Posts Tagged ‘mushrooms’
Proud Again
At quarter to one, we put Asher in the car and drove up to our township voting location at the town hall. After Cyndie and I cast our ballots in Wisconsin’s primary election, I left Cyndie to fulfill her volunteer role as a poll worker. Asher and I had the place to ourselves for the rest of the day.
We didn’t choose to harvest the chicken of the woods mushrooms that sprouted while we were up at the lake.
There sure are a lot of ‘em. Cyndie was looking through the many ways to prepare them last night. I think we’re going to give it a go this time. We picked some last year when a friend first pointed them out to us, but never got around to eating them.
Asher and I walked the grass trails to assess the percentage of mowing that is needed. I find it extremely frustrating because there are places where the grass is completely dried out and dormant, but then a small section where it’s getting ridiculously tall.
I will need to drive over the dormant grass to reach the portion that needs cutting, but I try really hard to stay off the sunburned sections.
Well after dark, Asher and I drove back to the town hall to pick up our intrepid volunteer. She had a good day and gained new insights about fellow citizens of our township and about the details involved in supervising voting. There are so many layers of checks and balances that the validity of the outcomes can be confidently assured.
It was a rewarding exercise in civic participation. I’m excited that she has made new connections with more people from the township than we had in the previous 13 years we’ve lived here.
This is all because a couple of elections ago, we were surprised to find one of the poll workers in our township was someone we knew from our school days in Eden Prairie. We had no idea she lived close to us. We’ve connected many times since, and this eventually led to Cyndie choosing to pursue the steps to get certified to perform the duties of facilitating elections.
She thanks me for supporting her efforts, but that’s easy compared to the amount of time and study she has put into becoming an election inspector. She makes me proud. Again.
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Cyndie’s Views
Rarely a day passes when I don’t receive a photo in a text from Cyndie. Many times, it ends up being the only image available to complement the tales I post. Occasionally, it is the main point of my post. Today, the backlog of images she recently sent me are featured in this post.
Like, “A Man and His Wife’s Dog.”
Okay, he’s our dog. Until he runs away. Then he’s her dog. Or when he chews up something valuable like my glasses. Or plows into me from behind. Or… well, you get the picture.
Cyndie gets the pictures, too. Here are five more to give you a glimpse of Cyndie’s view of this October at Wintervale…
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October Realities
There is a feast underway over the decaying roots of the tree we recently removed from the small paddock.
If any of those mushrooms are edible, I don’t think they interest the horses. Our horses chew wood, but not so much the squishy fungi that feed on wood.
We are enjoying a summery October so far. I tried mowing the grass one last time yesterday. That’s the second time this fall I hoped I was cutting for the last time.
It’s a pain because I want to cut the grass short in preparation for the coming snow season but then it keeps growing and gets so long it is hard to cut short again. I took extra time to avoid excessive clippings laying around and also cut at an odd angle to offer the turf a break from the natural ruts forming where the tractor repeatedly rolled throughout most of the cutting season.
It looks pretty good today. Now if the growth would just go dormant, that’d be just great.
Just to push the universe in that direction, I drained the oil from the engine after I was done mowing. I’d love it if I could also drain the gas and park the machine until next spring.
I was hoping to be fastidious about the oil change and was very pleased to be able to drain it while the oil was hot. With pan in place, I attached the extending hose to the not-very-reliable plastic drain apparatus and pulled the piece open. A little oil leaked onto the frame and then the extending hose came loose and dropped into the pan of hot oil.
While rushing to try getting the hose reattached, the entire plastic piece pulled off and oil got all over the frame and ran along the edge to drip almost beyond the pan below. That had me racing to wipe oil while adjusting the pan while inadvertently getting the rag in the primary stream of draining oil.
Fastidious, it was not.
It didn’t really wreck my mood because that had already been smashed by having gotten the rubber clipping deflector on the end of the deck caught against a fence post on an incline and wrenching it out of position. If I would have simply stopped to get off and reposition the tractor, calamity could have been averted. But, no, I forged ahead and suffered the consequences of my bullheadedness.
Maybe all the bullheadedness of so many people refusing to accept reality is rubbing off on me.
I’m going to be able to clean up spilled oil, I’ll figure out a way to fix the clippings deflector, and I will strive to be open-minded about the possibility our grass will continue growing in October 2021.
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Relative Something 