Calm Aftermath
This morning dawns with a fresh version of calm and quiet after our very long, busy, thrilling day yesterday, hosting our first significant ‘open-house’ / holiday gathering event. Friends and family, totaling 56 souls, arrived over a span of 10-hours to share “ooohs” and “aaaahs” over our precious new property and log home.
It is snowing here this morning, little floating flakes that are all resonating ‘calm.’
I could use a few full days of calm right now, but the holiday extravaganza that is before us for the next three, will dramatically limit the amount, for now.
We are grateful for the precious people who shower us with love and attention, and we wish all of them, and all of you who read me here, the very best (including some peace and calm) this holiday season.
Happy Holidays !
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Double Disdain
Maybe I’m just a bit old-fashioned, but there are two technological advancements that I disdain, and I just realized they have a certain commonality. Automatic transmissions in cars, and the electric cooktop. They share an aspect of vagueness that I don’t like. I want to be able to feel the control of gears and I want to see the flame providing heat for cooking. Neither of the two technologies do that for me.
I needed to drive Cyndie’s car on the commute yesterday, and in comparison to my manual 5-speed, her car left me feeling dramatically less in control. A lot like placing the pan on the stove and not having any idea of the status of the heat source below.
Cyndie and I are both gas cooktop people and now using an electric style that is in the kitchen of the home we just bought. We are trying to adjust to it, for now, but can’t help feeling it is a totally inferior option. With a gas flame, you know when it is on and when it is off. It doesn’t ramp up and down in intensity while you are cooking. Want more heat? Adjust to a bigger flame.
With the manual transmission car, when I let out the clutch and give it gas, it responds directly, without hesitation. When I want to slow down, simply removing my foot from the pedal allows the gears to slow the car. I just don’t get that kind of control with an automatic transmission. Her car just keeps gliding along, even after removing my foot from the pedal. I’m forced to tap the brakes. Yuck.
I have enough lack of control over other areas of life. Like software. Just when I learn how to control an application, a new version is released that sets me back to struggling to accomplish tasks. Isn’t it frustrating when devices that are supposed to make things easier for us, end up doing just the opposite?
There is a silver lining, though, in my suffering through the driving of Cyndie’s car. She brought mine back all clean and shiny from the car wash.
Sometimes, letting go of that need to control, can bring rewards.
Visible Difference
Good progress was accomplished yesterday, which begins to reveal the opening of space around the barn.
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I took a picture of a couple of our working diagrams, and then I tried to doctor the one on the right to indicate some of the old fence we are removing.
Moving Boundaries
We have finally taken the next step toward new fencing, which, ironically, involves the removal of the fences that were here when we bought the place. It is kind of an exciting undoing. Immediately, the previous boundaries are softened, which allows us to get a new sense for the lay of the land. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the design decisions we next need to make, entirely obvious. There is still a burden of imagining all possible weather events, and all the potential usage situations and scenarios, in order to make the best possible choices for location and arrangement of facilities.
We are perched on the edge of next.
The myriad activities of the rest of the world swirl around, regardless where we are in the process. We are alone with our petty concern, which is of utmost importance for our days to come. It is a thrilling responsibility.
Our unknown horses, somehow present in our minds, will be helping us to create their new home.
Forest Garden
My friend and mentor, Ian Rowcliffe, uses the moniker, “Forest Garden Estate” to identify their property in Portugal, a place that has served as one of our primary inspirations for the land we have acquired and are developing in Wisconsin. Yesterday, I received a visit from an arborist who I have known for many years, and who managed care of the trees on our Eden Prairie property. At my request, he made a special trip out here to survey the growing things, and provide advice on issues of stewardship. The impression I am left with is that we, too, have a forest garden here!
I was aware of some evergreens, and obvious oak, maple, and poplar trees. Oh, and two willow trees.
Now I know that a lot of the evergreens are Australian pine, and may not be the heartiest tree for our region. We discovered some fungus on the needles of one, and analyzed the status of another that looks to have succumbed the drought of last summer and fall. We do also have some white pine, and the one we looked closely at appears to be doing very well, with thick, full growth throughout. He suggested I add more of those, and possibly some eastern red cedar, which I would be very happy to have.
He identified a butternut hickory behind the barn. I want to watch it for nut production. Sounds like they will be worth collecting, if any show up.
I learned there are plum trees and nannyberry viburnum (which produced an edible fruit) on the old fence line of our north border. It sounds like they are worth keeping, and will present a challenge for our goal of getting the rusty barbed wire removed. The guys pulling fence prefer to clear trees to make room for installation and maintenance of the new fence.
In several areas of the woods we have wild raspberry or blackberry, gooseberry, and elderberry bushes growing. No wonder there are so many birds!
Other trees noted were ash (which are likely doomed to the emerald ash borer that is making its way across our country), elm (which he was surprised hadn’t been taken by dutch elm disease yet), hawthorn, apple, red maple, sugar maple, choke cherry, blue beech, ironwood (hophornbeam), and both red and white oaks.
I hadn’t considered what spring will look like around here, but plenty of those trees will flower before they produce fruit, so it will be interesting to see how they behave. Some of them are growing in the partial shade under the canopy of larger trees and may not be readily apparent unless walking the trails through our woods.
I am not going to worry about the trees that are broken from past storms, and will let nature take its course. As he pointed out, I will have plenty of other things demanding attention around here, and the danger in dealing with them isn’t worth the risk.
If it didn’t get so darn cold here, I could add some camellia trees from Ian’s collection and we could call this place Forest Garden West. For now, we’ll stick with Wintervale, but I’m expecting the name we have chosen won’t do justice to the growing garden of trees and bushes that will be blooming here in the spring.
Wilting Weather
One week ago, our little paradise was being buried in beautiful fresh snow. It was falling so fast, I couldn’t keep up with clearing it. I ended up spending almost the entire day last Monday, plowing and shoveling to get dug out.
Now, it is a foggy, sloppy mess, after yesterday’s rain, and a few days of above freezing temperatures. It’s a shame. It seems like such a waste. There was so much potential in all that snow! I didn’t get a chance to even think about making an igloo. I did have visions of starting a ski trail through the woods, though, but that isn’t likely to happen now.
Maybe winter will return. Or, maybe this is the new reality of the warming climate. We’ll get some snow, but not a full winter’s worth. Of course, my sour grapes perspective may be premature. We’ve not even reached the winter solstice yet! If I frame last week’s snow as just a late autumn event, maybe it doesn’t seem so gloomy.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit my childhood memories of the good ol’ days. When it snowed in November or December back then, it was the beginning of a winter’s worth.
The cats don’t seem to mind, either way. They are happy to sit at the window and watch snowflakes falling, or water dripping. It’s all good to them.
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Yesterday, Pequenita got distracted from her project of helping me pull the sheets off the bed.
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Mozyr paid no attention when his sister flicked the toy down to him on the floor.
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Contemplating Memory
A wonderful person I supervise at the day-job was addressing the roomful of us, describing an alarming incident that happened on his drive to work. The latch on the hood of his car released while driving full-speed on the interstate highway. He looked at me and made reference to the time my car had the same problem.
My blank stare gave me away.
“Don’t you remember?” he asked.
I didn’t want to completely deny his assertion of the occasion, so, admitted I wasn’t sure. In actuality, I would have comfortably stated that I had never had that experience before in my entire life. Any hint of a memory about such a thing had long ago gone missing.
Minutes later, while visiting the restroom –after he had described how he had gone out to my car with me to look into it (because he and I have the same model car)– I found myself with time to think about it. I exhumed a faint recognition of our both being out at my car, in front of our building, with the hood open. That’s it. That is all I can muster. And, only with the help of his series of descriptions of the event.
I will admit that my immediate reaction, standing at the sink, was to think of how my mother’s memory fractured and faded before our eyes in her later years. Was this my first hint of a pending similar fate for me?
More significant to me was the realization of how wrong I was in my confidence that I had never had that experience before in my life.
In my years of self-analysis since being diagnosed for depression, receiving treatment in the form of talk therapy, and subsequently contemplating my acquired dysfunctional perspectives, I discovered far too many instances where I staunchly defended something in which I held an unreasonable confidence.
I expect that my past depression has robbed me of a lot of memories. At the time, I wasn’t in a healthy enough mindset to record experiences like a mind otherwise would. Historically, I felt that if I had no memory whatsoever about something, then it never could have happened to me. It wasn’t so much a logical deduction, it didn’t feel possible to me that I would have no memory of something.
I no longer possess that same confidence. At the same time, I still need to practice the art of being conscious of the fragility of my perspective of the here and now. It’s something that a few horses will be more than happy to assist me with, I’m sure. Everything fits together rather nicely, don’t you think?
I wonder if I will retain a memory of having had this specific experience and following insight. I’d say that having written about it should be a help, except I tend to forget most of the things I’ve written in the past, so that doesn’t provide much of a confidence boost.
