Mar 11 – Symmetry

Used to be we had “malls”, enclosed HUGE buildings with lots of stores & mostly fast food restaurants inside.  Those have gone out of vogue, and now we have “open air markets” (which used to be farmers’ markets), that are huge mazes of shops & restaurants, but you have to go outside from one store to the next. Nice when the weather is, not so much when it’s pouring!

This row of pillars are at the end of the sidewalk on one side of the newest Whole Foods Market.  The store has been stuck down at one end of the “open air market” center, which is nice really, because you don’t have to drive or walk through the maze to get to it!

I love the look of the brick pillars with the ivy growing down from the lightpost, and the light fixtures that are NOT all the same angle. Symmetry below, asymmetry above!

Mar 10 – Tiny

This tiny little hole (goes under the tackroom floor from the barn aisle) is a passageway for the itty bitty field mice family that has moved in. They are getting less afraid of me, since I put a tiny bit of grain out when I’m getting the horses’ supper ready (and I talk to them).

I don’t mind the mice, such small delicate creatures. As long as there aren’t 1,000 (and since Racer, the massive skunk that resides under–or in, when the weather is wet–the feed room floor, has returned, he will keep their numbers down), I won’t bother them.

Rats, now, that’s a whole ‘nother thing!

If I’d had a dime in my pocket, I’d have put it down by the hole, so you could see it’s not much bigger!

Stitches Out Tomorrow!

FINALLY!

I’ve lost a few stitches that loosened and had to be removed by the oral surgeon, but there are a couple left, along with the membrane he placed over the extraction site to promote healing and keep in place the bone grafts until they took hold.

Can’t wait to get the rest of this stuff out of my mouth, and return to some semblance of normal eating (gingerly, as the new tissue will be VERY tender for a bit)!  1:00 pm cant get here fast enough.

Thanks for all the support I’ve gotten through this! My Elemental Village friends are the greatest!

Mar 7 – Fuzzy

Almost the end of winter!  Only a few more chances to photograph fuzzy horses. This is Mustang (full name: Thousand Oaks Stryk’s Southern Gent) in his winter coat.

When he was younger (he’s 7 this year) he was solid chocolate in the winter. Those Appy spots disappeared completely–I used to call him my part-time Appaloosa because of that.

But he is what is known as a varnish roan Appaloosa, and he gets more white every summer, and the undercoat in the winter is white. You can see the white undercoat through the chocolate guard hairs on his coat.  Oh and those chocolate spots on his rear are visible all year round now!

I’m going to photograph him right after bodyclipping in April, and I will repost this photo with it. Won’t look like the same horse. (Actually, he doesn’t look as much like a horse here as he does like a yak–minus horns!)

Ah, Dental Work!

Well, got my two extractions done, and had a mouthful of stitches.  They’re supposed to stay in until March 8, but all but one has come loose and been removed in two separate trips to the oral surgeon.  One lonely stitch left, and two membranes they put over the wounds to keep the bone grafts in place until they “took”.

Had a really rough few days after the surgery, and then intestinal issues due to all the high-powered antibiotics I was given.  About to get over that, I think, but I have acquired an unrelenting hatred of yogurt!  BTW: There’s a liquid fourpack called Goodbelly that’s not yogurt, takes 5 swallows to get it down and done with, and it’s probiotics.  Easier for me to take, and seems to be helping.  I’m ready to be ME again!

My husband took a 4 day weekend, as did my daughter, to help do the stuff I do daily (and did even with a fulltime, overtime-laden job).  If I hadn’t been so out of it (GOOD painkillers!), I would have been laughing a lot, but they did manage between them to do all that needed to be done.  Confused every animal on the place, though, wondering why things were done differently, at different times, and where’s our person?

So I’ve survived, and so has everyone else.  And on the days I’m too tired to do much, no one’s complaining right now!  How about that???

Feb 28 – Round

I use all kinds of things in training (and playing with) my horses, and that includes these blue plastic barrels.  We go around them in different patterns and directions.  (I have traffic cones, too, in different sizes and types, and use those with the barrels to create more variety and complexity in the patterns.)  The horses farther along in their training also learn to jump over them (except for Buffi–she can do it, but at 30 1/2″ and 11 years old, she’s the smallest and oldest, and she HATES to jump, so she’s exempted whenever I get in a mood to jump horses).  And, NO, I don’t ride them and I don’t go over the jumps with them.  Too dang old for that sort of stuff, but I do have to run along beside them!  (I may need to do a LOT of that this summer! Gettin’ fat*ter*!)

Due to the heavy winter coats the horses grow each year I usually give them the winter off. It takes forever for a long coat to dry if they get sweaty, and a hot, hairy horse can cool before he dries, which can lead to chill and a sick horse.  I don’t clip until spring, because I feel Mother Nature can always do a better blanket job in the winter than I can!

So, here they are in all their blue finery (or plastickery???) three of my blue barrels, round ends, round openings, round vents, showing.

Feb 24 – Patterns

I’m baaa-aaaack!  Two teeth lighter and still sporting stitches on both sides of my mouth.  Had a bad weekend, I’m already sick of SOFT foods, and have two more weeks to go before they remove the stitches.  Still, the worst is behind me, and I survived it.  Now, just to get rid of all this thread (actually wire) in my mouth!

Took this photo before my miserable week, when the morning sun was just peeking over the house and creating shadow patterns from the fence on the ground inside the front pen.  Looks almost like lace to me.