Posts Tagged ‘images’
Chippin’ Brush
With the lawn mowed and the piles of composting manure all in order, yesterday I was able to focus my attention on changing brush piles into wood chips. Once again, I found myself processing several preliminary steps to reach the point of being able to start working on the primary thing I intended to do.
I decided to let the chipper create a pile on the ground, so before I started chipping, I wanted to cut the long pasture grass down to the ground at the location where I would make the pile. I planned to use the Stihl trimmer to do that, but first I needed to change from a metal blade to nylon line for the job.
Next, I needed to solve the problem of a missing pin on one of the stabilizing arms of the 3-point hitch, before I could move the tractor and chipper down to the designated spot. When I was putting the tractor away after the last time I used it, I noticed the stabilizing arm was hanging loose, and the pin that was supposed to be holding it in place was missing.
It was a long shot, but I decided to look for the pin down near the spot where I had noticed the chipper swinging wider than normal when I was driving to put it away last time. I figured the unusual behavior probably started happening soon after the pin fell out. It was a little worse than looking for a needle in a hay stack, so I didn’t look for long.
I borrowed a pin from the ATV snow-plow blade, and was on my way. It was another beautiful day, and I remembered to take a photo before I started chipping, so I would have a comparison for how it would look afterwards. Little did I realize that it would also provide reference of how the beautiful day later turned gray in a matter of about an hour.
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I started working by myself, pulling branches from the pile and feeding them into the chute of the chipper, but soon recognized how much quicker it would be to have another person helping. Elysa and friends had come over for the afternoon, so I took a short break for lunch to see them, checked in with Cyndie, and mentioned I could use an assistant.
They were generous enough to come to my aid after they completed doing some exercises with the horses. Extra hands made a big difference, turning that pile of branches into chips in less than half the time it would have taken me on my own at the pace I was going.
It brought to mind this: I completely understand why farm families benefit from having a lot of children.
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Legacy Captured
Looking toward the fall sunshine when I captured this image of Legacy led to a great combination of light-streak and shadow. It’s as if his inherent horse wisdom is beaming out into the world from his eye. I’m particularly fond of the motion captured in his reaching leg, mid-step, and flow of mane and tail. Alternately, the bold shadow is able to make a strong statement, yet also works in a sublime way to offset him being the center of attention.
It is a great representation of our herd leader.
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Morning Sky
A few days ago, as Cyndie was stepping out the door to head to work, she hollered back to me that I should look at the pre-sunrise sky.
It looks like a wild-fire is raging just over the hill. Well, I guess it is a raging wild-fire, but it’s not just over the hill. It’s about 93 million miles away.
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Delilah Games
One night last week, when I was taking the memory card out of my camera to download the day’s photos to my computer, my finger slipped when I pushed on the card to eject it. The card popped all the way out and went sailing past me to the floor below. Delilah scooped it up the second it landed. I could hear the sound of the hard plastic clicking against her teeth as she checked it out.
In a panic, I scrambled from my stool and pushed my fingers around her jaw and into her mouth. I wiped off the saliva and inspected it for teeth marks. There were none. Disaster averted. Thank goodness for dogs ‘soft grip’ ability.
What a drama one slip of the finger can create.
You know, that gentle touch with her teeth reminds me of the amazing prowess that horses have with their lips. I was watching Legacy yesterday, while he rushed to graze some clover greens from which he seemed to anticipate I would pull him away. We were on our way over to the north pasture, but I was in no hurry, and actually was happy to have him trim the growth along the side of the gravel driveway loop. So, I let him have at it, and studied his technique.
There was a dead cottonwood leaf that seemed to be right in the way, and at the rate he was going, I expected it to get sucked right in with everything else. With an impressive combination of motion between his head and lips, that leaf was manipulated out of the way several times as he gobbled up all the greens on every side of it without ever slowing down. Talk about having touch.
Anyway, back to Delilah; Miss Quick. She’s a dog. She likes to chase and retrieve. She is also very fond of playing keep-away with us. She will keep bringing whatever the toy of the moment is for us to grab, so she can shake her head to pull it away. Even more, she loves to be chased and shows off her incredible athleticism with dodges and direction reversals rivaling an NFL running back.
The problem with this is that her game of keep-away wrecks the game of fetch. I throw something once, and she brings it back for an instant game of keep-away.
Having neglected to properly train her to drop things on command and play the game I want, when I want it, I instead devised a work-around. I bring two, or sometimes three objects for the game of fetch. Her compulsion to chase, overrides her desire to play keep-away. If I have another object to throw, she is more than willing to drop the one she has in her mouth.
Of course, that simply led to her upping her game a level so that she drops the first item farther and farther away from me, hoping to pick up the second thrown object and then beat me back to where the first lies. It was funny watching her struggle to fit two balls in her mouth at once, until she eventually perfected that skill (thus my solution of bringing a third…).
To mix things up, sometimes we throw discs for her to chase, instead. She loves leaping for them, when we get the throws right. She makes us laugh when she scrambles to try to pick up both discs at the same time. I expect she will hone that skill, too. I might as well start looking now for a third one of those, as well.
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Peaceful Morning
One by one the horses buckled their knees and settled down to rest in the relative warmth of the climbing September morning sunlight. Cyndie and I were working nearby to put up a little barrier around trees we want to protect in the new pasture. I noticed we unconsciously dropped our voices to a whisper.
While doing some cleanup of some dead wood in a patch of scrubby growth, we discovered desirable trees previously unnoticed. The more undergrowth we cleared, the more surprises we found. The first one to catch our eyes was a fabulous oak that was about 10-feet tall and had deep green leaves, a course bark, and some bushy looking acorns. After clearing the tangled growth that had been obscuring it from view, we felt a thrill to know it was there and looking so fine.
We continued to cut back weeds and eventually uncovered a different kind of oak, a couple feet tall and with much more yellow-green leaves. After that, a maple appeared, along with a frail looking elm and a single sprout of a poplar. It looks so much better with all the suffocating weeds cut back. 
It only took one day for the horses to take interest in that spot and I realized we would need to do something to protect the trees. We created a perimeter with step-in posts and hung a green mesh fabric around the circumference.
Today I will mount a solar charging battery to electrify the fence around that pasture. It will be time for the horses to rein in their energies and mind their manners over there.
On that subject, Cyndie reported that while I was out last night, she went to collect the horses from the arena/pasture grazing area for the night and found only 3 of them there! Cayenne had slipped past one of the barriers and ventured out into the hay field for a few unauthorized bites.
A little electricity does wonders to keep them from testing the fence boundaries.
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Pattern Change
We woke up with a hint of frost on our deck this morning. It is a clear validation of what we have been sensing the last few days. There is a change of season in process, and with it, our patterns of routine. I had to hunt down a long-sleeved shirt the other day. Of course, at this time of year the extra shirt comes on and off a lot, depending on activity.
I came in from outdoors and headed to the sink to wash my hands. Ah, there was my old peeve, back again. The cuffs of my shirt get wet when I wash my hands. Sure, I pull the sleeves up, but they slide right back down. Now I am able to appreciate what I have taken for granted all summer long, that I can scrub up without a care when I wear short sleeves.
A couple of days ago I asked Cyndie if she was comfortable in the house. She said she was, and I pointed out that the indoor temperature was 62 degrees (F). In the winter, Cyndie is quick to report her discomfort if the house temp drops below 70.
It fascinates me how our bodies respond differently to the seasons. What feels refreshingly comfortable now will be irritatingly chilly in the days to come. In 5 months, a temperature just a few degrees above freezing will feel refreshingly comfortable outside. This morning that temp tightens muscles and causes a wince. It has a bit of a bite to it.
Soon it will be time for me to find my winter gloves. I have no idea where they are.
For some reason I have a difficult time parting with old gloves. The finger on these opened up way too soon, so I patched it and got a good few weeks more out of them. Then the palm opened up and I decided it was time to retire them.
Just throw them away, John.
I looked over the right glove and couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Maybe I can use the right glove around the fire pit. I already have one by the living room fireplace, but come to think of it, I never use it.
Maybe I can use the leather for some other purpose. I could cut off the fingers and…
Just throw them away, John.
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Big Surprise
During the afternoon on Wednesday, when the gales of “Sept-ober” were blowing, I heard a crash while I was out scooping manure in the arena. It sounded to me like something very large had tipped over in the barn. However, I couldn’t think of anything in the barn that would have made that sound. I began to question my perception and wondered if something could have fallen up in the shop garage.
As I walked back toward the barn I had the thought that I probably shouldn’t leave the doors wide open on such windy days. I like getting fresh air moving in there, but the place sure is a dust factory as a result. I couldn’t see anything amiss, so I wandered over to the garage for a look. Nothing out of place there, either. It didn’t make sense.
Something about the sound brought to mind metal shelves, or the metal roof and sides of the barn and garage. With no evidence available to match what I heard, I promptly forgot about it.
Yesterday was a completely different day, with a stillness that exuded peace and tranquility. I walked the horses, one-at-a-time, over to the north pasture for a couple of hours after my lunch. They were exceptionally well-behaved. While they alternately grazed and raced around, I busied myself in the vicinity by trimming the scrub growth that looks decades old along our north property border.
Can you see Hunter positioned alone, away from the other three?
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The wild plum trees are producing a bumper crop this year.
I don’t remember this much fruit last year. Heck, we didn’t even figure out they were actually plums until a few weeks ago. Now we are all excited for having trees producing fruit we can use.
Well, more trees, that is. We do also have a rather tall apple tree that looks like it grew wild in the woods between the back yard and the barn. It dropped a lot of fruit last year. This year’s crop looks to be a bit more subdued.
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The horses were cute when I got them back into the paddock. All four of them settled into a late-afternoon nap after all the excitement of the new grazing pasture. It was so calm and quiet that the few isolated bird calls came across as being extraordinarily loud.
I sat down on the arena grass, which in no time led to laying down, and just watched them looking so peaceful. Then I realized one reason it was so tranquil. I still had Delilah confined in her kennel.
I hiked up to let her out and started tossing balls for her to chase. She was thrilled to have the attention, and was being as playful as ever. I walked down the hill to get one of the balls she had dropped and that’s when I discovered a BIG surprise.
I know what the crash was that I heard on Wednesday afternoon, and it wasn’t anything metal.
We lost a huge limb off a big old maple tree.
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Joyous Horses
We are currently experiencing an outbreak of ‘October’ around here, as our temperature has dropped 20 degrees, the clouds are hanging low, and the chilly north wind is gusting mightily. When this kind of weather strikes in September, Cyndie and I always think back to the year we were married and how cold and wet it was during the week before our outdoor wedding. We figured our plans were doomed, but luckily our special day was classic September with warm temperatures and a crisp, clear blue sky. Just the type of day we envisioned when we chose the date.
It always gives me hope that we can still have some spectacular warm fall days even though conditions may have drastically shifted toward the coming winter.
Yesterday afternoon I spotted the horses cavorting around the arena at high speed, kicking up their hooves and romping around. It occurred to me that they might be feeling the chill and wanted to generate some internal warmth. I finished the fence on the north side of the driveway, and I’m pretty sure they were growing anxious to get over there, so maybe they were venting some of that energy, too. They have spent a lot of time in the last two days grazing and standing as close to the direction of that new gate as their usual confines allowed.
Even though it was after 6:00 p.m. when Cyndie arrived home, I had patiently waited for her before giving the horses their chance. It helped that Cyndie had decided to put a pot roast in the slow cooker in the morning, allowing us to eat a rushed dinner as soon as she walked in the door. Minutes later we were marching to the barn for halters.
I mentioned to Cyndie that Legacy and Cayenne were hanging out together most of the afternoon, so we selected them as the first pair to make the short trip over. All four of the horses were still pretty amped up, and the dance to get two horses out of the gate —the two who had been selected— and only those two, was a bit precarious. Hunter and Dezirea went a little nuts over being left behind.
The heavy gusting wind was feeding their nervousness, so introducing them to this new space involved a bit of jumpiness. They seemed a little conflicted over the desire to be cautious, the ample supply of lush grazing, and the urge to check out the full breadth of their new pasture. We left those two and returned for Hunter and Dezi.
When the four of them were safely reunited in the new space, we were presented with a beautiful parade of prancing joyous horses, Legacy leading the way. They alternated between grazing and running for a brief time before settling down to mostly grazing, while Cyndie and I decided to do some tree trimming.
As darkness was about to descend, I headed over to put some hay out for them in the paddock, hoping it might provide some small consolation when we ask them to leave the pasture. It wasn’t needed. As I walked back toward them, Legacy and Dezirea were standing near the gate, ready to return ‘home.’
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Relative Something 