Posts Tagged ‘spring cleaning’
Started Wet
The big workday of the weekend appeared to be a washout when we woke up yesterday but the winter’s accumulation of leaves on the beach was surprisingly manageable soon after the precipitation stopped. I spent the morning trying to reclaim our mini-labyrinth in the woods from the thick growth of ground covering wild plants.
That work actually started with a need to cut up a big limb that had fallen across several lanes of the pathway. Then my focus shifted to the ferns, trillium, ramps (a wild leek), and tree sprouts that needed to be removed. I made it about halfway before I needed to join the worker bees who showed up to tend to the beach.
By this morning, all that was left to do down at the lake was a little prescribed burn between the beach and boat docks. Having waited to start yesterday’s work until the rain was done, it was almost time for dinner when we finished raking out the sand.
Today is just the opposite in terms of weather as the morning has been dry thus far but there is a mass of precipitation heading our way. I keep getting warnings on my phone about lightning in the vicinity of Wintervale. That weather will reach Hayward a couple hours later.
We are going to wait for the rain to pass before heading out to finish pulling wild growth from the path of our forest labyrinth. The moisture will make the job easier in terms of the pulling plants but decidedly messier in terms of the footing.
There might be a card game with family relations materializing to fill the indoor portion of our day.
It feels a lot like a holiday weekend at the lake. Oh, did I forget to mention the fabulous meals we have been indulging in, both breakfasts and dinners? Yeah, that kind of family time at the lake.
Experience dictates, wet starts don’t automatically spoil the rest of a day’s activities..
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Cobweb Covered
They accumulate in every nook and cranny in our utility room. Cobwebs that rival haunted-looking abandoned buildings everywhere. That room in our basement is neither abandoned nor haunted but you couldn’t tell by looking at it. Admittedly, the fact that we have been keeping two annoyingly dusty litter boxes in that space has contributed greatly to the ambiance of abandonment. There is a layer of that cement-like dust on every surface. It even clings to the cobwebs to augment their visibility.
Well, it was time for some serious spring cleaning yesterday. The washer/dryer set Cyndie ordered last January is to be delivered today. Tomorrow, our geothermal furnace will receive its annual inspection. We don’t want the service people thinking we are complete degenerates who tolerate the presence of cobwebs in our living space.
I disconnected the old washer and dryer and pulled them away from the wall so we could clean the floor beneath them. As nasty as that was, being covered head to toe with dust and cobweb fragments was more annoying.
We ended up dumping money into our failing clothes washer last year when the lead time for a replacement was teased as being out to 2023. A short time later, the bearings on the drum of the dryer wore out and Cyndie renewed her search for new washer/dryer sets. She found models she wanted available in March of 2022!
We milked the remaining bits of functional life out of the dryer drum as we waited for this day to come.
Best of all, it forced us to get down and dirty, cleaning out the utility room to almost make it a pleasant place to be.
I’ve lobbied to move litter boxes to the basement bathroom since it gets little use these days. Let’s see how much dust gets kicked up in that smaller space.
Showers after yesterday’s utility room cleaning project was complete felt more refreshing than ever. I remember now why we let it get so creepy looking around the edges down there. It’s because it is so unpleasant to clean it up. We tend to repeatedly put it off for some future day.
I hope Pequenita knows how much dust and scattered litter we tolerate to have her live with us. It’s kinda like the number of my messes Cyndie tolerates in letting me live here, too.
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Spring Cleaned
It is with much pride I can report the paddocks are now cleaned of the winter’s-worth accumulation of manure. It only took two and a half wheelbarrow loads. Loads that I will point out were much heavier than usual due to the highly saturated wetness of the droppings.
On top of that, movement of the multiple heavy loads was made particularly more difficult by the soft, slippery, muddy paddock surface highly pockmarked by water-filled hoof divots.
Therefore, my pride over the ignoble accomplishment. It was no easy feat, but that contributes all the more reward to having this spring cleaning job done.
I started while the horses were eating and when Mia finished she came out to join me. For some reason, it is not uncommon for one or another of the horses to take an interest in the wheelbarrow when I am plying my collection skills. It was as if Mia was standing guard while I ventured off in every direction to pick up piles.
It wasn’t until I decided to pause and take a picture of her that I noticed the other three horses had gathered at the waterer in what looked like a meeting of their minds. None of the three showed any urge to drink. They just stood in place for the longest time, facing each other.
As I resumed my spring paddock cleaning, I could hear Mia making contact with the wheelbarrow with her legs. One might assume she was rubbing against the object to scratch an itch except that there was little in the way of rubbing. She would push up against it and then stand stationary until deciding to adjust her position a little and push against it again and just stand.
Eventually, since there was a lot of old, wet manure and I work rather slowly, Mia began to get sleepy.
The ambient outdoor sounds and my methodical plodding/squishing to and fro, frequently tapping the fork against the edge of the wheelbarrow to release the messes I picked up, became a white noise that seemed to lull the horses into drowsiness. The other three were still standing together at the waterer, looking equally sleepy.
My stopping to take another picture of Mia as her eyes drooped broke the spell. By not continuing to walk around and periodically tap the wheelbarrow, I changed the routine sound of their white noise. Mia noticed instantly.
It was as if she was looking at me to convey, “Why did you stop and become quiet?”
Maybe she didn’t want me taking a picture of her muddy appearance with her eyes half-closed.
Yesterday afternoon, when I was cleaning up the day’s new manure, I discovered the next challenge for the wet weeks ahead will be differentiating between new manure piles and mud pushed up by a heavy hoof.
Keeping paddocks pristine is definitely an imperfect science.
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Satisfying Progress
It’s not all that hard, but oh, so satisfying to finally buckle down and give home equipment the annual maintenance inspection it deserves. Yesterday, we did that for our variety of carts and wheelbarrows.
Just like so many manuals often instruct, periodically checking bolts for tightness, adding air to tires, and greasing moving parts proved to be a well-deserved exercise. I found one missing a nut and one had lost both nut and bolt. As is usual in the spring, all tires needed air, but one tire was practically flat.
With our wheelbarrows in renewed shape for heavy duty, we put them to work hauling things and old, moldy hay out of the hay shed.
It almost looks like new and is prepped and ready to receive any hay that may be warranted for feeding the horses before our pastures have sprouted eight new inches of spring growth.
Just like taking care of regular maintenance on equipment is well advised, periodically giving barn and hay shed a thorough going over is worth it whether or not you have the incentive like we are currently enjoying. The effort uncovered several wasps nests we were able remove, which will force them to start over from scratch.
The progress of cleaning up the hay shed was even more satisfying than the wheelbarrows. That’s an excellent motivator for the next target of our attention: the barn.
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Clutter Rearranging
With the weather finally making a turn for the better, yesterday Cyndie spoke about possibly cleaning up in the garage to find gardening tools. The May labyrinth Peace Walk is only two weeks away, and she wants to trim back the winter-kill on the plants before the big day.
I spent the morning rearranging the gigantic winter manure pile in the paddock, while she brushed the shedding horses as they munched hay. They are definitely ready to be done with their winter coats.
I hope that means they know the cold temperatures are done for the season.
After lunch, we started poking around in the garage. One thing led to another and pretty soon we found ourselves into a full-fledged spring cleaning effort. The kind that uncovers boxes of things that haven’t been touched since we moved in.
I finally got around to sweeping sawdust off the yard tools stand which had been there since 2014 when we had carpenters build the storage room in our basement. That’s four years of not bothering, for those keeping score.
They did the majority of sawing in the garage, and everything got covered in dust, but that tool stand was right in the line of fire and was buried. With all the rakes, shovels, pruners, loppers, and brushes hanging on the portable stand, the sawdust was deemed harmless and not worth the time.
My Achilles heel of order happens to be flat surfaces. After much of the garage clutter had been pulled out and sorted, Cyndie took advantage of our momentum and went after the workbench in the back corner that is a catch-all to a monumental degree.
Old fluorescent light bulbs, some associated fixtures, screws and brackets left over from purchased assemblies, a broken staple gun, boxes, bags, gloves, old shoes, metal rulers I didn’t know I had, an electronic work light I don’t remember.
It’s great to dig into all of this stuff, but the questions that lead to things landing on that flat surface in the first place still remain. Do we throw away or keep? If we keep, where to put it that will be of any value to us in the future? If we throw, how to dispose of the electronic or hazardous items than can’t go in our weekly trash bin?
Unfortunately, way too much of the stuff that we cleaned out of the garage yesterday made its way down to the shop, where the flat surfaces are now doubly cluttered.
The house garage now looks pretty nice, but it wasn’t really a great clutter busting effort in the end.
It was clutter rearranging.
But it’s a start.
We need to go prune some plants in the labyrinth. The shop clean up will be a project for another day, hopefully sooner than in four years.
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Hazardous Conditions
Yesterday, while working outside for long hours in the spring wind, we exposed ourselves to enough tree pollen to cause significant irritation to our delicate tissues. I think I also successfully altered the weather to shut down precipitation here for some time.
While my nose dripped at an ever-increasing rate, I built a barrier of old, moldy hay bales in the trees by our uphill neighbor’s corn field.
During heavy rain, the water comes off that field in a torrent and washes sediment onto our property. Lately, it has started to fill in a drainage trench beside our driveway.
Oddly enough, I actually wanted it to rain today, so I could see if my creation worked as intended, but the forecast shows no precipitation expected in the days ahead.
Given that, I guess my project worked. It has stopped the sediment from pouring into our trench, hasn’t it?
While I was working in the tangled bramble of uncontrolled growth that forms the border between our property and that cultivated field to the north of us, I decided to finally address a remnant of rusted barbed wire fencing that had been swallowed by a tree.
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The tree had long ago been cut off, leaving a stump that was about the height of a fence post. Made sense, since the barbed wire ran through the tree, it was already functioning as a fence post.
Removing the rusted fencing was made easier by the fact the tree was rotting to pieces. So much of it came apart simply by prying at it with one of the old fence posts that I found myself struggling near the end, to finish it off in the same manner. Eventually, logic, and my increasingly irritating allergic reactions to pollen, led me to hasten the task by way of the chain saw.
The area looks like it has been through a serious spring cleaning now, with the added benefit of opening up visibility to the area where water flows off the neighbor’s field. It is easier to see if the barrier I built is doing the job of keeping sediment out of our ditch.
Sneeze. Cough. Drip. Stinging blink. It’s the hazardous working conditions of spring!
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Forest Cleaning
It wasn’t too muddy beyond our trails, among the leaves carpeting our woods, so we took advantage of the favorable weather and did some “forest-keeping” yesterday. Since we were already picking up the branches I had pruned from trees, we got inspired to keep going and clean up some of the years of accumulated fallen limbs and dead growth.
It’s like magic. Once you decide to start picking up branches, there suddenly becomes more branches deserving to be picked up.
We collected a wide variety of them into piles at the side of our trail, to make it easy for chipping later. We can grind them up right where they lay and spread them out to pave the trail for better footing during the muddy season.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could bring the tractor in there now? But the ground is too soft for the time being.
Timing is everything.
While picking up some branches that had lain there for years, I found myself wondering how I would know when enough was enough. It looked really good in the areas we had cleared, but I felt a desire to avoid trying to make it too pristine.
Cyndie agreed with me that we should seek a good balance of making it look well-tended, while maintaining a certain amount of natural character from the few oddities of limbs or saplings that grow askew or have reason to fall.
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Relative Something 