The Hermits' Rest

Invisible Demons Plus Apache Equals Trouble.

The good news is I didn’t fall off my horse. And I’m sure I learned a lot and will eventually be grateful for all the chances at relaxing and giving when I didn’t want to.

WAIT!

Isn’t that how I started yesterday’s blog? yep. I’m a glutton for punishment I guess. Today I spent the required bur and mud removal time, then headed back to Sara’s. This time I brought Apache. I was hoping things would go better going over obstacles with some friend horses around.

I swear to you that I was in a good mood and happy with my old boy. After all, he successfully ate his whole pill and let me remove all the burs. We had a nice walk over there, but his arrival disturbed the foal, which disturbed Aragorn in his dressage. Still, all good.

But when I mounted and started showing him the obstacles, he did the same thing he always does and started hopping and going sideways the minute he got near the pens. Honestly, I’d forgotten this would be an issue, so I wasn’t tensing up. Where are these invisible demons he senses?

After two one-rein stops and a lot of conscious relaxing and not tightening the reins, I was able to successfully do a slalom, go over a bridge, and walk over a jump. He even sort of did a turn in a box thing.

We dressed nicely. As you can see, he’s still tense.

But, I couldn’t reach the gate to unlatch it when we got to it, he acted like he’d never seen a mailbox, and he refused to approach a jug on a barrel. He’s done those things many times.

So I gave up on the virtual show and just tried to end on a good note. I took him to Sara’s round pen, you know, the one I’ve worked with him in for years. He did eventually settle down as we did some patterns in there. But, that was it.

I let him graze in the pen while other horses tried to do their show filming. Aragorn didn’t like the bridge after a non-stick matt was put down. Later, after I dragged my ass home, he did fine.

Oh, that’s what I was supposed to be doing. Oops.

And Cole, who came with our training friend Tracee, surprised everyone by cantering away and doing a great job. All that cheered me up.

And Apache was a good guy all the way home. Hmm.

I keep reading “helpful” articles saying if your horse behaves poorly, it’s something you did. I’m inclined to agree, since both my horses act so weird over there, it may well be me. I do get a little embarrassed that my horses are flailing around and not listening to me. But I’m doing my best to calmly regroup and try again.

I’ll keep trying. I’m disappointed, but we keep going.

To top it off I broke my other thumbnail.

Fire Ants Plus Drew Equals Trouble

The good news is I didn’t fall off my horse. And I’m sure I learned a lot and will eventually be grateful for all the chances at relaxing and giving when I didn’t want to.

Here I am, showing you my agitated look.

But no, my latest try at practicing dressage at Sara’s did not go very well. I appreciated Sara’s help with getting his bridle on and removing the fire ants he stepped on. That must have hurt, so no wonder he was head shaking, trying to canter, and dancing around, all things that I handled as calmly as I could.

It was all my fault that I didn’t have a death grip on the reins that were serving as lead rope while he was supposedly calming down and grazing. A truck pulling a rattling trailer sped by and scared him (even though the same vehicle has probably passed him when he grazed next to the road in our pasture). Drew jerked away and ran his ass off down the tree line.

I was too fast to photograph. Like my ancient halter Suna found in the pasture? It’s easier on my burs.

Luckily he stoped when he got to Spice in her paddock. All geldings love Spice. When we caught up with him he was happily interacting with her and Lakota. He doesn’t seem to have injured himself, and he went nicely back to the scene of the incident to graze some more.

And he made it back through the scary trees, though he was nervous. After a nice visit with Sully and Jhayati, we went home, which is where he will stay for a while. I’m not going to try to film a virtual show there this weekend. I could get hurt.

I did help set up the obstacles for the other parts of the show and will bring Apache there tomorrow to see if he can do a better job than last time we tried filming over there. It’s disheartening. I’m doing my best to be positive, but both horses act weird over there. Maybe tomorrow will be when the tide turns! Sara tries so hard to set up the spaces, and I’d like to take advantage of it. at least today I got some riding in that was calm. Yay?

Today was just plain challenging. I went to the Red House to help Anita get it clean for the next group (quick turnaround day), and I must have twisted my back putting sheets on the bunk bed. Between that and riding a jumping and pawing horse, I’m quite sore.

Decorations at the Red House. Not going crazy since so many kids come through.

Sorry. Nothing but whining for today.

Fame and Gratitude

If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?

Yow. This is hard! I came up with the Buddha, because I’d like to have learned from him. I’d also have enjoyed talking to Eleanor Roosevelt. I’d love her perspective on the choices she made in life and to experience her intelligence in person.

Really, though, regular people can be just as interesting as famous people. It would be interesting to talk to some of my ancestors in the Middle Ages in England, just to see what life was really like for women then.

Did they listen to birds or were they too busy trying to survive?

Okay, so it was US Thanksgiving, two years since my sister walked out and never spoke to me again. I have so many weird memories of this holiday, but I still love it. I miss cooking with someone.

You can see birds better now that leaves are off.

Today most of our usual dinner companions were dealing with pressing matters elsewhere, so it was just me, Lee, Anita, and my son. But it was pleasant, fairly relaxed (other than not being able to find a blender or even a potato masher to puree corn).

I messed up my own cranberry sauce recipe by adding lime oil (bad idea), but everything else was tasty, even the turkey I just stuck in the oven and cooked. Desserts were great, too. Anita made a lovely cranberry bread with fresh pecans from her neighborhood trees.

The best part of the evening was just sitting around and talking after dinner and a little concertina concert from my son, who found the instrument under some stairs in a building he’s renovating. Anyway, we all just went from humor to serious conversation, and I think we all had a good time. I’m very grateful for the chance to have relaxed conversations with people I love.

So all is well, even though our minds were on family and friends who are struggling.

Daily Bird

I’ll say today’s bird is the loggerhead shrike. I enjoy them bellowing from the electric wires and leaving insects stuck on the fences. They’re such fierce little guys. I enjoyed watching this one today.

I’m glad we have such interesting birds here!

Is It Instinct?

Do you trust your instincts?

I can’t top yesterday’s blog post, so I’ll just answer the daily prompt.

I’ve always trusted my instincts. I’m intuitive. Besides that, I think I take in cues I don’t consciously perceive that lead me to know what I should or want to do. It’s just how I’m built. I’m not good at deliberation; in fact many bad decisions I’ve made came from overthinking.

Sure, things go wrong, but often I learn the most when acting on instinct and getting different results than I expected. You just make the best decision with the information you have at the time. The worst thing is to not do anything at all, so my instincts are good enough for me.

Bug of the day is a young green stink bug. Yep, not green at this stage.

Honestly, as I’ve gotten older I’ve quit believing any predictions, promises, or plans for the future. I’m just going with the flow and not trying to influence the outcome. I’ll learn what I’m meant to learn. That has lessened my anxiety considerably.

Bird watching also helps. I saw the kingfisher catch a fish today!

So yeah, I think my instincts are correct for me and I’ll stick with them.

My instinct today was that I needed to spend some time with my equine friends. So while Drew was being a pain for Sara while she tried to trim his hooves, I hung out with the other horses.

I got burs out of them, which took a while for Dusty. His mane is sparse, but his thick tail was just about all bur. He munched hay and let me work on him. I brushed him, too, which he always likes.

I still manage to get burs in this little tuft.

Mostly I worked with Mabel, though. She’s been on a product called Gut-X for a while and it seems to have done the trick and helped her put on more weight. I’m pleased.

She’d already been getting happier, and now she voluntarily comes up for attention. She let me fix up her tail and much of her mane, but mostly she wanted to be brushed softly and stroked. We spent a long time just being together.

Still has that face only a mother could love.

After I was done, she stood in her pen and yawned over and over. This kind of release is a very good sign in a horse. She’s feeling good, even though one hoof is cracked and her eye had been runny earlier (she got hay in there).

Today’s Bird

Today I saw a bird we all see often, but one I rarely see here at the ranch. It really surprised me, as it was sitting on top of the utility vehicle right next to me as I went through the gate from the house.

The pigeon never moved. Eventually it must have flown off, though. We see doves here (mourning, white-winged, Inca) but not often pigeons. Wonder where it came from?

Early Anniversary Gift – WOW

I am completely bowled over by the wonderful gift Lee made me for our 15th wedding anniversary. It may be “only” 15 years, but we’re very pleased to have had such a great time in our late-life relationship.

I’d been seeing Lee messing around on his computer a lot lately and I was really wondering why he was putting so many photos of birds in his journal. It’s not that he doesn’t like birds, but he’s not crazy about them like I am.

I knew he’s been practicing book binding and has bound a couple of books he wrote and plans to bind recent journals. On top of that he’d asked me a few questions about my own journal. But I didn’t think anything of it until he spilled the beans that he was making me a journal for an anniversary gift!

There is a great deal of hand work involved in book binding. Lee decided to tell me what he was doing so he could hang out with me while he hand sewed all the signatures (units of a certain number of pages) together. Otherwise I wouldn’t have seen him last weekend. He sewed it with red thread, too. I like red.

I’d have been impressed just with a blank book, having watched how hard it is to press all the pages together, create the cover (with genuine book cloth), and affix the cover to the book (I think that’s the actual binding part—gee, I worked for a book publisher in my twenties and still don’t know all the terms).

But no, he made a bullet journal with dots on the pages, a pretty place to write headings, and lovely images on each page, which he cut with his scary killer paper cutter to go all the way to the edges.

And it has a cute title page. It’s really a labor of love, which I truly appreciate. It means SO much to me to get a handmade gift, especially one so carefully thought out. I’m going to use it as a bird journal, so it will be in use a long time.

What did I get him? I also gave him his gift early. It was a bunch of tasteful linen book cloth from a library supply company. I guess we were thinking along the same lines.

Lee got a really good new printer that will print in high quality on large paper, so now he’s working on book sleeves. I just want to print horse pictures, of course.

I said the above to Lee and a minute later he handed me this. It’s pretty impressive!

Daily Bird

I thought I was going to have to do the cranes again, because until late in the evening the only birds I’d heard or seen were dozens and dozens of them. The day had started out very windy and cold, so no one was flitting about.

But, as I was putting Apache’s saddle away and listening to cranes, I heard something else interesting. I started the Merlin app and finished what I was doing and let the horses out of their pens.

I was right! I was hearing owls. Multiple owls. Great horned owls! The only known predators of the barred owls who are usually here! Where did all these owls come from? I don’t have an answer, but this was my first time hearing them here. They make the “normal” hoo-hoo owl sound, among others.

To add to the wonder of the evening, all the black vultures started heading to their roosts for the night. There were 25 I counted. It was lucky that the wind had died down and there was no traffic noise from FM 485 for once. I could hear their wings beating. I love that sound.

The sunset was also beautiful, but I was too busy listening to take a photo. Here’s last night at Tarrin’s house.

Droodles: Master of Equine Mayhem

It’s weird. Since Apache started his medicine, he’s been a lot calmer. I wonder if he has a buzz or something.

Drew, on the other hand, has been on a real tear of peskiness and mischief lately, like he’s Loki and Apache is Thor (Apache has a lot of hair, like Thor). I’ve been watching Drew running around and chasing his herd-mates around, but never had any photographic evidence until this morning, when I saw a lot going on in the horse pens as I was feeding the chickens.

Droodles had gotten ahold of one of the food buckets and was playing with it. He picked it up and rested it on the fence; he waggled his head and threw it up and down; he ran off with it, as if he wanted to hide it from me (which probably would have worked if I hadn’t seen it).

He was really having a good time with that bucket. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted his absolute favorite toy, innocently grazing and minding her own business: Fiona. Off he flew to pester her.

He ran circles around her and tried to herd her into a corner. I’m not sure why he always wants to force her into a corner, because the result is always the same: she kicks him in the head. Sadly, I didn’t catch that part of the fun.

Drew let Fiona go, because his eyes alit on yet another toy. This is an old lead rope that actually is supposed to be a toy, which is why I don’t put it away. He picked that up and flopped it around vigorously until it hit Apache in the face, leading Apache to come over to me so I could get burs out of his tail.

Drew then turned to the next object in his visual range, which is a large water trough made of the same recycled rubber as the food buckets. He spent a few minutes chomping away on that, which gave me some bur removal time.

This is too heavy to toss in the air, darn it.

But, no, not enough time. I was still de-burring when Drew sidled up beside me. I thought he wanted a treat (he knows treats exist now, because he gets them when I bridle him). But instead, he wanted to “help” me with the tail project. His idea of helping was to try to take a big chomp out of Apache’s tail. Granted, that would have gotten rid of some burs, but not how I wanted it to happen. After three attempted chomps, Apache walked away, and I had to laugh as I watched Drew trying to sneak up on him for another chomp.

I finally shooed him off and he ate some hay while I finished with the tail project. I’m sure he was at least a little tired after all that. He doesn’t know it’s lesson day, so he’s going to get even more exercise later, and not just the circles, squares, barrels, and sidepassing I make him do every other day or so. (Yesterday I even made him do something scary: go around the shed from the BACK. Oooh, that was different.)

Don’t scare me or my hair will look worse.

Daily Bird

Today’s bird is the mockingbird, because I got a nice photo of one today. I remember as a kid being deeply disappointed that the mockingbird was the state bird of Florida, because it was all gray and black and white. I wanted the blue jay, due to being able to use more crayons to color it (the state flag of Florida had that tiny Native American lady in the middle who was hard to color, by the way, and the dang flower was white, which equalled NO crayons).

This bird was really enjoying something on these branches.

Really, though, I’ve gotten so much pleasure out of mockingbirds in my life, that I’ve forgiven their boring colors. We had one that sat on the streetlight outside of our house in Brushy Creek and would sing for hours. There was also a big singer over by Sara’s horse pens back when Apache lived there. They can really come up with some doozies of songs, like backup beeps and cell phones.

The northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) is a mockingbird commonly found in North America. This bird is mainly a permanent resident, but northern birds may move south during harsh weather. This species has rarely been observed in Europe. This species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae as Turdus polyglottos. The northern mockingbird is known for its mimicking ability, as reflected by the meaning of its scientific name, “many-tongued mimic”. The northern mockingbird has gray to brown upper feathers and a paler belly. Its tail and wings have white patches which are visible in flight.

The northern mockingbird is an omnivore, eating both insects and fruits. It is often found in open areas and forest edges but forages in grassy land. The northern mockingbird breeds in southeastern Canada, the United States, northern Mexico, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and the Greater Antilles. It is replaced farther south by its closest living relative, the tropical mockingbird. The Socorro mockingbird, an endangered species, is also closely related, contrary to previous opinion. The northern mockingbird is listed as of least concern according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The northern mockingbird is known for its intelligence. A 2009 study showed that the bird was able to recognize individual humans, particularly noting those who had previously been intruders or threats. Also birds recognize their breeding spots and return to areas in which they had greatest success in previous years. Urban birds are more likely to demonstrate this behavior.

The mockingbird is influential in United States culture, being the state bird of five states, appearing in book titles, songs and lullabies, and making other appearances in popular culture.
iNaturalist

They are fun to watch when mating, and their babies are darned cute, so I’m glad we have them out here at the Hermits’ Rest to entertain us on the off chance that the meadowlarks, killdeer, crows, and white-crowned sparrows get quiet. (In other words, there’s lots to hear out here.)

Bonus snow goose photo, since you can actually tell they are geese in this one, taken today.

Thanksgiving Cranberry Recipes

I just noticed in my stats that certain posts are getting lots of hits. Since US Thanksgiving is coming, I should reshare my two recipes using whole cranberries. Make a double batch of the first one and then make the second from leftovers:

Whole berry cranberry orange sauce (so easy – you can omit ginger)
Cranberry bread pudding

I also make really good cornbread dressing that also has some breadcrumbs in it. When affordable, I add oysters. This year I am trying smoked oysters, from a recipe in a magazine.

I believe these are among the few things I cook well other than New Year’s dinner as my family ate it. Maybe I’ll add black eyed peas and collards to my collection.

I do love cranberries, to get back on topic. Anita’s making a cranberry dessert for us on Thursday. I can’t wait. And oops. I forgot to get a can of the sauce other people eat. No worries. The local grocery store will have tons of it.

Available at your local store. Interestingly, the whole berry sauce is sold out at Amazon.

Reading? Of Course!

What book are you reading right now?

It’s a good time for that question, because I started a new book a few days ago, The Invention of Nature (2015). It’s about Alexander von Humboldt, whose work was very important for people like me.

I have it because folks were discussing naturalists and people who have a lot of species named after them. It became apparent that I wasn’t very familiar with von Humboldt, compared to Aldo Leopold. So, my friend “JC Maxwell” (a pseudonym) said she’d send me a book.

Sure enough, it showed up, along with a book called Regretsy, a humorous look at awful things sold on Etsy. I admit I read that first. It made me laugh aloud.

The author tells funny stories about herself, too.

Back to Humboldt. So far he’s still pretty young, but he’s been running all over Prussia and its neighbors being an eccentric genius and meeting famous people. I guess that’s what you did back then. He seems to have had a lot of time off from his job looking at rocks in mines.

Right now he’s hanging out with Goethe and the king of some small chiefdom or whatever it was before countries emerged in central Europe. They eat a lot and discuss poetry and new ideas about how the natural world works. Plus, of course he knows Charles Darwin.

I’ll get to the parts where he goes off and identifies lots of plants and animals soon enough. Right now he’s just way over-studious and energetic.

Did you know in the 1800s he was the most famous person in the world? That’s what the book says.

Today was full of chores, but Anita and I had fun grocery shopping for Thanksgiving at her favorite H-E-B store. We also visited Target and a couple of other places.

I still got home in time to horse around with Drew, who calmed down a bit today. All good.

Daily Bird

Today I went out on my usual morning walk and animal inspection. I heard an interesting hoot/honk sound. I looked down at the Merlin app and it said snow geese! Sure enough, they were flying over.

These guys are only here during migration, so I was lucky to get a glimpse. We saw tons at Bosque del Apache wildlife refuge in New Mexico when we went there. Beautiful birds.

So Much to Be Happy About

It really was a great day today. I don’t think the weather could have been better, all the animals were happy, and people were nice, too. This was the kind of day I’d hoped to have when I was a kid thinking about when I grew up.

Plus I saw this Queen butterfly on a vitex bush at the local coffee shop.

All my meetings were pleasant today, with good conversation and productivity. I finished a tedious task so now I can look forward to more fun work next week. I even sort of enjoyed a lot of tedious copying and pasting to make a list of every tag ever used in my Master Naturalist blog. Dang.

Lunch break was at the coffee shop with Anita, where I had a great coffee and huge salad. We listened to Chris the owner’s spouse talk about music and our mutual love of Ruidoso, New Mexico. Then we got all our talking in. We get to hang out again tomorrow, because I’m going Thanksgiving shopping with her tomorrow (Lee won’t grocery shop on weekends). What a nice break!

Birds flying to their roost at sunset. Cries I think. Or vultures.

After finishing work I enjoyed working with the horses. Drew even let me get some burs off the front of his head! the key was doing it while he ate. Tomorrow I’ll work on it more. But being out with them in the perfect weather was just ideal.

All this, and there were still more burs on him.

Finally, I went to a “hat bar” thing that my friend Courtney held at her store. I enjoyed watching the young woman who decorated the hats and had fun designing one for myself. She put a pansy on it for me.

The snacks were unique. They featured a huge armadillo sculpted out of cream cheese and filled with ham dip. It was ultra realistic and took folks a while to get up the courage to break into it. Whoever made it is talented!

Most interesting dip sculpture I ever saw

Anyhow, the hat thing was fun, though I felt sort of old and in the wrong social group (it was mostly the fashionable young women of town). But there were a couple women over 50, plus two people I knew.

Courtney did some hat burning, too, and was really proud of her leopard spots. She has to be good at it, since half the items in the store are leopard print (note shoes on customer in photo).

I had lots of fun with my friend Jenecia, who was in my Master Naturalist class with me. I hardly ever see her when she isn’t working one of her many entrepreneurial ventures, so getting to just laugh and catch up was nice.

I had more fun helping her find materials for her hat than mine, and it came out so cute!

My hat had a theme of matching Drew’s tack, as if I’ll wear a hat when working with him. But it’s going to go with lots of my clothing.

And as if the day couldn’t end any better, I walked outside to see all the pretty lights in the town square. Every day Cameron gets a little better.

There. Just wanted to share a good, full day of friends and fun.

Daily Bird

Today’s bird is the belted kingfisher, because I got to enjoy our winter resident as it flew around the front pond today. It seems to make the rounds of the three tanks/ponds near our house, judging from when I hear it. I see it often, too. Kingfishers have such a distinctive shape that they’re easy to spot.

The only other kingfisher I’ve seen is the ringed kingfisher I saw at the National Butterfly Center, which is in the northernmost part of its range.

I like to watch these birds. I can remember the first time I saw one, which was on some river. It must have been in Illinois at the little park by a large creek. I saw it catch a fish! I’ve seen that a few times.

We’re lucky to have one here at the Hermits’ Rest. I think I annoy it by trying to take a photo of it, but it’s because I love it!

A Guest Blogger!

Neigh! It’s me, Apache Smoke Signal, Suna’s horse buddy, also known as Patchy. I’m taking a break from constant eating, my favorite hobby, to be your guest blogger. Suna is too tired to type.

I had to dictate this, because I can’t use a keyboard.

I want you all to know I’ve been eating my special treats with the nasty pink centers every day, and I think I feel a lot better. I jumped two jumps in a row today, to my surprise. I surprise easily.

I’ve been extra well behaved, too, not like that young punk Droodles who keeps pestering my little friend Fifi. Today he decided to gallop full speed into the pens, pester Fiona, then gallop back to our manna from Heaven that Suna calls a round hay bale, three times. I don’t know what gets into that boy.

He won’t even lower his head like a gentleman to get those pain balls Suna calls burs off his head. That’s probably what’s making him all goofy.

Suna says maybe next year my coat won’t be so thick in winter. I’ve been so sweaty.

I had fun this evening when I had my first night visit with the human who tells me what to do and gets all bossy when I get nerved out. She always makes me go fast and tells me I started on the wrong hoof. How do I know?

I tried to enjoy eating my delicious bag of hay while my pal Aragorn was running around with my previous rider friend Sara, but there is a horse baby who won’t shut up there now. He kept yelling that he wanted his mommy. She was just over by the handsome man horse, so I can’t figure out why this baby was so loud. It ruined my moment of peaceful eating with no other horses daring to try to share.

What Suna wanted me to tell you is that even after enduring her washing my mane (I was enjoying that dirt) I did things I didn’t know I could do! Even though it was dark with bright lights in my delicate eyes, I trotted less awkwardly than I used to at many speeds and could understand what Suna was asking! And I went around the barrels well enough to please the bossy human. I admit I don’t like that weird fast walk they keep making me do, but it’s getting easier.

I need to get back to chewing and dominating the other horses now. Suna will be back to talk about birds and plants tomorrow. How boring. Grass is the only interesting plant! And maybe alfalfa.