Last Steps
We are down to the last preparation steps before erecting four new shade sail posts. I have been holding off from doing this work because we wanted to minimize the disruption to the horses’ normal routine. Since they appear to be coping just fine with the changes I’ve made prior to yesterday, Cyndie agreed we could temporarily relocate where we hang their feed buckets. That meant I would no longer need the hoakie fence I put up a few days ago, and instead close off the small paddock entirely.
I quickly went to work installing a different temporary barrier that finally allowed me to remove boards from posts, pull up a second post, and relevel two leaning posts on either side of the waterer.
Using all that I learned from pulling the first post, trying to straighten a leaning post, and installing the first temporary fence, everything I worked on yesterday went incredibly smoothly for me.
Posts are standing straight up, and the two spots along that line are open, ready, and waiting for the new tall posts to go in.
Is it obvious that I am chomping at the bit to get this done? Just have to wait one more day for my professional help.
What will I do with myself until then?
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He Scores!
Inter Miami and Lionel Messi came to the Twin Cities to face our MNUFC Loons yesterday, and Cyndie had a chance to be at the game with a friend.
The Miami team is loaded with talent and performed impressively, holding possession for many more minutes than the Loons could, however, Messi only scored one goal. The Loons scored four. Well, three plus an own goal.
Before the game started, I put up the hoakiest-looking temporary fence in the small paddock. I seem to be in a mode of remission from my habit of perfectionism lately. The horses spent a lot of time just staring at the new monstrosity now cutting their space in two. I think they all noticed it was a pretty wacky-looking barrier, but at least they didn’t demonstrate a need to defeat it.
Not right away, anyway.
I spent the first part of the day risking my health due to tick bites by crawling around in the leaves to weed out more volunteer tree sprouts around Cyndie’s strawberry patch. After finding three ticks on me in the three previous days, I somehow escaped getting more yesterday, even though I was doing everything wrong in terms of tick avoidance.
By the time the soccer match got underway, I was safely back in the house to watch it. We got everything we wanted out of the game, seeing Messi score and the home team getting the win handily. It was the best of both worlds.
Speaking of best… a shout out of “All the Best!” to moms on this Mother’s Day! You know who you are.
We are headed to a brunch shortly for a celebration with our kids and Cyndie’s mom. Moms RULE!
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Wrong Use
We put out a water trough to give the horses an alternative place to drink on the days I will cordon off their automatic waterer to install the new shade sail posts. They took to it right away and seemed to appreciate having the drink available up close to where we serve their grain twice a day.
Unfortunately, Mia considers the large tub an ideal place to wash her feet. I guess since Paddock Lake has dried up again, it’s the next best choice for her. We have seen her splashing her hooves in the Ritchie waterer and not entirely understood her motivation. The girl just loves to splash, it seems.
I tried to catch a photo of water spraying everywhere, but wasn’t quick enough. She can be seen resting her left front foot on the edge of the trough.
Also visible is the static electricity built up in her tail. Is that from the splashing? I don’t know. None of the other horses are showing signs of being staticky, despite our notably low dew point, which triggered warnings to be careful burning outside.
I could tell her tail was bugging her because she kept trying to swish the phenomenon away, which tended to only make it worse.
Eventually, a long lie down in the pasture for a nap seemed to ground her sufficiently. If we’re lucky, maybe that will teach her that splashing in the water trough is the wrong use of that amenity.
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Maple Weeds
They are everywhere. Young sprouts of maple trees grow like weeds on our property. Our perspective on that fact has evolved over the years we’ve lived here. We used to feel every tree was sacred and would struggle to cope with trees popping up in places that would become problematic ten or more years later. It led to plenty of attempts to transplant new sprouts to more suitable locations.
Our percentage of successful relocations was not very high. It gets a little depressing to put effort into trying to keep newly planted trees alive only to watch them wither and die within a year or two.
After enough years of witnessing the incredible number of new maple trees sprouting annually, we’ve developed a new confidence in taking lethal action against ones that show up where they are not wanted. Yesterday, I terminated a grove of new maple trees with extreme prejudice.
Now you see them…
Now you don’t.
This was an area near Cyndie’s gardens that we are trying to keep open to allow more sunlight to reach her plants.
The pile of little maple trees I had harvested shows that I was able to pull quite a few of them up by the roots. I much prefer doing it that way whenever possible, but it takes a toll on my hands, wrestling with stems that almost come free but eventually require a tool. When we have to cut the stem at the ground level, it usually leads to needing to come back later and cut again after new shoots appear from the same root system.
The ubiquitous presence of new maple trees sprouting everywhere they shouldn’t has me starting to refer to them as maple weeds.
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Drying Out
Ground moisture has changed dramatically in the last 36 hours, which bodes well for my planned post-burying project scheduled for next week. The current 10-day forecast continues to show nothing but sunshine until next Thursday, the day after we intend to auger post holes. Color me eager to get that next milestone accomplished.
I had a little episode yesterday that felt like my brain might be drying out because I couldn’t find two things in the barn that I knew had to be there somewhere. After much searching for my tape measure and one of the 6” turnbuckles, I gave up and moved on with an effort to tighten the snugness of the shade sail hanging inside the barn. While moving a ladder from a rarely visited corner, I spotted the turnbuckle hanging on a hook near where I had been making adjustments a week ago.
A few minutes after that, something clicked in my brain, and I realized I had left the tape measure in the hay shed when I was cutting wood blocks for the posts. I guess it’s good to recognize that there is nobody else to blame for my missing things, but I’m a little sour about the evidence of gaps in my memory about them.
Is it possible the dry conditions are putting a bend in one of the posts waiting to be raised for the shade sail?
I noticed the bend going sideways yesterday, so I turned the post to see if gravity would make any difference in the amount of curve. If the bend remains, I figure we can use it to our advantage against the pull of tightening the sail if we install it just right.
The trickiest part of this installation for me is definitely going to be achieving the proper dimensions, which is why I contracted a professional for assistance. Well, that and the operation of a power auger to drill holes as deep as I want them. Oh, and whatever the mechanism is to get header boards attached at an angle 8-to-10 feet overhead.
We are getting closer every day to the point where I want to put up temporary barriers to block the horse’s access to the space where we will be working. It’s a balance of trying to minimize the disruption to their environment, but give me adequate time to do as much preparation work as possible before next Wednesday. I don’t know what the ideal number of days is. I’ve been going through the steps I think will be involved in my mind repeatedly, but that has yet to help me definitively decide when to start.
At this point, I figure I’ve thought about it enough that the horses already know exactly what is about to happen, so I probably don’t need to worry about them at all. I expect they just want me to get on with it, give them the shade, and be done with the whole project.
If that is true, then it just shows we are of like minds. I would like to be done with it, too.
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Season Swing
The pendulum of spring weather has swung decidedly in the direction of summer in the last few dry, sunny days. The forecast for our area was in the upper 70sF, but the reality yesterday had us well into the 80s. There are still plenty of tree leaves that are still in the bud phase but it felt like summer is considering an early visit.
Did someone mention trillium? It is an extra thrill whenever we spot some on our property in places where we definitely didn’t transplant them.
Yesterday morning, I noticed one right beside one of our busier trails. Way to go, ants! (Ants spread the seed pods.)
The higher daytime heat has our grasses growing significantly from one day to the next. Mowing is once again becoming an almost daily activity for me. On Monday, when I parked the riding mower and pulled the six batteries for charging, I was shocked to find that one of them gave me a flashing red LED of failure. I called the service number to report my problem, and the recording on their end said the call center had closed early for the day. I wonder how many days that message runs.
As Asher and I were on our way back from feeding horses yesterday morning, I stopped to grab the battery from the shop. However, before doing that, I plugged it in one more time to confirm the failure still existed. Good thinking, John. This time it worked! I’m pretty glad the call center went home early on Monday.
While I did some much-needed mowing in the heat of the afternoon, I left Asher in the house on his own. Cyndie was visiting her mom in the Cities. When I finished, I gave Asher a chance to go for a walk. We made it about halfway around the property, and he decided the shade of the evergreen tree at the end of the driveway looked too good to pass up.
I chose not to join him on the ground because I have had wood ticks crawling up my legs much too frequently for my liking over the last few days. The ticks must be enjoying the arrival of this warm weather. There was no reason to rush Asher because I knew a secret that he didn’t.
Cyndie was going to be coming over the hill within five minutes or so, and knowing how much Asher loves riding in cars, I figured Cyndie would be happy to give him a lift back to the house. This time of year, the house holds the cool evening air nicely throughout the day while the outdoor temperature heats up.
Every day without new rain brings us closer to putting in posts for the shade sail in the paddocks. Our current target day for the work is next week on the 14th.
I have a feeling the horses will be wishing for more shade every day until then.
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Horses Unconcerned
One day after that hilly adventure with Rich on our bikes, I found myself greatly lacking in my usual get-up-and-go. After a forced effort to plant some grass seed, in which we later discovered we didn’t have the seed we thought we had, I came back to the house and conked out on the deck for an impromptu nap. Neither Cyndie nor I ended up completing plans we had discussed at breakfast by the end of the day, but we still chipped away at a few tasks.
I’m particularly pleased we finally cut back the Japanese Silver Grass shoots from last year in all four of the places they are now established around our property. We walk past them every day, and I’ve been looking at that job needing to be done for weeks. That triggered me to cut some grass in those same areas, and while I was there, I decided to haul away one last pile of branches we had skipped the last time we were working on that project. Those are all tasks that provide rewarding visual feedback in our frequent jaunts along our many pathways.
While I was in the woods between the house and the back pasture, I spotted evidence that our trillium is alive and well for another year.
The fawn lilies and bloodroot flowers will soon have some competition.
All that was well and good, but it all got eclipsed by the drama after sunset. Cyndie had taken Asher out for his last walk of the day, and suddenly, I received a phone call from her about a fire at a neighbor’s property. I found her and Asher down by the horses. She was very disturbed by the sight of so much flame, but I immediately recognized the visuals of a controlled burn of their field.
I thought it interesting that the horses didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by the unusual sight.
The neighbors had chosen an evening of absolutely perfect conditions, as we are just now starting to dry out around here, and the undergrowth is still damp, and last night there was no wind. Cyndie decided to spend a little time giving the horses massages, and I stood with Asher and watched the flames in the distance.
At least they won’t need to do any mowing in that field for a while. As I stared at the spectacle, I noticed myself feeling some envy.
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Valuable Miles
Saturday afternoon was darn near perfect for our World Labyrinth Day walk for peace. We had 8 people join us, which isn’t the smallest number of folks we’ve hosted for this annual event. They were all precious individuals, but the one person who was a particularly pleasant surprise was a neighbor we’d never met who dropped in after seeing an invite I posted on the Nextdoor app.
If anybody is wondering, my annual measurement of the trunk of the transplanted maple tree in the center of the labyrinth revealed a 3/16ths of an inch increase in circumference since my initial reading a year ago.
Yesterday, I took the day off from chores and went for a bike ride with Rich Gordon, one of my special friends from the annual bike ride in June. He was kind enough to drive all the way to Beldenville to join me in a loop of country roads over hills and through valleys of the driftless region around our home.
We are always looking for opportunities to season our butts against our bike saddles in preparation for days of long mileage in June on The Tour of Minnesota.
The Rush River valley offers some beautiful scenery after ten miles of farm fields.
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I was pointing out the top of the ridge visible through the trees that will soon be obscured by leaves. Climbing out of that valley was probably the most daunting of the many climbs we pedaled up, as may be discernible in the graphic above showing the elevations we traversed. We weren’t even halfway into the loop, so that effort made the rest of the route seem a little more taxing on our now-tired legs. When we reached the top, we paused for a snack break in the shade and quickly made friends with one of the residents who lived at that address.
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The second biggest climb came when we departed from El Paso. Rich made it look easy.
Compared to the biggest beast of a hill, it was a little bit easier. There was also the psychological boost of knowing we were that much closer to our finish line, and none of the remaining hills would be as long.
I’m encouraged by the fact that I was able to accomplish all the climbing without needing to rely on an assist from the battery I was lugging along in the frame of my Trek Domane e-bike. Having a friend along on the ride was a morale boost that prevented my usual lack of determination to push myself quite as hard.
My body will likely offer up some complaints today in the form of muscle stiffness, but I’ve got plenty of my usual physical activities on tap, tending to things around the ranch to keep me moving.
I’ll probably wait another day or two before my next conditioning ride of any substantial miles. Maybe I’ll opt for a nice flat trail ride to complement yesterday’s hilly terrain.
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Relative Something 