Imagine my surprise as I was heading out to run some errands and discovered the little robot vacuum at the back porch door.
As I carried it back into the house and hit the “dock” button so it would return home, I felt a little bad. Was I keeping it from its freedom? Had it been trying to escape from the onerous duty of trying to keep the fur and dust at bay in our house? Did it hear the clarion call of others of its kind? Was it a quashed robot uprising?
What do you think? Should I have given it its freedom?
According to the weather channel email I received on Thursday, an acre of corn releases 3000 gallons of water into the air every day. It’s “evapotranspiration”. A quick google search shows multiple newspaper articles blaming corn for the humid weather. I am tempted to call it misleading. I mean I don’t like the humidity either, but is it really all the corn’s fault? Data from the Ohio State University Extension office in 2024 says corn sweat is not contributing MEANINGFUL levels of humidity. More humidity is brought in by weather systems with southerly winds and bringing humidity from the Gulf of Mexico. The greatest amount of water usage by a corn plant is during tasseling and flowering, which is where we are at in SE MN. My corn just started tasseling this week. (And again, I am so amazed at how it all works! The silks emerge at the same time!) After tasseling, water usage in the corn decreases. All plants have some form of transpiration and evaporation. Don’t blame it all on the farmer and my corn.
The header photo by Kelly is soybean flowers. Soybeans are looking good and coming along.
This week I have been either finishing the projects at the Rep, or down in Chatfield lighting ‘Shrek’, the musical for Wits End Theater. Lots of road time. And with the main route to Chatfield, Highway 52 South closed at I90, I’ve been taking other routes. Sometimes Highway 7 through Eyota to 52, sometimes Highway 10 through Dover to the East side of Chatfield. Usually County Rd 19 through Marion to 52, or my favorite, County Road 1 through Simpson, past the Root River County Park, down in the valley over the North branch of the Root River and Fugles Mill, through Pleasant Grove, and into the west side of Chatfield. I try not to take the same road home as there.
I still haven’t gotten the oats harvested. It got mostly ripe but still had some green in it and that’s where it’s been sitting for 2 weeks. Rain and thunderstorms the last few days have caused more of it to go down. A lot of oats has been taken out. The Oat Mafia FB page says a lot of guys are finding it wetter than preferred. And there are some photos that show a stark reminder of the benefits of applying the fungicides. Fields without are broken and flat, while the fields with it are standing well.
No fungicide on left, fungicIde on right. PHOTO COUTESY OF THE OAT MAFIA FB PAGE
Oh, then our refrigerator died on Wednesday. I had noticed the freezer temp was 33 degree’s in the morning, and I thought maybe it was just defrosting. That afternoon it was at 39. We took everything to the basement chest freezer and I put a thermometer in the fridge. I laid on the floor and vacuumed off the coils and used the long narrow cleaning brush to dig out as much dust and gunk as I could. A repair guy was consulted and it was not given much hope. By that night, Kelly emptied the fridge, taking it to the downstairs smaller fridge. That little basement fridge was originally purchased as the “egg fridge”, but it has since become the pop fridge. Thanks goodness we have it. It’s a little no-name fridge that just keeps chugging along. Daughter is very put out that we don’t have the regular fridge upstairs. She insists it is still working and I’ve had to rescue her food and take it to the basement fridge a couple times. Thursday morning I went fridge scouting. The salesguy, Randy, his first question was counter depth or regular? “Uh….” Then he asked me what color? “Uh….” Did we want ice and water in the door? “Uh….” I didn’t have any of that information. My only question to him was ‘”Which ones have the better interior lighting like our old one?” That local store is where we’ve purchased appliances since we got married. They had a delivery slot open for Friday afternoon. I’ll take that one! And I sent Kelly some photos. We met there in the afternoon and agreed on a fridge for Friday.
Priorities, you know? When I checked with Kelly, her only priority was double doors. Yep, that was all I looked at. And freezer at the bottom. And good lighting. Beyond that, I didn’t know.
I hate having too many choices, so thankfully that only left us three choices, and if you remove the $12,000 model, well, I sent Kelly photos of those two.
By Friday evening daughter should be back in her happy place and we’ll have a new fridge with nice interior lighting.
I had a fun surprise yesterday morning. As I stood in my kitchen, thinking about breakfast, I got a text from one of my donut haunts, telling me that I had a reward coming – a free donut or a free coffee. So much more exciting than eggs and toast. Since I was going out for a couple of errands anyway, I decided to go the donut route for breakfast.
In order access this reward, I had to use my phone but since I didn’t have a younger person with me, I sat in my car until I got onto the right screen, or so I thought. The young man waiting on me was very patient when holding the phone to the “register” didn’t seem to work. He said he’s do it the “long way” and put my phone number in. He then said I had a $5 off, free donut or 5% discount. Which did I want? And then he said “or all three?” You all know what I said. He started punching in stuff; on my side, the screen was showing 3₵. I kept waiting for it to get to a higher number and it never did. When he confirmed the 3₵, I told him I’d have to go to the car to get a quarter since I didn’t have any cash on me. He smiled and said “let’s take it out of the penny jar” which was on the counter.
So I had my donuts and diet pop for free. And it was a gorgeous morning to boot. What could be better?
When I read Scientific American, it’s not usually a deep dive; I admit that a lot of the detail is over my head. I would also say that most of the ideas, while interesting, don’t usually seem too personal to my life.
Until now. Turned the page and found “Wiki-Curious” which described research about how people reign in (or don’t) their curiosity when they are online. Apparently there are three different types of rabbit hole styles: busybody, hunter and dancer.
A busybody is someone who is all over the board, often going from topic to topic – not always topics that are closely related. They found that in countries with higher education levels and greater gender equality, more folks browse like busybodies.
A hunter is a person has a more intense focus, circling around a fairly small number of related articles. Hunters are more numerous where there is less higher education and lower gender equality.
A dancer “links together highly disparate topics to try to synthesize new ideas”. Don’t ask me to explain this. This is the smallest group type.
I am normally a busybody until I hit on a topic that sends me down a rabbit hole, then I can be a lot more focused. The one thing that is different for me is that once I go down a rabbit hole, it doesn’t take very long before my browsing leads me to books and then the browsing is over.
I’m currently on two book treks that started online. Watching a show online by Lucy Worsley (a British historian) about the British love of murder mysteries has led me to several books about early female detective in literature. Susan Hopeley, Loveday Brooke, Lady Molly, Miss Gladden – some of the earliest women detectives in print. In addition of these, I have a couple more books coming from the library. Fascinating.
The second rabbit hole started when I was reading an interview by Michael Perry about why he wrote “Forty Acres Deep”. This was right before the Rivers/Ridges Book Festival and that was when I decided that I wanted to read all of Michael Perry’s stuff, in order. I’ve read four so far and number five is on its way via InterLibrary Loan.
Who knows where the next rabbit hole with lead but I’m sure it will lead to books.
Are you a busybody, a hunter or a dancer? Any interesting browsing lately?
Today is an aviation milestone day. In 1927 Charles Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis plane in Paris after his 33½ hour solo flight across the Atlantic. Then five years later on this day, Amelia Earhart landed near Londonderry, Northern Ireland after the first trans-Atlantic solo flight by a woman. The combination of a little shorter route and five years of advancing technology, it only took her 17 hours.
My first thought when I saw these two feats on the same day was that it was a concidence, but it was only a fleeting thought. I’d bet money that Amelia planned her flight very carefully to arrive in Europe on May 21.
It does make me think about explorers and adventurers who put their lives on the line because I don’t care how talented Lindbergh and Earhart were, they were absolutely taking their lives in their hands when they took off. Aviation was still a relatively young science, machines broke down at an alarming rate and then there’s the whole “across the ocean” thing.
Personally I’m not a daredevil. The scariest things I’ve ever done were hot-air ballooning in Africa and zip lining in Costa Rica. The balloon experience came available on a Fam trip (which is a trip that hotels/suppliers pay for in the hopes that travel industry folks will then sell their products); I just had a feeling that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing and I should get over my fears and do it. It was fabulous. The zipline was another matter. It was done with a client, more or less under duress and I was terrified the whole time. When we got to the part of the course where you didn’t zip, but swung on a rope from one platform to the next, the two guides had to come back for me and basically force me to swing by reminding me that there was no other way to get down than to finish the course. Bungee jumping is not on my list, nor is sky-diving. I simply cannot imagine myself stepping out into nothing. Nope.
So congratulations today to the memories of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart for heading out across the Atlantic and taking that big step for aeronautics!
What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done? And did you do it on purpose?
Wrapped up another academic year by celebrating commencement this past Wednesday. I will be employed at the college until June 2 as I have some rentals coming through. I’ll be going to half time to allow myself a little more time farming while I still finish up odds and ends at the college before starting back this fall.
The oats are up! And I see the neighbor’s corn is coming up. Mine will be coming out any day now.
We’re at 452 GDU’s – ‘Growing Degree Units’ for our area for 2025. About double what normal is considered. I did get some corn planted last weekend and the co-op spread the last of the corn fertilizer and I’ve gotten all the fields dug up at least once. Mechanical tillage helps with weed control, and I was afraid if we got too much rain the next few days the weed population would explode. There was a few late nights with me and Bailey in the tractor.
I planted oats and grass in the waterway that was built last fall. A little rain would be nice and helpful, and it would be especially helpful if we didn’t get any heavy rain for, well really, the whole summer, but at least the next couple of months until it is established and gets some good root structure down. Before I could get the waterway planted there was a couple of logs out there that needed to be picked up. I had told Kelly “We’re only doing the ones as big as my head and 4 feet long.“ But, of course then it’s hard to pass up the ones as big as my arm and 2 feet long. And if you’re gonna pick up those, you may as well pick up the ones as big as my wrist and a foot-long.
Kelly picked up a lot more sticks than I did just because I was in the tractor dealing with other stuff. She did several loads like this.
Kelly and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary on Monday. It was a pretty low-key celebration as I spent the day at the college getting ready for commencement and she was working. Back in 1999 I wrote a card for her, wrote on the front not to open until 2025 and tucked it in my dresser. I kind of forgot about it over the years and every now and then I’d find it again. I know I looked at it just a few months ago, and then I put it… “somewhere safe”. It took me a good half an hour to find it on Monday. Life was sure different for us 25 years ago. I kind of wish I had written more about just what was going on in our lives. I’ve wondered if I should do the same thing again? Do I dare do I make it for another 25 years? I realize no one is guaranteed tomorrow, and as we are both in our 60’s now, 25 years might be pushing our luck.
I planted corn Saturday and Sunday.
The load in for commencement was pretty uneventful this year, both for me and the IT guys hanging a large projector, screen, and setting up multiple cameras, and the sound system. Monday was the biggest part of that job for me as I picked up the rental lights, got them hung and cabled, and set up the laptop and lightboard to control them.
It kind of turns into a free-for-all on Monday and as I parked, I thought ‘Well if this doesn’t completely sum me up”:
Tuesday was stage decorations, curtains, banners, flowers, my floor lighting for all those things, and finalizing cues, and making sure everything worked. Wednesday morning was a walk-through, a nurse pinning ceremony, the main event at 6 PM, and it all came back down and packed up in about two hours and I was home by 10 PM
The obligatory ‘Head in the clouds’ photo:
I’ve got a lot of stuff to put away back at the theater, and I’m still checking my budgets and verifying expenses the Business office has compared to my Excel spreadsheets and catching up on things that I’ve let slide the last couple weeks. Depending on the weather, I may get out and do some more fieldwork this weekend. I might be able to finish planting corn if everything goes smoothly.
Chicks are growing and doing well.
Found a couple deer antlers while doing fieldwork.
And that one field that always ALWAYS grows big rocks came through yet again. Kelly and I dragged it home behind the gator. It took a long bar, two shovels, a chain, a 20’ long ratchet strap, and Kelly’s ingenuity, but we got it home and added it to her collection. “What are you going to do with it?” asks my one sister. We’re gonna admire it! …what a question… like everything needs to be practical.
You can tell it was a busy week because I needed a pen, pencil, red sharpie, and chrome ‘dress’ sharpie.
SIGNS WITH RED AROUND THEM ARE OPTIONAL. TRUE OR FALSE?
In the past Renee has mentioned that she has post-it notes stuck around with ideas for the Trail. This doesn’t work for me because if I’m out and about, by the time I get home to the post-it notes (of which I have many….), I’ve forgotten what I wanted to note. Yep – seriously sad. I remember that I thought of something but for the life of me, I can’t conjure it up when it’s time to write.
To make up for this I use a post-it note app on my phone. I have a bunch of separate notes and one of them is my Trail note. You’d think this would solve my problem but….
Looked at the app three days ago and one of the entries is “first fire”. That’s it. Nothing else. It took me the last three days to figure out it must have to do with YA making the first fire of the season in our fire pit last week. Of course, it doesn’t explain WHY I put this note in the app. There really wasn’t anything different about this fire except that it was the first one this year. YA is still in charge of the fire. She has a stash of newspaper and different piles of wood in the back corners of the yard – one for kindling sticks, one for larger sticks and one for logs. She makes the fire, feeds the fire, pokes the fire with her special fire-poking stick.
I’ve searched my memory and I can’t think of one single reason why you all have to read about our first fire. So maybe it was something else? A metaphor for our current world situation?
What do you think I should be writing about with the theme of “first fire”? How do you remind yourself of stuff?
The sad news in our neighborhood is that my next door neighbors (the ones with the two little girls I adore) are moving. Not too far away, but moving nonetheless.
This has meant a lot of activity next door. Cleaning and organizing the place – a big job with two girls ages 5 and 9. Moving lots of stuff to a storage place. Marie’s elaborate cardboard box car is actually on my front porch right now. Lots of showings and two Sundays of open houses. Phew.
They had an offer on Friday so Monday was the official inspection. First there were two different plumbing trucks – the funniest name for a plumbing company I’ve ever seen – The Sewer Rat. Then at about 10 a.m. I noticed something on the sidewalk right outside their front porch. I wasn’t 100% sure but I thought it was a drone. Fairly small.
I was so curious – why in heaven’s name was there a drone sitting on the sidewalk. I wasn’t curious long – a young man came around the corner, got the drone going and started flying it over the house. He was inspecting the roof! I probably would not have thought of that as a use for a drone on my own.
As I was watching I started thinking about why drones are called drones. I was thinking of a dull, monotonous sound – maybe what drones sound like when they’re flying? Apparently not… the internet says based on the male worker bee, the drone. I might have thought of that eventually.
Have you ever operated a drone? If you were going to, what would you use it for?
I went to the post office to buy stamps. This happened awhile ago, so I was looking for stamps for Christmas cards.
I looked at the bulletin board that had the available stamps displayed. There was a design I liked, with a deer, a rabbit, a fox, and an owl in winter settings. Appropriate for Christmas or Solstice, or whatever.
While I was waiting in line, my thought was that I would ask for the stamps with the woodland creatures. It’s a design theme that’s been trending in recent years.
As my turn was approaching, the postal worker behind the desk turned and called out to the back room, “Hey, Judy – can you bring me some more of the critters?”
I felt inordinately delighted by this. When it was my turn, I asked, “Could I get a book of critters, please?” and it made me happy for reasons I can’t quite put words to.
My post office receipt had a QR code that took me to a survey, and I gave my postal worker top scores.
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My guess is that I’ve thought more about jury duty than most folks. With my dad being a trail lawyer and our shared love of Perry Mason, I’ve known about juries from childhood.
About 35 years ago I got a summons for jury duty but despite sitting patiently in the basement of the Government Center every day for a week, I didn’t get impaneled. On Friday afternoon they released me and said I didn’t need to return.
Right before Christmas I got the Summons in the mail. Things have changed somewhat in 35 years (doh!). The biggest change is that you don’t have to show up on Monday morning and sit all week. You get assigned a group number and twice a day you check online (or call in) to see if your group needs to go in. One thing that hasn’t changed much is the stipend. It’s not enough to pay for parking downtown (which is just outrageous) so if you are on a fixed income, if you drive and park, it’s like you’re paying to get on a jury. I took the bus.
My group didn’t get called in until mid-day on Thursday (12:15 notice that you have to be at the Government Center at 1:30). The waiting area is now on the 24th floor and is referred to as “The Jar”. Hmmmm. There were 33 of us in the room; orientation took 15 minutes and at 2 p.m. they pulled the first group of 22. That left 11 of us, not enough for a jury. I assumed at some point 10 folks would come back and then there would be enough of us if they needed to call a new group. Nope, at 2:15, the 11 of us left in the room were sent home and told we didn’t need to come back in the morning or the following week. Our service is complete – we won’t be eligible again for 4 years. (This puts me above the required age limit so I can decline with no reason if I get called again.)
45 minutes of jury duty. I spent more time on the bus than doing my civic duty. And if you add all the time I spent researching how it works these days, rates at downtown parking ramps, bus routes and senior discounts not to mention the weather….. way more prep time than jury time.
I’m not begrudging the time – I do actually think of it as my civic duty. I know I wouldn’t want to be on trial and have it go wrong because you couldn’t find enough folks for a jury. Although I do think it would have been more fun to actually get impaneled and see a real trial!
Trail Baboon 