fun day

It started early with a round of duck-wrangling. Those little boogers are such escape artists. I think I finally figured how they were getting out and fixed it though. Time will tell.

Later in the morning my friend Heather came over with her two adorable kids to pick some apricots, and of course visit the animals! Heather and I knew each other in high school, in the sense that we went to the same high school in the same grade and probably had lots of classes together but were both afflicted with the "not talking to people" complex and despite our apparent similarities (thank you blog and facebook for helping me meet and re-meet people!) probably talked more in an hour today and we did in four years back then. That was fun. H, if the kiddos have the insatiable urge for more horse-time, I'm sure the horses would gladly indulge! :-)

Later in the day, after posting my previous entry about strange going-ons (goings-on?) around here, I was out here working on scrim, with Olin zonked out on the floor next to to the couch (btw Olin's favorite hobby is zonking out) and all of a sudden he woke up and his eyes went all big and scared and he STARED at the area by the front door. OMG I got chills all over the place, imagining some boogie-monster standing around the corner or something. Cripes. Seriously. It reminded me of one of the creepiest experiences I've ever had.

Want to hear that? Sure you do. I was about, oh, 12 years old or so. We had this dog, Gio, the best dog ever. I had to go out to the chicken house late one night, I was probably getting birds ready for show or could have been hunting mice, who knows. The chicken house was a little ways off from the house (don't ask me distances, I'm awful at estimating that). It was late, so I took Gio down there with me. The front of the chicken house had a door, the back had a window, and there were coops along each side. This thing was a mansion, with lights and everything! Anyway, so there we were, me going about my business, it's pitch black outside, Gio was just hanging around, and all of a sudden he looked at the back window, all his hair went up, and he GROWLED. Not like an annoyed little growl, more Cujo-esque. It was pitch black outside, and with the light on inside the chicken house I could only see the reflection of everything inside the chicken house. And there he was staring out the window growling at something in the darkness (egads I'm totally getting chills now). I don't think I have ever been so completely freaked out. I grabbed him, ran out the door, turned off the lights and ran as fast as I possibly could back to the house. Freaked. Me. Out! I can't tell that story without getting chills.

Anyway, sorry about the tangent. It was a good day today, and my horses made me happy by being very angelic with the kids. :-)

The microscope beckons. So does my bed. Scrimshaw or go to bed. Hmm. I think bed is going to win tonight. 10 days to deadline though!

funky stuff goin' down around here

Okay, I'm kind of creeped out.

Several times over the last couple days I've heard something fall inside the house. It just happened again, I was out here working and heard a pretty loud crash from one of the bedrooms. Loud enough that I should be able to see something amiss. But everything's exactly as it was, the chicks were going about their normal chicky business, and Olin's zonked out in my room. You might be thinking I couldn't see if anything had fallen amidst all my clutter but everything's really clean right now so that's not the case! I don't know about this...

And then last night... the gate. The whole property is fenced, all around. Nothing larger than maybe a cat could get through the gates and onto or off of the property. The horses are confined to the corrals and pasture, the dog is confined to the yard/house area, and there is a gravel driveway that separates the two, and a gate from the yard to the driveway. The gate swings outward from the yard. If you try to swing it inward it catches on the sidewalk and won't open more than a foot or so, so nobody ever opens it inward, and the gate is always closed so that the dog stays in the yard.

This morning the gate was open, pushed inward, and I say PUSHED because the latch had not been opened, it was bent around sideways so that it just slipped off the gate post. Um, WHAT?! What the heck could be big enough to do that?!?!? Jessie dog is on the inside, if she pushed the gate it would have gone outward. The horses don't have access to that gate. The cats can fit through without it being open.

Sasquatch?

Creepy.

ducks!

The days are packed lately. Seriously. I'm blogging at midnight. It'll be tomorrow by the time I post this.

The ducks are growing like weeds. They'll soon by bigger than their chicken mommies. These two hens have done such a great job with them! They just got the run of the whole garden a couple days ago and they are so much fun to watch.

Ducks and watermelon, it's a great combination. ;-)




Homer decided it looked like a good place for a nap. Hens and ducks decided to check him out.



Homer decided to find somewhere he could nap without being pestered!

jam!

Last call for strawberry jam! $6 per half pint, $12 shipping up to 6 jars, US only.

First and last call for APRICOT JAM!!!! This is a favorite of a lot of people. $5 per half pint, $12 shipping up to 6 jars, US only. They are quite all of a sudden ripe in the last, uh, day. Probably in a week they'll be gone. Eeek! Wish it lasted longer!

Hey local peeps, want some apricots? You-pick. Let me know....

It was 109 today. I hate summer! I spent much of the day at a Gypsy Horse open house near here with JC. She raises Gypsy horses. It was kind of a lesson in how NOT to host an open house. Lesson #1 is make sure people can find your house. The mailbox with the street address "was taken down years ago." The driveway was actually down a road other than that on which the street address is for (could they mention that perhaps?) No signs, no nothing, and the barn was tucked back over a hill so it wasn't like we could see the horses from the road. Had to call a few times before finally getting someone on the phone for directions. The host(s?) barely said a word to us, there was no pricing or info any of the horses. Thank goodness for the guy from England who was there, I really enjoyed listening to what he had to say about the horses and their history and what the differences are between the US and Europe and his opinion about a lot of the horses. That was cool.

It was so hot even the cat melted. ;-)

well that's great

I just got stung by a wasp. I think it barely got me, but it instantly turned red and blotchy, so I'm sitting here waiting for the benadryl-induced coma to hit me. Should happen in about a half hour. I guess I could do something productive until then.

Corrals are clean, coops are clean, and for some weird reason I re-arranged my bedroom furniture. We'll see how I like the new arrangement, the old one wasn't quite right.

The other morning there was a frog in the toilet.

I'm going in about a hundred different directions this week and need to get caught up on some important stuff.

It's been one of those weeks.

I'm very nostalgic lately. About Yellowstone, about Jackson Hole. And then I had to open up my high school yearbooks while I was moving stuff around, and read what people wrote. Apparently I didn't talk much. ;-) I had to laugh at all the comments where people pointed out that I'm "so nice but need to talk more!" LOL! Have I changed? Maybe a little. Thank goodness for blogging, eh?

And of course, nostalgic about staying up til the wee hours of the morning in the 5th grade watching "Thriller" at a slumber party at a friend's house. RIP.

upcoming dance performance!

Yay, a belly dance performance! Come out and see the troupe, and hope it's not so hot that our makeup melts. ;-) This should be a great show. I'm in EIGHT dances (wow!) and guess what, you can actually see me in all of them! Wow! Be there or be square! See http://www.galtfestival.org for directions. Free parking, $5 admission.

news n stuff

I found out today that "Sunday Morning" was accepted into the State Fair Fine Art show! Yay! That rocks, I'm excited that I got a scrimshaw piece in there! I am a little bummed that they didn't accept "Thankful" but that's okay, I'll live.

I have not decided if I will be showing birds there this year, it depends if anything looks like it might be in show shape, and also if any of my usual cohorts will be there to hang out with.

The second batch of chicks hatched on the weekend. The hatch rate has been really good. I'm getting pretty low numbers of chicks though because egg production is tapering off a lot, so I'm just not setting all that many. I'm only going to set 6 batches of eggs (6 weeks worth) so whatever I get is what I get, hopefully a decent number! I don't think I can deal with more than that. This all still feels half-hearted at best, which is hard to admit and I'm still not sure what to do about it.

The belt buckle is coming along FABulously well (inside joke that three people might laugh at!). Really, it looks great, can't wait to show you. My technique is a little "heavier" on this piece so that it will hold up well to being worn. I love my AirGraver! Make no mistake, it's all still by hand, but it sure speeds up work on solid-color areas and lines. Anything other than those two areas I still do with an etching needle.

Shylah is back on a diet. Sigh. That horse...

I think the baby Barn Swallows might have hatched. It's been a rough year for them. There are two nests outside the front door, have been for years. The First Female was nesting in Nest #2 a month or so ago, until one of the Evil Henchbirds (aka House Sparrows) killed her. One of these Evil Henchbirds has killed babies and destroyed eggs before, but this shocked me, and was REALLY sad. :-( The male stuck around, always out there singing and singing. About a week later her showed up with a new lady on his wing. Second Female. She checked out the digs and picked Nest #1, did some repairs, got the place fixed up, and I think the babies are hatched. I don't know how to keep those #$%&ing Sparrows away though, so I'm worried.

There are two Kestel boxes on the property. I think the ones that were nesting in the pasture have already fledged, though I never saw it happen. But I don't see them out there any more, and now the box in the corrals has a nesting pair. Hopefully I can keep a better eye on these ones and get some photos! I know there are baby Western Bluebirds out in the pasture now, I could hear them when I was out riding the other day.

I think that's enough jabbering for today.

why I try to always have a camera with me

This morning I drove out to the Delta to visit my friend Amber. We've known each other since junior high, though don't see each other very often (for which I have no good excuse, but will say that we really should see each other more often!). Anyway, she's having a baby next month (seriously, this is a baby year, EVERYONE is having babies, it's insane) and I was out of town for the shower so I took the gift over there, plus it was an excuse to sit around and gab for a few hours, which was fun. I enjoyed the visit, hope to do it again soon. :-)

Anyway, while heading down a remote little farm road along the way, I noticed that way up ahead of me the road was obstructed with something... It readily became apparent that a herd of Longhorns was being driven down the road. Cool! Not sure where they were going, it was an area of vineyards and orchards, but there must have been pastures back off the road somewhere. Anyway, I pulled up to the pickup truck that was on the other side of the road, fully prepared to be told to sit and wait (which would have been fine) or to turn around (also fine, but he'd have to give me some directions) but to my surprise the man said "this could take a while, go ahead and drive through them, just go real slow, they won't bother you." Okay!!! So I did. And around that time I remembered my camera was in my purse. I really should have just stopped and shot a bunch of good reference photos but I was so excited about driving my li'l car through a herd of Longhorns that it sort of didn't occur to me to do that.






I like the Delta. It's pretty, it's a little cooler (hey, it's where the Delta Breeze comes from!). The Delta is an area of several towns to the west of here, takes me about 45 minutes to get to A's house. It's a land of orchards, fields, vineyards, rivers, and bridges. I don't think I'd ever feel safe living that close to the rivers though. River, levee, house, all right next to each other. Nope, that's too close. I grew up along a river, but the house was maybe a half mile up from the river and on much higher ground (though the lower property flooded a few times.) That was close enough!





Because someone might wonder, no that's not a real scorpion. It was a gift. :-)

Tonight I watched the movie "Marley and Me". Oh those animal movies always make me CRY!!!!!!

reminisce

I can't believe it's been a year since I went to Idaho/Wyoming. I can't believe how much things... and people... can change. *sigh*

ramblings

I need to do some serious house cleaning. Human house, chicken house(s), corrals and stall. Sometimes I think I'd like to be a neat freak, but I don't think I ever could be.

I feel like a total blog slacker with not posting WIP pics. Things are going well though. Belt buckle in progress, all sketches now approved for pistol grips, image approved for pendant (and pendant shaped and sanded from a very rough piece of ivory, looks nice!)

I think I might try creating one pendant a week for sale though. Now that I'm using an inking technique that's more durable, I feel comfortable doing jewelry work and would like to get that on the market somewhere (okay I know where I want it to be sold, I'm just going to keep that to myself right now).

I got to spend some time with L (my sis in law) and baby C (my niece, two months old already!) today without extraneous grandparents hovering about, and I have to say I greatly enjoyed that. Much more relaxed. Babies are quite foreign territory to me, but hopefully I won't be totally inept as an aunt. I have to say I did catch myself eyeballing the little girly clothes at Horse Expo over the weekend and scheming to take C with me in a few years and get her all cowgirled up. Hee hee. :-)

To those of you who dared to complain about that AMAZINGLY WONDERFUL weather we've been having, curses on you!!! It's getting hot now, I don't like that. It had only been getting into the low 80s, loved it!!!! I've been riding every day, able to work outside without feeling like I might croak, etc. In my perfect world it would never be over 85 degrees.

I don't talk much about riding. There's not much to talk about. I ride. Sometimes not very often. Sometimes every day. Trail rides are exciting, I always write about those (and want to go on more!!!) but around here it's schooling, training, arena work. What the clinician said on Sunday at Horse Expo really made an impression, that we just don't canter our horses enough. That's been pretty true with me, and as you've heard me say before, Shylah has a pretty choppy canter and I've been willing to just not do it. So I'm going to try out the theory that doing it a LOT more will develop whatever needs to develop (her balance, strength, etc?) to improve it. And also just improve her stamina. In the few weeks that she has been on the [dry, dead, crappy, weedy] pasture she's totally porked up again despite lots of riding. Arg. I think I'm going to have to put her back in the corral and on a diet. Some horses are just too easy to maintain!

Okay, it's bed time, I have nothing else to ramble about today.