Posts Tagged ‘unseasonably warm’
Horse Raincoats
While our thermometers were reading temperatures in the 50s (F) yesterday, the angry-sounding wind kept it from feeling nearly that warm. Still, snow melting continued throughout the day, as well as some melting of the ground beneath. Even with that, the meltwater isn’t able to soak into the deeper layers, so the resulting hydrostatic pressure is pushing up onto the dirt floor of the barn.
With a looming threat of a chance of rain, we decided to put raincoats on the horses. Three of them accepted it without a fuss.
Mia chose to be totally noncompliant. After a few objections, where Mia just moved away each time Cyndie approached, Cyndie got the sheet tossed over Mia’s back. Before we could connect any of the fasteners, Mia took off down the slope in the paddock, kicked the sheet off, stomped on it once for good measure, and took a few steps beyond it.
After retrieving the now-wet sheet, Cyndie came out with a different blanket and a lead rope to toss over Mia’s neck. While Cyndie held Mia in place with the lead rope, I draped the blanket over Mia’s back.
Mission accomplished. Let it rain.
It’ll be great. Most of the ground is still frozen, so the water will push up inside the barn and erode new pathways across surfaces toward the drainage swales.
The bigger drama while we were down there tending to the horses was the wind. Strong winds automatically ratchet up the horses’ anxiety level.
While Cyndie was filling feed buckets and I was scooping poop, a gust of wind pushed open one of the gates we had positioned to block the alleyway. I looked up to find Light about to walk inside the barn. That got the other horses worked up when they noticed Light was in unauthorized territory.
Cyndie emerged with hands busy holding feed buckets and met Light face-to-face. Light didn’t automatically want to back up, and I couldn’t swing the gate back until she did, so we had a moment of pre-catastrophe concern. We all remained almost calm. Ignoring the gusting wind for a moment, I took buckets for Mix and Mia and got them situated on their side while Cyndie coaxed Light to turn herself around and get back on her correct side of the fence.
It’s a little like Olympic figure skating. You never know what is going to happen, but don’t be surprised when the results don’t turn out as expected. In the end, everyone gets to take a big cleansing breath, accept the outcomes, and move on to the next challenge.
I’m looking forward to the Olympic men’s and women’s Ice Hockey elimination games for the next few days. You never know how that puck might bounce. I’m hoping it’s in our team’s favor.
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Goal Achieved
I was wearing a short-sleeve tee-shirt and mowing grass in the warm afternoon sunshine on November 1st. Whaaaaat?
It’s for real. Of course, I also then went inside and watched some baseball on television afterward. It’s like a summer with no end. Something tells me it might make winter’s inevitable arrival come on with an abrupt switch when it finally hits.
So, my main motivation to get out on the lawn tractor was to test out my latest landscaping efforts and see how navigable the path around the southern fence lines is.
It worked! Not flawlessly, but it did work. I have wanted to accomplish this goal for a long time, so this was very satisfying.
There are two spots in particular where I needed to get off the tractor to lift it over a too-steep hazard where there are runoff trenches across the path. If I want to be able to drive across these, I’m going to need to modify them to create much more gradual sloping edges.
That can be done, but it’s not imperative that it happen right away. I’m kinda hoping our grass will stop growing and the snow season will arrive soon enough that I won’t need to be driving around there again until next spring.
After I completed a return trip along that fence line, I turned the corner and was headed toward the labyrinth garden. There, I discovered two deer casually grazing the variety of growing treats within. They looked up at me with mild curiosity, surveying my approach. It surprised me a bit that they didn’t act alarmed or run off.
So I just kept rolling toward them, pulling out my phone to see if I could capture them in a picture to share with Cyndie.
They’re there, but the natural concealment of their coloring is very noticeable, because they are mostly not!
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Relative Something 