Baby Birds
While I was pushing the hand mower in front of the house, I noticed a lot of chirpy bird activity. Eventually, I spotted a momma bird with something in her mouth, coaxing a youngster that had wings to flop, but not to fly. I figured she was trying to draw her away from the danger zone, which was a good thing, so I just kept right on mowing.
Suddenly, to my temporary horror, a pair of those floppy wings emerged from the back of the mower. I had just rolled over another one. Luckily, it must have kept its head down, and the mower height was set high enough to clear the little one. I suspect it was just as surprised as I was. I decided to leave it alone, intending to check on it later.
When I came out after lunch to finish mowing, the little bird was nowhere to be found. I took that as a good sign.
After a little more mowing, I again began to hear more of that urgent chirping. This time I knew to look around for one of those flightless flappers. It showed up a few passes away in the longer grass, snuggled in contentedly, chirping as if to tell the momma it was just fine. Mom showed little in the way of agreement.
As I closed the distance on it with two more passes, the little bird showed no sign of wanting to move. I stopped the mower and walked over to pick it up if I had to. I didn’t have to. When I bent over with my gloved hands cupped to scoop it up, it suddenly found its legs, and with those stubby little wings flopping, it hopped and scooted far enough out of the danger zone that I was able to finish mowing.
At least I didn’t have to worry about Asher showing predatory interest in the flightless babies. He was in the house this whole time. Why would I make him stay indoors on such a beautiful day? He was serving his penalty minutes for misconduct. Conduct unbecoming of a good dog. Beyond-property roaming.
While I was tending to the piles in the compost area, he was on his best behavior. He followed me as I pushed a filled wheelbarrow up to our strawberry patch, where Cyndie asked me to leave a few loads for her to distribute later. He followed me back again and sat up tall, watching the horses as I worked.
When he didn’t show up on my last run to the garden and back, I called for him. I walked around the house and rechecked the barn and looked in all his favorite spots to recline. I begrudgingly made my way to the end of the driveway, pushing the beep tone on his collar. When I reached the road, I found him just cresting the hill, trotting toward me as a pickup truck approached from the other direction.
The truck slowed, Asher looked at it, and it passed without incident. I made him march directly to the front door of the house, no distractions allowed.
A smart person might stick to their guns and live up to the plan of leashing him when distracted with a task. Obviously, my hope springs eternal.
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Doomed Willow
While the willow tree “that should absolutely be dead” inside the small paddock continues to support enough of a crown of new growth to cast a reasonable shadow that the horses are so fond of, the massive beauty just a short distance away has now lost another significant percentage of its whole.
Last year, a huge portion sheared off under the weight of sopping wet branches after a soaking rain. We were concerned that the smaller limb next to that wound, which was leaning at a risky angle, might fall soon after, but it has held fast. The section that came loose yesterday was a complete surprise. It was on the other side and stood straight up before falling.
I’m afraid the remaining portion of the tree still standing is probably doomed to fail, too. I should probably chop off all that’s left and let it start over, as the undead one in the paddock has done.
The wind wasn’t even very gusty yesterday, which feeds my doubt about the integrity of the wood that remains. The tree now has gaping wounds on two opposing sides, poor thing.
I’m beginning to feel we are cursed when it comes to our large trees suffering damage of significant proportions. Only one of the four incidents since last summer was related to a storm gust.
Here’s hoping we don’t soon find out what happens when the next serious storm arrives to test the endurance of the rest of the trees in our little forest.
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Trimmer Shrapnel
It was after I had finished, soaked in sweat after two hours straight holding the trigger on the trimmer, that I noticed the slight sensation of grit in my mouth as I was walking back to the shop. Great. How much E. coli bacteria from animal feces had I just spattered all over myself? Maybe none. But the thought crossed my mind.
The work is so rewarding, though. Recovering a walking path wide enough to drive the Grizzly ATV on, clearing the rampant tall growth that leans over and covers the trail, makes for a beautiful sight. In the morning, when everything is wet with dew, taking Asher on a stroll along that path has been leaving pants and boots soaking.
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Now we can get back to enjoying our Forest Bathing strolls among the trees, basking in the cooler, cleaner air on hot and smoky days without feeling like we are doing jungle bushwhacking. However, it won’t prevent the all-too-common occurrences of walking into unseen spiderwebs draped across the path. We try to take turns each morning being the person in front, to give each other a break from the skeevy wiggle of suddenly feeling a web across our faces and strands across our arms.
I consider the trail shown in the image above to be one of our great accomplishments in our first year here. Most of the wide trails already existed when we bought the place, but at this spot, there was a dead end. With a goal of avoiding cutting down any large trees, we opened this pathway from the thick growth visible on either side, creating a route that allowed us to ultimately walk the full rectangle of our property border.
Today, it looks like the trail has been there just as long as all the other portions.
And the only reason they are still there and open is because we continue to hack away at the vigorous growth that strives to take over any open terrain.
Another of our labors of love, tending to our little sanctuary of fields and forest that we call Wintervale Ranch.
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Unhealthy Adjustment
It is rather sad that I stepped out the door this morning and thought the air wasn’t so bad. It’s all in what you compare it to, and since we have been faced with a lot thicker smoke lately, the improvement today seemed less scary. The telltale headache I am enduring now is indicative of the level of unhealthy air quality our various sources have been warning us about.
Our location is teetering on the edge of much worse air, but a long way away from truly clean air, if there is such a thing anymore.
My plan for today involves an intentional avoidance of heavy labor outdoors, which will be greatly enhanced by the indoor entertainment of the final, Championship match of the World Cup. Spain? Argentina? I don’t have a guess.
I suspect it will be a much more tense performance than yesterday’s 3rd-place match between France and England. They provided a spectacular thrill with the many attacks and an exceptional number of goals. I could see today’s Final easily concluding with a score of 1-nil.
That’s a no-lose prediction because I would be very happy to be wrong and have goals being scored by the very impressive football athletes on both sides.
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Stage 14
I’m stealing my writing time this morning to watch a bike race that is happening in the mountains in the east of France, where sunshine has been mixed with brief downpours and thunder and lightning.
Exciting!
Maybe the World Cup third-place match between England and France this afternoon will be just as exciting. I hope I’ll have the mowing finished in time to watch it.
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Indoor Projects
Staying indoors, away from the smoke, was our priority yesterday, and it led to some interesting projects around the house. I’m trying to find items I may have stored in various locations over the last ten years. There’s a lot of guesswork involved. One interesting result from my searching has been finding other things I didn’t know still existed, like 40-year-old photos and an odd document or two.
I pulled out an old hard drive in a search for videos and found that an internal connector had broken loose from the circuit board where the USB cable connects. That’s one I probably won’t be able to fix myself, but I did find out how to get the plastic cover off by searching the internet.
It didn’t get as oppressively hot yesterday, but Cyndie still provided the horses with some extra cooling methods. Since they are stuck breathing the smoky air, we can at least help take the edge off the heat. Mia is still the one most likely to take advantage of the shade sail protection. You can see in the photo above that Mix is in the vicinity, but on the other side of the fence.
We’ve had some big storm clouds billow up nearby, but they’ve been just to our east and moving away from us. A rainstorm would be a welcome way to scrub the air and bring down temperatures a little bit. Unfortunately, the ten-day forecast doesn’t currently have any hints of rain at all. What it does have is some days with high temperatures not even reaching the 80s (F). Seventy-degree summer days are not something you will hear me complain about.
By the end of the day yesterday, it seemed like our air was getting a little better. There is a glimmer of hope for improvement moseying its way in. I’m hoping to get back outside today to do some trail trimming through the woods. It’s getting to be so jungle-like that a few of the pathways have become hard to detect.
That’s not very different than the hunting I’ve been doing in search of things I stashed somewhere in the house ten years ago.
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Stress Compounded
As if the high heat wasn’t enough, we now have the added stress of wildfire smoke dropping our air quality to unhealthy levels. The combination of environmental issues simultaneously becoming problematic gives the impression that we are living the very apocalyptic catastrophes climate scientists have been warning about.
I was indoors at a meeting in Eden Prairie when the visible smoke settled over the region last night. The sight of the thick haze that greeted us as we walked outside shocked us. Over the more than an hour drive to get home, I felt increasingly ill, developing a headache that increased in intensity with each passing mile.
The smell was clearly identifiable as wood smoke when I reached home. Cyndie had been offering the horses some cold carrots and a sweetened block of ice to munch on to give them some distraction from the heat, but there isn’t much we can do for them about the smoke.
As the sun was nearing our horizon, Cyndie found the herd out grazing on the hay field, looking like they were coping fine enough. That takes some pressure off our concerns about whether we are doing enough for them.
If extreme heat and wildfire smoke are something we need to adjust to as a new norm, I don’t want to find out what the next compounding stressor will eventually be that joins them.
Will weird coincidences start to occur? I experienced a freaky one yesterday.
I drove halfway to my meeting and parked my car to ride the rest of the way with someone else. In my car, I had been listening to my music library on my phone through Bluetooth. It doesn’t turn off when I shut off the engine. It stops playing when I open the car door, leaving an earworm of the song in my head as I walk away.
The song was “Times Like These,” by the Foo Fighters.
When my friend started her car, that same song started playing, from the same point where my earworm memory was looping. I grabbed my phone and looked at it, asking if my phone could have possibly connected to Bluetooth instantly when she fired the ignition.
She said, “That’s KQ.” (KQRS-FM, 92.5 MHz)
I tapped “skip” on my Apple Music just to make sure it wasn’t my phone.
Nope. It was her radio station.
What are the odds of that? I gotta say, that freaked me out a little bit.
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Cumulative Stress
From the National Weather Service:
Hot temperatures and high humidity may cause heat illnesses. Prolonged heat waves lead to cumulative heat stress for those who cannot adequately cool down and recover each night. Cumulative heat stress significantly increases the risk of heat exhaustion and heat stroke as time goes on.
Cyndie and I enjoy the luxury of geothermal air-conditioning that allows us to cool down and recover every night, but the horses don’t have that same luxury. We have been watching them closely during this current heat wave. So far, they appear to be coping with the hot weather just fine. Still, we try to do what we can to bring them some relief.
We already have had fans placed under the overhang where they like to stand, mainly as a way to reduce the number of flies bothering them, but fans work just as well to offer cooling, too. Although at the temperatures we are experiencing this week, it makes it more like a blast furnace to blow such hot air at them.
As an alternative, yesterday we put out a sprinkler to spritz the air with a cool water mist.
Mia was the only one to show interest. She approached very tentatively at first, then put one foot into the spray, and then the other. When she put her face down into the mist, I knew she was liking it. Eventually, she turned all the way around and let the spray reach each of her back feet.
If they didn’t cool off enough overnight last night, we’ll turn the spray on again today to see if the other’s level of interest changed.
The Extreme Heat Warning lasts until Thursday night, and we are now under an Air Quality Alert through Thursday as well. I do miss the luxury of having a lake out our door to immerse myself in for an instantaneous cooldown. Thankfully, stepping into the air-conditioned house works almost just as well.
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Hot Mowing
One way of looking at the crazy amount of overgrown grass (and weeds) that were waiting for us upon our return home made it seem almost disastrous and barely manageable. There was an Extreme Heat Warning in place that dampened my spirit about rushing out to begin mowing as soon as we unpacked the car.
I dawdled a little bit, putting some things away and grabbing a bite to eat, but the mowing really needed to get underway. I wanted to make immediate progress in catching up. To my great relief, when I set out to begin at probably the warmest time of the afternoon, it didn’t feel entirely overwhelming. On the riding mower, there isn’t a lot of effort needed. Rolling along actually augmented the light breeze at times, increasing the cooling effect. We also have a decent amount of shade from trees around most of the areas I mow, and that definitely helped to limit the heat stress.
All that remains to be cut today is the labyrinth and the areas around the house. I was able to complete 2/3rds of the total mowing by heading back out into the heat after dinner last night. It looks like someone lives here again.
Another way to look at all the overgrown grass is that it doesn’t require an unreasonable amount of work to get it back under control again.
Asher showed great affection for having us home and sat with me at our lookout spot after I finished mowing for the day, so we could survey how good everything looked freshly cut. We watched the horses for a while, and I thought Mix was moving a little better than she was in videos we received a few days ago. She is limping again, like something is hurting one of her back legs.
Cyndie took a picture of Mia (with a fly mask on) and Swings out in the hay field grass. At that time, Mix was staying in the paddock, and Light appeared to be remaining with her to keep her company. By the time Asher and I were watching them, they were all moving around together inside the large paddock to graze.
For the rest of the summer, we’ll only be away at the lake over 4-day blocks of time, so I shouldn’t have this problem of falling behind on the mowing again for the rest of the growing season. That is, if I plan correctly and the weather cooperates.
There’s still some catching up I need to do in the manure composting operation, but that can happen after I’m done with all the mowing. Even though that work occurs in a shaded area, the heat of the composting piles greatly compounds the heat stress of hot, humid days. If I don’t get to it first thing in the morning, it will probably wait until the next day. I can’t put it off too long because the horses just keep producing more by the hour, regardless of how hot it gets.
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Relative Something 