Posts Tagged ‘Memories’
It’s November!
How many times have I written of my astonishment at the arrival of a new month? November is here. This morning there is a beautiful fire in our fireplace and the clocks have been changed back to standard time. The pump has been removed from our little landscape pond and the leaves covering the surface are locked in a layer of ice.
The garden hoses (we had a dozen of them strewn about the place) have all been drained, coiled, and stored. It feels like November. The one family on our country “block” that came trick-or-treating for Halloween last year, showed up again Friday night. Luckily, this year Cyndie had purchased candy, so we treated the one family, and yesterday I tried to eat all the rest.
“Oops, I slipped and another chocolate-almond-coconut concoction flew into my mouth.”
Cyndie recently coerced me to spend some time on a jigsaw puzzle by pitching in to spread out the pieces and flip them all face-up. Puzzling is both soothing and exhilarating for me, and it always evokes pleasant memories of assembling them when I was young. I find that dallying on jigsaw puzzles while listening to well-loved music tends to bring new depth to old songs. The music seems richer and the puzzling becomes doubly so. I finished the puzzle Friday night.
Yesterday, I drove the Grizzly around and collected all the stacks of cut wood that have accumulated from the trees that either fell in the wind, or were cut to clear trails and fence lines. There is no shortage of wood to be split and stacked in the shed. Meanwhile, there are still tree trunks under brush piles that remain to be sawed into fireplace logs, after I chip the branches above them.
Last night I had a dream that involved my needing to plow snow. As shocking as it is to accept that the month has already arrived, it definitely feels like November to me now.
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Life Celebrated
We are at the lake this morning, Labor Day Monday, and our daughter, Elysa, is at home to take care of our animals. It rained and rained here last night. I shudder to think about how much water washed through our paddocks at home. This is an abbreviated visit for me. Cyndie had come up on Saturday night to spend more time with her family. I hitched a ride up yesterday in time to attend an afternoon memorial service for Steve Schultz, a man who taught both Cyndie and me at Eden Prairie schools, and then later became a precious colleague of Cyndie’s when she took the job of principal at EP’s high school.
He had moved up to the Hayward area after retirement and became a volunteer at the regional theater and concert venue, the Park Theater, and that is where the celebration of his life was hosted. This being an out-of-town location for most folks, it was interesting to hear so many stories from the local people who only knew him in the later years of his life. In turn, they expressed how revealing it was to learn about the man’s earlier years.
In Hayward, he was coordinating singers and songwriters in performances at the theater, and no one there realized he had his own history of playing guitar, singing, and writing songs. More than one person said that if they had known, they would have gotten him up on that stage. Mr. Schultz was my teacher for an English elective, Poetry and Song, one year. It was a perfect match for both of us.
One aspect of the man that I appreciated learning about yesterday was his role with all his siblings. When I was an adolescent, looking at him strictly as being a school teacher of mine, I never thought about him in terms of having his own brothers and sisters. It really filled out my perspective of him as a whole person.
He was a special guy that I feel very lucky to have learned from and to have known.
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Flowing
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slowly
flowing
blasting past
every last transformation
the old neighborhood
is gone
our memories
don’t last
buried deep
resurfacing
in a dream
a breath
of hope
lost
in an instant of ‘I’m not from here’
walking away
toward yesterday
the marbles roll
behind the couch
flirting
silently
with old realities
in the fog
of dust and detritus
pressed
precariously
against
unknown reasons
for every
vague
remembrance
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Back Live
I am back with live posts today —not pre-written and scheduled— having successfully survived and returned from the most challenging of bike camping adventures that I have ever done. We made plenty of jokes about planning a bicycle trip in a region that has been selected as a good place to have a wind turbine farm.
The challenge of riding daily into unrelenting gale-force headwinds was compounded by the addition of a surprising wave-after-wave of severe thunderstorms, drenching this region that was previously enduring a drought. The unprecedented amount of rain in that short time seriously flooded farm fields, creating flash floods that over-ran banks, flooded homes and washed out roads.
For some reason that I don’t understand, I had the unfortunate luck of adding to the misery by getting sick with a sore throat, stuffy head, and congested lungs. I don’t know if it was just a bad coincidence of timing or whether the weather conditions and close proximity to a large group of people happened to be the trigger.
Last week was one tough vacation. At the same time, it was as fun as ever. I hope to tell you more about it in the days ahead. Right now I am faced with the burden of deciding if I can go back to bed to repair my ailing health or get after the mowing and manure management chores that are in dire need of attention.
The same storms that dominated our bike week moved across the state and soaked Wintervale Ranch. We’ve got additional trees tipped over that I will need to cut up and move, just to get to the manure pile.
The bed is looking more and more enticing as my current preferred option.
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Saying Goodbye
Mozyr has left the building. Last night Cyndie and I returned Moz to the Feline Rescue center where he first caught our attention. Mozyr initially impressed us with his athletic abilities, but from the time he arrived at our home, he proved to be a particularly timid fellow. For the longest time, under the bed was his favored place to recline.
In the end, Cyndie and I realized that he was not suited for the stress of moving outside to become a barn cat. He will do much better someplace where he can be the only pet, in a quiet home, which is just the opposite of the environment we have here at Wintervale.
I believe he was aware that we would be parting company. After we closed off his access to our bedroom, he became like a satellite to me everywhere else that I went in the house, weaving in and out and around and around my legs; hopping into my lap, or the sink again, as I stood at the bathroom mirror. I received more attention from him in the last two days than he had given me in months.
It was cute, but it didn’t change the difficulty he had with people coming and going, or Delilah’s rambunctious curiosity and the daily clamor of life in our house. He was too frequently on alert, behaving as if he was on the edge of peril. It was beginning to take a toll on his health, and he developed that pattern of peeing inappropriately around the house.
We are sad to see him go, but satisfied that he stands a better chance in a different situation. It is a relief to be able to open our bedroom door again, and get rid of the gate we have been tripping over to keep Delilah out of the cat spaces. Pequenita doesn’t need a gate to control Delilah. She has been doing a heroic job of practicing that for a long time. It is our hope that those two will now settle into a more congenial one-on-one relationship.
So, goodbye, Mozyr. May you find someplace you feel safe enough to thrive and romp and unleash your impressive athletic maneuvering, while sharing your friendly, companionable self with one special person who loves you. You are a special cat.
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Remember Winter?
This year reminds me of what winters were like when I was a kid. When the snow season arrived, it stayed all year. None of this melting to the point you could see grass in the middle of January or February, or one measly cold spell when it dipped below zero and that was it.
This morning we woke to teens below zero and it is no big deal. It’s funny how you get used to it. At first, it seems like serious cold, but after days and weeks of it, with times when it dips well into the twenties below and involves wind that drives the impact into danger zones for exposed flesh, well, you grow weary of focusing on how cold the temperature is and just deal with it. Life goes on.
Unfortunately, details of daily life activity that you are trying to just get on with start to get complicated after weeks of accumulating snow continues to pile up. Driving gets difficult because sight lines become obscured by mountains of plowed snow that get piled up where ever there is a place to pile it. Shoveling driveways and walkways become epic efforts, tossing the snow ever higher to get it over the mound created by the previous six times you just did this.
It took me until yesterday to finally finish clearing all the new accumulation that fell last Thursday. I had tried making my way out to the wood shed for a load of firewood and in one trip exhausted all my energy by trying to forge my way through the deep snow. I realized this passageway should be added to the queue of areas needing to be cleared after every snowfall. It is no longer sufficient to just trod the route to create a path.
It reminds me of what it was like as a kid. I thought maybe it just seemed like there was more snow back then because I had shorter legs, but with the return of a winter like days of old, with uninterrupted snow and cold, I’m finding it just as difficult with longer legs.
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The Table
When Mom let us have the old Hays family dining room table, the one thing she required in exchange was that we host the Thanksgiving meal on it. Whenever it is time to haul the 5 center leaves out of storage, to stretch the table to conference-room size, I experience a flood of memories, and an overwhelming sense of appreciation for the honor of being given possession of the family table.
This table was in the farm-house of Intervale Ranch where my family lived when I was born. It has been with me for most of my life. I snapped this shot of the expanded length prior to covering it with 12 place settings and more foods than should be allowed yesterday.
Another happy Thanksgiving is in the books.
Ah, but that’s not all. This year we get two versions. Yesterday, Cyndie’s side of the family came over. On Sunday, the Hays side of the family with gather. We’ll keep the table extended for the days between. That will prolong my period of enjoying the memories conjured up when I see it in all its glory of being full-size.
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October Cold
It doesn’t always work to compare one year with the next, and I was doing just that last week, as we approached the 1-year anniversary of moving to this fabulous property in Beldenville, WI. A few days after we arrived last year, the temperatures were warm and we cooked dinner outdoors over the fire, then went to sleep with our bedroom window open.
Yesterday, I went outside with my usual work gloves on and rather quickly discovered they were now insufficient. It is time for insulated gloves again. I assumed the air temperature would warm up as the day went on, but it seemed to just get colder. Clouds blocked the sun most of the time, giving the day a classic cold October look. I ended up involved in more outdoor activity than I really wanted, and my body started to absorb the chill as the hours accumulated. Snow fell on and off, occasionally dense enough to start to collect on surfaces.
There is something to the adjustment of our bodies to the environment, and in October, temperatures in the neighborhood of freezing feel painfully more cold than they do in March. Yesterday the outdoors were harsh and bitterly uncomfortable. In 5 months, the same temperatures will have us opening our coats and basking in the relief from the deep freeze.
The horses have started to grow out their thicker winter coat of hair, but it isn’t quite full yet, and the cold rain in October gets right through to their skin. We brought them into the barn on Sunday because they were shivering.
Last week, before the rain, Hunter showed up with a mud mask on. It looked like he was getting ready for Halloween at the end of the month. I wish I could have seen him in action when he did it. The finished product looks so perfectly applied that I’m thinking he had a mirror or something. Probably, he was trying to improve the insulating value on himself, in preparation for the October chill that felt so wicked out there yesterday.
Happy Anniversary!
One year ago, today, we spent our first night here in our new home. Thinking back to that chaotic drama of trying to close on both houses on the same day, in two different states, has me really appreciating that all the plot twists eventually resolved, and we got to move in that next day, regardless the delay in closing. If you aren’t familiar with that part of the story, you really should look back in the “Previous Somethings” archived posts, at the days in October of 2012 when we made the move from Eden Prairie, MN to Beldenville, WI.
It has been an amazing year for us here. A lot has happened. And we are only just getting started. We added a couple of cats, then a dog, and finally, just a few short weeks ago, we brought on the 4 horses. Can chickens be far behind?
Relative Something 