Posts Tagged ‘October’
Seeking Normalcy
No masked soldier-looking thugs showed up to violently “detain” me over the weekend, despite my unwavering stance that their motives and methods are completely un-American and patently illegal. I’m stressed with concern over the odds of unjustified force escalating in the cities currently being targeted, either fabricated to create an appearance to their liking or as a result of threatened citizens lashing out due to fear and anger in a way that triggers an even harsher response from the goons.
It all seems like such a premeditated provocation with no valid justification, were our laws being respected in this country. There is no reasonable logical excuse that explains the actions of these military attacks on citizens. It is just plain wrong, but what is more frustrating is the fact that it openly continues to happen without accountability.
Maybe if I had just agreed to pledge my $5 a month to the non-profit political organizations that oppose the philosophy and behaviors of the current administration, this would have all been stopped before it started.
Cyndie and I are making plans to participate in the October 18 protests to stand among like-minded conscientious objectors and vent some of the frustration building up with each passing day. The absence of functional checks and balances being enforced to interrupt the sullying of our democracy is truly heartbreaking.
We are looking into the possibility of protesting in Hayward, WI, on that Saturday, as we are hoping to embark on a mid-October weekend visit to the lake place. It’s been a while since we gave Asher a chance to join us there, so we are planning to include him, too.
The possibility of rain yesterday came true for us, and as expected, it ushered in more seasonably cool temperatures. Maybe in two weeks, it will feel like October up north.
Today, we are breathing a sigh of relief and putting on long sleeves to enjoy a little normalcy for the occasion.
.
.
Middle October
You wouldn’t know by looking, but November is just a couple of weeks away. Terror movies, scary costumes, and campaign lawn signs will only intensify between now and then, but soon, it will all be behind us.
For much of my life, I have practiced the fine art of ignoring most of the crafty ways marketing whizzes attempt to grab my attention. When it comes to several house-sized monstrosities erected in and around River Falls with the name of a felonious candidate, I feel a significant dose of smugness in successfully averting my gaze to avoid looking at them every time I drive past.
Conversely, I take great pleasure in rereading the tiny little sign in one farmyard near our home that says simply, “HATE WILL NOT MAKE US GREAT.”
I see what I want to see.
I’m afraid that by the time November arrives, we won’t have any trees with leaves left in them. They are falling fast and furious now, even though some leaves are still pretty green.
I’m a little sad about how many of the leaves have just turned cardboard-brown before dropping to the ground.
One thing about the warm weather that we have enjoyed lately is having our bedroom window open to hear the hoots of our resident owls reverberating through the forest.
We’ve also noticed some instances where wailing sirens from emergency vehicles in the distance have triggered packs of coyotes to respond in kind.
I think the dwindling foliage is leading to sounds carrying further.
It sounds like fall. I think I can even hear the frost forming on the pumpkins.
.
.
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…
.
.
Twins Win
Looks like I’m going to need to split my attention between two spectator sports this October. On Tuesday, the MLB Minnesota Twins snapped a record 18-game playoff losing streak with a win over the Toronto Blue Jays. Yesterday, the Twins sealed the deal with a second victory to sweep the series and earn a spot in the American League Division Series.
My attention this weekend will be bouncing between baseball and football. The UofMN Gophers will be up against the powerful second-ranked UofMI Wolverines on a national TV broadcast and the MN Vikings will face last year’s Superbowl champs, the Kansas City Chiefs.
It does not escape my Minnesota-sports-fan sensibilities that all these high-profile events could end badly for us, making a potentially exciting weekend an opportunity for multiplied crushed hopes in the end.
One form of preserving a healthy attitude that I employ is to hope for nice surprises but prepare for the more likely outcome of each team getting embarrassed. It’s a perspective developed over a lifetime of experience as a Minnesota sports fan.
There is a lot of potential for good or bad outcomes this weekend. I’m looking forward to suffering through all of it. I may even take up the fine art of nail-biting.
Go, teams, Go!
.
.
Glorious Days
We have been blessed with three incredible sunrises as well as glorious October weather days at the lake this weekend.
The crisp morning air was colder than the lake water and produced mesmerizing steamy accents to the brilliant colors of the sunrise.
Most of the boats and docks have been pulled out of the water, but this poor orphaned catamaran was still awaiting attention.
It made for an appealing subject for a photo.
We didn’t spend much time near the water because there was so much fun to be had creating the new labyrinth path in the woods.
I was able to successfully route the path around the trees to form a shorter rendition than the 11-circuit Chartres pattern we made at home. Cyndie worked tirelessly to dig up rocks and move them to the edges.
There remains a fair amount of time needed to position more rocks and branches to better define the pathway in a manner that will endure through the seasons. Next spring, I envision a need to selectively remove ferns and trillium that cover the ground here in order to preserve the visibility of the path.
Since we usually are trying to transplant trillium from up here to back home in Beldenville, this has the potential of providing plenty of plants for the task.
Before we get to that point, this labyrinth will need to survive the winter, so I guess we’ll just have to make sure to get up here for the glorious days of the snow season and walk the path frequently enough to maintain the definition.
A labor of love.
.
.
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.
.
.
Peaceful Coexistence
It is possible that the early arrival of snow cover this October is playing a role in the normalization process of our two groups of chickens. For the most part, they are getting along… separately, together, if that makes any sense. They settle down okay in the coop at night, randomly mixing positions on the two roosts, but during the day, there is no mistaking the obvious distinction of three versus twelve.
Cyndie has cleared a clean path from the coop to the barn and the group of young ones follow on her heels as she heads to fill enough pans of feed to foil the older three who try to lord over that resource.
The hens are coping with the reality of needing to share the coveted space under the overhang of the barn.
The young ones don’t show any need to challenge the hens. Just the opposite. They are quick to retreat at the first approach from any of their elders, but probably just as quick to return in exploration of their ever-expanding horizons.
We are satisfied with the present state of peaceful coexistence and thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to watch things develop before our eyes.
.
.
Perfect Balance
If we have to endure so much snow in October, at least we benefited yesterday from a temperature that was the perfect balance for gorgeous falling snow without the need to plow or shovel. The ground isn’t frozen yet and the rate of falling flakes was not high enough to overwhelm the residual warmth in the asphalt of our driveway.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It was snowing from the moment we woke up until very late in the afternoon but I didn’t need to lift a shovel.
I’m soaking up the pleasure of that to the fullest, knowing the feature won’t last.
This morning the temperature was down to 22°(F), well below freezing. The average for October is a high of 58 and low of 40. Of course, this is the year 2020, so, the word “average” doesn’t apply in the least.
These conditions are more in line with our December weather averages than October. We’re only about a month and a half out of whack.
Sing along with me… “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…”
.
.
Heavy Record
Not that I’m going to write about the weather or anything… I used to like snow. Yesterday we received a record 7+ inches of heavy, wet and sticky, white stuff. It wasn’t all that likeable for the adventures I faced. Honestly, I shouldn’t complain about my commute home from work, as it was only about a half-hour longer than normal. I didn’t witness any spinouts, cars in ditches, or jackknifed semis (of which the State Highway Patrol reported there were 17). Just slow-moving vehicles along my route.
I left work early to give myself time to arrive at my health clinic for an appointment to get my flu shot. The curvy entrance to the place was a mess of unplowed slushy snow and my four tires had no grip as I rounded a bend and slid sideways into the oncoming lane. Luckily, nobody was coming from the other direction.
The snow was so deep on our driveway, I decided I should plow. This was one heck of a first accumulation, coming in October, barely three days after I mowed the grass around the house and swept up leaves.
The chickens are freaking out over this weather and the young ones seem to have no clue how to deal with it. They got all wet and shivery but wouldn’t be coaxed inside the shelter of their coop. Cyndie ended up chasing every last one of them to force them in by her hands.
We forgot the solution from last year of stuffing plastic along the outer edge of the space between the roof panels and the hardware cloth that is the ceiling of the coop. It keeps out blowing snow. Cyndie reported a lot of white coating the inside.
I hope we aren’t going to run out of names for the winter storms this year like the weather service did for the hurricane season. Starting this early in the season does not bode well.
If they didn’t assign them alphabetically, I think they should name yesterday’s storm, “Yuck.”
Spoken like the old fogey I seem to be turning into as the years go by.
.
.
Golden Leaves
Once again I find myself mind-boggled by the space-time continuum, as I perceive it, currently placing us in the middle of October when September seems like it didn’t even exist. For that matter, what the heck happened to August? It was here just a minute ago.
The 2019 autumn weather has not spawned a particularly noteworthy color display in the tree-lined vistas of my commute, but some of the trees on our land are sporting a fair amount of golden hues.
Looking out our kitchen window over the sink, this view caught my eye yesterday:
The magical enhancement of direct sunlight kicks up the attention-getting aspect of fall colors to 11. I stopped what I was doing (preparing Delilah’s and Pequenita’s dinners, much to Delilah’s dismay) to step outside with my camera to try for a capture of the spectacle before the light changed.
Honestly, the camera didn’t do it justice compared to the glory of naked-eye viewing, but it is still rewarding to see the dramatic difference from the wealth of deep greens the foliage in that scene usually provides during the summer.
I played with some post-processing for two additional views.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Fall colors are so much fun. The best is when there are as many reds and oranges bursting at the same time as the golden yellows, but that mix is lacking this year.
Somehow, I would like to exercise a deepest possible comprehension that it is October 15th today, whatever that is. I blame my date disorientation on needing to plan months ahead all day long at the day-job. The fact that I am currently scheduling work in November seems like it should make time go slower for me when I notice we are still only in October, but for some odd reason the result is just the opposite.
Living in the moment is a luxury that I usually struggle to fully accomplish.
Giving our golden leaves my rapt attention is one way I can strive to absorb a fuller recognition of what day it is today.
It would help if the low spots around here weren’t still wet as a spring day. I must admit, my muddy wet boots are another reason my brain struggles to reconcile we are in the middle of the tenth month of the year.
.
.
Relative Something 