Ranch Life – Page 35 – The Hermits' Rest

Morning Ritual Snooze Fest

What are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like?

Whoo-ee! What a boring question. I know that will attract readers galore. Since I did an April Fool thing on Facebook today (I said I’d given up blogging), I’ll just stick to the snooze-worthy facts.

Maybe our first winecup Mallu’s of the year will be more enticing. Look at all that pollen.

What do I do when I wake up? What most people do, I assume. First I find my glasses, phone and watch. Then. I relieve my poor bladder. Next, in an exciting twist, I turn on the coffeemaker, which Lee usually sets up the previous evening. I make sure to completely shut the lid, which he doesn’t do. That’s my contribution.

Also, the first Engleman Daisy of the year blossomed.

Then, if needed, I shower. I shower every 2-3 days so my hair doesn’t dry out. I use things that smell like roses: shampoo, conditioner, shower gel. I like roses. In summer I swim daily.

Next on the agenda is tooth brushing with the annoying electric toothbrush I hate, and flossing. Yes, I floss. If I didn’t wash my face in the shower, that’s next. I use rosewater mycellar water, however that’s spelled.

Off to the closet I go, where I determine which cutesy undies and bralette from my friends at Me Undies to wear, and which jeans, t-shirt, coordinating socks, and shoes (probably Skechers) to wear. If I wear jewelry I’ll choose that as well as glasses of the day.

Now come exciting anti-anxiety meds, turmeric, and probiotics. On Saturday I also get Vitamin D. What a rush!

Hmm, I then apply serum and facial moisturizer. If I’m going somewhere I put on foundation to cover my red face. It doesn’t cover the wrinkles, so I’m only slightly vain.

I got ducks that look like my horses. It’s done Jeep owner thing.

That covers the first 30-45 minutes. It’s followed by pouring coffee and going downstairs, where I fire up the computer, write in my bullet journal, check the Facebook, and start to work.

After an hour or two I take a walk to feed chickens, listen to birds, and check on horses, then I eat something. But that’s later.

Is anyone awake? I’m not.

Today was also just fine. The horses had their farrier time, and everyone was quite well behaved. No horse complaints.

Kathleen escaped being attacked by scorpions and was able to make dinner, so I had time to goof off and chat with the menfolk in the evening. Ah, as my high school buddy Jeff N. pointed out, every day’s a good day when you get to be this age.

Waking up and doing your routine may be boring, but yay, you’re alive!

All Is Well and Colorful, Too

Friends, it’s been yet another pleasant day with nothing to complain about. The lack of stress in my life right now is very welcome. Plus it enables me to be available to people who do have stress going on.

Hard to stress out when you are surrounded by fields full of flowers, butterflies, and bees.

Yeah, the closest I got to being stressed today was trying not to step on honeybees who were busy on the various clovers and other flowers. The ground was buzzing!

Bees love these yellow ones and the bur clover. I still hate burs.

In a major Suna triumph, I managed to get through an Easter pasture ride with Sara today without letting Apache’s stress get to me. Because of that, we went all over the front pasture, including places he historically had issues with. Mabel neighed at him a little, but I got him refocused.

Both Aragorn and Apache did a good job going up and down a hill, then successfully went across the dam on the big front tank. There was a lot of tight turning and steep climbs, but we all did fine. It was even fun. This was the spot where I had to fall off or get impaled by a mesquite tree the first time I ever tried riding out there. That tree is dead, too. And this time, I was in charge, not the horse.

I tried to boss Suna, but she didn’t let me.

When we got to the gate to our place, Apache expressed his opinion that he wanted to go home quite strongly. It didn’t work. I rode him away and THEN dismounted. And yes, he’d been a fine animal, so he got to go home.

Aragorn would like to point out that he was also brave and cooperative.

Because I now have a new hose and spray nozzle, I was able to give Apache a much-needed bath when we got back. There was some deeply ground-in dirt to remove. He was also extra sweaty, thanks to still having a lot of winter coat.

I was impressed that, even though he wasn’t dry yet when I turned him out, he took six whole minutes before rolling in dirt. I’d thought it would be 30 seconds, max.

I’m sure it felt good. After he ate his dinner, he let me curry him some more, and the dirt came right off, along with a lot more clean, fluffy hair. I did have to chuckle, because when I finished, I realized that Fiona, Mabel, and Dusty were waiting for their turns. So they each got some rubbing. I’ve created a real love for grooming in these guys! It’s fine with me, because next poor Fiona will finally shed out. That’s always a workout.

Kathleen came back from her latest adventure. I knew she’d arrived when I found the first rat snake of the season in the chicken house. They know she’s here, we’re pretty sure. I’ll keep an eye on Kathleen so she can safely get through her medical stuff with no more help from insects, arachnids, reptiles, or livestock.

Could you please escort the guest away from our perches?

Avian Visitors

It was another pleasant spring day, the kind that makes you forget you live in the land of unbearable summers. Since my dear spouse isn’t big on doing anything involving leaving the premises before noon these days, I had the morning all to myself. After I fed the chickens, I looked over at the horse pens and saw a white bird land on the ground.

I wondered what a great egret would be doing over there rather than by a pond/tank. As I walked closer, I realized the bird wasn’t alone.

Once I saw how many there were, I realized it must be time for a cattle egret visit. They show up at least once a year. Upon closer inspection I could see the color on their heads, which confirmed who the visitors were.

Later I saw them with the cattle, but they’re gone now.

I’m still here, even though you didn’t share pictures of me earlier in the week. This is my adoration of the pretzel bag face.

Most of the day I spent reading, which is such a luxury, and going to Costco to order a couple more pairs of eyeglasses. I got one intellectual black pair, and one funky red pair. No more online glasses for me. They just don’t work out real well.

I’ve been enjoying this period of peace, calm, and equanimity. Living in the moment is easier on days like today.

Yes, Laughter IS the Best Medicine

What makes you laugh?

My dad’s Readers’ Digest magazines always had lots of jokes, with some of the corniest ones in the column labeled “Laughter Is the Best Medicine.” My kid friends and I would go up in our treehouse, where dozens of old RD magazines were stored in an old trunk, and read each other the jokes until our cheeks hurt. Being a kid in the 60s was pretty great.

Now I read most of my jokes on Facebook, but rarely laugh out loud. What does get me going are the antics of the animals around our ranch. Chickens running because you might have food for them always elicit at least a smile.

And when the dogs start playing, Lee and I are thoroughly entertained. They run themselves ragged, with Carlton being fast, Penney being clever, and Goldie falling all over herself. Harvey watches and barks.

Then there’s stuff like this. She jumped up and immediately commenced to licking.

As for the horses, they can be just as awkward as Goldie and as graceful as Carlton. Mostly it’s Fiona who makes me laugh. Today she was begging to be petted, but Tarrin and I quickly realized she was covered in poop. We stuck to picking burs off her head and sides, which she loved so much we just had to giggle.

Today was more of a peaceful and pleasant day than anything else. I managed to get all my work done and still have time for a bakery treat with Anita. Then I spent enough time with horses that I ended up sunburned a little. It was worth it.

Another beautiful day in the neighborhood.

It was Tarrin’s monthly visit to the ranch for lessons. Since Drew is still at her house we worked some with Mabel. She’s really doing so well. You can barely tell her back is messed up, and she has nice muscles. She’s so friendly now, too. When I went to get Apache and called for the horses, she immediately galloped up. Dusty and Fiona trotted. Apache did come halfway…

Mabel let me brush a lot of mud off her before Tarrin arrived. Then I got to watch how Tarrin gained her trust by being patient and calm. Soon enough, Mabel volunteered to be haltered. Tarrin just approached and retreated and let Mabel sniff her hand as she shaped it just like a horse nose. I learned a lot.

By the end of the session I was brushing her mane out while Tarrin got all the burs off her forelock and mane. Mission accomplished with no stress on my lady horse!

Working with Apache also went very well. Tarrin kept telling me how much I’ve improved at things, and I have to admit she’s right. By gosh, I gave some groundwork and riding skills developing!

And Apache stayed pretty calm over by the house.

We practiced doing a variety of circles at a walk and trot in the round pen. He practiced calmly walking (much improvement) and I practiced using just one hand on the reins. I practiced with each hands, which is important to be able to do, according to Tarrin. It was fun practicing.

Learning

I’m impressed at how much calmer I am now while riding. Things no longer escalate like they used to, because I’m learning to nip things in the bud when Apache starts to go wonky. My calm helps his anxiety, too.

This is where Apache was thinking he’d gone far enough.

I also think he was pretty tired after a lot of cantering in the groundwork part of the lesson. I doubt he was up to frenzied uncontrollable trotting, so the whole lesson was quite civilized. I’m so grateful to Tarrin for her patience with us, and proud of myself for sticking with this horse through all our ups and downs.

If only I had on a cowboy hat, I’d feel so Texas.

It’s a lot easier to laugh when you are feeling good about yourself. Dang. I feel good about myself! Past me would be surprised.

All Grown Up

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Ha, I’m pretty sure I wanted to be a horse when I grew up at that age. I know I tried eating grass, and spent time practicing my whinnies. I also wanted to be a dog herder. I would gather up all the neighborhood dogs and try to get them to follow me (no leash laws back then).

We want to herd cattle. Or play with them.

After that I wanted to be a veterinarian or Supergirl. As you see, I haven’t changed much, except now I write all those ideas down.

Things are good here:

Monarchs are here, plus I saw a big zebra swallowtail.
Our niece is not too badly hurt from getting kicked by Big Bag Betty B**** (a cow who m, deservedly, leaves for the sale barn soon) even though she was life flighted by helicopter to a hospital pretty far from her farm. (She posted the story, so for once I can do more than vague hinting.)
I had a great session with Apache the Paint today, better than usual, even. He sure has energy and joy now.
Tarrin has a plan to get my gray horse Drew better, which involves some expensive veterinary stuff, but gives me hope for our future.
There was time this afternoon to watch the dogs play with cows (nice ones) and to hang out on the patio with Lee. We are much less stressed than yesterday!

My herd, minus Harvey, who doesn’t play with cattle, and Vlassic, who was in the garage.

I wish every one of you at least one beautiful spring day to spend with those you love, and I hope your childhood dreams came true, at least a little. I can’t BE a horse or herd dogs, but I can hang out with them!

Cognitive Dissonance

What’s something most people don’t understand?

That’s what most people seem to be unable to grasp. There are just too many people out there who don’t see any problem with holding beliefs or opinions that cancel each other out.

So you’re pro life. Good for you. But once a baby is born you’re against helping it. And if it wanders onto your property as an adult, you’d shoot it. And your guns are more important than innocent children in a school or people trying to attend a concert. You’re pro life and pro murder. How can you believe both?

I’ll stop before I offend the other 50% of readers.

Sorry folks, today has taken a turn for the worse and I’m in a less centered space than I’d like to be. The family health issues just keep on coming and there’s nothing we can do but observe and stay centered. Well, we can support each other, which IS something.

Life is challenging. We know that. But it’s also good. Is that cognitive dissonance?

I’m so glad I have lush pastures to wander in (with proper footwear to avoid snakes) and sweet horses to love on and breathe the scent of their grassy (mud encrusted) coats.

The equine buddies are my calmness center right now. Even Apache calmly let him remove his boots and asked for head rubs, and Mabel keeps asking for attention. It surprised me, too, how grooming Dusty and seeing him look so healthy made me happier.

Thanks, horses.

Speaking My Truth

What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?

I often wish I were better at expressing myself, especially in the heat of the moment, when under stress, or when surprised by an unexpected turn of events. These are the situations in which I tend to do a particularly poor job of expressing what I want to say or reacting gracefully. I also, conversely, tend to get too lax with my words when I’m feeling very relaxed or comfortable. I can then make jokes that don’t go over well or say things I intend as friendly that I later find out were interpreted as rude or condescending. Yuck.

It’s easy to be misinterpreted and also easy to misinterpret others. That’s why I attempt to assume people have good intentions when something awkward comes out of their mouths, and ask for clarification.

This Texas vervain says let’s slightly change the subject.

Speaking of misinterpretation, I may have mentioned hearing weird sounds in the woods lately. First I heard some while camping, but then I started hearing eerie sounds like a sad animal calling out.

It was a spooky day in the woods, anyway.

The sounds were happening this morning, so I bravely decided to go find the source. As I got closer, I kept seeing icky worms, tent moth caterpillars, and slimy mushrooms. The wind was also howling and it was very cloudy.

The caterpillars are jumping around in there

Eventually I got to where I could tell where the sound was coming from. And from that spot, Merlin Bird ID finally piped in and said it heard a crow. Earlier, no ID was given for the sound, which had made me think it was an animal. I looked up and saw I was under a large tree. And in that tree was a very large nest. Aha.

I was hearing crow parenting sounds! Eek! I recognized the nest, because I used to see them in Chicago between O’Hare and Schaumburg, when I worked there. There was a large green belt with a huge rookery I loved to observe.

I won’t be quite so creeped out by the sounds from now on and will leave the crows alone to raise future corvids. You just never know what’s out there.

Though today was gusty, I got to see new blossoms in addition to the creepy stuff.

Found where the baby blue eyes are hiding!

Since it was my rest day, I had time to cook a nice meal for family and friends. It was a nice end to the day.

Tomorrow, dental fun. Just a cleaning, but my insurance is messed up. My fault, too.

Extra Springy

Today was truly a spring day. The weather kept changing from intense fog to sun to cloudy to windy…warmer, cooler, you name it.

I felt much like the weather. I was extra productive, deeply tired (thanks to Goldie and all the other dogs sleeping in my bed during storms), energetic, and zonked. In between spurts of creativity I went out and enjoyed the flowers and butterflies for a while.

I managed to brave the very muddy pens to feed the horses and groom Apache, who thankfully was not all muddy or covered in burs. I have to try to get him clean by 8 am tomorrow. Wish me luck. He didn’t help when he stomped on his halter, which meant I had to wash that, too. Sigh. It’s not like I didn’t t have things to do!

The Master Naturalists had a nice, big booth at the Spring Festival in Cameron this afternoon and evening. I was on the second shift, which enabled me to get all my chores done before heading over to the Venue.

We met a good number of folks and did some excellent recruiting. Alan (left in the photo) is great at encouragement, and we got all sorts of people interested in our work. Cindy of Bird and Bee Farm talked a lot about turkeys, and I think she convinced a guy to get some for his big ranch. That would be cool.

The best part of the evening was finally introducing Lee to a couple of my Master Naturalist friends. I hope he liked them. The other part that made it a great time was just sitting around and talking to Chapter members outside of a meeting setting. They’re such an interesting group of people and so good to each other. We marveled at how fortunate we are to have found so many compatible folks in this sparsely populated county. In these times, that’s really great.

Yes, I enjoyed all aspects of today’s extra springy events. Life is pretty good in our little town.

Rambling Kind of Gal

What do you wish you could do more every day?

Right now I’m conflicted. There are two things I’d like to do more of every day, and it’s not practical for me to do both.

Staying out of the rain is what we’d like to do more of.

One thing I’d do more of if I could is work with the horses. I’d love to have the opportunity to get more education, ride more, and learn more ground skills. I would love to have someone to trail ride with (I do have an Easter date to ride with Sara). Apache does fine when he’s with another horse.

Who knows how Drew would be, since I’ve still never tried it, since we’re moving backwards rather than forwards in training at the moment. It was pointed out to me that I forgot to say how Droodles is doing at Reform School. He is making progress but slowly. He’s not happy going right still. Maybe we can only go left from now on. He will see the bodyworker again soon. The upshot is I paid for two more weeks of rehab at Tarrin’s.

It was hard to fit this all in the frame. Glad I’m not driving it.

All right, so the second thing I wish I could do more of is travel. And as you can see, we’re finally all set to go places in style. Hermee looks pretty good behind Seneca! That’s one tiny Jeep!

I was really impressed by this fancy hitch. It collapses into practically nothing and stores in the belly of the motorhome. It attaches and detaches much more easily than I expected, too.

What freedom! I can’t wait to go somewhere and be able to explore the area! I’d love to go all over the US, but I know that’s expensive and uses a lot of resources. Plus, I really miss the horses and Fifi.

I do know of a few folks who travel with horses. I used to enjoy reading in one of my horse magazines about the Krones, a couple who roamed North America with their two horses. They sure had some adventures! But it required money, dedication, and more bravery than I have!

So I’ll continue to keep my job and do as much horsing and traveling as is practical. Really, my life is just fine as it is.

I’m Not Sure Who I’m More Proud Of

Hard work and persistence can pay off, and Apache and I learned that today. It’s been challenging and hard, but the two of us have actually managed to learn some things. We can communicate, we can rely on each other, and we can have fun.

He had been standing sort of funny this morning, so I was worried about his feet.

We rocked today’s lesson after Tarrin worked on his shedding soles.

This is after over an hour of me working on his shedding hair. He’s so soft now.

Tarrin was giggling like a kid and telling everyone how happy she was to see Apache shedding sole on his feet. He’d never done that before he started his medication. And the feet are white, not yellow! She found evidence of some bruising, which could explain why he hasn’t been to keen on picking his feet up. Now he should feel really good!

He got his boots back on so he can heal.

Anyway, once the hoof business was complete, we did our lesson stuff. Somehow, in the past month I’ve learned to ask him for a nice, soft trot, and he’s gotten enough muscles to do it. A few weeks ago he could do two or three steps in a rounded trot. Now he can do circles, and circles within circles, and slaloms…wow. It was so unexpected and good that I laughed aloud and snorted in a most undignified manner.

Apache seemed pretty pleased, too. And I feel somewhat competent. I’m even looking forward to doing a little better in the upcoming show. At least I now know how to do a rounded trot! If we execute it, so much the better. It will just be good to have a little more of a clue as to what we’re supposed to do, with different trot and walk speeds, good turns, and subtle cues.

And hey, it’s spring. How do I know? This guy showed up.

My magnificent tail and I have returned!

I am always happy to see scissor tail flycatchers each spring. And the barn swallows have taken over the porch from the house sparrows. Go bug eaters!