Posts Tagged ‘family’
Great Event
The usual calm and quiet has returned to Wintervale this morning. I think the horses sense that Cyndie’s and my energy has significantly changed, moving from the hyperactive tensions of preparation mode to a serene afterglow now that World Labyrinth Day 2026 is in the past. The beautiful weather with bright sunshine helped to create a perfect setting for visitors.
Asher kept me company while I set up the Wintervale flag near the road to give first-time visitors a sign they were at the right place. For some reason, my phone camera made that view look like our entrance is a U-turn from the road, which is not the case. The angle is much less than 180°.
Cyndie turned our storm door into a sign for anyone who arrived while we were both down at the labyrinth. I was too busy gabbing away with folks to take a picture of the spread Cyndie set out on the center island of our kitchen, but you can be assured that there were plenty of scones, cookies, vegetables, cheese & crackers, grapes, and a couple of versions of flatbread pizza square bites for good measure.
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We moved Cyndie’s precious door table down near the labyrinth with a tub of beverages that turned out to be very popular. She also provided cards with some guidelines for maximizing one’s experience walking the roundabout pathway into and out of the “not-a-maze.”
A mix of friends, family, and acquaintances participated in trodding during the appointed hour of meditation on all things peace-related. One of my favorite aspects of peace is joyfulness, and there was plenty of joy expressed in the congregating of like-minded souls.
I couldn’t help myself lamenting the event happening so early in our growing season that it looks barren compared to the lush growth that will be obvious in a few more weeks. It was agreed by a variety of others that my idea of holding our own local version of a meditative walk on the topic of LOVE could happen later in the summer, to allow people to enjoy the scenery at its best.
It would take us less preparatory effort if people just came to enjoy our sanctuary as their opportunity arose. I expressed that to everyone I spoke with in hopes they would take me up on the offer in the future.
Every time we have visitors, it clarifies the fact that our property is so much more rewarding when we get to share it with others. It’s a win/win when someone who experiences great joy being here ends up doubling our joy for being able to welcome them.
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Plant Rescue
We were given possession of a root-bound ZZ plant (zamioculcas zamiifolia) by friends who were reclaiming some space in their home. Our daughter, Elysa, and Cyndie separated it into 5 different pots yesterday.
I’m hoping we can make it a companion to our Bird of Paradise plant that Elysa and Ande gave us after having gone through a similar exercise of separating and repotting that beauty. They should make a great pair.
While we were at Elysa’s, I did my feeble best to rescue her 2-door fence gate. I can’t fathom how eight screws (4+4) in two hinges completely sheared off one of the doors. I was thinking I might be able to simply move the hinges on the door until I discovered they were part of a metal frame that spans the entire width of the door.
We ended up raising the whole thing half an inch and screwing it into the post. It is now reattached, but getting it to butt up against the other door requires a little extra effort with a lift and a shove.
Cyndie shifted her focus to pruning dead shoots from some very vigorous raspberry bushes along the fence.
When we were ready to wrap up our visit, my car was filled with the larger of the potted ZZ plants and multiple shoots of the raspberries. As I was driving home, Cyndie was reading up on how to take care of our newly repotted plant. We decided to put it in the front sunroom for now to give it time to settle in the new pot.
I’d like to see it turn toward the sunlight and have the soil firm up to give the stalks more stability before calling this a successful transplant. Then I hope to buddy it up with the tall Bird of Paradise on the sunnier half of the house.
I like the symmetry of our two rescued/repotted exotic plants growing alongside one another.
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Some Firsts
I searched my photo archives for an image I wanted to include in yesterday’s post, but didn’t find it until it was too late. It was a shot of the boulders in the center of the labyrinth after Cyndie’s cousins and brothers helped me place a rock on top back in the fall of 2017.
I was excited about having that smaller rock resting on the two boulders and ending up the tallest. It didn’t last in that position for very long. At one point, I ended up wrestling it sideways all by myself, to avoid having it tip over and roll off of both of them.
This is what it looks like now. It’s not nearly as interesting looking. I’ve added the little egg-shaped rock as an accent, but it never lasts very long there. I think birds land on it, then push off when they fly away, knocking it to the ground.
That’s the first picture of the center since the maple tree has been removed.
Yesterday morning, Cyndie and I experienced a first when she discovered she had a black eye for no known reason when she woke up. I asked her if she feels safe at home. She wakes up all night long at any sound or activity, so we have ruled out a possible stray elbow while we were sleeping.
I suggested she do a little research with Dr. Google. Of course, the list of possible causes included cancer, brain diseases, or impending death. Undaunted, she kept reading. Toward the bottom, it mentioned allergies, of which Cyndie has many. She recalled blowing her nose after working in the dusty barn and raking the winter accumulation of debris out of the labyrinth, and said the tissue was blackened. I pointed out that my weather app had alerted me to extremely high pollen levels, as well.
Those triggers, along with aging blood vessels, combine to logically explain how she might have developed a black eye overnight.
“That never happened before…”
In a first-time experiment of using pallets to frame my pile of composting manure, I peeled them off to turn the pile and add air.
I broke the composting manure apart and shoveled it back between the pallets for a second round of aerobic decomposition. This setup definitely allows me to work with larger amounts of manure in one pile. It’s inspired me to want to rig up a second set of pallets so I can start a fresh batch while this one continues to break down.
Other firsts of the season accomplished yesterday include hooking up garden hoses, pulling the leaf net off the landscape pond, and mowing grass with the push mower in four different spots where it has already gotten surprisingly tall.
It would be a more inspiring indication of our transition from winter to true spring if we hadn’t lived through so many April or even May unexpected snowstorms in our lifetimes. It’s awkward, trying to decide when to hang all our snow shovels in storage for the year.
Too soon feels like it would jinx things. It wouldn’t be a first.
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Lovely Feast
On the Sunday Christians celebrate Easter, Cyndie likes to shower her family with love in the form of food she spends days preparing. It was as delicious as ever. This year, she also made customized Easter cards for everyone, adorned with a variety of creative bunny faces (plus one bunny tail), which she hand-painted using colorful acrylic paints.
Having so many people to cuddle and beg for scratches is normally to Asher’s delight, but yesterday was a little challenging for him. Steve and Jessica brought their little dog, Vern, for the visit. I would describe Asher’s behavior as ‘tentatively tolerating’ in the presence of the highly active intruder who showed up in his space.
They coexisted, but didn’t become fast friends. It was actually the second time they had met, although that was many months ago. Their interactions then were pretty cute, but Vern was more of an oblivious puppy at the time, and Asher seemed to accept that nothing about him was a threat. Yesterday, Vern was more interested in Asher’s undercarriage, and that pushed Asher to become a little more wary of his presence.
Our big boy has convinced us that he has outgrown sleeping in his crate overnight. He curls up just fine in there, but he can’t fully stretch out when he wants to. A few nights of repeated (uncharacteristic) whining was all it took to earn him the privilege of now sleeping on the floor at the foot of our bed. He luxuriously stretches to his fullest extent between periods of curling up like a sled dog hiding in a snowstorm.
The photo above shows Asher keeping Cyndie company while she was painting bunnies in our den. He is neither curled up nor stretched out on the bed in that image.
It really was a lovely feast yesterday; however, the fact that Cyndie shows her love by feeding people special treats is beginning to overwhelm my limited willpower to resist. I ate way more of the foods that aren’t on my healthy diet plan than I should have. Calories consumed have not been balanced with calories burned for too many months in a row.
It’s great to be loved this much, but I am not a fan of the expanding inches of my middle.
I wonder if I could rig up a contraption so that her oven is powered by me pedaling a stationary bike. Those darn lemon or vanilla-frosted buttery biscuit cookies she just made are killers for my former ability to stop at just one. I am powerless to resist.
There is so much love in every bite, I bet these cookies could stop a war.
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Still Vibrating
After a day away at the rally on Saturday, life returned to normal yesterday on the ranch. Well, almost normal. Something is wrong with our furnace. I noticed the house temperature wasn’t holding on Saturday night, so I reset the power in hopes of achieving a quick resolution.
In the middle of the night, I saw the display was showing the house back up to 68° and imagined the reset had solved the problem. Unfortunately, when we looked at it first thing in the morning, it had dropped to 65° again. It being Sunday, we opted not to seek service until today, a regular business day.
I built a fire in the fireplace to take the edge off the morning chill and waited for the temperature outside to climb into the 60s.
It’s a little frustrating that we just had our annual furnace inspection a couple of weeks ago, and it was found to be in good working order. What odd timing, and during such relatively mild conditions for a problem to occur now.
There is one place where I am having just the opposite problem: too much heat.
The first compost pile of the season is cooking a little too hot already. The fertile garden soil factory is back in business.
As I was toiling in all things compost, I found my mind was still resonating with the energy and the impassioned faces that surrounded us on the Capitol Mall Saturday.
There were friends and some extended family in attendance, many of whom we weren’t able to connect with before leaving. Communication via text was made unreliable due to the sheer number of people all trying to utilize the same cell tower(s) simultaneously. Paul and Beth were near the stage. Pam and John were there somewhere. I got a text from Liz and Nick that they were there, but I only achieved a one-word reply in acknowledgement.
Cyndie was exchanging photos with friends in an attempt to establish each other’s location. Bob had a bike and never made it into the crowd near us. I was grateful we had gotten there early enough to easily find Rich and Jill, so we were able to share the experience with them. Julian and Allison took up a position more to their liking toward the edge of the main crush of people.
Between the overhead drone cameras and the State Patrol helicopter hovering, I hope they can come up with a reasonable estimate that all parties accept for the number of people in attendance. A more valuable measurement would be the level of combined invisible heart energy radiating throughout the crowd.
It was strong enough that it is vibrating with me still.
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Many People
We had a good experience in the middle of the crowd, which I’ve heard is estimated to be all the way from 50,000 to 200,000 in St. Paul, Minnesota, for No Kings Rally III. Being one short person in the middle of it all, I wasn’t able to get a sense of how many people, but I’ve been to our State Fair, and those crowds reach 200K. Regardless of whatever official number becomes agreed upon, it was a very respectable showing by the citizens of Minnesota, and it felt like the crowds at the Fair.
We skipped the marches, of which planners smartly held three from different directions, and went right to the Capitol, where we found friends standing near dead center beside the sound equipment tent. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see the speakers directly due to a scaffold filled with press personnel. Love ‘em and hate ‘em. We want the press there, just don’t want them completely blocking our views.
Thankfully, they had four large video screens and a respectable sound system. I thought each speaker did a fantastic job, too many folks for me to remember, but it did run a little longer than we were able to endure.
Governor Walz looked like he was in a flannel shirt. He always knows the right things to say. The signs were wonderful and entertaining. Most everyone was being family friendly, although there were plenty of F-bombs on signs, but at the end of one impassioned oration from the stage, a lone voice from the crowd yelled, “FUCK TRUMP!” and it was perfectly timed and met with universal approval. Sometimes you just have to say it.
Bernie was superb, yet it felt like the same speech he has been giving for decades without actually solving any of the wrongs he barks about. It was great, and depressing at the same time.
Bruce Springsteen singing his song protesting the deaths in Minneapolis at the hands of ICE goons was a special moment. By the time Jane Fonda took the stage, she was greatly rushed and commented that some of the speakers needed to leave to catch flights. That’s when Cyndie and our daughter were reaching their tolerance for standing (around 5 hours), so we started the difficult art of moving through stationary people to reach the edge of the masses. By the time Joan Baez was at the microphone, we were beyond the video screens, but we could hear some singing from the crowd.
That was a lot of staid Minnesotans showing up to uncharacteristically and unapologetically voice their disapproval very publicly. It was very moving at times. Brought a tear. Most of all, it fueled a new level of longing for the end of all the current shit and a return to true leadership that is bursting with compassion for ALL people. Every person there was wishing for the very same thing. It is powerful to be able to stand in the middle of that much combined hopeful human energy.
10/10, would do again.
Voicing Objection
It’s off to the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul we go today to participate in the 3rd NO KINGS! rally since the criminal administration unleashed its malfeasance. We are looking forward to hanging out with the predicted more than 100,000 people who also wish to voice their objections to EVERYTHING the bums are doing to our country.
It’s a crap shoot on whether we will find somewhere to park our car after picking up our children and driving to within a reasonable walking distance to the Capitol Mall. It would be nice to achieve a place to stand that is close enough to see the local officials and activists who will be speaking, but even nicer to spot Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Jane Fonda, and Bernie Sanders. Their attendance brings this rally in Minnesota to a level of national significance.
If we are ever allowed to have history books that accurately portray reality in the years ahead, this event will be included in the list of resistance efforts that citizens have made over the ongoing destruction of our democracy.
At the very least, it would be nice if we could convince enough Republican officials to find their spines and stand up to the idiocracy staining our country and the rest of the world. Stopping the war mongering would be a nice gesture. Holding pedophiles accountable for their despicable crimes should be an easy decision.
Wherefore art thou, sensible Republicans?
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Watchin’ Basketball
I have trouble understanding how basketball referees decide when contact is a foul and when it isn’t. Last night’s four games of the sweet sixteen round of the NCAA Men’s were fun to watch, despite how often players “walk” with the ball and don’t get whistled for it.
Tonight, I will switch back to watching the Women play, since the lady Gophers are still alive in their tournament, having survived to the sweet sixteen for the first time since 2005. Wish us luck against UCLA.
There was a little competition for space in a chair between Asher and Cyndie yesterday. Not all sports were happening in tournaments. Our grand-nephew, Drew, stopped by for a visit from his dorm at UWRF, and that had Asher all excited and seeking nonstop attention.
Cyndie whipped up some Italian Beef sandwiches for dinner and served some fresh-baked goodies for dessert. Her buttery, super-sweet granola cookies were a big hit. I think I may have exceeded my daily sugar ration simply by looking at them. I ate several of them, just to make sure.
It’s a bad time to be consuming excess calories, since I spend a lot less time being active when there are so many March Madness games on TV, grabbing my entertainment attention. This would be a great case for powering the television with a treadmill. Then the only way I could watch would be by exercising.
In the meantime, my body at rest stays at rest.
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Unexpected Fun
Forgetting for a moment that citizens of our country are under attack from our own government was more fun than we expected yesterday. While the bowling by the unpracticed novices of our family qualified as comical, it takes a measurable level of personal strength to laugh at one’s own foibles displayed so openly among strangers. I’m pretty sure I accomplished rolling a gutter ball following a previous frame strike. D’oh!
After surviving the sensory overload of overly rambunctious youngsters, a pop music soundtrack, clanging and banging arcade machines, and plenty of crazy lighting effects, we made our way to the Namaste India Grill & Brewhouse for laughter around the table. With a menu of enough delectable choices to make my head spin, I don’t think there was a duplicate order among any of the six of us.
I treasured hearing an impassioned conversation from a booth nearby in a language I didn’t recognize. We arrived before the dinner rush and were able to witness the gradual increase of customers from a variety of nationalities filling the tables, which bolstered the atmosphere of fun.
Alone with Cyndie on the drive home after precious time with our kids, we discovered the best surprise of the day. Turning her attention to her phone for messages, Cyndie discovered calls from a friend from graduate school in San Diego, some 46 years ago.
Cyndie and her two best friends from that time in graduate school had lost touch over the years and miles, but Susan and Lupe were moved to search for Cyndie’s information to offer their support for the ongoing conflict in Minneapolis.
Apparently, I have written enough times about our life adventures that this blog, along with the details of our labyrinth location that we have submitted to the Labyrinth Society, provides enough clues to reach us. For the record, that is by design.
Cyndie was moved to tears to hear Susan’s voice on the message in the car and could hardly wait to call her back when we got home. I could see years melting away from Cyndie’s aura as she flipped through old photographs from such a long time ago.
I recognize that feeling of a bond with friends who shared such a significant time of life, the challenges of higher education, and the unknown places it might lead to for all of them.
The reconnection was an unexpected bonus of fun on our day. I picked up the excitement vicariously through how vividly it reinvigorated Cyndie. Finding out that this blog helped the three of them rediscover their friendship connection again warms my heart.
Thanks for your keen sleuthing efforts to find us, Susan and Lupe! LOVE!
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Feels Wrong
Amidst all the blatant misuse of power, the lies, and the unending obfuscation of the current U.S. administration, there seems to be little cause for hope among the average citizens. Unfortunately, this latest version of oppression that is being dished out for the greatest effect is not new to a large portion of the population that has been discriminated against for generations.
Those of us who never suffered the constant disdain from proper society folk aren’t used to dealing with this developing vilification and the increasingly violent actions against our constitutional rights. A good number of the recently offended are standing up in protest, making our voices heard. That’s a struggle to do day after day, especially when the Federal offenses continue to intensify.
My inclination this morning was to curl up with my head beneath my pillow, where I could pretend I am not living in the middle of the decline of our democracy, even though I know it would only help the oppressors to achieve their desired outcome.
Luckily, I have Cyndie in my life to help me carry on against the ugliness. She is not taking me by the arm to march in the streets today. No, she is applying a lesson she learned long ago from someone with first-hand life experience in being discriminated against.
Sometimes, even when you don’t feel like it, it’s important to get out and dance.
I guess I can see the logic, but it just feels so wrong to seek out joy when so many are being mistreated. Then it occurs to me that people have been suffering all the other times in my life when I was out on some grand adventure. How would this be different?
At least we are combining our plans to have some silly fun with our kids and their life partners today, with a goal of supporting small businesses that are experiencing focused abuse from the authoritarian crackdown.
We are thumbing our noses at those who want us to suffer. Our form of protest today will be achieved by not wallowing in our sorrows over the abuse from the tactical military outfitted thugs stomping on citizens’ rights. We will be laughing, loving, and feeding each other’s souls with happy energy at a time when all of our resources of these gifts feel low.
If it starts to feel wrong to be happy, maybe we will chant “ICE OUT!” a few times before sharing our smiles with an immigrant server or their neighbors in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota. We aren’t actually attending a dance. I’m afraid I will need to pretend I remember how to throw a bowling ball down a lane toward ten pins.
I’m guessing it may feel cathartic to knock things down in a harmless way.
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Relative Something 