Posts Tagged ‘September’
Not Colorful
The leaves are changing, but not into the glorious reds, yellows, and oranges one expects in the fall. No, this year we are getting a predominant dose of browns.
I don’t know if it’s due to dry conditions or something else, but trees that have been brilliant in past autumns are simply transitioning to shriveled brown leaves this year.
It’s hardly the glorious spectacle we wanted when Cyndie and I chose September to be our wedding month. That just so happened to occur 44 years ago on this exact date. I believe we had a fair amount of color in the trees in 1981. I don’t think I paid a lot of attention to the fall colors, what with my beautiful bride commanding all of my focus that day.
Seven years after that, our son, Julian, was born on the same day as our anniversary. So today is a day of celebration in the Hays family. Tonight, Cyndie and I have reservations at the Shady Grove restaurant, about 4 minutes away from our house. Tomorrow, we meet our kids for dinner in Stillwater to toast Julian.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some colorful trees on our drive along the St. Croix River.
It’s a Happy Birthniversary Day!
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It’s Starting
In September, the shortening of days becomes more noticeable. The temperature swings between morning and afternoon force clothing adjustments from jackets to shirt sleeves. Tree leaves begin to reveal that their growing season is coming to an end.
The tops of some of our trees are starting to show some orange. Cyndie has set our thermostat to “Auto” to cool the house if the daytime gets too warm and bring heat when the nights get too chilly. Schools are in session, and fall sports are underway.
Advertisers peddling goods via Christmas themes won’t be far behind.
I experimented with relaxing my perfectionistic tendencies yesterday in order to get enough mowing done to feel like our place is ready for us to be gone for a week. The grass remained damp enough that it was difficult to get a grip with the riding mower’s tires.
It didn’t feel like I had time to carefully navigate sideways slopes, so there was a fair amount of failure to keep the free-spinning front wheels of the zero-turn from uncontrolled turns downhill. It was a haphazard, frequently circular route to getting all the grass blades trimmed.
The wet soil and slippery grass resulted in a far greater occurrence of spinning wheels when I simply wanted to execute a turn. Normally, this causes me a lot of angst and a fair amount of foul language, and inspires me to try many ways to prevent it from happening. Not yesterday, though.
I chose the alternative of not caring in an effort to accomplish the greater goal of having the whole place mowed before we leave. I’m the only one who will even notice the increased number of skid marks.
It’s September. People’s attention will be on the trees, not on the dirt marks in our grass.
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Foggy Morning
The weather app on my phone notified me that we were under dense fog conditions first thing this morning. That proved to be a spot-on analysis.
It wasn’t all that obvious in the woods where Asher and I were breaking spider webs that crossed our trails. When we reached the fence of the back pasture, it was as if none of our neighbors existed.
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The horses didn’t seem overly worried about their limited views. They were spread out with heads up when I came around the corner, appearing well aware of my arrival.
Every morning there is obvious evidence of burrowing critter activity in and around the barn overnight. There is enough spillage from the horses’ sloppy eating that barn pigeons and rodents find more than enough motivation to hang around. For some reason, this morning a couple of rodents didn’t wait until I was gone to emerge from their tunnels to scrounge. That’s the first time I have actually seen them.
Come to think of it, I haven’t seen the neighbor’s orange cat lurking around our property of late. I wonder if Asher would be okay with us getting a barn cat to keep the rodent population from exploding. In the meantime, we will be adding some traps in the barn.
One of our ash trees near the (vacant) chicken coop is proving to be our “canary in the coal mine” when it comes to the onset of autumn.
Every year it drops leaves sooner than most other trees have begun to change color. This year it stands out more than usual for being so bare-branched so soon.
Is the middle of September early for bare branches? Sure seems like it to me, especially when we have 80°F temperatures forecast for the coming week. It still feels an awful lot like summer around here, even with a cool fog blanketing the landscape this morning.
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September Morning
It was a classic September morning yesterday and a rather photogenic one, I must say. How about a wispy fog in the valley around sunrise?
Around the corner, near the barn, we just couldn’t stop gazing at the scenic landscape.
Then Cyndie remembered she was going to pick more wild American plums from a tree beside the compost area. It is entangled with a vine that has sprouted some fruit of its own. We have some grapes!
Not much for size compared to cultivated varieties but great fun to see them appear on our totally wild vines. Maybe the growth in this spot is happy to be in close proximity to whatever leaches from the piles of composting horse manure.
Before we know it, these mornings will start to get frosty and the growing season will come to an end. As the planet warms, that’s been happening later and later every year, so it’s a guess as to how soon. The shorter hours of daylight make it seem like the change to frosty temperatures is just around the corner.
I’m mentally prepared but won’t be holding my breath in anticipation. I love September mornings no matter how they come.
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Even Frostier
Yesterday morning, Wednesday, September 28th, was even colder than the day before. Instead of a few random spots of frost, our entire back pasture was white from ice crystals on the grass.
It was a hard enough freeze to quickly dispatch some of the plants in the labyrinth. The leaves of hydrangea plants had begun to turn black and shrivel by the afternoon.
Once the sun got high, the temperatures were ideal for toiling in the late September rays. We were on the final stretch of weeding around the rocks lining the paths of the front half of the labyrinth. First, we rolled the rocks away to make it easier to pull weeds. Then, using a guide stick to determine proper spacing, I repositioned rocks to define the lanes again.
Having started at the center of the labyrinth where the distances of each circuit are short, dealing with the increasing spans of the much longer outer rings began to grow a little tiresome. Upon reaching our goal, we rewarded ourselves with a second session of the day hanging with the horses as they freely checked out the barn.
It was their second opportunity of the day and every indication is that our plan is working wonderfully. We placed a small amount of feed in each of the stalls as enticement and by the end of the last session all but Mia had ventured in and out of different stalls to nibble. Swings was taking advantage of the water available in hanging buckets in each stall.
It’s looking like we are making good gains toward adjusting their attitude about coming inside the barn during harsh conditions.
Compared to last winter, they are certainly giving us a much less “frosty” reception to the opportunity.
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Cutting Pasture
It feels like I have been cutting grass non-stop for days. I used to think that growth slowed to a crawl after August but I saw a chart at the State Fair this year that indicated grass growth in September can be compared to what happens in June. There is a slump in July and August when grass might even go dormant before reenergizing in September.
It used to confuse me that September was a recommended time to seed new grass but now I can understand why that is.
Our land is still overly dry but we have had just enough rainfall between dry spells that the greenery looks pretty lush and the grass seems as happy as can be. The reason it feels like I’ve been doing a lot of mowing is that I have been playing with our new electric push mower, and I cut grass in the labyrinth, then used the brush cutter pulled by the diesel tractor to mow the hay field, and yesterday, the back pasture.
In addition, I have been cutting beneath the fence lines with the power trimmer. On top of that, I knocked off the second phase of a twice-a-year mowing of the drainage ditch along our southern property line.
When it’s dry, the mowed ditch becomes an alternate trail for Delilah to explore. In that image, she has her nose to the ground exploring any animal trails hidden beneath the mass of cuttings. The months of growth in the ditch were four to five feet tall and it is a blind cut on the first pass. My foot is poised to hit the clutch to interrupt the power to the mower if anything that wasn’t supposed to be mowed is encountered.
I back up the full length with the brush cutter tipped up a bit and then lower it for the return trip in the forward direction toward where I started. It isn’t a straightforward simple cut because there are washouts where fast-moving water has eroded the soil and they meander back and forth so the tractor wheels occasionally drop down or the mower bottoms out as travel progresses.
So, it is a blind cut on a completely unpredictable terrain. It is a great relief when that task has been fully accomplished.
It is also extremely satisfying to have both big fields mowed. If you’ll recall, it isn’t so much the grass that we need to cut as much as the weeds we want to prevent from going to seed. Cyndie and I don’t want to use toxic chemicals so mowing is our chosen method of control. We also pull a lot of weeds but that is similar to trying to empty a lake of its water by removing a spoonful at a time. Although, it is very satisfying, psychologically, to yank a weed out by its roots.
The horses took great interest in my activity in the back pasture and gave me the impression they wished I would hurry up and finish so they could get back on it.
I’ll keep the gates closed for a couple of days to dry out the cuttings and give the grass a little time to sprout new growth before giving them access again. Meanwhile, they have the entire already-mowed hay field at their disposal.
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Leaving Us
It’s Tuesday after Labor Day and plenty of fall activities that haven’t already kicked off will be starting today. Our guests left us yesterday for the next leg of their journey in a vehicle that looked to be packed with everything a college freshman would need to get started.
The Birgens awoke in the morning to the news that the Kenyan Supreme Court has ruled that the candidate, William Ruto, was properly elected President in the 2022 general election. One less thing to be concerned about for them at a time their oldest son is starting a new job and the youngest is starting college.
I find myself thinking about how nice it is to be well beyond the years of taking kids to their first year of college. Feels similar to when I began to appreciate getting past the years when September meant “back to school” during the K-12 phase of our kids’ lives.
The few connotations September holds for me now are the onset of fall colors, Cyndie’s and my anniversary (41 years!), Julian’s birthday, and the start of MN Vikings football –despite my best efforts to stop caring about anything having to do with the modern-day NFL. Nothing about getting prepared for school.
I have already noticed the return of school bus traffic on our road at home twice a day, but the impact from that on my life is negligible.
I tip my hat to all of you who have school-age children starting a new bus and/or classroom experience today.
My time with access to television coverage of the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament is ending today as we leave the lake place and return home.
For some reason –probably related to wanting to witness Serena Williams make one last attempt for a major victory at the end of her illustrious career– I was inspired to watch as many live matches as I could this year. I was lucky to have captured a few dramatic matchups that were really exciting and very competitive.
A couple of them were almost as exciting as the end of the Florida State vs. LSU college football game I stumbled upon Sunday night during a break in the tennis.
It’s probably a good thing we are leaving the lake place and all the cable sports channels I have access to here so I can take a break from spectator sports and get outside and give this gorgeous September weather the proper respect it deserves.
It’s my favorite time of year, right up there with my other favorite, winter!
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Inside View
Justifiably so, most pictures of trees in autumn are from beyond the forest where the view can include the variety of brilliant colors glowing from entire trees. Yesterday, Delilah and I paused on a walk through our woods so I could capture the view of early autumn from within the trees.
There are plenty of green leaves still attached to branches but the forest floor is already carpeted by a new batch of recently fallen leaves. The onset of fall is first noticeable by the leaves that fall on our trails, before the ones that start turning colors up in the branches.
I find myself needing to put effort toward consciously noticing this IS autumn. The early phases of this transition beyond summer are just as much a part of my favorite season as the later phases when branches are bare and mornings frosty.
Earlier in the week, Cyndie captured her shadow visible on the trunk of a tree that was glowing orange with a spot of just-risen sunlight appearing through the forested landscape behind her.
It may be the last week of September but the grass on our property is growing like it’s still mid-summer. It is becoming common now that I end up mowing grass and mulching fallen leaves all at the same time.
It bothers me a little bit that I am not shocked that 80-degree temperatures are forecast for the next few days.
Just like the fall season IS here right now, so is global warming and all the effects scientists have long predicted would occur if humans didn’t reduce the creation of greenhouse gasses at the rate that has grown steadily since the beginning of industrialization.
Fall colors and hot temperatures are an odd combination for my mind to associate.
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Getting Bolder
Even though the number of trees around us that are starting to show some colors of autumn is few, a couple took a jump yesterday toward premium brilliance. Those spots of bold color are particularly eye-catching.
That dot of redness stands out distinctly against the green around it. When this happens, I imagine what that tree would look like if all the leaves changed to the same degree at the same time.
Around the corner from that area is a maple tree turning orange.
I hope this is an indication of fall color intensity we can look forward to seeing more of as the month progresses.
I heard that the ever-changing sunrise and sunset times are moving 3-minutes per day about now. That’s a loss of 21-minutes of daylight this week. Could less sunlight mean slower grass growth finally?
I’m ready to be done mowing for the season. I suspect we still have a ways to go until I can park the mower for the winter.
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September Eleven
Twenty years later, I’m pausing to remember my trauma of that day, witnessing so many other peoples’ trauma over the unimaginable death and destruction unleashed by fanatical terrorists hijacking commercial jets containing passengers to use them as explosive missiles.
I spent the first moments, and then the unfolding hours, trying to grasp the reality that such things could be happening. We didn’t learn of the events after the fact. We witnessed much of it as it was happening. I’ve never really liked hearing the sound of a commercial jet flying overhead after that day twenty years ago.
This morning, I turned on some of the television coverage of memorial events being held at the three locations where the planes crashed. In Minnesota, they read the names of people from the state who were killed that day, as well as Minnesota members of the military who died in the wars since.
Thinking of John Lennon’s lyric “Imagine there’s no countries…,” how many more names would need to be recited if loved ones from Afghanistan were to read the names of all who died in the twenty years since.
Meanwhile, in the idyllic surroundings of our home on this beautifully warm September day, we are living life in peace. The first hints of color continue to slowly transition in the panorama of trees along the edges of our woods.
On this third day of being the only person feeding our animals, they are all settling into my way of doing things. On Thursday evening, the horses demonstrated a fair amount of uncertainty navigating the feeding routine, but as I have adjusted my methods and they’ve responded willingly, this morning was as serene as ever.
Having watched Swings lose as many pellets out of her mouth as she consumes, I’ve started soaking her servings in a little water first and that seems to be making it easier for her. We had hoped having their teeth floated would help her more than it appears to have done.
This morning I decided to try again to use the hay boxes I built. They were powering through a single bale so fast the last time we tried using these that we switched to providing the net feeders from which they were used to eating.
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If they make it through a bale too fast today, I’ll plot a modification to the grate that might slow it down to something comparable to grass-grazing speed, if I can guess what that actually is.
It seems illogical to me that they would prefer dry hay bales over the two large fields of fresh grass that we provide them full access to day and night, but I’m not a horse. I trust they know why they make the choices about what to eat.
As rescued thoroughbreds, they know about memories of trauma.
Today we are soaking up the peacefulness we have been afforded and adding another day of distance from the source of our past traumas.
We will never forget, but we will always seek that world where we all be as one.
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Relative Something 