing Elysa my phone and asking her for the favor did I get these snapshots of the continuing story exchanges still in process in the post-feast bliss of yet another annual Wildwood 4th of July picnic (despite the interruption of a brief nuisance rain shower that had occurred).
When evening came, we gathered ‘round
for the kind of picnic you’re supposed to have
And though people not present were sadly missed
There were fireworks displayed to rival all time
Wildwood, Wildwood
It’s been so long, but the change is good
Wildwoo-oo-oo-ooood
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Democracy Burning
It’s strange, actually. On the surface, it’s as if nothing is wrong. The calendar indicated yesterday was July 4, a national holiday in the US.
Independence Day. We had won the Revolutionary War and freed our country from the rule of a king some 249 years ago. Families gathered to celebrate on a particularly hot day in the northland of Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, media reports continue to announce that politicians in the House and Senate have passed legislation that appears unfavorable to the vast majority of common people of modest means. A picture of the future is slowly being painted that dashes hope for everyone except the least deserving. It is bizarre to hear that many of those who risk being harmed by the harsh decrees of the current administration are lapping it all up with mindless acceptance and even glee.
I wonder how these throngs of supporters all reconcile the discord between the words and actions of the law enforcement employees and the politicians representing districts back home, who are spinelessly carrying out the bidding of the wannabe-king and his court as it contrasts with their ancestors who fought and died defending the US and other countries in the world against the very types of things that are unfolding before our eyes again.
No one that I have heard from in my circle of friends and family has expressed approval of the reports about masked agents arresting citizens and detaining them without cause. No one I know has voiced support for the holding facility built with a moat of alligators surrounding it. As far as my eyes and ears have seen and heard, the prevailing concern is that our democracy is getting systematically dismantled.
It’s hard to enjoy a celebratory holiday feast while breathing the smoke from our democracy in flames.
Stopping a runaway train usually involves crashing. Personally, I’m growing weary of witnessing the slow slide toward whatever level of control this current administration is intent on achieving. I wish it would work to simply send my $5 or $9 a month to the multiple organizations flooding my email inbox every day with their promised solutions for stopping the madness.
Standing alone with a protest sign on a corner for over 8 hours, like I read someone did yesterday, seems about as effective as sending money to greedy opposition email campaigns.
Maybe I’ve been away from the horses and our nature sanctuary too long. Somehow, the bliss of the lake place isn’t doing it for me like it usually does. At least, here I still have the precious company of happy, healthy people to enjoy while we are here.
That part of the adventure is feeling a little more precious this year, given the doom and gloom so pervasive out in the greater reaches of the country and beyond.
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Relative Something 