Gratitude was in the eyes of all the pasture dwellers today. They had not been at all thrilled that a round bale of hay had been unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the entrance to their pens. They were equally irritated at the orange tractor sharing space with them.
Correct tractor and pens, but not the actual location.
Mysteriously, a front tire popped off its rim as Lee drove it into the horse area, intending to drop the hay bale in the pasture where the Powers That Be (horses) prefer it to be. So, they stayed there for two weeks awaiting rescue until today, when strong and clever men from DeWitt County arrived to perform tractor tire magic and get a new bale in the correct place.
Hay, where it is intended to be
I’m pretty sure the horses are also enjoying the pleasantly cool and sunny weather, too. They always charm me after they eat, checking empty dishes in case anyone left any tasty supplements. It’s one of those times when you just enjoy the moment.
Time to see if Spice left anything. Mmm. Dusty left some gravy. Dang, Apache just left salt. I’m gonna go eat hay. We can’t eat now! We must stare at this threatening truck and trailer until it leaves!
I hope you had a couple of moments in your day when you could just pause to enjoy the moment.
Since I was young I just loved the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show. It probably started me down the road to my love of puns. Every single segment just cracked me up, even when I had to ask my parents about some of the humor.
1959-1964. Long time ago. Still funny.
Jay Ward, the creator of this weirdly wonderful cartoon show, was a genius. I had many serious scholars of his work as friends during my academic years, so I may have overdosed on the reruns and analysis, but I still chuckle if I see a clip. If you are young, look it up and read about it in the article linked above. Then binge on Moose and Squirrel, Boris and Natasha, Mr. Peabody, and Dudley Do-Right.
Their college
I’m still thinking about things and issues, but more kindnesses from neighbors and some pleasant weather helped a lot today. I got things done that are hard for a person whose brain is not firing on all cylinders.
We’ve both had better hair days.
Still, the three days of much-needed rain put me way behind on bur removal, with only Apache done. I’ll try to get someone else in the herd done before my lesson tomorrow—since the horses finally have a round bale again, they won’t be so invested in getting tidbits of grass from between cocklebur plants.
I know, I know! My horses! And after a lot of effort on many people’s part, they have some round bales to enjoy when the cold weather comes.
The first four bales
The horses seem pleased. They should be.
Nom nom, as the young people say.
I had just washed my hair when I went out to figure out where to put the hay. I now wish I had a wind like today’s to style my hair with every wash! It made my hair look great!
Nature-styled hair
By the way, I may deserve a treat or pampering like the horses get, too. It’s the dreaded cocklebur season. I’ve probably mentioned this multiple times already this autumn. The horses seem to think the grass under the bur plants is the BEST, because each of them has a fine collection of burs in their manes, with bonus tail burs…or had.
Burs? What burs?
I took an extra half hour getting Drew and Apache ready for their lessons today. Some of it involved getting mud out of their hooves, but most of it was bur removal. Drew, whose new hairstyle is shown above, had about 15 burs in his made and a bunch in his tail. His hair is smooth, which makes it easy to get burs out. When I was done, I did the braiding you see. I hope it makes for fewer burs and easier removal. Plus, it’s cute.
Look at meee!
Yes, eventually Apache got braided, too. First at least 38 burs had to be removed. He has fine, frizzy hair in his mane, so the burs stick way more and are much harder to remove. My poor hands! (I’m careful not to use my nails.) I ended up making his forelock into some kind of horse-man bun. That should help. The rest of his braid is longer than Drew’s, but at least it won’t fall forward and may get fewer burs. We will see. Too bad I never was a girly-girl or had a pony and learned to do fancy braids. But Tarrin said the style I did might work.
He also has lots of wisps and at one point his braid flew up like a kite.
But I can’t be annoyed at the guys. I’m still kind of shocked at how well Apache’s been doing in lessons. It’s so very fun to get more skilled at riding as he gets better at his form. We did slaloms today and ran out of things to criticize. And we did three barrels correctly, at a trot.
These are things I never expected. Heck, even his side passing is borderline okay! Quite an improvement! Obviously he isn’t built to be a high-level dressage horse and he started out way late, but as long as he’s healthy and interested, we’ll keep working on things.
Drew and I are both improving, too. Bridling is coming along, and I’m getting the hang of helping him get straighter on slaloms and barrels. He’s where Apache was last year. But I think he can do great things if we keep working away. He deserves hay, too.
And I deserve hay. Duh. Even though I bray rather than saying neigh.
Lots of us deserve a reward right now. I’ve solved some problems and helped people at work, for which I’m proud. Lee’s buying us a house to renovate! Go him! And others in my circle are being amazing caregivers. Teamwork!
Oh the poor horses! Today we looked out the front window and saw something out of place. There was a brown lump where there is usually smooth grass.
What the hay?
I looked to the left of the lump and there were the horses and Fiona. They were standing transfixed, with their heads and ears pointed at that mysterious lump. It must have been perceived as a threat.
Two seconds earlier, Apache was also staring.
I had to work so I went back in the house. When I came out to get the mail later, they were still on high alert, not letting that lump out of their sight.
Drew and Dusty are ok, but the other 3 are watching.
I walked down the driveway, cautiously approaching that threatening lump, which got less and less scary as I got closer.
Hey, that’s some hay!
I was a little confused as to how that fairly significant pile of hay got in the pasture. Then I noticed more hay on the road. Okay, so someone had lost some nice fresh hay as they went down the road. It must have been very windy to blow so far off the road??
Road hay.
I actually took Drew some of the hay, but nope, the group would NOT go anywhere near the hay pike, which is larger now, because I added the road hay. They hadn’t by feeding time. Who could blame them? It appeared out of thin air.
This didn’t appear out of thin air, but I’m finally done.
Now, did all that hay really blow into the pasture? No. The mystery was solved later when Lee casually mentioned that he’d found hay on the road on his way back from his daily walk, and tossed it in the field.
The letter for today is apparently H. I shall start with hearts, since it’s a cheerful topic and something to be proud of. After finishing the camo blanket, I went back to work on my heart afghan I was making for Kathleen. Today I finished the heart section.
It’ darned cheerful!
It’s way too small to be useful to keep one warm, so I am already a third of the way through with making a border of squares to go around the hearts. I have ten colors of yarn for the centers and need 30 squares. That’s pretty dang good how it worked out!
After that, I’m gonna do something else as another border, probably also from that book. I have a lot of yarn. Well, except for the cream. I may need another skein of that one. All the other colors I haven’t even finished the first skein on!
Hay
I decided that since hay had gotten so expensive due to the drought, I should “harvest” what was left when the front pasture was shredded. There was some long and very nice coastal Bermuda out there that got mowed.
That’s a good amount of hay!
It was fun to pick it up. I feel ranchy!
Horses
Sometimes the horses mystify me. Both Fiona and Drew had smears of blood on them this evening.
Just a schmear.
No horse had a cut. Maybe Apache had another nosebleed? His nose looked fine, though. A mystery.
I’m still thrilled Mabel looks so much better.
Mostly they make me smile. They see me coming and pick those heads up to see if perhaps there’s food.
We see you. Is it dinner time?
When it’s been a hard day, watching their antics and rubbing those soft necks can make everything better. Which I needed.
Drew’s relaxed enough to drop and roll around with me right in front of him. Probably trying to wipe off the blood.
Headaches
Have you ever had a day where you start off sorta irritated and then actually irritating things start happening? That was me at work today. Sometimes I wonder how people get hired. Or how they keep their jobs if they don’t understand what their job entails. It’s like signing up to be a carpenter but you insist on hammering the pointy sides of nails. That’s not how nails work!
But I’m way better at shutting up these days. I didn’t write the software I support nor their job descriptions. I’ll just do my job and let their bosses notice the quality of their work.
Still. I got a headache.
Occasionally this helps.
Plus I missed a meeting this evening. My calendaring skills are something my boss should have a chat with me about.
I’ve mentioned that we’re in a big drought, as big as when we first got to the Hermits’ Rest. You may be in a part of the world with too much water. Neither is ideal!
That’s a sad pond.
As you know, there’s not much for the horses to eat, even though we’ve been supplementing with hay and built more fencing to give them access to an ungrazed area.
Johnson grass. Yum.
The cows the family own are also hungry, So our friend Pamela came to the rescue with some round bales of hay from the end of last year that we could afford. As you can imagine, with high demand cones high prices.
Hey, hay!
To save our good square bales for winter, we’re going to get a feeder for the horses and give them a round bale for the duration of the dry and hot spell. The feeder will keep them from wasting hay. It will eventually pay for itself, I hope.
We will love this as much as we love each other.
So, we have plans, and that’s good. I’ve just got to get over my heat issue. I can barely do any horse stuff. They don’t mind too much, if at all. Much petting and bonding occurs.
You don’t see me. I’m hiding.
The heat is really a pain when it comes to deliveries. Since UPS lady won’t drop things off, we can miss things dumped by the gate. I was not happy my wine delivery sat outside for a long time yesterday. But, only one cork tried to pop. I “had” to open this perky orange rosé tonight for that reason. No one had to beg me!
Wine is Noisy Water Winery from New Mexico.
The good news from today is that I got a beautiful Creature of the Day. She a neon skimmer dragonfly. Look at her sparkle!
Well, I’ve had a hard work day, so it’s time to crochet, drink wine, and eat boudin. It’s what’s for dinner.
I have some, but most are online friends. I have some local ones, but the only one I’ve seen for the past month is Tarrin, and she got paid to show up. Just kidding. It’s my fault as much as anyone else’s!
I had a nice chat with this friend today. She said it was hot outside. (Obscure bird grasshopper)
My car has had a flat tire since before we left for California. At least it got me home. There’s been just too much going on to get the tire off and take it in to get fixed or replaced. So I have gone nowhere except to the hospital to see Kathleen.
This friend and I chatted while I fed the horses. He said he appreciated the shade. (Differential grasshopper)
Yeah. I’m also working my butt off. No time to galavant around Cameron. Work is good though. I feel appreciated!
You know who is no longer my friend? The UPS driver. She’s stopped dropping off by the garage and now dumps heavy boxes buy the road. Today I had to wrangle a 45-pound bag of coconut stuff for the horses. I was glad I had a wagon!
My wagon is a great friend! These are the boxes huge feed containers came in. The wagon also helps with all my hay moving.
I have no idea what’s up with UPS but I’ll just deal with it. No time to fume and fuss. I’ll just be grateful for good things, like Kathleen being back again and looking better.
Wine, yarn, and a white dog friend will keep me positive, too.
The endless stretch of rainless and ridiculously hot days has not ended here, so I feel much sympathy for my friends in the northeast who are finding out what it’s like here! No fun, right? Well, there is SOME fun.
This is a bale of hay. What the circle is on the shipping container is a mystery.
You might say that a bale of hay in a wagon is a pretty boring photo, even though the building and shipping container certainly are nicely painted. But what you don’t know is that this is a very special bale of hay! You see, I got it out of the shipping container ALL BY MYSELF. Any member of our family will tell you the shipping container doors are extra hard to open, even for adult males. Getting them open myself takes me one somewhat large step closer to true rancher-hood. Ranchers should be able to get their own hay out to feed their animals.
Hay? Is Drew eating hay? We better come check that out!
As you can see in the above photo, we do not have enough grass for the horses anymore. They need to have hay to supplement their nibbling. I’ve opened all the paddocks so they have as much grass as I can give them, but it’s not enough. I kept hoping and hoping it would rain and give us more grass.
No rain appeared from these clouds this morning.
Now, we have an area with some green grass still and a part of a field that hasn’t been grazed yet. But we can’t build the fencing, since welding will cause a fire. There are already too many pasture fires out here for the busy fire departments to take care of. I’d rather keep them safe and sound, since I happen to be fond of some of them!
Hey, Mabel, SHARE already!
There is a Plan B, which was going to start next week. That was to just put up some temporary electric fencing so the horses (except Apache, who doesn’t get to go eat a bunch of green grass due to his delicate constitution) can get some nutrition and “mow” the parts we can’t get to. We will have to fence off a couple of spots, so they don’t hurt themselves (like where the overflow comes out during floods (what are those, again?), which has a lot of debris in it to keep down erosion). I’ve been taking Drew out there to snack after we do our exercises every day.
Sure, there’s a hay pile for each of us horses, but we all want to eat from THIS one, except the plump one, who has a pile all to himself.
However, all plans are again on hold as Kathleen is back in the hospital dealing with pneumonia and perhaps something else, which we will not know for a while. The fencing isn’t something the work crew can do without anyone to direct them (they have been painting the Pope House in the meantime, which I am sure the neighbors appreciate).
Yay, Fifi made it!
So, I’ve been putting hay out where I can. I have a feeder where I groom them, plus a bonus one that will last longer than the hay that’s just on the ground (I still don’t have one of those nice feeders). And I have another slow feeder in the paddock, where Drew and Apache will spend tonight, so I won’t have to wander the earth trying to get them to come in for their lessons tomorrow (yay to have Tarrin back!).
Two hay stations are shown. Note lack of grass. Also lack of poop!
One thing’s for certain, bagging hay and scooping horse poop are good things to keep your muscles in shape, and the heat provides free weight loss. Mainly, though, the rhythm of chores helps me deal with all the uncertainty in our lives, just as much as doing crafts, like I mentioned yesterday. And the more things I can do for myself, the fewer things I have to ask others to do, which is true rancher-hood!
Like today. I was awakened in the night by a familiar odor. Someone had been skunked. That someone was Penney.
I was just helping Goldie
And more stink arrived in the form of Goldie. I tried to sleep but Penney kept pushing, which she does when she is scared. I ended up with my legs off the bed, which gave me sore knees when I woke up.
I’ll spare you the carcass
After only a little coffee I was told to remove the skunk from the side yard, where most of it lay. Other parts were scattered around, as if a large animal had gotten to Goldie is a large animal.
Suspicious hole
As I went to get a shovel, I noted a large hole under the pool equipment base. Oh goodness. The skunk was trying to build a burrow in the yard where the dogs live. Skunks aren’t bright, cute as they are. It was doomed.
This was all over the yard.
Anyway, the skunk is now turtle food in the pond, and I got over my nausea from looking at its innards. The hole is gone, too, since this morning, Lee and the nephew created a new walkway from the back of our under-construction garage apartment, the garage side door, and our main path. It also made the pool equipment area look better.
New path from rocks that got delivered earlier in the week.
After the skunk thing, I cleaned my giant closet and the kitchen, which had turned into a housefly buffet. I’ve now kept up with the dirty dishes stacked near the dishwasher for 6 hours and emptied the dishwasher twice. Lee has washed the stinky sheets. Yay.
This young lass had her own skunk adventure over at Sara’s but has bathed herself. Good dog.
I was tired of ranching and chores so I helped Sara film Aragorn on this dressage work, now that he is all shod. He did great. While I was there, I found a new (to me) plant, a swan flower. It is beautiful, and nothing like any other flower around here!
Swan flower
I wrote an article for the Master Naturalist blog with more details. I was surprised to see this one is the northernmost sighting of this plant, which is only found in Texas. How about that! This has been the highlight of the day and was a nice break.
When I got home, we got a hay delivery of square bales for the horses this winter. I did my best to help, but I really suck at lifting hay bales. The young man who brought it, though, was damned good at throwing it, and the nephew was good at stacking it. I counted.
The young woman who also lifted many bales.
Half the hay went to our house and half to Sara’s. Sara was much more helpful than me. But I wish I had a video of the tossing. They were amazing at it. Nice hay kids! Whew.
I was hot and the day wasn’t half over. This ranching can be hard and keeping your cool can be hard. I tried to cool off by the pool, but no. Neighbors dropped by to ask if we’d seen the obscene stuff painted on the bridge over Walker’s Creek next to our property. They had all sorts of theories that some teens who’ve been riding up and down the road in a “gator” (motorized golf cart utility vehicle).
That proves it wasn’t ME.
I had no idea there was stuff down the road, but I remembered seeing red stuff when we came back yesterday afternoon. That day teens did indeed go up and down the road endlessly. And I’d seen them earlier messing with cane on the bridge. I thought it was just kids having fun on summer break.
But no.
Nope. There was obscenity, anti trans stuff, cruel stuff about people with mental illness, and the coup de gras (whatever) the flourish of Let’s Go Brandon. Hardly necessary.
So welcoming to their trans neighbor.
And you know what, in today’s society, you hesitate to report vandalism in the community, because you worry some asshole will come shoot you. Nice. Rural living can be beautiful. It can be scary. Here’s a flower.
And yes, I called the sheriff. I just hope my beloved county commissioner will paint over the offensive stuff. I’m not wanting anything it peace and quiet.
So…this afternoon, Lee said he’d help me get some hay with the new trailer (I keep calling her Tillie). That gave him a chance to try out pulling it with his Tahoe. He got all the towing settings engaged, and I got to bond with Vlassic. I miss rides with him.
Friends. I know it’s kind to let him stay with Lee’s brother, who needs a companion, but I miss Vlassic.
The getting of hay went just fine. It was just in time, as my horses had just finished the last two bales. I wish I’d gotten pictures of Drew when the trailer showed up. He came right up, greeted Lee, then got all interested in Tillie. There’s a horse who isn’t afraid of a trailer, especially one with hay in it.
We went to leave the pasture and that’s when things went awry. Lee could not get between the shipping container and the stuff next to the fence.
Not shown: obstacles
Lee was not about to give up. He went and fetched the tractor and started moving stuff. It still wasn’t enough.
The obstacles.
He kept inching forward in the car, then moving more stuff. It was pretty funny watching him try to move some heavy poles and awkward lengths of fencing. Here are the stages.
A big bunch of stuff On the way outThe biggest obstacle goesI moved a lot of fencingThings kept falling offThat last pesky poleClearing the way
I did help by moving some stuff I could carry. And still, poor Lee had to manually move some fencing. But he did it! Tillie and the Tahoe made it out. We were able to load all the trash from the container so it can go away! That’s a big step towards the tack room getting set up and the container holding hay.
Ta da! Space!
The shipping container behind the horse pens is now at work holding renovation leftover, so everything is in its place.
Thanks for the hay
And finally, there was still time to get in my first ride on Apache since he got home. It went pretty well, and the few times he tested me, I coped fine. We went all over the field and did some trotting around. Whew.
We made it.
We even got to sit outside this evening and just chat. Sure, there are challenges and concerns, but by gosh we can move those obstacles, too. At least in our little world. Let’s hope those of us facing much larger challenges in the world can move their obstacles, too.
The Hermits' Rest 