Category Archives: Our Land and Home

Aging, Dogs, Family, Our Land and Home

Life Busting Out All Over. Much Better Than the Alternative.

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Lughnasa                           Waxing Harvest Moon

My thoughts on Enlightenment were cut off mid think by this world, Rigel on an adventure outside the gate.  Now I’ve secured the gate (I think.) until it can be repaired and I’m about to return to research for the Liberalism series.

We have many tiny strands of life breaking out:  Kate’s spine, Rigel’s venturesome spirit, Vega’s big gallumphing crashing presence, a gnarly conceptual piece that needs to be written by September 6th, the oncoming harvest, driveway seal coating on September 8th and the next round of Ecological Gardens work starting on September 9th.

I also have a tour today at 1:30.  Thank God, it’s only Sin and Salvation.  Ha, ha.

Dogs, Our Land and Home

Fences

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Lughnasa                              Waxing Harvest Moon

Good fences make good neighbors.  The folks that live diagonally across the road from us, their house fronts on Round Lake Blvd., have two dogs.  These dogs like to visit our dogs.  Note that this means their dogs do not have an enclosure to keep them at home.  When the neighbor dogs come calling, our dogs bark and bark and bark and bark.  Really annoying.  To amplify the annoyance Vega and Rigel (remember them?) have discovered a variety of ways to penetrate the fence and go play with the visitors.

All understandable, especially when you have two strong, determined puppies (8 months old now and 86.6 pounds and 74.6 respectively, Vega and Rigel), but not acceptable because there is a busy highway nearby. It is also always possible that the lure of things far away could grip these two star-named dogs and they could wander.  Not good.

What to do?  A fence.  We now have a chain-link fence that surrounds all our 2.5 acres except for the area immediately around the house.  We also have a fence around the orchard since Vega ate the netaphim.  We used to have a fence around the vegetable garden, but I dismantled it three years ago.  So, we have a lot of fence.

Even so, I have begun installation of one more.  This one I will create from old snow fence and a plastic snow fence, using fence posts made from bamboo and old wooden stakes.  The purpose of this fence will be to create a 50 foot or so setback from the chain-link fence line.  This will separate our dogs from the neighbors by a good distance and should lower the volume and decrease the escape attempts.  I hope.

That’s what I spent the morning building.  It’s not quite done, since I have to create a gate that can open and close to admit the truck and lawn mower, but I think I have that figured out.  I’m not sure whether this will be permanent or not.  If it is, then I’ll have to use better looking material, for now, though, I only want to see if it solves or substantially ameliorates the problem.

Family, Garden, Our Land and Home

Down in the Trenches

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Lughnasa                             Waxing Harvest Moon

Kate’s pain continues.  “I don’t even  feel guilty about not going into work today,” she said.  Whoa.  That says it all.

Her condition creates  a moving target, how to balance therapies and activity with the pain and newly emerging symptoms.  We’ll find a place for her to be, at least until we have to find another one.

The gradual slide toward fall, now most noticeable in the changed angle of the sun and the decreasing average highs, has energized me.   The trench for the electrical wiring linking the honey house (in process) to the grandkids playhouse has soil over the wiring now.  The trench had to be redug where Vega and Rigel had prematurely pushed soil back into the trench.  That was work for an adze, work done while kneeling spread wide over the trench.  A wide stance, I guess you could say.

I checked the bees this morning, too, sending them love as Queen Latifah suggested in the Secret Life of Bees.  Though I love them and they seem happy, that is plentiful and busy, there is not much honey, maybe a frame and a half at most.  Why this is, I don’t know.  It seems the learning curve here will be long, but that’s ok.  I’ve got time to learn the way of the beekeeper.

Asia, Our Land and Home

Excluded Queen, Clean Fins

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Summer                       Waning Summer Moon

The smoker worked.  Mostly.  The bees have had 2 to 2.5 months of breeding, brooding and comb building.  There are a lot more bees than there were in April when Mark showed me how to load a box a’ bees into the first hive box.  Weekly I’ve checked each frame, when there are three hive boxes on as there is now, that means checking 28 frames each time.

The bee’s propolis had welded together many frames this time, so prying them apart proved more difficult than it had the first weeks.  With smoke to discourage angry bees each frame came out with minimal interference.  After checking a few frames in each hive box, I put the top box on the bottom, left the middle one in its place and put the bottom one of top.  If I understand it correctly, this encourages the bees to continue producing brood, making the colony more healthy for the winter while also expanding their honey base in the honey supers where the queen cannot go.

In this way the colonies survival over the winter gains a higher probability while still allowing the bee-keeper to harvest some of the honey flow.

Today, after the hives, I cracked the case of the outside air conditioning unit, took it off and sprayed off the literal blanket of cottonwood fibers that had collected around the fins which guide air past the cooling coils.  I could have done this three weeks ago, but I forgot about it.  It’s not fun for me since it involves lot of little screws, a cantankerous body of sheet metal that must line up with the holes just right and more bending than my deconditioned joints can stand.  A good prod to get back to the resistance and flexibility work as well as the aerobics.

I tend to emphasize the aerobics since the heart and circulatory system and the respiratory system tend to cause death if not tended with care.  That’s only half of the battle though, the other half is having enough strength and flexibility to live the life time saved by regular aerobic exercise.

The cantankerous sheet metal awaits.  I’ve written this while letting it dry off.  This all falls under the British category of estate management.  Where are all the servants again?  Oh, that’s right.  They are me.

Our Land and Home

Houdini Inhabits a Canine

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Summer                 Waxing Summer Moon

Each penitentiary or prison warden fears the convict who can identify a weakness in the multiple barriers to escape.  So do dog owners.   Our puppy Rigel wiggled under the gate leading down to our perennial garden, an impressive feat considering the narrowness of the opening and the size of her body.  When I blocked this one, she wriggled through a slat in the gate as far her rear hips which just would not fit.  I had to pry the gate apart to free her.  I nailed another slat diagonally across the gate and she quit trying.

Now, however, we have a dog of a similar color, Vega, but different strategy.  A good strategy.  Good for Vega, that is, but bad for us.  I went outside this afternoon to work in the perennial garden in back, overlooked by the deck where our dogs spend much of their time when relaxing.  I looked up there.  All five dogs up there.  Rigel did not try the gate.  Ah.

Oh. I turned, walked around the side of the house and suddenly, standing beside me, Hello!  Hello! I’m here!  Look at me! was Vega.  At first I thought she might have vaulted the gate.  I had put a concrete block down and inadvertently left the solid side up.  I had to know how she did it.

After 13 dogs I have some window into the canine mind.  After finally coaxing Vega  back onto the deck inside the fenced in part of our yard, I left her out there, let the rest of the dogs out and returned to the perennial beds.  Sure enough, only 3 minutes passed and I caught sight of Vega, not on the concrete block, which I had guessed, but near the fence that borders the perennial garden about 100 feet or so from the deck.

The fence is chain link and has contained all of our dogs except for the occasional whippet who follows out some animal that dug to get in the yard.  I have a regular routine of walking the fenceline, checking for breaches and filling them with old tree trunks, fence rails I no longer use, rocks.

Back to Vega and the fence.  She looked at me, looked down at the area where the fence met the ground, crouched with her doggy butt up in the air, tail wagging and dug.  At first I thought it was just a feint, that she had really jumped as I imagined.  Nope.  She got up, then crouched down again, put her nose under the fence, then squeezed her 70 pound puppy (a really big puppy) body under the fence and Hello!

Sigh.  Now I’m going to have to harden all the fence line that borders the perennial garden against these escape attempts.  Instead of the bird man of Alcatraz we have the man dog of Andover.

Our Land and Home

Puppies

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Beltane                    Waxing Dyan Moon

Kate and I went out this afternoon to Loretto, near Corcoran.  This is a horsey part of the metro, but we wanted to look at dogs, specifically an Irish Wolfhound and Walker Coyote Hound mix.  The man who bred them, Julian Lehman, has the unusual occupation of master of the hunt.  That is, he trains both horses and fox hounds to ride after a scented lure.  He also rides with those who hire his services.  Can’t be many of those in Minnesota.

These dogs were, for us, perfect.  They retain Wolfhound features and personality, but will probably be about 2/3’s the size.  With the hybrid vigor of a mix and a smaller overall body we hope they will live longer.  We went for it, buying two litter mates, this time both bitches.  Our last two Wolfhounds, Tor and Orion, were unneutered and this caused problems for them and for us.  Our fault of course.

We won’t bring them home until after our trip to Indiana, but after that Blue and Cleo (their puppy names) will live with us.

Our Land and Home, Politics

Life Beyond the MUSA Line (and a bit of left wing political thought)

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Beltane                       Waning Flower Moon

We live beyond the MUSA line.  Not very far beyond, it cuts Andover almost in half.  The Metropolitan Urban Services Area line establishes the land which must have city water and sewer. It snakes around the outline of the seven county metropolitan area, attempting to adjust the size and density of suburban development.  Planning officials created the MUSA line in the long ago as a tool to prevent urban sprawl.  It hasn’t worked.

The house we purchased 15 years ago sits on a 2.5 acre lot and has its own sewer (septic) and water, a well.  This has happened all around the seven county metro area.  Larger size residential lots leapfrogged the MUSA line and went in with their own utilities.

From the standpoint of personal independence I prefer our situation.

At any rate this all means we have to manage our own septic system and our own well and water deliver system.  Today we had the septic system pumped out–every 2 years.  The guy who did it took off the manhole cover and checked the baffles. Who knew we had baffles?

Anyhow this 15 year old system was made of concrete and the baffles had cracked and one had fallen off, so we had to replace them.  In order to do this the guys from Kothrade Sewer, Water and Excavation had to get down inside the tank.  Turns out this can kill you.  The fumes.  As I thought about it, I thought, gee, that makes sense.

How would you like to make your living crawling around somebody’s septic system?  Me neither.  It cost $175 for protective gear to work in  a confined space, an OSHA requirement.  This is real danger, two guys in Minnesota in the last year after crawling down a thirty-foot deep manhole into a new system.  Curing concrete sucks up 02.  The first guy in passed out and died.  His buddy went down to see what was wrong.  He died, too.

There aren’t many things worth dying for and our septic system is sure not one of them.

Art and Culture, Bees, Garden, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Travel

Getting the week started

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Spring                         Waxing Flower Moon

Business meeting this morning.  We decided to go ahead with a vegetable garden renovation planned by Ecological Gardens and to get the deck in on which we will build the playhouse for the grandkids.  That work will start soon. Exciting.

The bees spend these first days filling up cells with brood and honey made from the syrup mix.  I checked them yesterday and will now leave them alone until next Saturday.

Finished reservations for Hilton Head with the exception of the rental car.  That’s next.

Planting this week, too.  Today, though, is docent book club day.  Allison’s work on textiles.   Should be fun.

Art and Culture, Our Land and Home

An Up Early Day

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Spring           Waning Seed Moon

I hoovered up information on Bonnard, Rembrandt, Honthorst, Poussin and Thorvaldsen this morning, kicking it back out in bullet points and inquiry questions for the tour on Friday.  I have Beckman, Dali and Chuck Close to go.

This time around with the European painting I came back to it with renewed interest, as if I came to it fresh, yet more knowledgeable.  This reminded me of Ricouer and his notion of second naivete, an important skill as we age, if, that is, we want to enjoy work or hobbies of long standing.

An up early day, so I began to flag on the research around 11:00, so I began phone calls.  More suburban estate management, this time gutter cleaning, outside window washing and having the septic system pumped out.  This last we do every two years by city ordnance.

A nap, then a hair cut from my in home barber and now I’m out to paint the bee hives.

Our Land and Home

Refinanced and Happy About It

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Spring            Waning Seed Moon

We have signed the refinancing agreement for our house.  4.75% interest.  Dropped our monthly nut a lot.  A lot.  Kate did it!

Having said all that the lack of process and scrutiny involved in this refinance made my jaw drop.  Kate went, talked to a loan officer,  some dithering went by as we  locked the rate.  It took us three weeks to ask where the appraisers were and as I said a while ago, they had already decided we didn’t need an appraisal.  We set up the closing for this morning and in spite of a last minute glitch–par for the course if you’ve closed on a lot of houses–we are back home now with a much cheaper loan.

It all reminded me of the way banks got in the trouble in they’re in right now.  Too little care in the lending process.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m tickled we got through with so little pain and I would not have written this until the bank had committed itself in writing, but gosh, gee wheez.  What about all those under-performing or non-performing loans?