Posts Tagged ‘spring weather’
Week Apart
At the risk of belaboring the point, here are two images of our home, one week apart:
Sunday, March 15
Sunday, March 22
The temperature swing from Saturday to yesterday was a drop of more than 40 degrees. March weather can be dizzying. I won’t deny an enduring urge to stay snuggled in bed instead of getting up to slog through all the mud on our trails and in the paddocks.
Thank goodness we’ve got the horses to warm our hearts, no matter what version of early spring weather is dished out. They don’t let the mud underfoot bother them. No, they consider it a valuable asset for skin and hair treatments.
Cyndie found that two of them were ready to have their caked-on hair brushed out, while the other two preferred to keep wearing their mud packs. To each their own.
A week from now, it will just as easily be the other way around.
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Weather Swings
What a remarkable difference a week can make this time of year. Last Sunday, we were being blasted by a blizzard that disrupted much of normal life for a day or two. Elysa was supposed to fly home from Florida on that Sunday, but after her flight was canceled, the next available seat on a plane was the following Thursday. Cyndie and Marie were able to make their scheduled flight on the Monday after the storm, but reported that a fellow who had a first-class seat on a canceled flight ended up sitting behind them in the cramped back of their plane.
Yesterday, we enjoyed record-setting warmth with temperatures in the upper 70s (F) that forced us into T-shirts to cope. Overnight, everything swung back in the other direction, and we bundled up against the wind chill to tend to the horses this morning.
The swift change back to chilly air had the horses a little “hangry” when we showed up at the barn. Even though they most often demonstrate impressive patience with us when we are going through the paces of our feeding routine, there are days when they clearly communicate their wishes for us to deliver with a little more urgency.
Yesterday’s beautiful weather was ideal for our adventure in St. Paul with Barb and Mike. After a short walk around Landmark Plaza and Rice Park, we had burgers at Herbies, where I was able to catch the third period and overtime victory by the Wild over Dallas on their many TV screens.
Our dinner location was strategically chosen because it is right next door to the Ordway, where we had tickets to see Classic Albums Live for the third time since we discovered them.
We were thoroughly wowed by this concept the first two times we saw them performing Abbey Road and Sticky Fingers. Last night’s crew performing the Eagles’ Greatest Hits 1971-1975 came up a little short of the level of perfection we had enjoyed the first two times. Still, the concept is brilliant, and the entertainment value is top-notch.
Now I can switch back to the March Madness basketball games mode. I’ll need to catch up on what I missed yesterday and prepare for the women’s Gopher team playing their second round game today. Staying indoors to watch sports on TV is a lot easier to justify when the weather isn’t so inviting outdoors.
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Mia Wins
Looks like Mia won that round. We awoke to a moderate blanket of snow covering most everything, with temperatures hovering in the upper 30s (F). Mia was a little wet, but not soaking, and showed no sign of being too cold.
I couldn’t help sensing a bit of cockiness in her attitude, but I suspect that is pure projection on my part. She adamantly demonstrated she did not want to be covered, and the weather ended up being much less severe than what I had expected.
Touché.
The other thing I didn’t expect yesterday was for the sky to clear so completely and the sunshine to make the snow disappear from everywhere but the shadows.
Wednesday is the day we roll our trash and recycling bins down to the end of the driveway, so I collected all the trash I could find in the house and barely came up with half a bag. With Cyndie out of town for the previous week, there hasn’t been much activity in the kitchen. I haven’t made any purchases of packaged products. Didn’t need to replace the furnace filter.
I don’t know what we usually produce for garbage in a week, but it’s rarely less than a couple of bags. I took it as an opportunity to seek out some worthy items lying around that deserved to be jettisoned. Might as well take advantage of the available space.
The thought crossed my mind that I should contact the trash hauler to seek a discount for being conscientious customers who strive to minimize what we put into the waste stream. Figuring they would be unlikely to humor me and honor such a request, I went the other direction, digging up odd miscellany to fill the bin and make the driver’s trip worthy.
I found an old, practically ancient bicycle helmet with styrofoam so long out of date it was not safe. I emptied the trash container in the shop and also the one in the barn.
Leaving the bin by the road, I had mixed feelings. The decluttering urge was rekindled and gave me a sense of satisfaction to be getting things tossed that don’t warrant being kept. At the same time, it did feel like a loss to be arbitrarily increasing trash that goes into the waste stream just because there was space in the bin.
It would sure help if the trash hauler charged less for those of us who hardly fill the bin.
This morning, I plan to offer Mia a chance to wear a rain sheet before the next round of predicted precipitation starts to fall later in the day. If she accepts, I’ll take it as a sign she understands the coming weather better than I do.
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Muddy Mia
In the middle of my housekeeping task under the barn overhang yesterday afternoon, I suddenly heard great splashing sounds. I had to step around the three horses surrounding me to see what was going on. It was Mia. She decided to go swimming in Paddock Lake before their dinner.
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She came right up afterwards, but oddly showed no patience for eating feed out of a bucket. She wandered out into the back pasture. She has always been sort of the odd horse out of the herd, but lately, Mia is behaving like quite the loner. The other three appear to be just fine with that and show little stress over her frequent solo departures.
I left her bucket hanging in the usual spot and went about my business. Eventually, I spotted her back to have a bite or two, but she didn’t stay. It has me missing the days when they voraciously gobbled every last morsel of their servings. There is something unsettling about animals choosing not to eat food served to them.
Mia’s mud bath appears to be just the beginning of the messiness awaiting us in the days ahead. We’ve enjoyed two days without new precipitation, and while many areas are wetter than ever, the high ground shows a hint of drying out.
I’ve grown fond of being able to see where we are stepping on walks recently, but the next few days look like the ground could be covered with snow again. Slushy snow, one source predicts. That hint of drying out will soon be a thing of the past.
Oh, joy.
Look at that! John is showing signs of losing his passion for all things snow-related.
I must be getting old.
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Season Swing
The pendulum of spring weather has swung decidedly in the direction of summer in the last few dry, sunny days. The forecast for our area was in the upper 70sF, but the reality yesterday had us well into the 80s. There are still plenty of tree leaves that are still in the bud phase but it felt like summer is considering an early visit.
Did someone mention trillium? It is an extra thrill whenever we spot some on our property in places where we definitely didn’t transplant them.
Yesterday morning, I noticed one right beside one of our busier trails. Way to go, ants! (Ants spread the seed pods.)
The higher daytime heat has our grasses growing significantly from one day to the next. Mowing is once again becoming an almost daily activity for me. On Monday, when I parked the riding mower and pulled the six batteries for charging, I was shocked to find that one of them gave me a flashing red LED of failure. I called the service number to report my problem, and the recording on their end said the call center had closed early for the day. I wonder how many days that message runs.
As Asher and I were on our way back from feeding horses yesterday morning, I stopped to grab the battery from the shop. However, before doing that, I plugged it in one more time to confirm the failure still existed. Good thinking, John. This time it worked! I’m pretty glad the call center went home early on Monday.
While I did some much-needed mowing in the heat of the afternoon, I left Asher in the house on his own. Cyndie was visiting her mom in the Cities. When I finished, I gave Asher a chance to go for a walk. We made it about halfway around the property, and he decided the shade of the evergreen tree at the end of the driveway looked too good to pass up.
I chose not to join him on the ground because I have had wood ticks crawling up my legs much too frequently for my liking over the last few days. The ticks must be enjoying the arrival of this warm weather. There was no reason to rush Asher because I knew a secret that he didn’t.
Cyndie was going to be coming over the hill within five minutes or so, and knowing how much Asher loves riding in cars, I figured Cyndie would be happy to give him a lift back to the house. This time of year, the house holds the cool evening air nicely throughout the day while the outdoor temperature heats up.
Every day without new rain brings us closer to putting in posts for the shade sail in the paddocks. Our current target day for the work is next week on the 14th.
I have a feeling the horses will be wishing for more shade every day until then.
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Willow Buds
The maple sap should be flowing this weekend with our overnight temps dropping below freezing and daytime rising above. Yesterday, we noticed the big willow tree was looking rather anxious to be getting on with spring.
It inspired me to take a closer look at the buds getting ready to pop.
I sure hope the tree knows what it’s doing. Growing things don’t tend to waste time when the hours of sun increase in spring, and many of our trees look like they want to burst forth with leaves.
It breaks my heart when the weather messes with their timing and a hard freeze ends up killing new buds.
Reminds me what it’s like to have tariffs mess with my investment portfolio.
Instead of paying attention to that, because if I think about the state of things beyond the borders of our property it makes me cry, Cyndie brought out her bird-identifying app and we let her phone listen to all the birdsongs during our morning walk.
Of course, the song that was most prominent and wonderfully dramatic stopped as soon as she pulled out her phone. All the regulars were in full form but there were others of which I wasn’t aware and we couldn’t officially confirm.
Here’s a list of all the birds identified:
American Robin
Northern Cardinal
Blue Jay
American Crow
Red-winged Blackbird
Northern Flicker
Song Sparrow
Brown-headed Cowbird
Dark-eyed Junco
(later in the day… Red-Tailed Hawk)
I’d like to get a look at that Cowbird if it was truly present. We saw very few of these feathered friends listed while walking Asher. Without the use of an app for identification, it would all simply be the background soundtrack to our great outdoors.
Since we hadn’t made it to the barn yet, no pigeons were detected during the morning stroll but they are still around. Just not nesting in the eaves of the barn anymore.
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Peace Meditations
’Twas the first Saturday in May
And all through the labyrinth
Plenty of creatures were stirring
Especially the burrowing pests
Today is World Labyrinth Day. Despite the first Saturday of May always arriving too soon for our beautiful growing perennials in the labyrinth garden and the trees surrounding it to have fully blossomed, we still try to tidy it up as much as possible for the annual peace walk at one o’clock.
I had the electric riding mower out and about again yesterday in an attempt to knock down the outrageously tall and thick areas of overgrown grass in multiple places, despite several of them holding puddles of water and most of the soil being too saturated to support the tire traffic.
I had to swallow my pride a couple of times when the spinning wheels turned what had been nice grass turf into wide smears of muddy skid marks. I deemed it tolerable damage in this case, given the difficult situation we were in to get ready on the only day left when it wasn’t raining.
It’s too bad the prediction for this morning is at an 80% chance of more rain. Even if precipitation pauses around the middle of the day, we will likely be walking on the equivalence of wet sponges while meditating for peace on Earth.
The concept of creating a rolling wave of energy around the world by having people participate at 1:00 p.m. in each of their local time zones is an inspired one, in my opinion. I suggest that the practice needn’t be limited to people walking labyrinths. You can do this wherever you are.
At one o’clock [your time] this afternoon, pause for a time and rally your mental energies toward a focus on the possibilities of peace in every form imaginable. Heck, if you are reading this after the appointed hour, go ahead and do the mental exercise anyway. What have we got to lose?
Give Peace a chance.
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Oops, Snowy
You’d think I would know better. In my post yesterday I gushed about the fact we had dodged the snowfall that places north of us were getting. Sure it was a day of messy, wet precipitation with temperatures hovering so close to freezing it felt challenging to set foot outside. But, at least it wasn’t snowy, I wrote.
Such a naive suburban fool. (Tim Curry lyric, Paradise Garage, 1979.)
Reality was hard to ignore this morning.
Thank goodness, Cyndie offered to allow me to stay in bed while she did horse chores this morning. This is the first time she has taken on the morning routine all by herself since she broke her ankle last November. I’m experiencing a feverish reaction to my shingles vaccination shot administered yesterday morning.
On Thursday, I received notice via email that it was time for my annual health checkup with my doctor. Using their online system, I found an available appointment for the following day and filled out all the questionnaires remotely in advance. I was in and out with ease in about 45 minutes but walked away with a jab in each arm. One was to draw blood for my glucose and cholesterol level checks and the other was the first of two shingles shots.
I am thoroughly impressed by the efficiency of our clinic. They sent notice before the day was out that my test results were already available to view. Blood glucose and cholesterol numbers continue to run a little high, which is normal for me, but I am pleased that all of the cholesterol readings had improved since a year ago. My methods are slow but progress in the right direction serves as validation that my good habits are paying off over time.
Knock on wood.
I don’t want my choice to write about the good fortunes of my health status to go the way of my rejoicing over not getting more snow in April.
Who knows what tomorrow might bring? How about we visualize sunshine and warmth for a little change of pace for a few days. And continued good health, too!
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Not Snowy
At least it hasn’t been snowy on the ranch the last two days. It has been rainy, however. Wednesday night we experienced a thunder and lightning storm that had me sounding stressed in my slumber. Cyndie spoke soothingly and I recall hearing her voice, but not what I had been dreaming at that moment. She said I quieted right down and my breathing soon returned to normal sleeping mode.
When we stepped out in the morning to feed the horses, I asked Cyndie if she had arranged the rocking chairs under the tree by our driveway.
She said she hadn’t touched them. That meant the way they were laying in the image above was accomplished by the wind. Previously, the chairs were upright, sitting side by side, and facing downhill.
The chilly rain is keeping the horses under the overhang space where they can munch hay while staying out of the wind and keeping dry. When they aren’t chomping bites of hay from the net bags, it appears they are using them as a surface to rub against. I found a mat of horse hair coating the outer surface of one.
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This serves as a good incentive for us to get our newly braided strands of old-cut twine wrapped on one of the posts for them to rub. We are making decent progress in converting individual lengths to reusable bundles!
It’s not as fun to do braiding when it’s so cold and wet but while waiting for the horses to finish the food in their pans, I twist up a section to pass a few extra minutes. When it is sunny and warm, sitting under the overhang braiding while the horses watch is a lot more fun and we get a lot more done at once.
Before the rain got intense, Cyndie and I stepped out to pull our custom netting from the top of the landscape pond. It’s proved to be a convenient way to keep leaves out of the pond over the off-season.
I hadn’t gotten around to putting the pump and filter back in before the rain picked up. I ended up moving on to something else and the pond stuff sat out in the rain for a couple of days before I remembered about it all and moved the buckets back into the garage –after pouring out the water they had collected. It reminded us to put out our rain gauges.
The last few days of spring weather have been messy, limiting our outdoor accomplishments, but at least none of the precipitation coming down on us has fallen as snow. Thank goodness for that.
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Getting Excited
Straight out of the “fake it ’till you make it” playbook, I am pretending to be excited about how nice the weather will be once the weather stops being so dang crappy. Cold, wet, & windy are not my favorite conditions to be doing anything outside in April. Cold that hovers so close to the freezing point that some materials turn solid while the rest just get slippery, muddy, or miserably anything-but-frozen, is a surefire recipe for grumpy.
Not that I am getting grumpy. No, not at all [humph!]. I’m really excited! Just because the horses are acting all grumpy over the conditions this week doesn’t mean I’ve been influenced to the point of wanting to yell at Mix for being such an a**hole unkind member of the herd.
Was that suspiciously specific?
I mean, who runs other horses off and then comes back, turns herself around, and poops where the food was served? Who would do such a thing?
Mix.
After she kicks the fence separating her from Light.
We ended up splitting the herd in two in hopes of reducing intra-herd shenanigans that tend to leave one horse [read: Mia] out in the rain. I think the separation made Mix grumpier because it left only one horse as a target for her grumpiness. She and Light began to have their own little spat from either side of the fence between paddocks.
I’m getting excited for the day when they all mellow out because it is warm and dry again. Honestly, I’m finding it a struggle to remember that it reached 80°F for a few days last week. Seems like so long ago now.
The tiny wildflower blossoms are probably thinking the same thing.
Those blossoms are few and far between so I guess the majority of growing things didn’t fall for that unusual burst of warmth that came and went like a mystic dream. I’m nurturing my ongoing excitement for the real warmup of the season that will allow for vigorous raking of our grass areas around the house.
Opportunities to play with my new mower won’t be far beyond that.
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Relative Something 