Posts Tagged ‘muddy season’
CSI Wintervale
The only crime to report lately is mud shrapnel showing up inside the house. This spring, it hasn’t happened as often as it used to. The primary traffic in and out of our house has been limited to just Cyndie and me. That is about to change with the plan to adopt Ash, a rescued Shepherd Mix. More mud in the house will be a small price to pay.
Cyndie recently showed me her solution for leaving her boots on while retrieving something from inside the house for a project we were working on outside.
Looked like crime scene booties to me. The tedious hassle of getting in and out of boots for a quick indoor trip finally drove her to bag the boots and forge ahead. Works in a pinch but I don’t think it will be the solution for having a dog living with us again.
Time to get the kiddy pool set up by the front door.
Yesterday, we brought Delilah’s crate in from the garage and set it up beneath the spiral staircase, trying two different orientations before settling on the way we had it before. We have been wracking our brains to remember how and why we chose to do things the way we did ten years ago when we brought Delilah home for the first time. We share a common yearning to catch things we might have done, or conversely, failed to do, toward establishing rules and a firm command of desired behaviors in our pet.
What would we like to do differently from the way we attempted to train Delilah to become her best self? We think there is room for improvement.
Our appointment to pick up Ash is set for tomorrow morning. Cyndie has registered for a class of obedience training for him that will start in a couple of weeks.
It would be a crime if we miss the earliest opportunity to train Ash to achieve the best-behaved potential his mixed breed is capable of after the rough start he may have experienced before rescue. The only obvious issue when he first arrived at his current foster home was food aggression related. Since we don’t have any other house pets right now, that won’t be a big struggle for us at the start.
One of my favorite behaviors Delilah mastered was her patient and reliably obedient adherence to waiting in a designated “Place” until a release command allowed her to approach her bowl of food. I fumble around with a desire to have a dog that behaves with a military level of discipline without us being good at establishing a military level of training.
Despite ever reaching the ultimate level of control we both would have appreciated having with Delilah, Cyndie and I achieved enough success teaching her that we are hopeful for that much and more with Ash. We look forward to discovering what differences his personality will bring to the process.
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Mud Returns
Pick your adage: Be careful what you wish for. What could possibly go wrong? You never know how things will turn out. How much worse can it get?
It’s March. We are ready to be done plowing and shoveling snow. We are looking forward to seeing the ground again. We want the snow to melt. However, the ground doesn’t suddenly thaw out all at once. Just like it freezes from the top layer on down, it melts in the very same way.
Well, the top layer has thawed just beyond the overhang and it is now a muddy, mucky mess. The water can’t soak into the ground because the next layer down is still frozen solid. Water is just standing in hoof-sized pools.
My perpetual quest to clean up manure beneath and around the overhang promptly becomes an unwinnable battle when fresh droppings land in the pockmarked slurry of muck the horses keep walking in. It is a Sisyphean task that I nonetheless continue to wage despite the mess and my limited success.
Meanwhile, the space beneath the roof suddenly becomes an even more luxurious oasis than it usually is.
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The long day of drizzling rain was beginning to become sleet blown sideways by gusty winds when I went down to feed the horses at dinnertime. Beneath the overhang, it was calm and dry. Once again, I found myself praising the location and orientation of this barn.
The mud might be around for a long time to come in the days and weeks ahead but we are already starting to get antsy for conditions to allow me to get back to landscaping projects and Cyndie to try walking the uneven terrain down to the labyrinth. We have hopes of being able to promote World Labyrinth Day on May 6 this year if the ground dries up enough for hosting larger gatherings by then.
I’d like to offer a shout-out to friends, Patty and Steve who plan to visit us in April to experience Wintervale in person for the first time. Here’s to the gift of unexpected connections/reconnections that seem divinely inspired. Thanks for reaching out to us, Patty!
We are three days from the vernal equinox. I’m sensing spring is preparing to be sprung. Is that too much to wish for?
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Long Haul
One-hundred years ago today the woman who became my mother was born. Elizabeth Jean Elliott grew up during the Great Depression and as an adult served in the US Naval Reserve WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) during World War II. She raised six kids. She knew about the long haul.
I wonder what she would think today about the way people are responding to the current coronavirus pandemic.
It’s hard to grasp where we are on the curve of the immanently approaching viral outbreak, both in terms of the risk to lives and the fragility of people’s financial well-being.
There have been comparisons to both the Depression and WWII. While some talking heads are trying to convince the citizens that we’ll get over this in a matter of weeks, health experts are struggling to prepare people’s mindset for disruptions that could last months.
Obviously, in the attempt to avoid the sharp exponential rise in cases that would overwhelm our healthcare resources, officials are trying to accomplish restrictions that will flatten that curve to a level the hospital workers and facilities can support. If that wise goal is achieved, the flatter curve becomes a wider curve, meaning a longer duration.
This past week has been a mind-numbing jumble of stressful routine disruptions that felt like it lasted twice that duration. If one week of having our lives drastically upended was this exhausting, how are we going to deal with months more like it?
Mom would know.
I’m pretty sure she was one to practice the philosophy of taking things one day at a time. She had a way of presenting a mental preparedness for the worst possible outcome while maintaining a hope that it might end up being better than that.
It’s a philosophy I am trying to apply to the oncoming mud season. Our snow is gone except for a couple small remnants of piles that were created when I plowed the driveway. Actually, I’ll miss those when they’ve completely disappeared because they happen to be a great place to clean the mud from my boots before going back into the house.
Our front entry is a cruddy disaster between dirty boots and muddy paws umpteen times a day. (I’m pretty sure I picked up “umpteen” from Mom.)
The trails in the woods are teetering on being unusable where the mud is so ferocious it threatens to keep a boot that steps into it. Yesterday afternoon and evening we received enough rain to take things to level-two messy.
I fear the month of April is going to be a long haul in more ways than one.
Stay home and space out.
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Relative Something 