Posts Tagged ‘spring’
Growing Green
We don’t even recognize this brave creature that has sprouted from the earth at an alarming rate of growth in the last week. I am amazed that it is doing so despite our frequent harsh returns to winter. This beauty is exploding forth with a surprising rate of growth whenever it sees more than a few minutes of warm sunshine.
Cyndie says she has a little sign downstairs in a bag that would tell us what it is, but she doesn’t remember off-hand.
When the weather isn’t snowing and freezing, which it has done overnight more times than not lately, the green growing things have been reaching for the sky. The ground is so saturated with water that I shudder at the thought of trying to drive my lawn tractor over the grass, but it is quickly threatening to get long enough to deserve mowing.
Reminds me of the annual dilemma we face with our hay-field. We would like to cut it before it gets so overgrown that the stems get too woody, but when that maturity is developing, the ground is usually still too wet to drive on.
Also, when the tall hay growth gets cut and is laying on the ground for a couple of days to dry, it doesn’t work so well to have the ground be still saturated.
Here is a worm’s-eye view of the back yard that will need cutting soon at the rate it is growing. I wonder what it is like to try mowing a lawn that still has snow on it…
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Snowy Stones
We have been on the roller coaster of spring weather lately, mixing beautiful warm days with blasts of wintery cold. We wake up to snow and it melts by the time the sun gets high. It feels a little crazy-making, but I love the way it looks.
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Spring Storm
Sometimes our spring storms involve rain, but it’s not strange when they come as all snow. Last night, we got the all snow variety.
Let’s review. Last weekend I was adding a bedding of manure around the base of some of our pine trees. It looked like this:
Just days later, a spectacularly defined winter snow storm spread out across the middle of our country and rode right over the top of us.
When I left work in the afternoon, there were hints of snowflake flurries, but nothing showing on the ground. Driving across the metro area, I arrived in the thick of falling flakes, but the roads remained snow-free. It was wet, and my windshield wipers struggled to smear aside the salty spray blowing up from the vehicles around me.
As I came up the driveway, I spotted Dezirea standing in the wet blowing snow, but the other three horses were wisely tucked under the overhang of the barn. Cyndie moved them all inside to their stalls when the snow began to accumulate.
We stoked the fireplace and dined on a gourmet spread of coconut chicken and rice with lentils, barley, and quoting Cyndie’s description, “a whole bunch of other stuff” that she whipped up with her typical professional flair. We watched a fascinating documentary film, “Finding Vivian Maier” that arrived in our mail from Netflix. We stayed cozy and warm while the definitive spring snow storm blustered its beautiful best outside.
This time of year, it is always a laugh to think back to whether a ground-hog saw its shadow, or how long winter would really last. Winter comes and goes in fits. It has been 70° (F) here already, and we’ve had days of greening grass and drying soil. We also have enough snow to look like it’s been here forever and the previous days were simply a dream.
I’ll venture out this morning in the darkness of the early hour, and traverse the miles that go from almost a foot of snow, across several counties to the day-job where it will still look like spring.
Thus is the nature of the narrow gradient of frozen precipitation on the north edge of a late winter/early spring storm in this part of the world.
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Horses Sense
The weather has been a little cantankerous lately, dishing out some horizontal precipitation in strong winds, with temperatures hovering uncomfortable close to the cold freeze-point. The kind of weather that a horse might not particularly appreciate.
I drove home from work on Thursday at a time between showers. The pavement was dry and the overcast sky looked less glum than the rest of the week. When I came over the hill to the first view of our place, there was no one in sight. Over the first rise of our driveway I discovered a distinct absence of horses.
Hmm. I whimsically asked myself if maybe Cyndie had sold them.
Why would they be inside the barn at this hour?
Sometimes the weather at home and the weather at work can be dramatically different, but all indications showed it to be equally dry. It occurred to me that the horses might be making up for the fact we had left them out the night before, when enough windy precipitation showed up that it exceeded their level of tolerance.
We had put them in the barn two nights ago, due to a cold rain, but Wednesday evening they were dry and seemed content with things, so I left them out. My sleep was disturbed later that night by the sound of blustery precipitation —I couldn’t tell if it was rain, sleet, or ice balls— hitting the bedroom window. My first thought was of the poor horses out there with their heads down, enduring the insult.
I asked Cyndie how they were in the morning and she reported a fairly normal routine and appearance. She said they weren’t necessarily dry, but they weren’t chilled-to-the-bone dripping wet, either.
At the same time, Cyndie did have a fascinating report to offer from that afternoon. She had left Delilah in the house and wandered down to be with the horses for the specific intent of listening to what they might have to offer. With a lot of concerns on her mind lately, she wanted to stand among the herd with no other cleaning or feeding agenda as distraction.
It was early in the afternoon, and like I described, not a bad day outside compared to the rest of the week. The message she got from the horses was insistent and unmistakable. They wanted to go inside their stalls. Now.
By the time I arrived home, it looked like nobody lived there. Cyndie was surprised they would ask to be inside so early, but gave them what they wanted.
A short time after I got home, the snow started flying. Sloppy, wet flakes that painted the deck with moisture. The kind of precipitation that a horse would probably be tired of enduring this week.
The kind of weather a horse would have enough sense to get out of if it had a barn for shelter.
All ours had to do was ask.
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Not March
This is not the weather I recognize as occurring in the month of March in the region where I am from. That’s no surprise, since we are breaking records for both highest overnight low temperature, as well as the daytime high for March 8th.
Our back yard looked almost summery in the afternoon sun.
No snow in sight. It felt unnatural. Thinking back just a few years, I was trying to carve drainage paths through the mounds of packed snow on the sides of our driveway in March, for water to drain away.
No such problem this year.
Just to keep us from getting too far ahead of ourselves, the landscape pond is available to remind us that spring doesn’t happen instantaneously, even when it seems like that is exactly what it is doing. There is a solid mass of ice filling the pond still.
Something tells me it won’t last much longer.
When I was a kid, the saying was, “April showers bring May flowers.” I wonder what the March showers will bring in this new climate reality.
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Between Season
Every day this week, on my way home from work, I’ve seen more and more exposed ground due to receding snow cover. Twice, on the way into work, I have driven through new falling snow. This time of year, those light snow showers don’t add much to the snow pack, so we have continued to lose more than we’ve gained.
Cyndie’s daytime view of melted snow
The days have only offered a spattering of minutes where the sun shone through enough to cast definable shadows. The rest of the time it has looked pretty gray outside, and not very conducive to melting much snow. It hasn’t mattered. Forces are at work to create a mystical disappearing act of our snow.
It feels very in-between seasons. We are certainly not getting anything that looks like the winters we have been known for, and we have yet to see enough sunshine to want to put the top down on the convertible and go for a joyride. The snow and ice is no good for winter sports. The dryer ground and inviting warm sunshine of springtime have yet to arrive.
So what are we going to do? We’re gonna head to the lake. One of our favorite house & pet sitters announced her availability for this weekend and we are taking advantage of it to make a rare visit to Big Round Lake. With friends Mike and Barb joining us, we will be exploring creative ways to enjoy the outdoors at a time of year when most of our usual activities are unavailable.
I guess it’s not all that unusual for me to be taking pictures, and that is something for which the ‘between-season’ actually offers extra opportunity. Around home, I keep seeing some amazing natural art where leaves and other dark debris laying on top of the snow will melt intricate outlines of their exact shapes as they make their way toward the ground, multiple times faster than the rest of the snow around them.
I have yet to capture any good photos of this phenomena, because the depth that is a huge feature of the visual is very difficult to convey in the limitations of a 2-dimensional image. The live perspective we get through actually seeing for ourselves is worlds beyond what a lens can offer. Of course, that makes it all the more enticing to want to try.
More significantly, I haven’t gotten any good pictures yet because I have been finding them too late, after I have tromped all over the place and kicked snow on the potential candidates.
So maybe it will be a weekend of photography. That, on top of the always incredible good eating we enjoy, the lounging around a fireplace, and the playing of a few card games while listening to music.
I’m finding myself also between the season of wanting to dig into any real projects that produce worthy results. I’ll save that motivation for a warm and sunny spring day, just in case one of those finally shows up.
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Quintessential Spring
The winter snowmelt was pretty easy to deal with this year, almost to the point of leaving things too dry for a short time. Then we got a few bouts of spring rain and our ground moisture began to show signs of life. Now we are in the classic battle of grass growing so fast that it is hard to keep up with the mowing, and occasional rain storms that hit on the days when it would have been nice to mow before the grass gets too long.
The horses are doing their part to keep things mowed (when we give them time on the grass) munching down the area we have fenced off for an arena.
Since we don’t do any jumping with our herd, we may end up leaving the area in its uneven, sloping natural state. We’ll see how it works for our purposes, once Cyndie actually starts holding some seminars.
The spot we picked for that arena is within the field we have designated for hay, and the narrow lanes that resulted beside it in that corner and along the drainage swale are now isolated from what will be cut and baled. We decided we may as well make it accessible for the horses to “mow.” I just need to put up a short length of fence to contain the horses in that alleyway and keep them from venturing out into the main hay-field.
When I finished mowing the grass yesterday, I spotted the horses already out in part of that space. Cyndie had put up a rudimentary barrier and given them access to one side. I still need to get a more secure version of a temporary fence there, though, as they will certainly challenge it in time, especially as the grass continues to grow more enticing out in the greater field.
In another classic sign of spring, I got a call from my hay supplier on Friday, checking in on how many bales we’d be interested in this year. He sounded a little crestfallen when I told him the much smaller number of bales we felt we would need. Between not wanting to be short and then getting higher yield than we expected from our own field last year, we got ourselves overstocked.
Other spring milestones include my being startled by the first garter snake of the year and the number of rabbits and raccoons visible romping again. Obviously, Delilah can’t find every rabbit’s nest when she is confined to being leashed the majority of time.
The temperatures have been bouncing classically between warm and cool, appropriately mixing at times to create thunderstorms, but so far, this year we are enjoying a perfect spring climate with few unsettling extremes. It is a nice change from the previous two years.
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Flower Blossoms
Our crab apple tree is fuzzy with flowers today, and the giant allium beneath it is making its way to spectacular. The changes at this time of year are noticeable almost by the hour. A little rain, followed by warm sunshine, and growth practically explodes in every direction.
At the same time, I am discovering that we have a few late-blooming trees, maples, I believe, that look dead next to others that have already leafed out completely. This is our third spring here, and I am becoming aware of more and more about our property that escaped my attention the first two years, due to my being overwhelmed by it all. Does that imply I am becoming dulled to some of the glories of this place? That would be sad.
No, I don’t think that is the case, although there are certain aspects of managing 20-acres that tend to take less mental space when you gain the experience of a couple years. Even though I’ve seen trees die every year, I’ve seen so many more sprout, some of them at a surprising rate of growth. I am less inclined to fret over individual incidents now that I have gained the perspective of a few cycles of the growing seasons.
Even the snapping branches during previous storms, which caused me significant trauma to witness at the time, has been revealed to me to be a common and often recoverable situation. I have come across trees in our woods that look to have been severely damaged years ago, but which have simply sprouted new growth off the fractured limb and although funky looking, are functioning as much like a normal tree as all the other damage-free trees around them.
Our late-blooming maple trees are sporting buds now and will catch up in a blink. I don’t have to worry about them, which allows me to better absorb the beauty and wonder of all the blossoms decorating or fields and forest this year.
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Well Fed
When the pendulum of oncoming spring swings away from the snow showers to sunny warmth of surprisingly summer-like days, we are presented with more to do than there are hours in a day. It is a blessing and a curse.
There are areas of our property where the grass is already growing like crazy, forcing me to need to mow the hill behind our house last Thursday before the predicted Friday rain/show showers. The ground is barely dry enough to support the tractor, but I delicately pulled it off. That precipitation turned out to be pretty much a bust and after yesterday’s warm sunshine the grass in others is now looking overdue for a cut.
The horses are in full mode of shedding their winter coats. They don’t wait around for us to take care of brushing them out, resorting to the tried and true method of mutually grooming each other. It is such fine cooperation to behold.
We had a visit from the vet yesterday to get the horses updated on their vaccines. We squeaked in a session of grooming prior to the vet’s arrival so everyone would be looking their best for the doc. Cyndie checked the weight of each horse with a tape measure which provides that translation and we were happy to learn they have all lost some weight since we last checked. The vet says they aren’t where we want them yet, so we have additional work to do. We are hoping the addition of more intentional exercise now that the winter is over will get us the rest of the way to their healthiest weight.
With her parting comment, the vet made a point about the weight of our animals when Cyndie brought Delilah from around the barn where she had been barking for attention. Dr. Lisa said she thought from the bark it sounded like she would be a smaller dog. She reached down to greet Delilah and after putting her hands into Delilah’s thick coat she blurted, “Oh, that isn’t all hair! You are overweight, too!”
Point taken.
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Reality Check
I am going to pause today in my ongoing chronicle of our Guatemalan adventure to provide some perspective that I think will show why I choose to describe our 10 days with the Morales family in such specific day-to-day detail. This is the April reality that we have returned to at our home, latitude 44.7739° N:
You may be able to barely make out the silhouette of our horses in the distance through the falling flakes, but you won’t find any palm trees and I can attest that there was absolutely nothing similar to a balmy Pacific breeze.
Do you blame me for wanting to relive every precious warm moment of that visit with our great friends in their beautiful country? It’s winter-cold here again and the wind is gusting mini-blizzards straight out of the Arctic circle this week!
Seriously, tomorrow I am going right back to describing our last days at the beach house and then our return to Guatemala City in preparation of boarding the flight home. Maybe it’s escapism. I’m not proud. I do it because I can.
Aw, heck. I can’t even wait.
This is what I am talking about…
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Relative Something 