Posts Tagged ‘pathways’
Wet Start
Another day when we found ourselves feeding horses in a morning thundershower and finished the day under oppressively hot sunshine and high humidity. The rain allowed me a reasonable excuse to stay indoors and watch England’s victory in the World Cup. Harry Kane, how do you do it?!
In the afternoon, since the grass was too wet to mow, I put in more time trimming back the tall growth encroaching on our grass trails.
There are places where the tall grass has grown over my head height. When it gets wet and leans into the pathway, walking through it can leave a person soaked. I speak from experience.
After trimming the tall grasses, I reached the curve through the trees near the end of the north loop trail. Those branches reaching for sunlight can infringe on trail space even more than the grasses. The hedge trimmer allows me to create an even-walled border along the pathway.
I suspect that part of the trail could eventually become a tunnel if the tree branches overhead fill out enough on both sides. It’s so different from the winter when there are no leaves on the trees, and you can see right through.
My new favorite work gloves have held up well against the abuse I’ve been putting them through. The last few days, they have stayed wet due to the high humidity. There is something about them that is bugging me, though. I think they sewed on a finger in place of the thumb on the left glove.
It’s a nuisance, but since it’s on the left hand and I am right-hand dominant, it only occasionally affects what I’m trying to accomplish. Still, it irritates that OCD part of my nature. Ever since I first noticed it, I haven’t been able to unnotice it, and it nags at me repeatedly.
We ended the day watching the USA match against Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The day started wet, but finished with a win! On to the round of 16. I’m not sure I can handle going much further in the tourney.
I’m sure glad these aren’t best-of-7 series playoffs.
Things will pick up this weekend when the Tour de France 21-stage bicycle race starts. The weeks ahead are going to be filled with more televised spectator sports than I can sit through daily. I’m sure happy to be free from trying to balance employment responsibilities with sports watching.
Catching competitions live is the best, and watching the stages in France means prime morning hours here.
Maybe we can get even more morning showers while the bike race is happening.
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Never Enough
There are a lot of ways that Cyndie and I are wonderfully compatible, and near the top of the list should be our shared appreciation/fascination with rocks. We both agree that you can never have enough rocks. Toward that end, yesterday Cyndie went into our woods where our newly cut trails had uncovered old piles of fieldstone and hauled a bunch out for use in the labyrinth.
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Our farmer neighbors think we are weird to hold their old rock piles in such high regard.
Cyndie shared a sweet story from her day. When she dumped one load of stones it made a loud clatter that caught the attention of our closest neighbor who was out trimming branches near his deer stand. He called out to her to ask if she was okay. I’m sure from his location it could have sounded like quite a crash.
It’s very comforting to know neighbors watch out for each other here.
These perfect specimens will get placed around the labyrinth pathways to build up the existing borders and allow removal of more of the artificial rocks we used when first establishing the circuitous route. We had pallets of manufactured stone left over from the decorative veneer plastered around the block foundation below the log walls of our house. At the time, it seemed like a good use of the material, but they don’t hold up well against the elements when laying flat on the ground. Some have broken apart from the moisture and many others are simply getting swallowed by the earth around them.
It was interesting for me to work on the different labyrinth design up at the lake over the weekend because that one has very wide borders that are three times the width of the narrow path.
Our labyrinth at home has wide paths with just a single line of stones as dividers.
After working with both, I now wish we could make our rock dividers wider at home, but doing so would narrow the path more than we want. Maybe by placing larger rocks strategically we can beef up the pathway borders enough to provide more of the visual impression I desire without compromising the walking space too much.
There never seems to be enough time to work on the enhancements we both dream of and there are never enough reasons to stop tweaking the design once and for all.
Our labyrinths will always be growing and changing with time.
And they will never have enough rocks, no matter what.
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Relative Something 