Posts Tagged ‘family’
So Rewarding
Yesterday, our daughter, Elysa, brought friends for a day of Wintervale exploration, a day that had been planned for weeks. Cyndie and I have been watching the weather forecasts which consistently reflected a chance of rain. Instead of precipitation, we were rewarded with a fair amount of afternoon sun.
We had spent an afternoon sprucing up the labyrinth in preparation for their visit, trimming bushes, re-balancing stones, and removing accumulated leaves.
It looked pretty good, which rewards us every time we walk past.
There is already enough grass growth happening that it could use a mowing to keep it looking well-tended. I will certainly need to cut it before the arrival of World Labyrinth Day in three weeks.
I’m looking forward to that day because of my plan to measure the circumference of the transplanted maple tree in the center circle of the labyrinth annually on the first Saturday of May. Last year was the first time I measured it, establishing a reading of 7.25 inches as the initial reference dimension.
After the five guests finished walking the labyrinth, they made their way to see the horses, where we were rewarded in several more ways. First off, simply the fact that the horses were in a very social mood all day was a big plus. The horses rarely seem bothered by groups of talkative strangers and all the added energy they bring.
The herd was on their best behavior. They all took turns lingering at the fence for scritches or treats being offered. Most rewarding for me was seeing Mia, the mare most easily startled, stay engaged at a fence gate to receive hands-on attention even after a couple of flinches when something spooked her.
That is uncommon for her.
Elysa was reaching to untangle some fairy knots in Mia’s mane until Mia had had enough. Instead of stepping away, Mia simply reversed her orientation and gave up her other side for scratching.
The most timid horse showing such self-confidence warmed my heart.
Once again, it is visitors who truly bring Wintervale to life. That is a reward we will never grow tired of receiving.
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Didn’t Meet
I didn’t get to meet our new support person from This Old Horse yesterday as I’d hoped. For unknown reasons, he was a no-show when the delivery of hay arrived. This leaves me uneasy. Our first two experience with the new person have been non-appearances. I hope this won’t be the case when we eventually have a pressing need.
It’s not so much about us being inconvenienced, but it’s that the horses are the ones we are trying to protect from suffering whenever there is an issue.
At least we no longer have any concerns over getting low on hay. It always feels so good to have the hay shed stocked. Plus, I’ve currently got twice the regular amount of bales staged in the barn after prepping for the new delivery, so I won’t need to toss bales again for quite a while.
While we were standing around the trailer talking after all the work was completed, Light nodded off to sleep and fell to her knees like Cyndie and I had seen her do before. It was affirming to have other people also witness it.
I wish I felt more empowered to do something to help Light lay down and get some deep sleep if sleep deprivation is indeed the problem. Our previous effort of adding something to her food doesn’t appear to have done anything beneficial for her.
Lately, all the horses have seemed to have less interest in finishing their grain. Per Johanne’s recommendation, I served up smaller portions at their afternoon feeding, and there were minimal leftovers after they had eaten their fill. It didn’t appear to concern them in the least, so I will continue with that adjustment for the time being.
Earlier in the day, I enjoyed a Facetime call from Cyndie and the kids in Florida, where they were able to boast about the warm weather. When I stepped out to do morning chores yesterday, the wind chill impact made it feel 70 degrees colder than it was a day and a half earlier. It’s getting pretty complicated at the coat tree in our front hall with all the different outerwear I’ve been selecting in order to adapt to the conditions at any given time of each day.
Their decisions are more along the lines of which bathing suit to wear and whether they have applied enough sun protection.
What a difference 1700 miles makes, eh?
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Fascinating Results
My exercise of mulling ideas over in my head for days on end brought me to a lightbulb moment when contemplating how a shade sail might work for our horses in the small paddock. How might I simulate what it will look like in order to figure out an optimal size and location? In my head, I’ve been troubling over the lack of a single defined parameter. Too many moving parts.
To figure out the size of the sail needed, measure precisely between the posts. There are no posts yet.
To figure out where the posts should be, calculate it from the size of the sail. I don’t have a sail size determined.
Lightbulb moment: My son, Julian, has done some 3D simulations of spaces. What if…?
He knew right away I would be surprised by the possibilities available in the supercomputer I carry around in my pocket. He pointed me to an app that collects LiDAR scans via the camera in my iPhone.
Having zero familiarity with the operation of the app features, I clumsily made a first attempt at collecting a scan Julian could use to then add a simulated sail canopy. I collected a 3D image of the paddock and sent it to him.
That didn’t work for what we were trying to do.
He was able to point me to the preferred settings to scan the environment with LiDAR. With no experience, I walked back and forth to collect enough of the small paddock to encompass the area I hope to shade. Mia was at the waterer, so I tried including her in the scan, but she kept turning to see what I was doing. It barely picked up the vague shape of a horse.
Far from perfect, it worked well enough for our purposes. I shared the image to Julian’s email, and he was able to take the file and add the rough geometry of a shade structure with controls to move the orientation of the virtual sun and see where the shadow would end up.
Brilliant! And fascinating! Since we got this far after such a short time, I asked if he could twist the position of the shade structure to align better with my current thinking about location. Julian asked if there were any other changes to include while he was at it. Well, as long as he asked…
I sent him several images of the types of shade sails I’m considering to see if he could more closely match the shape. He asked about color, and I chose a green like the barn and hay shed roofs.
In less than 24 hours, we had a mockup that blows my mind. There are keyboard controls that allow movement of the size and position of the sail, adjustment of the viewing angle, and moving the direction of the sunlight.
From the phone in my pocket and his experience with 3D software, we have a visual of what was in my head.
That wasn’t just a lightbulb moment I had. It was a lightning bolt!
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Hays Gang
We got the gang back together again yesterday for a little face-to-face catching up. The five surviving Hays siblings are successful in gathering all in one place every 18 months or so, and we try to capture photographic evidence that it truly happened. This time, we met at Elliott’s house in Richfield, which is mostly central to our distribution of homes to the north, south, and east of there.
It’s mind-boggling to fathom how much life experience has occurred since the time when we would have all lived under the same roof. It would have been in the farmhouse at Intervale Ranch on the border of Eden Prairie and Edina.
At a gathering we achieved in January of 2020, one of our group shots included what has become a meme where Elliott turns his back to the camera. Somewhere, I know there is a shot where he did that at the house Cyndie and I owned in Eden Prairie, but Cyndie’s quick search found this one from 2020:
Here is how we looked yesterday…
It makes us laugh every time.
I LOVE my siblings!
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Year End
’Twas the last day of the year, and all through our house, we did a quick review through my blog to see what had mattered. It occurred to me that I am more inclined to reminisce about long-past events than the prior year. I spent time in the morning looking through newspaper articles from the 1870s. The minutiae of Pierce County, WI, in 1874 strikes my fancy more than the collection of my daily reports on the ranch.
Looking through the “Previous Somethings,” we were reminded of trips we made to the lake to supervise the replacement of a rotting log truss on the main house and to do a little DIY masonry on the satellite building we call Cabin 3. The fall I experienced at the end of February didn’t require any “remembering” because it led to a chronic shoulder problem that I am painfully reminded of every single day.
We coped with water on the basement floor at the beginning of the year and the broken power line to the barn. We dragged out a DIY landscape project to our entryways over several months. After a soaking wet first half of the year, we experienced a long drought that revealed the water fountain in the paddock had sprung a leak.
In February, we hosted Hays relations up at the lake place in Hayward with a photography contest as one of the features. I rode my bike in the 50th version of the Tour of Minnesota. At this point, I’m undecided about whether I will do the 51st in 2025 or not.
In a year when Cyndie went surgery-free, we each took a turn at having our first case of COVID-19 illness and separate bouts of pneumonia. For the most part, we are otherwise healthy, although both of us have been noticing aging is increasingly sapping our youthful vigor.
The most notable adventure was our trip to Iceland with friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus in September. That island country is a marvel of fascinating natural beauty.
Despite that wonderful event highlighting 2024 for us, I’m afraid the heartache of the results of the U.S. Presidential election in November and my resulting coping reaction of avoiding news ever since has become the predominant pall shadowing my perception of the year. I can pretend all I want that I didn’t notice, but that doesn’t change the fact that it happened, and we will all face the consequences in one way or another.
Considering all the terrible things that have happened in the world since those quirky stories of interest in the 1870s, it is noteworthy that good people still endured, coped, and found ways to survive and sometimes thrive time and again. We can do this.
Thus, my review of 2024 is complete, and I am ready to return my attention to whatever today brings, especially taking note of the many blessings bestowed upon us.
Sending love to all you readers who have successfully found your way to the last day of this calendar year. Let’s spread the love far and wide throughout the next 365 and beyond!
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Holiday Socializing
Cyndie and I did the old back-and-forth routine again this Christmas, starting with the hour-long drive to the Cities on Christmas Eve to gather with family from Cyndie’s mom’s side, then returned late to sleep at home. On Christmas morning, we fed the horses (Asher is away at a trainer’s kennel for a week) and then drove back to her mom’s for the classic Friswold breakfast and an opening of gifts exchanged.
From there, we drove home again for a brief rest in the afternoon, which allowed us a chance to feed the horses before driving back to the Cities for food and fun at her brother’s house.
Up past our bedtime for the second night in a row, stuffed beyond sensible with scrumptious foods, and buzzing from the precious energy of socializing with people we love so dearly, we hopped in the car one last time to drive home and crashed into our bed to sleep deeply.
I am ever so grateful that this was the only crashing we experienced because we witnessed some crazy speeding and risky maneuvering occurring on the highways yesterday. No one wishes for a traffic ticket on Christmas, but that doesn’t mean the Highway Patrol should take the day off.
It didn’t appear there was any enforcement in place during our cautious commuting, and some reckless speed demons were taking full advantage. Thankfully, road surfaces weren’t excessively slippery, and no bumpers were bumped throughout our many trips to and fro.
Every last trip was worth it for the treasure of special holiday time with our peeps. For those who love solitude, it provides a healthy reference for how nice it is to return to the calm and quiet of our own homes after periods of intense socializing.
Down in the paddocks, there was some unique social interaction going on between one particular pigeon and the horses and me.
I first noticed it walking around me as I rolled out the wheelbarrow to do some housekeeping under the overhang. It showed up on a fence board as I was sweeping off the placemats under a feed station.
When I arrived to tie a hay bag, the pigeon didn’t move away from its puffed-up position where I wanted to be. So, I took its picture.
Friendly little guy. When I stepped out of the barn with buckets of grain, it was sitting on Swings’ back. After it stayed perched there while Swings walked over to eat, I pulled out my phone to take another photo of the friendly bird.
I was too slow. It had hopped down to see if Swings was sharing any holiday cheer on the placemat below.
The rest of the pigeon flock is much more flighty about the presence of humans, but this one seemed to have no fear. Much as they tend to annoy us for the racket and mess they create, not to mention the temptations they are for Asher, I chose not to shoo this one off.
It was Christmas, after all. That wouldn’t have been in the holiday socializing spirit.
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Escape Puzzle
’Twas the day before Christmas, and what am I doing? Playing with the new gift I’ve already received from Elysa!
It’s an “escape puzzle” from Ravensburger. The information says the puzzle is different than the image on the box. I assumed that might mean completely different, so I didn’t closely look at the cover at first. Eventually, I noticed it’s mostly the same with a few minor differences.
The assembly was just easy enough to keep me engaged all the way to the end in one afternoon. Knowing where some of the details don’t match the cover image doesn’t automatically solve any riddles for me, but at least I have a good idea of where I should be looking.
Now comes the hard part. There are indications that it’s a numbers game and math will be involved. Oh, joy.
Here’s hoping you can enjoy some diversions from the real world this Christmas Eve and make an effort to have visions of sugar-plums dancing in your head.
Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!
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Almost Healthy
The splitting headache is no longer splitting, and her vital signs have returned to normal. Cyndie seems back to reasonably functional. She helped with horse chores and has taken Asher for a couple of walks in addition to a trip to the Post Office as Santa’s little helper. Goodies are in the mail, and the neighbors will find a bag of holiday cheer has been dropped at their doors.
At this stage of holiday preparations, it’s hard to tell that Cyndie was off her game at all.
In support of all her Elf-ish energy, I have been mining the far reaches of our Apple Music offerings to find appropriate holiday sounds. The first few notes of an Andy Williams Christmas album instantly transported me to a big old farmhouse on the border of Edina and Eden Prairie, MN, and the 5-year-old me arose from within my depths with visions of leaded tinsel being draped across branches from outstretched arms of a person standing on a folding ladder above me.
The result of that surge of nostalgia left me feeling lonesome for the clamor and banter of my siblings buzzing around me.
The branches of that family tree have sixty years of growth that have spread us out beyond the conveniences of frequent contact.
That 5-year-old me would only have his father around for 17 more years. I will always remember the time he almost convinced me that he had heard something on the roof in the minutes just before I showed my face one Christmas morning. I was old enough to know better, but I’d never experienced my dad putting on such a believable act before and was gobsmacked by it.
I like to think he was rewarded by the innocent astonishment that must have shown on my face.
Much less astonishment came over me when I stumbled upon news of a school shooting recently in Wisconsin. That innocence is long gone.
Looking at our trees, I was grateful they don’t need to know such things happen. Same with the horses. Then, I realized how attuned trees and horses are to the universe, which means they probably sense each and every atrocity through the connectedness of all things.
They keep calm and carry on their existence, and so should we. I’ll pretend we are almost healthy.
And now I miss the innocence of my 5-year-old self more than ever.
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Turkey Feast
In classic Cyndie fashion, we did not have one turkey for our Thanksgiving feast; we had two. She soaked one in brine and purchased a smoked bird from a local barbeque joint.
A Thanksgiving feast deserves to be served on a royally set table so Cyndie pulled out family heirloom china and silverware and augmented them with her hand-crafted dried leaf place markers.
Speaking of leaves, we put all five extending leaves in the old Hays family table to provide generous elbow room for our modest-sized gathering.
While dinner was cooking, I guided a group down to the barn to offer the horses a few Thanksgiving carrot bites to brighten their day. I was greatly impressed with Light’s quick acceptance of my message that I had no more treats for her. She is prone to prolonged, insistent begging for more when we start offering treats. In this case, she reacted as if she totally understood what I was communicating and turned around to walk away and stand beside Swings, who had already given up on a chance for any more bites of carrot.
When we returned to the house, there was time for a little word-guessing game in front of the fireplace before Chef Cyndie made the call for “hands.”
Much feasting ensued.
All visitors were sent home with generous servings of leftovers, but due to some strategic pleading by me earlier, they made sure to leave a little for me, as well.
Today, Cyndie and I are heading north to spend the weekend at the lake, because we can. Our leftovers will be going on a road trip along with us.
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Less Hot
The weather alerts that keep pinging my phone warn of excessive heat. Sounds ominous. Medium heat would be tolerable, but excessive? Yikes. We better be very careful. Except, the breeze coming off the lake this morning is about as perfect as a person could ask.
The filtered sunlight with dancing shadows of tree leaves projected on the logs of the sunporch wall augment the ambiance of serenity to a wonderful degree.
If I wasn’t inclined to think about how much the horses at home will be sweating today and Asher thrashing against his itchy skin, my life today would be downright heavenly. Comparing my usual grimy activity of constantly groundskeeping 20 rural acres to our getaways north where I laze around luxuriously highlights the significant difference in my experiences.
There is no lack of appreciation for this privilege on my part.
In fact, were I to imagine a time when Cyndie and I no longer chose to live in the situation where we needed to do so much work to maintain Wintervale, I’d gladly lobby to become the caretaker of her family’s property on this lake.
That might be the excessive heat warning talking. Check with me in the midst of a January deep freeze to see if that visualization of a possible future still stands up.
We are enjoying conditions that feel a lot less hot than what the weather app warnings keep beeping about. In today’s blurb by Paul Douglas in the Strib, I see that Saudi Arabia saw a midnight temperature index of 134°F when the dew point was 95.
Hot conditions, like so many other things in this world, are relative, aren’t they?
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