Posts Tagged ‘photography’
Happily Home
Gee, but it’s good to be back home. First of all, our dew point temperature is significantly lower than it was in Missouri. It actually feels like September here, with the cool evening, warm afternoon, brisk wind, and lowering angle of sunlight yesterday creating a distinct feeling of autumn. The rain that fell here while I was riding the Katy Trail has greened things up considerably.
Cyndie captured this gorgeous shot of the horses backlit by the twilight sky.
Now that’s a field that looks worth grazing.
I spotted one of her sunflowers with an echo of the actual sun in the background.
The wind picked up significantly in the afternoon while I was mowing. The north loop trail was clear when I gave it a clean cut, but after lunch, I found it blocked by a fallen tree.
It was a dead pine tree that we had let a grapevine climb, so no big loss as far as we are concerned.
Sometimes, the beauty of Wintervale causes me to question why I ever leave.
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Words on Images
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*This is the second time I have used “Last” for a title on this blog. Click HERE to see the first time.
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Precious Dew
Any moisture in a drought becomes all the more precious, so a little dew in the morning takes some of the edge off how harsh it feels outside. The dew also causes all the overnight spider webs in the pasture to become highly visible in the low light of the rising sun.
The horses seem to be tolerating the dry and dusty conditions with their typical demonstration of coping skills.
In their favor, the lack of wetness has inhibited the fly populations to a significant degree. However, it has also drawn a large number of bees to hang out around the horses’ automatic waterer. Cyndie put out some apple cider vinegar-baited traps and tried a couple of bee spray applications to discourage the establishment of a hive in the body of the Ritchie waterer.
Paddock Lake has become nothing more than a dug-out depression good for dust baths.
It’s getting hard to imagine how much rainfall it will take to ever fill that crater again. With the month of September just days away, the outdoors present a distinct feeling of an early onset of fall, minus the cooler temperatures.
Maybe we’ll get a wet October, which doesn’t seem unusual at all, but I don’t recall rain in the tenth month of the year historically amounting to the level of moisture we will need to put a dent in the dryness that has occurred this summer. I’d like to hope for a lot of snow over winter to give us a kick of moisture during the spring melt next year, but the strong El Niño is expected to result in a warmer winter with less snow in the Twin Cities.
I’m getting what pleasure I can from the early morning blankets of dew until the next rain event. There’s a tease in the forecast of a 70% chance on Saturday, but I’m not holding my breath. We are hosting guests for lunch that day, so maybe that will increase the chances. One can hope.
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Four Versions
Here are four versions of images I captured of the surface of our lake in the order they were taken:
Take from them what you will…
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Plugging Away
It was a calm day at the lake place yesterday. Since it was an off day for the World Cup, I made a concerted effort to get out and walk the grounds after watching the 5th Stage of the Tour de France. Later today, the tourney resumes with the first of the quarter-final matches kicking off. After watching the majority of the competition to reach this point, I feel compelled not to miss any of the remaining matches. I will keep plugging away at consuming the riches of spectator sports available to me.
That continues a frustratingly large number of hours in front of a television, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for entertainment’s sake. My days back on a lawn tractor will return soon enough. I’m trying not to think about how much horse manure is accumulating in the compost area that will need tending.
My survey of the grounds provided an opportunity to snap a few creative photos and witness the evidence in the gravel driveway that the storm that raged overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday created a bit of a flash flood. A significant amount of sand and gravel was removed along one slope of the driveway and poured down into the lagoon, leaving the water looking like a milky coffee drink.
The water at the beach remained clear and inviting, making for a perfect, soothing soak as the afternoon drew to a close.
A swim felt ideal after digging into a messy chore I’d been putting off since we arrived last Friday. There was a firewood storage box located on the upper deck of the house that was far from watertight. The dregs of firewood on the bottom were soaked and rotting. The plywood bottom of the box was rotting, too.
Unfortunately, that led to the boards of the deck underneath it rotting. When I looked in on it when we first got up here, I saw there was a hornets’ nest being built under the lid. It took me a few days to get around to dealing with that. Cyndie and I finally sprayed it on Tuesday night, and yesterday, I started scooping out the mess of decaying, soaked firewood left in the bottom. That process involved several trips down from the deck to dump the rotting gunk and felt an awful lot like plugging away toward accomplishing a task.
When I had the box emptied, I enlisted the help of neighbors to carry the box off the deck to a spot where I plan to unceremoniously deconstruct it. I suspect the old firewood box will become fuel for future outdoor campfires, that is, the parts that aren’t soaked and rotting, anyway.
The moral of today’s story: Water erodes gravel driveways and rots any and all wood with relentless tenacity. To avoid it, enact routine preventive measures.
You know, keep plugging away at it.
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Relative Something 