Posts Tagged ‘labyrinth’
This Happens
In the morning, our wake up call comes from Delilah. She sleeps in a crate beneath the spiral stairs in the main room. During my work week, when I leave the house in the early morning darkness, she regularly ignores me and stays quiet until around 7 or 7:30, if Cyndie is lucky.
It’s not exactly uncommon for Delilah to start getting vocal more than an hour earlier than desired. When it is way too early, I discovered that if one of us moves to the couch behind her crate and lays down to sleep, she will usually go back to sleep, too.
This morning was one of the occasions where it wasn’t so extremely early that it was still dark outside, but it was earlier than either of us wanted to wake up, after having stayed up a bit late last night because it was, after all, a Saturday. Cyndie, being less inclined toward sleeping on the couch for the dog, got up and let Delilah out of her crate. Then Cyndie came back to bed, hoping to get a few more minutes of shuteye before getting up for real.
That practice is based on the willingness of Delilah to calm down again after having just stretched out in expectation of starting her day. She puts her feet on the bed to check on me, she paces a bit and pants loudly. If we are lucky, she recognizes the situation and walks in a tight circle about 6 times and lays down to give us a little added slumber.
Then this happens… I realize that I have to pee.
Go figure. I am desperately trying to stay in my sleep mode, and the dog has just indicated she is willing to gift us with precious added time. I don’t have to go to work, I can sleep as long as possible, but my bladder is asking for relief.
Since I am tired, it is possible to override the body signals long enough to regain unconsciousness. It could be blissful, except for one thing. The body has its own intelligence, and it doesn’t give up without additional effort.
You know the drill. I was dreaming that it was time to leave and people were waiting for me, but before I could leave with them, I needed to use the bathroom. Actually, I think there were several bathrooms involved in this morning’s dream. Of course, a toilet couldn’t be found in any of them.
I dreamed I was peeing into something where I had mistakenly placed a kitchen utensil I had just used. Then I was peeing into a tub that had been placed where a toilet was supposed to be, but it turned out to be filled with plastic building block toys. In that case, the door was not latched and my niece’s young son wandered in, with her right behind. Soon she was commenting on my choice of receptacle.
It’s like being stuck in a labyrinth that has no end.
After Delilah decided we had enough extra time, she woke us again, interrupting my troubled sleep and freeing me from my self-inflicted imaginary dramas.
That was a relief for my mind which then, finally, allowed relief for my body.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Warm Rays
When I left for work yesterday morning, there was actually less snow on the driveway than when we walked down to the barn the night before to check on the horses. The pavement was warm enough that it was melting from the bottom up. When the sun came up, the snow began to vanish. We had about 8 inches of accumulation and it barely lasted 24 hours.
From the labyrinth cam…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Astute observers may notice the fantastic jump in temperature recorded by the trail camera. Seems the direct sunlight against the trunk of the tree and the plastic of the camera body creates a significant amplification of the air temp. I’m pretty sure it didn’t reach 89° (F) here yesterday afternoon.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Not Much
I moved the trail cam over the weekend and am not happy with the results. I wanted to try a more open area so there would be less branch clutter in the foreground of the view.
I chose the labyrinth garden.
I’m not sure why, but the result was picture after picture with no discernible activity. Over a hundred in two days.
Birds, maybe?
There were surprisingly few images during darkness. However, we did get a tiny glimpse of one animal that was conspicuously absent from all the images captured when we had the camera stationed on the trail in the woods…
Shy little bugger, she. That was all the further she moved into the field of view at 4:30 in the morning.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Visiting Stray
We came upon a stranger on the perimeter trail through our woods yesterday morning. Cyndie and I were walking Delilah when I spotted a dog facing us on the trail ahead. We paused and started a dialogue with the mutt, but I got the feeling he wasn’t hearing us. He simply stood his ground, no matter what we did, so I decided we shouldn’t approach.
We turned around and headed back in the direction from which we had come, which pretty much involved dragging Delilah sideways, because she did not want to take her eyes off the stranger.
By removing the pressure of our presence, the stray was able to let its guard down enough to turn its back on us and head off in the direction from which he had come. With that, we reversed ourselves again and followed to observe where he would go.
At our southern border, the visiting dog crossed under the old barbed wire fence and kept going on our neighbors property. We finished out our walk and then got the wood chipper hooked up on the tractor to grind downed branches into wood chips for the labyrinth.
While we were working, the stray dog showed up again, this time exploring around our house. I headed after him, trying to sweet talk him into letting us check out his tag, but he didn’t want to have anything to do with me.
I went back to work, but Cyndie continued to try making a connection, eventually succeeding in getting a leash attached. The dog’s tag included an ID number and contact info for a local veterinarian. They checked their records and provided the name and a phone number for the owner. Cyndie left messages and then put the dog into Delilah’s kennel.
Eventually we learned the dog’s name was, “Blue” and he was very old, and hard of hearing. He had been missing from home since Wednesday night’s “Flash-Boom” event of a thunderstorm. He ran off to catch that booming invader, and ended up in our neighborhood a day-and-a-half later, over 2 miles from home.
By the way, it wasn’t until yesterday that I checked our rain gauge and found 3 inches to add to the 1.5 that Cyndie had dumped out Wednesday night.
Maybe Blue just floated here on the runoff.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Comes Around
Last year, when I was home full-time, I often looked forward to the moment when Cyndie would arrive home from work and cruise up the driveway where she could see the results of my day’s effort on some project or another. Of course, this only worked if she made it home before dark, which is a tough thing to do during the period when the sun sets before 5:00 in the afternoon.
Sadly, more often than not, I would need to prompt for some feedback, and the response tended to reveal that she hadn’t noticed a thing. After the long commute, just reaching the driveway safely becomes the primary milestone of note, which tends to swamp the senses and blur specific details that may have been noteworthy.
Yesterday, after I pulled up the driveway, I did see the horses grazing in the hay-field nearby, but after that, pretty much a blur. I found Delilah waiting on the other side of the door, as I walked into the house, but no Cyndie. After a wonderfully happy greeting from our dog, I watched her move to the doors beside the fireplace which provide a view beyond our deck to the back yard hill that slopes down to the labyrinth garden.
With no leaves on the trees, it was easy to spot Cyndie pushing the reel mower on the path of the labyrinth. Delilah anxiously followed her master’s every move in the distance. That dog really bonds with the person who is home with her all day.
When Cyndie eventually made her way back up to the house, she promptly asked me how the place looked when I pulled in.
Busted.
I hadn’t noticed all the work she had labored to accomplish on her own while I was away. I felt awful to have missed it, and I gained a new appreciation for what it was like for her last year, before our roles became reversed.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Looking Back
Last week we reached the milestone of the 3rd anniversary of making Wintervale Ranch our home. Lately, Cyndie and I have found ourselves randomly recollecting some of the early days here and marveling over the variety of things that have since changed.
It feels a little —what is it? Presumptuous? Gratuitous?— somehow inappropriate for me to request, but I urge you to sneak a peek at one or two posts from the Relative Something archive (Previous Somethings) for the month of October 2012. There are too many gems depicting our arrival for me to do justice to them by trying to produce links, or re-posting to bring them forward to current posts this week.
Barely a month after we finally closed on the purchase of this place, we adopted the cats, Pequenita and Mozyr. After about a year, we came to the realization that Mozyr was not happy with his situation, and we returned him to the shelter, but Pequenita has proved to be compatible with the random chaos that arises here from time to time.
In July of 2013 we added 10-month-old Belgian Tervuren Shepherd, Delilah, to our family, purchased from a breeder nearby. From that day on we have tended to find ourselves in a battle between her training us and us training her. It’s fair to say there have been a smattering of victories on both sides.
Just short of 3-months after Delilah joined us, in the last week of September in 2013, our horses arrived. That was a monumental occasion for us, and came after an intense effort over the previous 11-months to be appropriately prepared.
We removed rusted barbed wire, installed new fencing, built up protective cover on barn walls (previous owners had miniature horses), buried a water line to an on-demand waterer in their paddock, and built a hay shed, along with a variety of lesser noteworthy projects.
I knew so very little about horses at that time. They have taught me a lot in the ensuing years, and come to mean the world to me. Just standing among them, passing time, has become one of my favorite things to do.
I have built a wood shed, twice. After it blew down in a storm, our friends Barb and Mike Wilkus came by and helped me to put it up a second time. Any time we weren’t working on something else, we were creating the spectacular 70-foot “Rowcliffe Forest Garden Labyrinth.”
Speaking of storms, we have endured a variety of dramatic winter weather events. Two of them particularly stand out for me.
The first one involved 18-inches of heavy wet snow in early May and snapped a lot of tree branches. Two pine trees that tipped over during that storm eventually died, even though I tried standing them back up and staking them.
The second snow storm blew for days and eventually filled the space between the 4-foot banks on either side of the driveway. It took me two days to dig us out, even with the assistance from both of our closest neighbors. What did I learn from that storm? The neighbor to our south told me he had plowed his driveway twice during the storm, so it never got to the extreme that ours did.
Lesson learned.
An awful lot has changed in the last three years. It is hard for me to imagine what might be different, three years from now, but I expect the changes won’t be near as dramatic as what transpired when we first arrived and worked to establish the infrastructure to support having 4 horses and fulfilling a dream of creating our Wintervale Ranch & Retreat Center.
What fun it is to look back once in a while.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
More Mowing
Does it look like the labyrinth was in need of being mowed?
I can assure you, it definitely needed it. I worked long and hard to conquer the task, but remained cool and comfortable the whole time in the September sunshine.
I looked up at the world around me when I finished and discovered that the leaves of some of our trees had changed color in just the span of the day.
I expect it will take a couple of frosty nights to finally get the grass to take a break for the season, but trees have begun their shutdown. The autumnal equinox is just days away.
I’m lovin’ it.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Fabulous Time
What is the deal? Is my camera broken or something? I haven’t taken any pictures for two days, so I can offer no visual proof that our friends, the Morales family, have arrived, or that we have already had so much fun being with them again that little else is receiving our attention.
The one exception turns out to be my stealing any spare second to get after the never-ending task of mowing or trimming grass. I now have just one section of fence left to be mowed before having that whole job complete. I’m planning to sneak that in early this morning before packing up to head to the lake for a couple of days.
We decided to drive two of our cars up there to give me the option of returning earlier than others on Friday to enable me to —can you imagine this?— mow all the lawn grass in preparation for the big knock down, drag out shebang we have scheduled for Saturday night.
Some years the grass growth slows around here in late July and August so I don’t have to mow as frequently, but this year I’m finding that it looks like I need to mow again after just a couple of days. When I wait a whole week, enough grass clippings are created to make me think I should have George bring over his baler.
We are having a fabulous time with our precious friends. Despite their late arrival on Monday night, which had us getting to bed around 3:00 in the morning yesterday, we made it to Hudson in the afternoon for a brief moment of shopping, and a fine patio lunch overlooking the St. Croix river at Pier Five Hundred restaurant.
Later, after a stint of grass trimming, both along the fence and in the labyrinth, George and Rachel Walker joined us for dinner. Marco graciously accepted Cyndie’s invitation to grill steaks, which turned out perfectly delicious. Poor Delilah doesn’t have a clue what happened to her usual sleeping routine the last two nights, as we lingered around the table after the meal, sharing stories and laughter well-past her usual bedtime.
Today, we leave her behind to be cared for by friends for a couple days while we will all be visiting with Cyndie’s parents up at the lake place in Hayward. With any luck, I’ll remember to take a few pictures of the frivolity expected to ensue.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Labyrinth Water
I only accomplished a short portion of my list of things deserving immediate attention yesterday. First and foremost, I completed the project to install a hose spigot for water to the labyrinth garden. Despite my 3 attempts to achieve a leak-free set of connections at the bottom of the hill, I quit while there remained a slow drip and deemed it good enough for now. Perfection isn’t everything, you know.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
If you look closely, you just might be able to spot the transplanted maple tree by the large rock at the center of the labyrinth. It appears to be holding its own in this first summer out in the open sunlight.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Four Inches
I expected to see a lot of water in the rain gauge after yesterday morning’s early deluge, but four inches was a surprise. I knew right then that walking the property with Delilah was going to be a messy adventure. After the rain stopped, we received a couple of dramatic gusts of wind that audibly torqued the house and visibly stressed the trees. I prepared myself for the possibility of damage to buildings or trees.
Happily, the wood shed withstood the gusts, due in large part to the added anchors that we installed when Mike Wilkus and I rebuilt it. I do need to get out there and re-stack one row of logs that has fallen over, but that collapsed long before yesterday’s weather.
We found only small debris of branches and leaves on the ground for as far as we ventured. It was just too wet to take the main perimeter trail through the woods, so that remains un-inspected.
The horses seemed entirely nonplussed by the excitement of the downpour and wind by the time we happened upon them. It seems to me they are getting used to the flash-flood situation that happens in their paddock every time we get heavy downpours.
One good thing about the wet ground was that it made it easier to bury the new irrigation line down the back yard hill toward the labyrinth. We opted to go low-tech and just slice a little opening with a shovel and drop the tubing under the sod. If I had tried using the tractor with the ground so saturated, I would have made one heck of a muddy mess in the yard.
It feels a bit odd to be working to get water to the labyrinth at a time when it least needs it, but it will feel great when things eventually dry up and we grow desperate to provide the optimum amount of hydration to all the growing things down there.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Relative Something 