Posts Tagged ‘Delilah’
Spring Things
For the first time in months, I finally got my car washed yesterday. The once shiny blue car was an ugly gray mess of accumulated salty road spray. The temperature didn’t get above freezing yesterday, but it was sunny enough for the March sunshine to be effective at making it feel warmer than it really was. The line at the car wash was long and the wait was even longer, but it felt worth the pause to get it taken care of before the next blast of precipitation starts the accumulation all over again.
There is a real sense of impending change lingering in the air around our place now that the daily low temperature readings are no longer negative numbers and the high temperatures are headed above freezing for a couple of days. The higher sun angle and the later sunset hour are probably contributing the most to the feelings of transition that are upon us.
The horses are already showing signs of shedding their winter growth. Delilah seems to have more energy than ever. Unfortunately, she has started a pattern of barking at the sound of a neighbor’s dog 10-acres distant who sits in a kennel and “shouts” a lot. I’m grateful that Delilah has chosen to just sit on our hill and bark back at the dog, as opposed to run off in search of it.
We think Mozyr has resumed his misbehavior of peeing where he shouldn’t. The other night, he did it on our bed while we were right there, distracted by a video Cyndie had leaned forward to view on my computer. When she leaned back, her hand discovered the wet spot. What the heck!? Now I keep thinking I’m smelling urine in the air in several places, but I can never sniff out a location on surfaces. Even though I almost don’t want to see the truth, we are going to get one of the UV lights that will illuminate the spots where the cats have peed. Obviously, it is important for us to know, but at the same time, I really don’t want to discover what I expect will be the vast number of incidents.
I stopped by the hardware store on the way home yesterday to see if my lawn mower blades had been sharpened and ready for pickup. They weren’t, waylaid by the onslaught of problem snowblowers that had been brought in after the last mega-snowfall. I thought I was being smart to get my blades taken care of during the off-season, when they wouldn’t be inundated with lawnmowers needing similar attention, but it’s only logical that there isn’t really an “off-season” at a hardware store. At least I got them in at a time when I won’t be needing them if the wait takes longer than I expected.
This coming weekend, we move the clocks ahead one hour for the start of Daylight Saving Time, and in two weeks from today the vernal equinox arrives. Spring is here! That means only about two and half months left when we are at risk of getting bombed by a monster snow storm. Isn’t that encouraging!
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Overactive Snowflakes
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It was an otherwise innocuous passing flurry of barely 3 inches of fluffy light snow. Delicate flakes, each one unique, falling in a graceful dance with the air, moving in a randomly synchronized patterned performance. How many snowflakes could there be? They pile up. They land on every available surface, and swerve to reach places not so available.
Yesterday’s snowfall draped itself softly over the wind-hardened drifts in the driveway to complicate an already challenging chore. I had walked over those drifts the night before when I took the garbage bin down to the road. They were packed so dense that I could walk on them without breaking through. It’s like walking on water. It’s just snow, so logic has it that a boot would submerge, but not when it gets packed this tight. Across the top I strolled.
Delilah is finding the latest snow conditions to be confounding. Sometimes she stays above, and sometimes she breaks through. At the speed she is usually traversing, it causes her to do a face-plant into the deep. Then she has to swim a bit to reach a place where she can switch to her deer-like leaps to bounce through the deepest parts.
When the snow stopped falling yesterday, there was plowing and shoveling to be done, again. Those light, teeny flakes that fall from the sky change dramatically when they come to rest en masse. They foil the attempts of machines that try to move them, causing the wheels of the tractor to spin in place against the weight of the snow.
Walking our property has become unthinkable without snowshoes. If I had time to get down to the labyrinth, I would verify that it was entirely invisible at this point, buried beneath the biggest accumulation of the year last week that was followed by the gale force winds and then topped off with the several fluffy inches yesterday.
Snowflakes are beautiful and brutal. I think that’s what makes them great.
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Pee Happens
I have grown to really appreciate my quilt-lined Carhartt bib overalls this winter. They hang at the front door and no matter what I am wearing, I can hop into them to head down to the barn for chores. When I walk in the door in the afternoon, dressed from the day-job, stepping into these overalls covers perfectly for mucking out the barn and feeding the horses.
I ran into one problem with them the other day though, when I discovered the zipper in the fly is jammed and won’t open. I don’t recall if I have broached this subject in the blog already, or not, but since moving to the country, I have peed outside more than ever before. I can pretty confidently report that I never had occasion to pee outside when we were living on a tiny lot in the suburbs.
I suppose it seems acceptable, logical even, to take breaks outside to “water the trees” when exposed (hee hee, I wrote “exposed”) to Delilah and the horses doing it so often. Maybe something in me senses the value of marking my territory.
On Monday, when I was on the diesel tractor trying to finish clearing snow from the driveway and front of the barn, I got the sense my bladder was filling, but I wanted to complete the plowing before taking a break. That was a bad decision.
Of course, the worse the urge got, the closer I would be to almost finishing. If you know me at all, you can imagine me deciding to try to get just a little more snow removed, and then cleaning up one remaining edge. One of the difficulties I have plowing with our machines is that almost every time I move snow from one spot, I spill it on another. I kept not being done yet. I guess for some reason, I decided to torture myself by not pausing and climbing down to pee. I waited so long it was getting painful, which I know better than to do. Why in the world…?
Now imagine how calm, collected, and thorough I was about getting the tractor parked in the garage. It’s a miracle I didn’t crash into something as I rushed to get it put away. Happily, I wasn’t wearing the bib overalls at the time, and I didn’t need to make my way up to the house.
With that incident fresh in mind, my discovery that the overalls zipper was jammed took on greater significance. I intend to correct that situation well before the next time I might have need to use it.
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Walking Partner
The best thing I can do for my back is go for a walk, so as soon as I got home from work yesterday, I headed out with Delilah for a little stroll around the property. She is very entertaining to walk with this time of year. The snow is deep enough that she struggles mightily to make progress through areas of undisturbed accumulation, quickly resorting to leaping like a deer to pounce over, instead of plowing through it.
She is happy to follow the trails left by the deer, or where someone has previously walked, sprinting to get way ahead of me, and then turning to see if I’m still coming. She shows intense interest in the scents lingering in the footprints left by the deer, and spends protracted moments in olfactory detection. If I somehow manage to catch up and pass her, she bolts to close the gap and then leaps into the deep snow for several pounces to get around me before reclaiming the trail.
We came upon the pine tree that we picked up off the ground a few times last spring, and discovered it is showing signs of not having survived. It is one of several that aren’t looking so good, and has me thinking we should be planning to do some tree planting come spring so that we add more than we lose every year. We are already behind, because a similar pine on the front side of the house died last winter and had to be cut down.
While I was taking pictures of the tree, Delilah got in some small-game hunting beneath the snow.
She didn’t come up with anything except a face full of snow, which I attempted to capture before she shook it all off. I didn’t get much cooperation from her in terms of posing for photographs, but I think this does it justice.
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I was lucky that the deep snow tired her out enough that she reached her fill of being outside at about the same time I was reaching my tolerance limit for walking. On this day, the deep snow and my ailing back ended up balancing our walking partnership perfectly.
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Rambling Randomly
Late Sunday afternoon we got the horses fed, ushered Delilah outside to her kennel and then set out toward the far side of the twin cities from us, to the far side of Lake Minnetonka, joining our friends Barb and Mike at their house for the Superbowl game. It seems like it should be too far to go for a short evening visit, but spending time with them proved more than worth the drive. Plus, it being a Sunday evening, there was minimal traffic on the road and we made excellent time. It inspires me to avoid letting the drive interfere with staying connected to friends.
It’s now well over a year since we moved from the suburbs to farm country and I have finally taken the steps of transferring to a local doctor and dentist. I scheduled appointments with both for checkups next week. The transformation is becoming ever more complete. Now, if I could just learn to recognize good horse hay when I see it.
We have a number of bales that are moldy. We have a lot to learn about hay. Right now we are dealing with the accumulation of bad hay that we can’t feed to the horses. Online searches haven’t easily revealed any brilliant descriptions of what to do if you discover your stored hay is moldy. I don’t know if we need to get the bad bales away from the good ones. The most common suggestion is to use moldy hay for mulch in gardens. Maybe I need to advertise that we have garden mulch for sale.
While I was outside moving firewood up on the deck and splitting logs by the wood shed yesterday, Delilah was freely romping in the snow and exploring our woods. Eventually, she appeared with a kill clenched in her jaw. I have no idea what kind of animal it is –or, was. It is interesting to witness her demeanor change when she gets possession of a dead animal. Instinct seems to take over and she slips into wild carnivore mode. When she comes back in the house, I get nervous about the way she looks at the cats.
Gutter and soffit replacement resumes on the house tomorrow. I have made their work a little easier by clearing the most recent snowfall off the eaves and away from the vents at the peak. It had gotten so deep that our vents were covered completely. I haven’t heard anything from the builder who ordered our replacement window, but that should be arriving sometime soon. As much as I want to see progress there, I think it would be best if gutter and window replacements don’t overlap.
I’m back at the day-job 3 days a week now. I think it has me rambling randomly to process Wintervale responsibilities in my head so there will be some room for work related thinking that needs to happen. Don’t know if it will help any, but I see the rambling as a valuable exercise, regardless.
Special Day
This day used to just be January 31st on the calendar, but a year ago someone came along and claimed it for her birthday, and in doing so, made my friend Katie a Momma. Little Lilia achieves the milestone of her first birthday today. Everybody send her love!
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Delilah sends her love, too. (And a snowy-nose kiss.)
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Happy 1st Birthday, Lilia! …Yah.
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Rescue Effort
It is just a little cold here this morning. Minus 21°F on the thermometer, don’t know what the wind chill is. It actually looks pretty calm outside, compared to yesterday afternoon when we were experiencing some intense gusts and a heavy, steady wind. It created frequent mini-tornadoes of snow.
We stayed up later than usual last night to take in the Grammy Awards broadcast. For some reason, Delilah decided to wake us up earlier than usual. Nothing like a bad night’s sleep to make you feel less than your best self in the morning. On top of that, I spent the afternoon clearing snow –which felt like a bit of a doomed task with the wind beginning to blow and fill in everything I had just plowed– and once again I got the ATV stuck, which required extra shoveling effort to dig out, so most of the muscles and joints of my body are in ‘complain mode.’
Growing old is not for sissies. If it’s this tough for me now, what’s it going to be like when I get old?
At one point yesterday, when we were lounging around the warmth of the fireplace before I ventured outside to work, from my perch on the couch I spotted Delilah fix her gaze on some prize up the spiral staircase. It must be a cat, I thought, and off she went, seeking closer inspection. She seems to desperately want to make contact, probably as much as the cats would fervently prefer to have her not. As she headed up, I tried alerting Cyndie, who had disappeared into the basement in search of a cookbook, and I pondered aloud whether it was Pequenita or Mozyr up in the loft.
As the scrambling and hissing commenced up there, I spotted Pequenita emerge from the safe zone of our bedroom and start up the stairs. That meant it was Mozyr who Delilah was engaged with and had cornered up there.
Mozyr has been behaving more and more like his old self recently. On days last week when I was working, and Delilah would be out in the kennel, both cats were taking advantage of the dog’s absence when I got home, wandering around the house and snitching some dog food from her bowl. Mozyr has become our bathroom pal again, hopping up by the sink, and sitting on the edge of the bathtub when I shower. I take it as a good sign that he chose to venture out from the confines of the bedroom and climb the stairs to the loft when Delilah was around. It gave him a chance to act out toward her and express how he feels about having a dog sibling forced upon his world.
When the commotion settled down and we were able to bring Delilah back down the stairs, it occurred to me that Pequenita’s behavior could be interpreted as coming to Mozyr’s rescue. When she heard the confrontation, she came running and put herself in harms way by diverting Delilah’s attention, smartly doing so with a convenient escape route back to safety. In fact, that helped our effort to convince Delilah to leave Mozyr alone and come back down with us, as Pequenita sprinted her way down and to the other side of the gate.
The brave cat to the rescue, once again, and Moz seems no worse for the wear.
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January Warmth
We heard temperatures would get above freezing on Sunday, but didn’t expect it to rise into the 40s! Cyndie came up to the house after feeding the horses in the morning, and reported how nice it felt outside, as she grabbed a toy for Delilah and went back out to play.
When I peeked out at them, I found Cyndie on her hands and knees, coaxing Delilah in a game as she crawled toward her. I went right for the camera, because they looked too cute together to resist.
The horses have been free of blankets for 2-days now, and they looked very comfortable with the relatively warm afternoon breeze we were experiencing.
With Elysa over for a visit, we re-inflated the big red ball, sealed it with a borrowed plug, and took it out to see if the horses wanted to play. It was the time of day when I would usually find them laying down for a nap, but they showed some initial interest.
It took a bit for them to figure out what the attention was for, taking turns scouting for treats, checking the ball, and investigating why Cyndie and Elysa were inside the fence with them. Then all of a sudden Hunter began pushing the ball with his nose, picking up speed and running up the hill of the big field. I was watching it all from a distance, and the sight of him playing with such gusto, and doing so all by himself, triggered an involuntary guffaw. It was a fabulous sight.
After that, despite several attempts, and eventually my joining them in the pasture to try enticing more energetic interaction with the ball, there were no further runs. Legacy’s only interest seemed to be in getting a grip of the plug with his teeth. I think it is safe to bet that he was the culprit in pulling the plug the first time I put the ball out for them. At least now we know better than to leave it with them unsupervised. We took the ball back to the barn and allowed them to resume their willful idleness.
For the first time since this season’s snow first fell back in early December, our front steps are clear and dry. That first precipitation started with a freezing rain that turned to snow and was then followed by a significant drop in temperature. We were never able to completely clear the front steps of that ice before each additional snowfall added to the mess. Some days it was interfering with our ability to close the storm door. Yesterday, I was finally able to completely scrape off the accumulated ice.
Thank goodness for the annual January thaw.
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Bravest Cat
It seems as though a pattern is being revealed to us where we start talking about reaching the limits of our patience with trying to make progress normalizing relations between our cats and dog, and then they suddenly make big gains toward the goal. In the last few days, Delilah and Pequenita have been working diligently to practice co-existing peacefully.
While Mozyr has lagged behind in the bedroom, the two females have been spending a lot of time fraternizing out in the main room. We are leaving a gate up, blocking the hallway to our bedroom now, and Delilah often waits by that gate for Pequenita to venture out. That little cat is being the brave one and stepping out in plain view, even as the dog winds up with excitement over the mere sight of her.
Occasionally, Delilah is able to play it cool long enough that it appears we’ve reach a new drama-free mutual acceptance between them. It offers us rewarding glimpses of what it might possibly be like someday. Pequenita will walk right under Delilah and stroll about calmly and slowly, while Delilah peers down at her with a look of surprised disbelief.
It is almost too funny to watch Delilah struggle to control herself, and eventually her wagging tail gets so much momentum that it swings the front of her body into action, springing back and forth in attempt to get the cat to play. It looks as though, if she thought she could get away with it, Delilah would snatch the little kitty up like a chew toy and run around squeaking her.
When the energy gets to be too much, Pequenita pins her ears back, turns sideways, and in no uncertain terms hisses a powerful message that backs Delilah off. The cat also practices a mean swing that has already taught Delilah to be quick to back away when she is bouncing around in hopes of some play.
When it gets too overwhelming for Pequenita, she just sprints back behind the gate for a while. After the dog has calmed down again, ‘Nita will return and try the exercise another time. We are surprised at how quickly she has been returning. It is often enough that it seems evident that it is an intentional experiment toward achieving normalization.
We couldn’t ask for anything more from Pequenita. She is truly one cool, brave cat.
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Relative Something 