Posts Tagged ‘change’
Noticeable Difference
I sat down on the couch after work yesterday and the first thing that caught my attention was the angle of the sunshine radiating through the glass door to the deck. It seemed a lot higher than usual for this time of day. The days have been getting longer since December 21, and now in the second week of January, I’m noticing the change. It’s inspiring!
We have about a day to enjoy a break from extreme cold today, as a warm spell is pushing our temperatures toward the 30s (F), after which it is expected to drop even colder than it was last Sunday and Monday. Brrrr.
Luckily, I will have plenty of indoor entertainment available in the form of televised NFL playoff games in which my team is not participating. That makes them all stress-free for me, because I have no emotional attachment to any other team’s success or failure. If someone’s kicker misses a potential game-winning field goal, I will be able to feel their pain, for sure.
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Delilah was gnawing ferociously on a new stuffed duck-looking chew toy that Cyndie bought and suddenly she seemed entranced by how high the sun still was at such an early hour.
Great minds think alike.
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Not Static
Nothing is as static as my mind tends to imagine it to be. The constant changes and endless activity I have witnessed on our property in the past 3 years are convincing me that my general impression of the world has been a gross oversimplification of reality.
I think I’ve already written about my amazement over how relatively fluid the “solid ground” actually is. I know that farmers who need to pick rocks out of their tilled fields year after year are well aware of this ‘fluidity.’
Yesterday, a day that was about as plain as an uneventful winter day can be, I was trudging up one of my shortcut paths through the trees between our barn and the house when I suddenly became aware of all the debris collecting on the snow covering the ground.
It is a blaring announcement about how much activity is actually occurring in the seemingly static days that have followed last week’s snow storm. I’m guessing that squirrels are responsible for much of the shrapnel that has fallen from the trees, but I expect there are plenty of other less visible actors in the constant change taking place.
I need only look to the manure pile to witness evidence of the microscopic players at work in a feat of perpetual transition. Even though growing things all appear to be in a winter state of dead or dormant, the manure pile continues to cook at 140° F. There is an amazing amount of activity going on in the center of that pile.
I used to think there were two states of a mouse trap: tripped, or not. Now I know there is a third one. It is called, gone. I have lost too many mouse traps to count. Before we went out of town last Thursday, I added new peanut butter bait to the two traps in the garage. It had been too many days in a row without any evidence of activity, and I knew better. The mice had definitely lost interest in the traps.
The tally upon our return was, one trap with a mouse in it, and one trap gone. I don’t know if a mouse got caught in the trap and something else hauled it off somewhere, or the trap snapped on a mouse that could still run away, dragging the trap with it.
My response to all this is that I am not going to devise any single solution to situations that arise. I will endeavor to change the way I deal with things just as often as the challenges morph in new and different ways.
It’s not any spectacular new innovation. I’d say it’s pretty much how things have been throughout time. I’m just coming to a realization that I can choose to frame my perspective differently.
You could say I am planning to observe and respond to situations with more fluidity.
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Loose Ends
I happened to glance back at a couple of posts and noticed a few story lines I have been remiss in maintaining. For those of you hanging on the edge of your seats in wait for a resolution to these mini-dramas, I offer the following to tie up some loose ends:
The “Check Engine” light on my car turned out to be a bad oxygen sensor in my catalytic converter. Our local auto shop reset the warning light and put in an order for a replacement sensor. In the mean time, it is okay to drive my car, which is a good thing because I really needed the all-wheel-drive yesterday to safely navigate the hazardous winter commute into work.
Oh, that answers Tuesday’s closing line: I did go into work yesterday. I scrambled out of bed as soon as I woke up, noticing that my alarm had been playing the radio for 3 minutes, and headed outside to plow the driveway. We received between 4-5 inches overnight. It kept snowing all day, adding another approx. 4 inches, requiring that I plow again after I got home.
Finally, it is feeling distinctly wintery around here.
I’ve neglected to share one of the special treats Cyndie bestowed on me at our family gift exchange, and it fits nicely with the subject of tying up loose ends. Now that she is not working away from home anymore, Cyndie has been able to give time to projects that have long been dormant.
One task she dug into this fall was to open up some boxes that have been ignored since we moved here back in 2012. She found tee shirts belonging to the kids and me that she had been saving to make memory blankets. Feeling as though she should follow through on that plan, since we paid movers to haul the dang boxes all this way, she busied herself with crafting 3 different blankets in time to present to us all for Christmas.
My siblings may recognize a few of these panels from over 40 years ago.
I’m not sure which I value more… the blanket of treasured memories, or the fact she finally made use of something that we’ve been hauling around and storing, everywhere we’ve lived, for almost 4-decades.
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Past Views
On Sunday, we are hosting a neighborhood gathering for a cookie social. I was thinking ahead about a way I might match the people we hope will come, with the locations of their homes. I looked at property records online for an overhead view with the house numbers shown. I was considering the possibility of printing it out and having people sign in and mark their location on the map.
Unfortunately, that view, sized for a normal printer, ended up being too small to be much good. I may simply resort to having my computer there with the view that can be zoomed in and out. People could point at their homes on the screen.
While I was looking at the county map, I realized that it is a little different than the Google Earth view with which I am more familiar. I’m pretty sure the county image is older. It occurred to me that I should capture and save both for a historical reference.
Above is the view from the county property records site. Below is the view from Google Earth. It hasn’t changed since we started looking at it in 2012.
I did a search to see if I could learn how often the Google view gets updated. They claim to do so about every 3 years. We are due. I don’t know if that means they will soon post a current view, or that soon they will update it with a view from some time in the recent past.
It won’t be too hard for me to identify if a new view is from a time after we took possession, since we made a wide variety of frequent changes over the last 3 years. I’m particularly interested to see what the labyrinth looks like from space.
I’m also hoping it will be from a time when the horses were out in one of the fields. It would be really nice if that worked out.
As long as I was at it, I ventured over to a view of the old neighborhood in Eden Prairie where my family lived when I was a tween/teenager. I’ll post it here for my brothers and sisters to see. It is recognizable, despite a few changes. The road at the end of our driveway was a 2-lane back in the day, and crossing it led to a farm field, not another neighborhood.
I wonder if there are any photos of this view from back in the 1970s, maybe taken from one of the small planes out of Flying Cloud Airport.
That’s a past view I would particularly appreciate seeing.
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Weekly Expedition
Thursday evenings is the usual time when we move our garbage and recycling bins down to the road by our mailbox. Our driveway is about a quarter of a mile long, so it can be a feat that requires some preparation.
Early on, I contemplated a variety of options for managing the bins for trash day. Plenty of rural folk permanently keep their bins near the road in a designated location, and then devise ways to haul their trash down.
I don’t want our bins in plain sight all the time, and I definitely don’t want to haul trash the long distance to them.
One of our close neighbors always drives his down in his small pickup truck. I figure it would work okay to haul ours down in a trailer behind the Grizzly, if need be. We have contemplated, off and on, about the driveway becoming gravel in the future, to avoid the expense of new pavement. The bins might not roll so well over gravel.
For now, just we have for the past 3 years, we continue to walk them down every week. It might seem like quite a chore, and I’ll admit there are times when I’m not mentally prepared when that thought occurs to me, but the effort always ends up being a rewarding experience.
I can’t count the number of times when I have felt awe over taking that ‘forced-chore’ walk outside, at a time when I didn’t think I wanted to, because the experience ended up being so beautiful, fulfilling, and inspiring.
That simple action turns into an epic journey.
I have had the opportunity to spend a week learning winter survival skills at Will Steger’s homestead, to travel to see Olympic games in Norway, to hike in the Himalayan mountains in Nepal, and to experience a few weeks at Ian Rowcliffe’s Forest Garden Estate in Portugal. I returned from each of those experiences a changed man.
There is something about routinely rolling heavy bins of refuse from our house to the road that changes me, too. Every time. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how to describe it, but I’m pretty sure it is what keeps me from putting any serious energy toward devising a more mechanized method of moving them.
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Remembering Fondly
Back in July of this year, my transition from staying home to manage our property 7-days a week, to working at the old day-job again, began in earnest. Now that we have received some snow, I am reminded of the luxury I enjoyed being home last winter, able to clear our driveway and paths immediately on the mornings after an accumulation.
Every minute in the life of a snowflake there is change. As soon as it stops growing, it begins to deteriorate. When innumerable flakes land and cover all surfaces, time allows them opportunity to become one.
By the time I arrived home yesterday afternoon, the snow on the driveway was freezing/refreezing into something of a cement-like coating. It did not motivate a desire to plow. I’m going to wait and let the daytime temperatures clean the driveway.
The current forecast is indicating the likelihood of above freezing temperatures for a week.
Last winter, I would often be the only one out plowing and shoveling on weekday mornings. I loved to pause and enjoy the snow-dampened quiet of our winter world.
When snow is cleared right away, asphalt or cement surfaces will often dry up, whether temperatures are warm, or not. By afternoon, the only way you could tell that it had snowed was the giant piles of clean, white snow lining the sides of the driveway. It is a look that I hold a great fondness for, and one for which I enjoy the process of creating.
Now that I don’t have that same luxury, the value of these memories has grown.
I have figured out I can enjoy by proxy through Cyndie. I recognized Monday night that it would help if I shared the trick with her about clearing snow early, when it comes to our front steps. She has not been in a habit of needing to tend to the steps, because I would usually take care of it. I pointed out the benefit of dealing with it right away.
When I got home from work yesterday, I stepped out of the house to observe Cyndie exercising Delilah (who has recovered quickly from her brief stomach upset, by the way) and found the steps perfectly clean and dry.
Success!
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Another Visitor!
What a strange coincidence we witnessed this weekend when, for the second time in three days, a stray dog showed up and lingered all day. Again, this one had a collar with license and veterinary information, but it being Sunday, there was no way to get a number to contact the owner.
This guy was friendly, and when it became obvious that he was happy to hang around, I let Delilah out to meet him. In minutes, they successfully navigated an introduction and seemed comfortable with each other’s presence.
What are the odds that we would have two stray dogs visiting us in such close succession? As Cyndie and I watched Delilah and her new pal playfully running together, it occurred to both of us that maybe we should be thinking about getting a 2nd dog.
The interesting thing about that idea is, Friday we decided to go to the feline rescue organization during the weekend to see if we could get a young kitty as a companion for Pequenita. As soon as we made that decision, a series of situations played out that repeatedly disrupted that plan, culminating in a surprising change of thinking from the possibility of another cat, to considerations of another dog.
We aren’t sure what we will do next, but I believe it will involve queries into what kind of dogs there are at nearby shelters that might be awaiting a new home and canine companion.
Sorry, Pequenita, your new pal will have to wait.
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White Flakes
Ladies and gentlemen, let the record state, we have snow. Ready, or not, the white flakes of winter have made their first appearance here. You can hardly see them in the image, but I had to take the picture anyway. It’s the official portrait recording proof of the occasion.
Maybe if you squint a little bit and shake your head back and forth while looking at it.
Not really. I just wanted to see if I could get you to do that.
I came home from work with the full intention of building the last of four slow-feeder hay boxes for the stalls in the barn, for Legacy’s “apartment,” but the weather had degraded early enough that Cyndie moved the herd indoors before I even arrived. He’ll eat his hay out of an open tub for the time being.
I got the night off, which was quite all right with me. I wasn’t that interested in venturing out into the cold and wet blowing mess, preferring instead, to climb under a blanket and take in one of the rented movies that came in the mail.
We had a good laugh over “Life of Crime,” with Mos Def and John Hawkes, among other notable names in the cast. It was a fun distraction from anything that matters, like …the cost increases for medical insurance, or when the chimney repair company will be able to fix it so we can burn fires in the fireplace again.
When the movie was over, we put on outdoor gear that hasn’t been worn for over half a year and went down to the barn to check on the tenants. My headlamp revealed some snow was finding a way to accumulate on the leaves and grass. The horses seemed happy to be out of the elements and a lot closer to dry than they were when they came in, hours before.
I was able to watch the three chestnuts navigating the new hay boxes, while Cyndie worked around them to clean their bedroom floors. It’s nice to see them be able to eat with their heads down, in the natural position of grazing, as opposed to the old system that involved racks that held the hay up high.
I dumped the wheelbarrow of manure and wood shavings, with the thought that this was the beginning of the season where we collect significantly greater volumes to be composted. After just a few loads already this season, the space set aside for this purpose looks like it will never be enough for the whole winter. That is, unless they don’t need to come inside overnight very many times.
I’m thinking El Niño may help keep the horses outside a lot this winter. If that happens, we have plenty of compost space to support our operation for another year.
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It Toppled!
The big rock I stacked upon another last July, on the topped-off pine tree trunk, lasted more than 3 months. It toppled over last weekend.
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I think I heard it, but at the time, mistook the crash for butternuts that loudly fall onto the metal roof of the shop garage. Although, I don’t know what made the big crashing sound when the rock fell, as it landed on soft ground below.
I’m unsure about whether I want to put it back up, or not. I’m going to think about it for a while before doing anything.
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Relative Something 