Posts Tagged ‘perspective’
That Guy
I don’t think I’m that guy, but Cyndie says I might be. One of the reasons I have historically eschewed gas-powered equipment comes from the demands of maintaining the machines. If a device is electric, and all I need to do is turn it on to use it and back off when I’m done, that would suit me just fine. Maybe change the brushes if you keep it long enough, or take care of the batteries if it’s got ’em, but that’s about it.
It’s all the stinky gasoline, oil, air filters, fuel filters, and spark plugs of gas-powered engines that weighs on me. I don’t want to deal with them, so I wait. But how long can I get away with avoiding it without suffering performance problems? I prefer to have my machines functioning at their peak.
After putting our Craftsman lawn tractor through rather rough use, and suffering the consequences of a frustrating degradation in performance, I’ve adjusted my attitude about the machine.
Ironically, this ends up being less about the gas engine and more about the general use of the machine as a lawn mower. I really did use the thing with reckless abandon, mowing over rocks and sticks, heading down our rustic trails and over sharp drop offs, sometimes into wet areas where there was standing water.
The mower responded accordingly, bending and breaking when limits were exceeded.
I figured it was a piece of crap and that I should look into getting a heavy-duty commercial grade machine that could take such abuse. A mechanic at my favorite hardware store helped me to see it otherwise.
We already own a power trimmer. I should be using that appliance in all the afore-mentioned rough areas. My lawn mower is designed to cut lawn grass. If I use it as designed, it will do the job well.
In the past, when I finished driving the mower through all the abuse, I parked it and walked away, glad to be done with that nuisance of a chore. I was aware that grass would collect and build up under the mower deck, but it was hard to access, so I saved it for some other time.
I was tired, and the mowing was done. The last thing I wanted to do was mess with the job of clean up.
I wasn’t that guy.
Well, not entirely. Not yet, anyway.
Maybe I’m getting closer. Yesterday, Anneliese saw me cleaning the mower deck and asked if it had gotten plugged. That made total sense to my old way of thinking. You clean it when it stops working well.
Not any more.
No, it wasn’t plugged. Since the informative visit with the mechanic who gladly sells me products and services, I have changed my methods. I pull off the deck after each mowing, flip it over, and clean out the accumulated gunk, before the mower ever gets even close to plugging.
The same as the way that guy would do it.
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New Routine
After spending the 3-day weekend as guests at a place we’ve never been before, getting home to the familiarity of the daily chores associated with caring for our animals can be a comfort. This thought led me to consider how I perceive the old routine, especially from the fresh perspective of the fabulous weekend we just enjoyed with the Walker family.
Traveling anywhere involves living with a limited selection of your clothes and devices, and getting oriented to a bed and bathroom other than your own. Back home again, places and things return to a level where you don’t have to think. Every thing just “is.”
When I went out to turn the compost piles and fix a flat tire on the wheelbarrow, it had a feeling of our old routine. Even though I saw that as a good thing, it occurred to me that “old routine” or “returning to the old grind” of the work week after a holiday weekend is more often framed as a negative.
I turned that around in a blink of mental gymnastics, choosing instead to consider our activities as routine, but new. We have done these things before, but never on September 6th in 2016.
Every day is a new day, even if we are doing something similar to what we’ve already done before.
This week is a time when school starts for a lot of people. We put the vacations of summer behind us and roll into another year’s routine.
Enjoy the familiar, but frame it as a brand new version.
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Those Days
It’s been one of those days lately at the day job. Several of those days, actually. So, on my off-day of the week, I’m still grinding away on the work email to address issues. Issues that come in bunches. Bunches of issues that I prefer not occur.
But they do.
I looked out the bedroom window this morning and spotted a volunteer oak sapling that I staked up last year in hopes it would become well established and fill a void created by the loss of a pine. The new leaves are all wilted and sad.
It got me thinking that the same thing would likely have occurred to the new transplanted maple in the center of our labyrinth, had it actually sprouted new buds this spring.
So is it a good thing that it didn’t grow?
Maybe I’ll look at it that way. By not thriving after being transplanted, it avoided the fate of frozen new growth last weekend. Smart little tree.
It’s been one of those springs, thus far.
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Flower Blossoms
Our crab apple tree is fuzzy with flowers today, and the giant allium beneath it is making its way to spectacular. The changes at this time of year are noticeable almost by the hour. A little rain, followed by warm sunshine, and growth practically explodes in every direction.
At the same time, I am discovering that we have a few late-blooming trees, maples, I believe, that look dead next to others that have already leafed out completely. This is our third spring here, and I am becoming aware of more and more about our property that escaped my attention the first two years, due to my being overwhelmed by it all. Does that imply I am becoming dulled to some of the glories of this place? That would be sad.
No, I don’t think that is the case, although there are certain aspects of managing 20-acres that tend to take less mental space when you gain the experience of a couple years. Even though I’ve seen trees die every year, I’ve seen so many more sprout, some of them at a surprising rate of growth. I am less inclined to fret over individual incidents now that I have gained the perspective of a few cycles of the growing seasons.
Even the snapping branches during previous storms, which caused me significant trauma to witness at the time, has been revealed to me to be a common and often recoverable situation. I have come across trees in our woods that look to have been severely damaged years ago, but which have simply sprouted new growth off the fractured limb and although funky looking, are functioning as much like a normal tree as all the other damage-free trees around them.
Our late-blooming maple trees are sporting buds now and will catch up in a blink. I don’t have to worry about them, which allows me to better absorb the beauty and wonder of all the blossoms decorating or fields and forest this year.
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Worm Lesson
Yesterday I learned something that surprised me, especially for the extent of time —basically, my lifetime— about which I have been clueless. I assumed earthworms were native to my region and entirely beneficial. They provide food for our birds and other critters, and they aerate and enrich the soil.
Au contraire! I spotted an article in the sports section of a local newspaper aiming to educate people who fish about not dumping their leftover angle worms on the ground. Worms should be disposed of in the trash.
Why? First of all, the terrestrial earthworms are a non-native invasive species from Europe and Asia! I had no idea. Second, they are harming our hardwood forests. They actually disrupt the natural decomposition of leaf litter on the forest floor and turn good soil into grainy, dry worm castings (poop), which then can’t support the understory plants of our forests.
Apparently, they are welcome to help in my compost pile, but they are not friendly to our woods. Up at our lake place in Hayward, WI, our favorite flowering woodland plant on the forest floor is the trillium. Around Memorial day at the end of May, when we head up for “work-weekend” to open up the property for the summer, we often find a carpet of white blossoms covering the ground.
I have dreamed of seeing the same thing occur in our woods at Wintervale, but we can’t find hardly any here. Cyndie spotted one all by itself recently with 3 blossoms, capturing this shot with her cell phone.
According to the literature I have reviewed, trillium is one of the plants that is lost to the earthworms.
All of my life I have assumed that earthworms were a good thing. I’m afraid I will no longer think of them the same way at all. I would much rather have a thick, healthy layer on our forest floor that could support a robust undergrowth, than a dry, leafless surface of worm poo.
Anglers, contain those crawlers!
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Amazing Journey
I used to live in a city neighborhood and I used to live in a suburb. Now I live in a rural setting. The differences are dramatic, as well as subtle. The common element of each is, me. Obviously, I bring my perspective to each setting. The different environments influence me, yet I interpret each place through my personal filter.
As a human being, my filter is basically similar to all the other humans interpreting their environmental influences. I feel what everyone feels about each of the three habitats. As an individual, my perspective is not identical to all others, but specific to me. We can generalize about the hectic pace of crowded places and the mellowness of open land, but individuals have the capacity to find their own mellowness in a hectic environment, or excitement over all that is found in being alone and outdoors.
People have the ability to compartmentalize their lives, and as such will become isolated and detached from that which is less familiar. For most of my life, horses were a mere blip on my radar. I knew of people who were horse lovers, but I was not so inclined. I married a person who was interested in horses, but she was far from consumed with a focus on them, so the impact on me was negligible.
Now I have a close relationship with a herd of 4 horses. I have become another person in a huge group of people with strong interests in horses. I am new to this group, and I bring my unique perspective, but I expect that I appear to the rest of the world as just another horse lover. On the surface, that is accurate, but there is more depth to all of our stories and I am inspired to figure out what about mine I should be endeavoring to tell.
Some days my amazing journey leaves me speechless. Oftentimes, I simply write about what I do, putting one foot in front of the other and tending to daily chores. There is more to it, I know, and I have a sense it is percolating within me in preparation for being told.
I’m letting it simmer a bit, while continuing to embrace and savor the breadth and depth of my wild ride.
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Progress Marches
One small step for Cyndie, one giant leap toward mobility without chronic joint pain. Yesterday, the visiting physical therapist rather quickly had Cyndie leaving behind the walker and using a cane to stroll around the house. Moments later, she was caning her way up and down the stairs to our basement.
It was fascinating progress to witness. What a blessing to have the guidance of the therapist to keep our patient moving forward with exercises and activities.
With a nod to the title of this blog, progress is relative. From an overall perspective, there is not a lot happening at Wintervale lately. I find myself repeatedly struggling with the decision of what I want to write about. At the same time, the progress Cyndie is experiencing toward recovery and rehabilitation seems huge. I’ll take that.
Whether we notice or not, progress is marching along.
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Choosing Hardship
Things are not going very easy for us on the ranch right now, but despite the difficulties we face, we are still basking in the richness and fullness of this life we have chosen. The primary frustration is the current weather pattern we have been under for a week. It has been chilly and rainy every day. Too rainy, for many of them. The wind has calmed a bit in the last couple of days, so we do have the benefit of that misery being removed from the rest of the miserable onslaught we have had to endure.
In direct correlation to the troublesome weather is our plight in caring for the horses in the manner we aspire to maintain. We just can’t alleviate their predicament of too much mud. We anticipated a certain amount of hassle, but this week of rain is just over the top. Not just the rain, but the cold, cold temperatures, too. We have tried to provide some relief, by allowing them time in the barn, but that is a temporary solution for a problem that has far exceeded being of temporary duration.
The amount of work required to manage our property is significant, but adding the universal difficulty of non-stop wetness compounds the burden dramatically. Every building is leaking, including my wood shed! The grounds are a mess. That makes the house a mess, and clothes a mess. It’s hard!
But it’s good. It’s a good hard. There are easier life styles a person can choose. Mankind spends a fair amount of energy devising ways to make life easier. I make jokes about the situation where life gets so easy a person has to join a fitness club and pay money to engage in sessions of doing hard work. People will workout in a gym, running in place or moving weighted levers up and down to get sweaty, develop strength and muscle tone. But, dig in the dirt? Carry heavy objects long distances? Walk the hills of 20 acres? Why would someone choose to do that?
Maybe we choose to live like this precisely because it is hard. A life of hard work offers special rewards that more than justify the effort. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself whenever our hard life starts getting really hard. Of course, I’ve got the benefit of being in proximity of Cyndie’s positive outlook, which she graciously shares, encouraging me to check my focus and recognize our many blessings.
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Visualizing Success
While our landscape is still locked beneath a thick blanket of snow and the daytime temperatures rise above the freezing point, I reacted upon an urge to give the lawn tractor some long-neglected maintenance attention. The poor thing was caked with dirty, dusty grime and grass clippings.
Opening up the email inbox this morning revealed the timely message from my Stihl dealer detailing how to get those power tools ready for the first use of spring. It’s definitely that time of year. My cycling season can’t be far off!
I opened up the double door between the shop and garage and pushed the old Craftsman tractor, on one mostly flat tire, into the warmer workspace to begin the operation. I’m finally getting around to utilizing that space for the purposes it is so smartly designed to facilitate. The seller of our property kindly provided his stock of spare parts for the machine when we purchased it, so I am set with new air and oil filters, and belts if needed. Too bad that leaves me short a fuel filter, a spark plug, and a replacement bulb for the headlight that has been blown since we bought it.
We may even look into replacing the cracked vinyl seat that was once nicely patched with what looks like electrical tape, because said tape has long since given up its adhesive. Don’t tell anyone, but I will also finally defeat the interlock on the seat so the engine will be able to keep running without interruption when Cyndie bounces up off it when trying to rock the tractor every time it gets stuck.
In all fairness to Cyndie, I have experienced that situation myself a couple of times, as well as wanting to get up off the seat to ride the fender in attempt to better balance the tractor on the one steep part of the ditch by the township road.
Here’s hoping I’ll have the machine running sweetly in advance of actually needing it, without introducing any problems that didn’t exist before I dismantled so many of the vital components. This is a great situation for me to practice the art of visualizing success!
Very early in my life, while hanging around as an extra hand for my dad while he was engaged in any number of similar mechanical repair projects, I came to recognize one common aspect that troubled me. Every job seemed to include, as if by obligation, a moment where some problem arose that would completely impede further progress. One common example was the situation of a nut not coming off a bolt due to corrosion or thread problems.
Such moments are either a wonderful opportunity to rise to the occasion –finding the right tool for a solution, gliding through the uninvited obstacle with minimal disruption– or a disaster of careening down a path of increasing destruction and frustration. Success can be a function of having the right experience and/or keen instincts, and a good inventory of the right tool for the job with the intelligence of knowing how to use them.
I’m pretty sure I developed an aversion to these anticipated obstacles, which leads to the catch-22 of my avoiding them, which creates a deficit of learning how to successfully respond. Since I am now faced with increasing opportunities to delve into mechanical projects that offer potential for just these kinds of lessons, I hope to bring the wisdom I have gained in developing healthy mental perspectives and my ever-expanding awareness of things unseen –recognizing, listening to, and trusting my heart and my gut– as tools to assist me in my learning.
One of the first tools I intend to wield is, visualizing success.
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Relative Something 