Posts Tagged ‘mowing’
Falling Behind
This place we call Wintervale is truly a paradise and a joy for me, but this morning it is feeling a little overwhelming. Can it be that one day makes that much difference? The day-job is very demanding right now and I needed to work on my usual Friday-day-off yesterday. Between that and our spending the long weekend away last week over the holiday, I have fallen behind on the grounds keeping at home.
The growth is like a jungle in the yard and on our trails. In addition to the usual lawn mowing, the drainage swale and fence lines are overdue to be cropped. The composting manure is also overdue to be turned and distributed, and I am behind on wood splitting and several other projects I had hoped to accomplish.
What can I do about it?
I’ll mow the lawn today. It makes the biggest difference in giving the appearance that things are under control.
I’ll note that it feels more overwhelming than it really is because Cyndie is away this weekend and I am home alone.
I’ll spend some time among the grazing herd and absorb their calm and peaceful energy. This option is the most rewarding for me …as long as I can avoid noticing the overgrowth of weeds we were hoping to control.
I’m hoping to squeeze in time to mow the back pasture with the brush cutter behind the diesel tractor, since it is not being grazed enough to keep things in check. Left to neglect, these fields are incredible weed factories.
Grazing has been curtailed this summer after Cayenne showed up lame while I was on my bike trip and the vet exclaimed the herd needed to lose weight immediately.
All this grass and they shouldn’t eat it now.
All this growth.
On the bright side, we are definitely not enduring a drought!
I have to go mow.
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Popcorn Showers
Cyndie described her day at the ranch yesterday as a series of 5 or 10 minute downpours separated by periods of bright sunshine. The weather was notably unstable from dawn to dusk. I drove into an incredibly dramatic cloud formation on the way to work at dawn, stopping for gas just as the first cool gusts of the front swept in.
With the sun barely clearing the horizon behind me, the way it shone on the high roiling clouds was both eery and inspiring. A rainbow appeared straight ahead, looking more like a vertical stripe than a bow, and no, I didn’t get a picture of it. I was driving!
I checked the weather radar when I got to work and saw that there wasn’t much substance to the blob of precipitation. At the time, it looked like that would be it. Later in the day, when someone at work mentioned it was suddenly raining outside, I pulled up the radar image again. Our region was dotted with a countless number of popcorn showers. Evidence that supported the first-hand account I received from Cyndie when I got home.
During my return commute, I briefly considered the possibility of getting on the mower before dinner, to get ahead of the dramatic grass growth happening now. Two days after cutting it, the place begins to look like it has fallen to neglect. Luckily, my tired eyes pulled rank and kept me from doing anything productive. It saved me getting soaked by a surprisingly intense cloudburst about a half hour later.
Right on schedule, the clouds moved past and the bright sunshine returned. It made the roof shingles look like they were on fire. Smoky swirls of steam rolled down over the eave.
I can’t think of a better formula to make the grass grow even faster than it already was.
Maybe I should be looking into getting a bigger engine for our lawn tractor.
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Yard Hay
I mowed the back yard yesterday afternoon and ended up with windrows that look like I should be borrowing George’s baler to pick it all up. I feel like I have mowed when it has needed it worse, but not ended up with so much in the way of cuttings as I did this time.
That must be a good sign that the lawn is thick and healthy. I hope the same holds true for our hay-field out front in a few weeks!
The weather hasn’t been so kind to a lot of other growing plants. Over the weekend we had two nights of below freezing temperatures. Cyndie was proactive about protecting her newly planted wild flower garden both nights, covering them with blankets. She also brought all potted plants into the garage.
Unfortunately, we have too many growing things to protect them all. Several trees with new leaves look to have suffered to the point of drooping wilted leaves.
In the autumn, by the time we get freezing temperatures, the leaves are on their way to the ground, if not already there.
It’s not obvious yet if anything was damaged beyond recovery, but we will be watching the labyrinth with hope that plants there didn’t experience the couple of freezes as fatal. Cyndie’s initial survey brought hope that some may not have suffered at all.
That offers promise to which we intend to cling.
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Springing Along
The season of spring is springing along nicely at Wintervale. The leaves have started making an appearance on a variety of shrubs and saplings. The raspberry bushes in particular have shown dramatic development in the last few days. It is hard to tell whether the recent rains triggered this, or it was just coincidental timing, and would have happened at this time, anyway.
It amazes me how quickly the initial sprouts of foliage obscure the view into our woods. Very soon, there will be so many green leaves, we won’t be able to see more than the outer surfaces.
I’m wishing I could remember this moment long-term in order to hold it as a reference for comparison with the other extremes of the stark bare branches of winter and the view-obscuring green leaves of summer. Every season seems to last just long enough that I mentally fall into a trap of perceiving views as if a present state is the only way it could ever be.
When the forest is fully leafed out, I find it hard to comprehend that just months earlier, it was the complete opposite.
Though most areas of our yard have yet to be mowed, I already needed to cut one section a second time.
I sense that summer is just a short blink away from replacing spring, and the expanding leaves on trees and bushes will be leading the charge in the days ahead.
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Anxiously Waiting
We knocked off a good number of satisfying chores yesterday, taking full advantage of perfectly summer-like weather. In fact, it was so summery, I found myself mowing grass. We also put fence posts in to split our back pasture, so we will be able to rotate the horses back and forth, allowing us to provide the turf occasional rest from the voracious foursome.
The herd spent most of the day lined up at the gate, anxiously awaiting access to the new green smorgasbord that is sprouting beyond the confines of their paddock. Cyndie captured a wonderful shot of them eyeing her as she walked past, sending their message of bewilderment over being neglected all this time.
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They won’t have too much longer to wait. We have shut them in for a few weeks to give the grass a head start, protecting it from both their heavy hooves while it’s wet, and their devouring ways.
While I was getting machines prepared for the day’s work, Cyndie drove the truck down to one of the older rock piles at the edge of our woods and selected perfect specimens to create a border for a new native wild flower garden that she is creating in the spot where we recently removed all the old barbed wire, stump, and brush.
Visitors will be greeted by a colorful splendor as it comes into view over the crest of the first rise in our driveway.
Cyndie has some of her own anxious waiting to do, for her vision of new growing flowers to become established and in full bloom on this wonderful spot she is creating.
It seemed like more additional work than I saw a need for, but once again, her ability to make things happen is bringing about another enhancement to Wintervale that will add even more charm to an already precious place.
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Growing Green
We don’t even recognize this brave creature that has sprouted from the earth at an alarming rate of growth in the last week. I am amazed that it is doing so despite our frequent harsh returns to winter. This beauty is exploding forth with a surprising rate of growth whenever it sees more than a few minutes of warm sunshine.
Cyndie says she has a little sign downstairs in a bag that would tell us what it is, but she doesn’t remember off-hand.
When the weather isn’t snowing and freezing, which it has done overnight more times than not lately, the green growing things have been reaching for the sky. The ground is so saturated with water that I shudder at the thought of trying to drive my lawn tractor over the grass, but it is quickly threatening to get long enough to deserve mowing.
Reminds me of the annual dilemma we face with our hay-field. We would like to cut it before it gets so overgrown that the stems get too woody, but when that maturity is developing, the ground is usually still too wet to drive on.
Also, when the tall hay growth gets cut and is laying on the ground for a couple of days to dry, it doesn’t work so well to have the ground be still saturated.
Here is a worm’s-eye view of the back yard that will need cutting soon at the rate it is growing. I wonder what it is like to try mowing a lawn that still has snow on it…
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An Addendum
Last Sunday was a beautiful warm sunny day, during which we were out and about, tending to a variety of chores. It was also the day when we received the second of our two visiting stray dogs of the weekend.
The dog was clearly interested in everything I did, spending most of the time that he was here, in close proximity to wherever I was working. My last project, prior to heading in to watch the end of the Vikings NFL game, involved the Grizzly ATV in front of the shop garage.
I remounted the plate which supports the back of the snowplow frame beneath the under carriage. I also spent time bolting the blade and associated parts to the plow frame, which had been removed for welding over the summer.
I had the first half of the football game on the radio, and both Delilah —on a leash— and the wayward visitor, milled close by as I puttered.
As Cyndie passed by after feeding the horses, she picked up Delilah and headed into the house, leaving me to finish while the stray longingly eyed me for attention. When I was finally ready to close up, I spotted the dog laying in leaves nearby. I closed the big garage door and then turned out lights and shut the shop door.
I recall purposely deciding to not head directly toward the house, thinking the stray dog would follow me to the door and make me feel bad about going inside without him. I chose instead, to head toward the barn first, and circled around toward the labyrinth, so I could get one last look at the new mowing I had done earlier in the day, widening the path along the back pasture fence line.
In doing so, I saw no sign of the black dog. Since I had wanted to lose him in the first place, I was okay with that, and climbed the hill up to the house, alone.
On Monday morning, I left for work in the early darkness and hoped to hear from Cyndie if the dog was still hanging around when she and Delilah got up. No news came. With no dog around, she had no reason to call the veterinarian to find out who owned it. We thought that was the end of it…
Until yesterday.
Just after lunch, I got a call from Cyndie with a big surprise. When she stepped out of the barn in the middle of the day after cleaning out the stalls, she heard a wailing sound and followed it up to the shop garage. She discovered that the stray had somehow made his way inside when I closed up on Sunday.
He had been locked in there for almost 2 days! I hadn’t made a visit to the shop on Monday after I got home from work and he didn’t make a sound any of the multiple times Cyndie and Delilah walked past, until she finally heard him yesterday afternoon.
It breaks my heart to know the poor guy was stuck in there that whole time. Cyndie gave him water and some food and he headed off on his own right away. Cyndie followed up with the vet and contacted the owner, who reported the dog had made his way home, but she was rather surprised he wasn’t soaking wet from all the rain that had fallen.
I’ll take consolation in that. At least he was warm and dry during his unintended 2-day imprisonment.
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Quick Work
When you only have a limited amount of daylight in which to get your work done, you find a way to work quickly.
After seeing how nice the front yard looked after I mowed it to a close cut on Sunday, I desperately wanted to have the same result in the back. With the beautiful weather blessing us for another day, I made a point of rushing home from work and changing into grubby clothes.
There wasn’t much that needed to be done in preparation, so in no time I was on the back hill mowing all the leaves that had fallen. I made one pass around the perimeter and stopped to take a picture, hoping to get a “before” and “after” combination.
That image was lit with sunshine that would last barely another hour. Unsure whether I would have enough light to get an “after” shot, I picked the angle for this view and got down to business.
Since I was cutting very short, areas where the moles have wreaked havoc became much more glaring than when I leave it longer, but taken as a whole, the turf landscape looked rather noble by the time I was through.
Before snapping the second shot, I snuck a peek at the first image, because I’d already forgotten where I had stood to take it. For as little effort as I put toward aligning them precisely, I am tickled to have ended up with a shot that almost perfectly matched the earlier view.
The only thing missing was the sunshine, which was below the horizon by that point.
The hill is ready for becoming a sled run, in the off-chance we end up getting enough snow for that this winter, what with the “Godzilla-of-all-El-Niños” forecast to be moderating our temperatures in the months ahead.
If our current spell of good weather fortune is any indicator, we could be in for a short ski and igloo season this year.
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Accomplishment Burst
After a few days of not doing anything productive, it didn’t take much yesterday to make me feel like I’d salvaged the weekend by accomplishing something beyond just feeling better. It helped that the weather was especially nice, despite starting out rather brisk in the early morning.
By the time I made it out of the house, the chill had been replaced by an increasingly comfortable November breeze. My first goal was to get the truck battery charging. For some reason we have yet to discern, every other time Cyndie uses it, there’s not enough battery to turn it over when we next try.
Logic would indicate she is leaving something on, or maybe not closing a door tight. I don’t know. We have yet to find any clear evidence of what it is, and the fact that it doesn’t happen every time complicates the mystery.
While the truck charged, I headed down to the round pen to help Cyndie rake out and distribute the sand that was added. We got the project down to a manageable-sized remaining pile after spreading an even new depth throughout the whole circle.
On my way in for lunch, I paused at the garage to get the truck started and let it idle while winding up cords and putting away the charger. Then I checked and re-checked to make sure nothing was left on to put any drain on the battery. It better start when we test it again. Cyndie wasn’t anywhere near it when I did all this. 🙂
After lunch, I enlisted Cyndie’s help to tackle a chore I have neglected for over a year. This one means the most to me to have finally resolved.
Almost 2-years ago I had a little accident when trying to get the diesel tractor out of the shop garage to plow snow at a time when a storm had knocked out our power. The garage door did not stay up all the way and the roof of the tractor caught the weather-strip of the door and ripped it down. I saved the moderately bent up aluminum and rubber strip, but had no idea how it could go back on.
I neglected it for the entirety of last winter, studiously shoveling out all the snow that repeatedly blew under the door, instead of looking closer at the weather strip. Honestly, I had pretty much given up caring about the conspicuously absent finishing strip on the bottom of the huge door.
When I was building the last hay box in the barn stalls, I needed a board from my stash up in the rafters of the garage, and that meant I had to move the old weather strip out of the way. I decided to just take it down and lay it in front of the door, to make it easier to reattach than struggle to put back up on the rafters again.
The strategy worked! It took a little creative problem solving, but Cyndie and I figured out how to get the rubber to slide off the aluminum, so we could access the screws. With a few minor steps to add some screws in new locations, we got it reattached and were able to get the rubber back in place. We successfully recycled a part that would have otherwise been tossed.
No snow inside the garage this year!
With that success bolstering my confidence, I hopped on the lawn tractor and mowed the front yard. It struck me that I had been working in a short-sleeved T-shirt all day, and was mowing my lawn like a summer day, on the 8th of November. I’ve dealt with worse working conditions.
After that, I got the horses fed and cleaned up manure, before calling it a day and heading inside.
I think actions speak louder than words to reveal evidence that I am, indeed, feeling much better after several days of rest and Cyndie’s exceptional care.
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Beautiful Days
There is something rather heartbreaking about receiving the gift of summer-like warmth on a November day, and then not feeling well enough to take advantage of it. My body is wrestling with some common cold symptoms, sapping me of most of my energy to do anything physically productive after work.
Within an hour of arriving home, the daylight is fading fast, leaving a rather small window of time to tend to outdoor projects.
With my body feeling achy and my eyes stinging, I was more interested in curling up on the couch, than going outside to take advantage of the beautiful day. I did, however, step out to capture an image of sun’s last moments on our horizon.
I could hear the buzzing hum of our neighbor’s mower, which poked at my already sensitive moping over wishing I had the gumption to be out doing similar such chores around our house.
Looks like I should have one last chance this afternoon, and then our temperatures plunge back to the realities of November. At least chilly weather won’t make me feel as bad about convalescing under a blanket in the living room.
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Relative Something 