Posts Tagged ‘photography’
Lyrical Meander
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on the edge of a shadow
walking briskly to avoid stagnation
nothing is obvious in the thoughts that meander
one thing I will always miss
is the number of your expressions
that formed on your face
as you looked toward my eyes
in the middle of stories
we told ourselves
returning often
to themes both intimate
and benign
successfully avoiding to cross
boundaries that might matter
to each other
and everyone within earshot
clickbait for the souls
yearning for something they can’t perceive
oblivious to the bold sensibility
of simply listening to themselves
with a divine authenticity
we surfed the enlightened feeling
connecting brings
taking intellectual flight
for time-defying hours
allowing ancient history
to flow into the future in a blink
elemental impossibilities that echo
as if the wars of every civilization
are different from the ones being waged
every single day
like a dog returning to passionately dig
through tangles of grass
where a nest of rabbits once existed
just in case they might still be there
our breath exchanging fabricated truths
about wants and needs
solving mostly nothing that tomorrow brings
beyond the rendering of titillation
that fed our hearts
fueling love
which serves to fuel love
perfectly well
fearlessly healing untold emotional wounds
without knowing
we were even trying
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Looking Close
I woke early yesterday and snuck out the door in the dark while Asher was still in his overnight crate. My destination was the Subaru Dealership in the Cities where I bought my 2019 Crosstrek. It’s headed for the 80K mile mark soon and still had the original tires, or what was left of ‘em, anyway.
Today it has fresh tires, brakes, oil, and an air filter. It’s almost like a brand-new car.
Cyndie called in one of our pet sitters to take care of the dog and horses in my absence. It was like having a day off for me. Well, half a day. Upon my arrival home, Asher instantly wanted to rough-house and battle for his squeaky ball. Eventually, we headed out to feed the horses.
The barn was in perfect order. The only difference between the way I do things in the morning and the way our helper left it was a closed door where we usually leave the top half open during the day.
I found myself taking close-up photos while waiting for the horses to eat everything in their feed pans.
The wind was whipping up some ripples on the surface of the waterer.
Close inspection of some of the hay that was delivered to us last season reveals a lot of woody stems and a very bleached coloring. We’ve been mixing it with partial flakes from 30 bales we received from a different supplier. I’m guessing the difference is first-cut versus second or third-cut.
The horses are very skilled at not eating any hay they don’t like.
It’s a lot more like straw than hay. The horses just let it drop to the ground.
This morning, Asher gets a car ride to Hudson for a day of play with other canines. It’ll almost be like another day off for me, except I’ll be picking up Cyndie’s grocery order and hauling it into the house.
The latest update on Cyndie’s convalescence is all good one week after surgery. Maybe even ahead of schedule for what she was originally expecting. The swelling is under control and she is already moving around using only one crutch while controlling pain with nothing but over-the-counter acetaminophen.
She is doing well to keep herself at rest and icing and elevating her ankle regularly.
I’m hoping she will be able to get back in the action by the playoffs. Whoops. I mixed her surgery up with all the injuries happening in the NFL. Between concussions and ruptured Achilles, it seems like there is a risk of teams not being able to field enough backup players.
Here’s hoping Asher doesn’t pull a muscle racing around with other dogs on his play date today.
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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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Dramatic Glow
Getting up in the morning to feed horses this time of year provides more opportunities to see the spectacle of dawn’s early light when there are clouds around to be illuminated. Yesterday was a fun one.
During much of the summer, the sun is already above the horizon by the time we pop out of the woods near the back pasture on the way to the barn.
More than once, I neglected to grab my sunglasses on the way out the door and regretted it when finishing horse chores with the sun glaring.
It’s both a treasure and a curse to need to be outside every day regardless of the weather conditions. Builds character I suppose. Whatever “character” means in that context.
Sometimes, I feel more like it’s a caricature of myself that is created by my antics. If Relative Something was a cartoon animation, what would my voice sound like? I can’t say. I don’t know what the self-talk that plays inside my brain sounds like.
If I tried to pick a voice actor to play me, it would become an exercise in deciding what famous voice I’d want to sound like. Samuel L. Jackson. Um, yeah, no.
Okay, I admit recently rewatching the final scene in the diner in the movie, “Pulp Fiction,” when I stumbled upon it while channel surfing. I’ve also been watching the limited documentary series, “Beckham” but I don’t hear his voice fitting for me.
The documentary about me will need to be animated because nobody with a camera has followed me around recording all the poignant scenes of our lives at Wintervale. It’s too bad because the morning routines outside as the sun is coming up would look beautiful.
Especially when Mix reaches her head out toward me in her greeting and we exchange breath.
Can you imagine hearing me lightly calling from a distance to let them know it’s us coming?
“Good morning, horses.”
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Puzzling Thoughts
There are hints in this transition toward the months of spending more time indoors than out, that jigsaw puzzling season is going to start very soon for me. The increased hours of darkness are a significant influence on my thinking, but I have also noticed lately that my photographic eye is trending toward images that deserve to be cut into a thousand pieces.
Maybe not each of those, but I’d enjoy a crack at assembling a puzzle out of the first one. I’m a sucker for the period when the seed plumes of our ornamental tall grasses show up and look a little like fireworks displays.
I started the day yesterday with a 6-month teeth cleaning appointment which is a necessary evil that isn’t all that fun to endure but feels great when completed. The day only gets better after that, even if the only real work undertaken involves managing the manure composting area.
It has been hard to keep the piles cooking lately. This time of year the composting process slows down, forcing me to move some piles before they have broken down as much as I’d like. It helps me to have as many piles as possible cleared out to leave plenty of space for dumping loads of frozen manure throughout the winter months.
This year we are still using the composted material to fill low spots around the edges of the driveway pavement remaining up by the house. It’s rare that I don’t have uses for the custom soil cultivated from our horses’ manure, but after the driveway landscaping is completed once and for all, I may be looking for a spot to stockpile accumulating inventory.
The horses never slow down their production, regardless of my finding new ways to put it to good use.
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Autumn Walk
The ground has started to dry up after the most recent soaking and the sky slowly grew sunnier and sunnier yesterday afternoon making for a particularly picturesque leash-walk with Asher.
Warm, however, was not how the air temperature felt.
I have no confidence that Asher is able to associate being confined once again to the leash with his recent rash of unacceptable sprints across the road to disrupt things at our neighbors’ but it’s the only solution immediately available in our bag of tricks.
The challenge it creates for us is finding ways to burn off some of his big energy with games and exercises in the house. He got a little wound up in the house but he was amazingly tolerant of being tethered every time we went out.
I thought this flipped-over oak leaf with the deep puzzle-shaped recesses was particularly eye-catching. I didn’t recall ever noticing leaves with this shape on tree branches. A few minutes down the trail, boom! There’s a small oak with the same shape of leaves. Doh!
The trail in the woods offered more mystical nature specimens, especially this classically shaped toadstool.
Had me looking for a troll sneaking around in the trees nearby, especially the way Asher was sniffing the ground.
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Side Views
Asher and I spent a little time out behind the house yesterday morning in the space that I think of as our “side yard.” It produced this collection of views that caught my eye…
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I hope these provide a sense of the beauty and tranquility that we are blessed to enjoy in our little paradise. Maybe not so tranquil for the burrowing rodents that Asher seeks to root out, but otherwise, heavenly in the fall, under majestic old trees on a bright, sunny day.
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Grass Gripe
While I have been toiling to prepare the dirt along our driveway and in the back pasture for grass seed, one thought keeps going through my mind. We are working hard to nurture grass seeds to germinate. 
Preparing the soil, distributing the seeds, raking the seeds into the dirt, spreading straw over the top, and watering the area in an effort to establish a carpet of green where previously there was none.
Meanwhile, grass has grown in front of our hay shed despite a total lack of effort from us to make that happen.
Over and over yesterday while raking, my mind reviewed the unlikely fact that grass seed falling from baled hay lands on the hardened gravel drive. The soil wasn’t prepared for seeds. We never watered that area. It gets too much sun. Vehicles drive over it. We don’t want grass to grow there.
Despite all the reasons grass should not sprout there, it has done so with unbelievable effectiveness.
It’s just plain wacky. It’s an imbalance in the universe. It defies logic.
Don’t mind me, that’s just a little grass gripe I harbor. Let’s end this post on a more positive note. How about a photogenic ground cover in the rocks just beyond our front steps?
Add to that a shot of the golden sunset Cyndie captured the other day:
Beautiful, no?
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Relative Something 