Coop's Corner

Sunday, May 2, 2021

Early May 2021

Our weather has been cooler after our few days of almost record setting warmth, I wish that I could say wetter as well but that is not how things have gone. We're dry and need some rain....our fire/wind warnings continue to come and go. Almost no riding, even when conditions were on the warm side. It's coming though, soon...the riding.

Garden and yard work continues, a paced race to warmer weather when the plants started indoors can finally be out where they belong and hopefully thrive; we're certainly attempting to provide them with conditions they favor.

I kinda lost count but I think this was load #10, a good yard to yard and a half each load.

We waited..and we waited...and we waited some more. Delivery promised, then promised again but then finally after 2 weeks of being told that UPS had it on their truck did the pallet actually arrive. Just like the new mower, delivered with an 18 wheeler at the top of the driveway and like the mower, I had to bust up and remove the crate. The mower was driven home, the coop had to unpacked and then stacked in the trailer. Those folks are obviously Tetris masters!

Where it still lies on the edge of the lawn. Chickens aren't due until June, the site for Coop's Coop not yet prepared.

This Aprilia Scarabeo came home last Saturday, its former home once shared garage space with my Yamaha Morphous. Rick and Judy were scooter riders from way back and owned numerous models, two of which I now enjoy. That afternoon once off the trailer, a big round trip out to the mailbox and back. Not until late Wednesday did I suit up and actually take the bike for a ride, that length of time from Home > First Ride Somewhere a new record...there's been that much going on around the home front.

Out and about, a quick late afternoon ride for Soup and a Sandwich in Red Wing Wednesday afternoon.

By Saturday a real ride, complete with Zumo XT this time. I'm obviously still in training mode since I had to reach out to my fellow users for a very rudimentary question mid-trip. Both of them answered quickly and without a waver.

Plenty good enough on the gravel....

County XX....

The blue line (160 miles) my Saturday route on the Scarabeo...the yellow route was a Himalayan loop in the evening for dinner in Red Wing.

Bright and early Sunday morning, a breakfast ride. Not a long ride but a good ride.

https://youtu.be/buwpn0r0lQM

More progress in the garden.....

Corn, blueberries, raspberries, peas (peas are up), beans and I don't know what all else...Peg's been busy!!

Others say....

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)