Posts Tagged ‘raking leaves’
Making Preparations
Our health insurance provider has notified us that they will no longer offer coverage in our location in 2026. Each time I have spoken with a new provider about their plans, they have mentioned being flooded with calls from people in our county in the same situation as us.
I found a plan that appeared to fit with my needs, but it didn’t show my primary care clinic in its list of providers. Several calls led me to the option of using my regular doctor and having my clinic send the bill to the company whose plan I intend to select. All parties appeared to be in agreement.
When I tried enrolling online at Medicare dot gov, I got stuck because it didn’t have my doctor in the list of choices. When I tried enrolling at the site of the company I had chosen, it tried to direct me back to the Medicare enrollment site. I called them and explained my predicament. Their solution was to snail mail me the application to fill out and return.
It’s a good thing I’m not shopping for major coverage. All I’m looking for is the basic annual preventative checkups. I can’t imagine how crazy it must be to find complex coverage.
With phone calls done and paperwork in the mail (supposedly), I headed outside to get a little exercise with Asher. Next thing you know, I’m busy raking leaves off the front yard.
The wind was blowing in my favor; otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered. Most of the trees, other than the oaks, have dropped the majority of their leaves. Just maybe that’s the last of the lawn raking for the season.
At this point, the next thing to do would be to locate where I stashed all the snow shovels from last year. You never know, maybe it will snow this winter. I like making preparations. It’s a little like preventive medicine. Or insurance, even, only with much easier enrollment.
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Good Life
We woke yesterday morning with a glee hangover from our amazing David Byrne show Monday night, and it lingered throughout the day. Blessed with a fabulous climate-warmed summery-feeling November morning, we danced our way through the woods with Asher before approaching the barn to feed the horses.
We found the mares luxuriating in the emerging sunlight and mellow as ever. It got me thinking about how they stand so stoically to endure the miserable conditions when the weather is gruesome, as if they are aware that it never lasts, and that there will eventually be rewarding days like this as compensation.
Lately, mornings as nice as this one was –when the horses are calmly munching their feed and the natural world is as peaceful as ever– serve as a balm, soothing and comforting us. Coming on the heels of our evening of super special entertainment, it felt like we were getting a double dose of feel-good medicine.
Asher seemed to be enjoying the unusually nice weather as well, and it had him romping playfully all over the place. When I decided to try raking some leaves, he behaved like I was making piles for him to race through and kick all over the place.
For what I hope is the last time this year (never say never), I got out the riding mower to mulch the leaves in the backyard grass. Most of the trees that drop leaves have finished doing that, so it seemed like a reasonable time to finish tending to the grass in back.
When I put the mower back in the garage, I moved the ATV to the front and parked the mower behind it, a symbolic gesture in anticipation of the change from mowing season to snowplowing season.
After that, I started picking off little nuisance tasks that had been nagging at me for a while. I drove my car to the shop garage to put air in the tires. Then I brought our three most-used wheelbarrows up from the barn to inflate tires on those. I attached a recently purchased battery manager to the diesel tractor battery. It instantly kicked into “charging” mode. That tractor doesn’t get driven enough to keep the battery charged.
Cyndie cleaned and mended horse blankets. I moved a fresh batch of hay bales from the shed into the barn. We moved her picnic “door table” and chairs from beneath the big oak tree in the woods into the barn for winter storage.
Working outdoors felt like we’d been given a gift to accomplish all these things on such a pleasant weather day. With all of our animals showing irrepressible joy and contentment, it felt like we were living the (really) good life.
If only I could train my brain to retain the sense of this goodness with more weight than it does with the challenging days of harsh weather and difficult problems, I would be ever so grateful. That would be living an even better life.
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Birdbrain Decision
You’d probably think my preeminent focus on LOVE above all other distractions in life would make February 14th a special day for me. Uh-uh. I generally refer to it in jibes at the marketing of it and other holidays aimed at coercing of consumers to spend their hard-earned sums of money on barely affordable things.
Still, I’m not above throwing out a “Be Mine” to sweethearts or favorite desserts every so often.
Maybe it’s hard for me because I love you all. That’s more cards, chocolates, and flowers than I can manage.
Today, I’m here to report the National Weather Service has issued a Winter Weather Advisory that includes our county and mentions SNOW ACCUMULATION! of 3 to 4 inches overnight tonight. I will not be holding my breath in anticipation, but if it falls and if it accumulates, that would be a welcome change, to say the least.
In preparation, I raked up some of the piles of leaves that had blown around outside the barn and ended up in places I shovel and plow after snowfalls. I hope that didn’t jinx the possibility of us getting a fresh white blanket over our landscape.
I also raked leaves so I could boast that I did so in the month of February. That is a first in my lifetime.
Is that a birdbrain decision? I don’t think so. That’s certainly not why I chose the title for today’s post. No, that comes from the behavior we observe of the pigeons that have chosen our barn overhang as their favorite place to be.
We are not fans. Their flapping and noisy footsteps on the metal roof, incessant cooing, and way too much excrement (on the horse’s placemats of all places!) put barn pigeons on our list of annoyances begrudgingly tolerated.
Recently, we have seen an increase in activity that has me thinking they may not be growing in number as much as I suspected. Their egg-laying decisions don’t seem all that compatible with procreation.
Maybe if it snows they will find the landing a little more forgiving but underfoot where horses are active seems to qualify for what people have come to mean by the term “birdbrain.”
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Rewarding Work
Taking advantage of Asher being occupied at a doggie daycare appointment yesterday, I jumped into outdoor chores that the warm November has graciously continued to make possible. First on my agenda was the most visible out the front door.
Leaves have been blown into every nook and cranny around the house after several days of crazy gusting winds. It clearly reveals air patterns as they move around objects. Massive piles of leaves accumulate in certain areas beside spots that are blown bare even though we wish a mulch of ground cover would remain.
Clearing the mat of leaves off the lawn grass offers a wonderful visual reward. Bring on the snow.
After raking, I headed into the trees to finish my annual survey for Common Buckthorn sprouts. After all the leaves of desired trees have disappeared, the Buckthorn leaves that hold their green later in the season become easy to spot.
My slow and steady method involves cutting existing trees that were too large to pull out by the roots. I saw them off at an easily visible height, returning every year to trim off the sucker sprouts that try to salvage some future life.
It only takes a year or two before the root structure gives up trying. I admit to experiencing a mean sense of enjoyment over the invasive wasting its energy on a lost cause. Instead of the root structure sending out new sprouts across the ground, it tries growing up the severed trunk.
This keeps the new growth localized and easy for me to control. Any new sprouts that I see in different locations are easy to pull by the roots at this point. I’ve been patrolling these woods for 11 years now. Buckthorn growth is doomed on our acreage, despite it having a strong presence in the neighbor’s woods surrounding us.
The success I have achieved in eliminating the invasive shrubs/trees in our woods is one of the more rewarding of my forest management accomplishments.
Today, we stay out of the woods for a week and a day while orange-clad shooters try to reduce the size of the deer herds that roam. This morning, we were greeted with three gunshots down the hill near our bedroom window before we had even gotten out of bed.
I don’t venture out to learn if the shooter was successful or not. Staying away, and keeping Asher leashed, are my responses to the presence of hunting rifles.
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Worst Combination
I’ve been dreading this possibility for months. The worst combination of plowable amounts of snow falling before the ground is thoroughly frozen played out yesterday right before our eyes. The unfinished shoulders of our new driveway are too soft to support driving on them, let alone scraping them with a plow blade.
Since we didn’t receive a huge amount of snow by the end of the day yesterday, I’m contemplating just pushing what snow there is to the edge of the asphalt to create small snow banks over the existing shoulder. Before the banks freeze too hard, I might try flattening them enough to create a base layer over which I could drive and plow after future snowfalls.
In the beginning moments of accumulation yesterday morning, I headed outside to clean leaves off the pavement in front of the shop. It’s a job I intended to do a week ago but a certain person’s emergency and follow-up surgery have disrupted a lot of the before-snow plans we had hoped to fulfill.
Nothing like raking leaves that are already getting covered by snow. By the end of the day, the area in the picture became a parking spot for my car. I moved my car out of the garage so I could put Marie’s car under a roof. If the snow lets up today or tomorrow, it will save me from needing to scrape windows if she decides to brave the winter driving back to her place in Minnesota.
With the two of us watching over Cyndie, the metal-jointed woman has been making pretty good progress managing her pain and healing her incisions. With Marie running the kitchen, I have been freed up to take the dog outside and to keep the horses well-fed.
And now, I’m adding the role of chief snow shoveler to my other primary duties.
🎶 It’s beginning to feel a lot like… winter.
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Eventual Success
We finally got the break in our weather that allowed us to deal with all the leaves on the front lawn yesterday. How many weeks have I been whining about this issue?
You don’t have to answer that. It was a rhetorical question.
I am well aware of how long this dilemma has been dragging on. I have been looking at it every day since the big oak tree over the driveway suddenly let go of more leaves all at once than in all the previous years that we’ve lived here.
It was a big year for acorns, so maybe the two things are related. The tree put so much energy into growing acorns that it let go of the leaves in greater volume than usual? Yeah, that’s stated as a question. I have no actual knowledge on the subject.
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We had some help on the project yesterday. The chickens were very interested in all this scratchin’ that was going on and came up to check things out. If I wasn’t working fast enough for them, they would step into the leaves and start clawing away themselves to get at the goods.
It looked to me as though they just peck at the ground after invisible nothings, but pausing to crouch down and get up close and personal with one of the Australorps, I was surprised to see it pick up a big fat green caterpillar that I had no idea was there.
I sure hope all the pecking they are doing is reducing the tick and fly population that would otherwise emerge to trouble us next spring. The current brood of nine are covering a surprising range of territory with impressive thoroughness, based on the cute little scratching circles they leave behind throughout our forest floor.
The weather finally warmed above freezing enough that the ground surface was just pliable enough to give up the leaves, but the annoying push-up tunnels of moles and voles were still solid. It made for some all-terrain raking complications.
Unfortunately, some precipitation moved in with the warmth, so after we barely finished with the front yard, it started to rain. Now the ground is frozen beneath a thin slippery wet layer to give us something else to chirp about.
Will I ever be content with the way things are? Eventually.
Beyond the surface of petty complaints I am so deft at plying, I am more content than ever. Just yesterday I was pointing out how much simple joy the chickens bring every day. I had no idea how much pleasure they would provide.
Regarding the art of reframing all my petty whining, I am visualizing eventual success.
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Nice Try
The weather at home has eased enough to melt the snow in all the areas except shaded spots, but it hasn’t released its grip on the frozen ground. I had a spare ten minutes last Friday while Cyndie was finishing preparations for our visit to Anneliese and George’s house, so I grabbed a rake and tried moving some leaves off the grass on the front yard.
In the time I had, pretty much all I accomplished was clearing a small area of the yard and piling the leaves around two trees. That left a lot of oak leaves still frozen in the grass.
Earlier Friday morning, I also tried raking out piles of composted manure that I had dumped on the hay-field while Cyndie was in Guatemala. I hadn’t gotten a chance to do that before because it rained, then froze, and then snowed on those piles.
On Friday, it was almost warm enough to make me think raking out the piles would be possible. Almost. I worked on it anyway, because it felt like any little progress was better than no progress at all.
I’m counting on the universe giving me points for at least trying, on both the leaves and compost tasks.
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Looking Brown
When I got home from work yesterday, I looked at the thermometer outside to find the high and low temperatures for the day. It ranged from the warmest being 32.9°(F) and the coldest, 32.0°. Yummy.
It’s going to be a struggle sweeping up the wet leaves from the grass if the winter weather that showed up this week decides to stay.
Most of the ground is still too warm for the snow to last. The image of our woods below provides a clear demonstration of the difference between the relative warmth of the ground, compared to the above-ground branches that are cold enough the snow doesn’t melt.
Supposedly, the ground will have a chance to freeze in the days ahead, as the forecast predicts a number of days in a row with high temperatures not making it above the freezing point.
Other than the disaster this will present for me with regard to leaves in the yard, it will be a welcome change from the current swampy conditions on our trails. We’ve got standing water in multiple places. The lime-screenings around the barn overhang are starting to become a mud fest from heavy hoof traffic.
I am ready for it all to become rock hard. The squishing is becoming tiresome.
Look at the color palette of these three pictures. Does anyone else associate November with the color brown?
Last night, I was listening to music on the radio in the house and more than once, Delilah reacted as if she heard something outside. At one point, she barked, like someone was here.
I shut off the radio and let her hear the quiet.
We went to the front door so I could show her there was nobody around. She then ran around to the door to the garage. I’ve seen this routine many times. She was looking for Cyndie to arrive home.
I opened the door to the garage to show her it was dark in there. I made the mistake of turning on the light, which allowed Delilah to see Cyndie’s car and get revved up over what that usually means.
How do I explain to Delilah that Cyndie got a ride to the airport and her car has been parked in the garage for the last eight days?
I guess enough days have passed since Delilah last saw Cyndie that she is beginning to figure mom must be coming home soon.
Just two more days!
That might be all the time needed for enough snow to fall that Cyndie will never know I didn’t get around to removing all the leaves.
Well, never, until next spring, that is.
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Relative Something 