Posts Tagged ‘muddy tracks’
Muddy Mowing
A couple of sunny days hasn’t been enough to dry our grass for mowing without leaving muddy tracks. The areas of saturation didn’t come as a complete surprise yesterday, because there is still standing water on our trails in the woods. I just didn’t expect so many wet spots in places where it isn’t normally wet.
The outlet of the culvert was no surprise, but it was wet well above there, too.
The area along the small paddock fence is usually a puddle after the snow melts, but not in June.
The alleyway behind the barn is as wet as ever, to the point of being practically undriveable.
As much as possible, I know to avoid these areas when I’m on the riding mower. Even though I was trying to be careful along one of the ditches beside the driveway, I got sucked into some standing water that almost swallowed one of the back tires. I’m not sure how I got out of that mess but soon after I switched to using the push mower wherever water was visible.
Almost as challenging, the compost area was a slippery, sloppy mess. During the week I was away, I had Cyndie dump manure into one particular spot. Because of all the rain, the horses haven’t spent much time away from the overhang area near the barn so there ended up being a LOT of manure to clean up there. Yesterday, I spent some time stirring up and shaping compost piles that were soaking wet. I discovered that active composting is the exception, not the rule in these conditions for most of the piles.
We had a little excitement in the morning when we found Mia covered with welts that appeared to be some kind of allergic reaction, maybe to something she ate in the fields or possibly a bug bite or bee sting? It looked rather extreme but she wasn’t behaving in a way that indicated she was being bothered by it. We notified our handler from This Old Horse, who brought over some pills for Mia.
Toward the end of the day, Mia looked better. We now have her wearing a protective fly sheet, too. It was white when we put it on her. I can’t imagine it will stay white for very long with all the mud and standing water across our landscape.
The weather conditions are a problem for normal operation around here but, hey, we aren’t dealing with the threat of a failing dam or 4 feet of water in our home.
If muddy tracks from mowing are the worst outcome we suffer, I’d say we have it better than a lot of other folks in the region.
Quit your bellyaching, John.
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Growth Control
Between the days when it has been raining lately, the mowing hasn’t been simple. The saturated ground makes navigating the heavy riding mower on the many slopes around our property a rather inelegant science. The hardest part is not knowing I’ve driven myself into trouble until I’m already in it.
A glance behind me reveals muddy tracks and then forward momentum slows as the tires start to spin. Even though there are areas where I know there is standing water to be avoided, it’s not always obvious how much of a buffer around them I need to maintain.
The bottom line becomes getting the tall grass knocked down as a priority and accepting there will be a few sacrifices made to the turf in the process. The final result is a much less satisfying mowing experience than the days later in summer when the ground isn’t so wet.
Yesterday, I decided to use the string trimmer to clean up some areas where the tractor didn’t dare go. Then I trimmed around culverts, under fence lines, around downspouts, and along walls. Having those areas cleaned up provided a visual reward that compensated for the ugly skid marks and muddy tire tracks that resulted from needing to control the growth happening at its fastest while the ground was still extremely wet.
I’m coming to terms with the reality that early-season mowing often won’t look pretty around here but the fast-growing grass will be knocked down often enough that it never gets completely out of control.
Heck, even the horses can’t keep up with grazing their pastures this time of year.
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Peace Meditations
’Twas the first Saturday in May
And all through the labyrinth
Plenty of creatures were stirring
Especially the burrowing pests
Today is World Labyrinth Day. Despite the first Saturday of May always arriving too soon for our beautiful growing perennials in the labyrinth garden and the trees surrounding it to have fully blossomed, we still try to tidy it up as much as possible for the annual peace walk at one o’clock.
I had the electric riding mower out and about again yesterday in an attempt to knock down the outrageously tall and thick areas of overgrown grass in multiple places, despite several of them holding puddles of water and most of the soil being too saturated to support the tire traffic.
I had to swallow my pride a couple of times when the spinning wheels turned what had been nice grass turf into wide smears of muddy skid marks. I deemed it tolerable damage in this case, given the difficult situation we were in to get ready on the only day left when it wasn’t raining.
It’s too bad the prediction for this morning is at an 80% chance of more rain. Even if precipitation pauses around the middle of the day, we will likely be walking on the equivalence of wet sponges while meditating for peace on Earth.
The concept of creating a rolling wave of energy around the world by having people participate at 1:00 p.m. in each of their local time zones is an inspired one, in my opinion. I suggest that the practice needn’t be limited to people walking labyrinths. You can do this wherever you are.
At one o’clock [your time] this afternoon, pause for a time and rally your mental energies toward a focus on the possibilities of peace in every form imaginable. Heck, if you are reading this after the appointed hour, go ahead and do the mental exercise anyway. What have we got to lose?
Give Peace a chance.
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Messy Mistake
There is a reason I turn off the electric fence when I mow. Yesterday, I demonstrated precisely what that reason is. When we walked around the back pasture in the morning, the ground was so saturated it was obvious I wouldn’t be able to mow along the fence line there. With more rain expected in the morning, I figured I wouldn’t be cutting grass anywhere, despite it growing so fast lately it needs to be mowed every couple of days.
That rain never fell. By lunchtime, it was starting to get sunny out so I figured I better do some mowing. It was mesmerizing. The new battery-powered zero-turn was making great progress with plenty of juice to spare. I headed out around the back pasture without thinking. That was a mistake.
By the time I was reminded of the saturated ground, I couldn’t turn out of it. I wasn’t able to back up and got stuck against the wire fence. To extricate the mower I needed to get some boards and a jack from the shop. I lifted up the front so I could point the wheels away from the fence and set them down on top of the boards. That almost worked but the rear wheels were still stuck spinning in their own divots.
Another trip back to the shop for more boards to shove beneath the rear wheels got me away from the fence and free to spin my way along until I reached dryer ground. I came back later with a push mower and finished cutting that section by hand.
The biggest victory of the day was that I didn’t beat myself up over getting into the mess in the first place.
I am loving my new mower but I have a long way to go toward controlling it well enough to stay out of trouble and stop making skid marks when I turn around on slopes. If the ground would get a chance to dry out, that might help. So, maybe July?
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Just in case anyone was wondering, today is my sister, Mary’s birthday.
Happy Birthday, Marebare! 🙂
[It being her birthday has nothing to do with Messy or a Mistake. That was all on me.]
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Different Tracks
Our grass is growing fast and the ground is saturated from recent rains so I decided to use the power trimmer to mow areas with standing water to avoid creating muddy tire tracks. While focused on the grass in front of me, I was oblivious to what was happening behind me.
As I shuffled along at a slow pace, I was leaving muddy tracks behind me. Ha ha! Oh well.
I trimmed along the paddock fence from the outside and then stepped inside to clean up around the overhang. With no horses grazing the paddocks, the grass in there is growing pretty tall.
It feels very satisfying to transform the place from looking abandoned to freshly trimmed. It’s only partially abandoned.
This morning we are abandoning the property for a few hours to attend a socially distanced graduation ceremony for Cyndie’s niece, Althea, on her family’s driveway in Edina.
I appreciate the attempt to accomplish some traditions amid the upside-down turmoil of a global pandemic and civil unrest.
In the middle of my afternoon of mowing yesterday, I claimed a block of time to watch coverage of the launch of the manned Dragon capsule as it happened. In the evening, I watched the news broadcasts of police and national guard soldiers arresting violators of the curfew put in place to quell the looting and riots that have unfolded amid the protesters who are fed up with police abuse and unchecked murder of black citizens.
Remember when kneeling during the national anthem was the attempt to express protest over police misconduct?
While I am making different tracks in our wet areas, protesters are seeing a need to use different tactics to bring a change in the unacceptable status quo of equality being professed but not enacted.
We shall overcome, someday.
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Relative Something 