Win A Few .... Lose A Few

      I just took back the second saddle I purchased for Amiga.  It was a 96 mile (round trip) excursion to Parrish's Tack shop.  There was no financial loss, (except gas money) but time and energy were spent.  This is the 5th saddle I have tried on her, so I am bummed that it didn't work.  I am looking for a saddle that doesn't rest on her back bone, or restrict movement of her back legs for gating. The square western saddles do not work and I do not want English for long trail rides.  I have been looking at different endurance saddles.  I really liked this last saddle; looked good, felt good when sitting in it, but it was too tight on Amiga's withers.  So the search continues.... and I am due to come out a winner on this sooner or later.

      It was so beautiful coming home from work Tuesday, on a whim I veered off course and went to Lowe's for some flowers.  I also priced some trees and saw one I wanted to buy, but decided flowers were enough for one day.  Once home I pulled out all of last years planters and started cleaning them up and planting flowers.  They don't look too impressive just yet, but once the flowers fill in, it should be pretty. I have some extra plants left over that I want to put in the beds once I get them weeded.

    
      Joe decided it was time to plant the garden.  He put in corn, sugar snap peas, carrots, lettuce and spinach. I mowed a riding path through the large pasture with our Kabota tractor after Joe was done mowing around our yard with it.  Our riding mower is temporarily out of commission.  He then worked on the fence line mowing with the trimmer.  We have some ginormous weeds that have roots like dandelions, only bigger and longer.  We have both been working on digging them up on a regular basis.  They are in areas we do not want to spray.  The horses enjoyed more time on the front pasture, and Zorro is finally starting to get acclimated to the new, rich,
green grass.
Amiga did not have near the problems he did.      
     Courtney came over at 4:30 as usual, and we did our routine of brushing, (they are loosing their darker winter coat) then round pen work, and I went for a ride on Amiga (bare back once again).

     When I drove up to the house Wed afternoon, I saw a big ground hog on the north side of the corn crib.  He was not in a huge hurry to take cover, but sauntered over to and under the corn crib.  I have seen him several different days and many times since.  Time to get out our live trap and move him to a new home.  Neither Joe or I know how to set it....that was Daniel's job.  We need to find the instruction sheet.  I had a bunch of grading with mid term grades due Thursday by noon.  So I set my mind to focus on that and not be distracted by gardening or horses.  I set up camp in a lounge chair with pad, pillow, snack, drink and papers.  Needles to say, the distractions occurred.  First a very bold ground squirrel came around.  I watched it go in and out of the various little sheds I had left open to air out.  He stood up on his hind legs and checked me out a few times.  Then Ron,
                                                     a mower fixer, came and took our one

mower we sold to him, and would be back for the one we are keeping that needs repair.  Since I was up, I got the dog and hooked her up near by to scare off the ground squirrel.  The chickens and barn kitties proceeded to come over and investigate what I was up to.  At one point Sis attacked my bare toes that were hanging over the end of the chair, scratching them enough I had to go wash and band-aid one cut.  Once things finally settled down, I really started getting some grading done.  But it wasn't long before the monotony and warm sun lulled me to sleep.  After a bit of snoozing, the dog got all tangled up and started barking, which only allowed me to nap about 20 min.  I guess that was good....but I was not happy.  Sometimes you just can't win.  Back to work and it wasn't long until Courtney showed up.
I told her she was on her own with the horses today.  She did her routine with Zorro, and then worked Amiga in the round pen some.  Amiga is kind of fearful of her, so Courtney is trying to build that trust and respect relationship.  She had better luck keeping Amiga from coming in too close to her, but saw the problem I have been having.  Then she walked her around in the lush, long grass of the front pasture.

     Got my grading done Wed. night and posted on Skyward Grade Book by noon Thursday, but was a little short on sleep.  It didn't help that Joe got up at 2am to work.  He ended up having to go into State Farm at 4am.  When I got up at 5am, it didn't seem like I had slept much with all the interruptions to my sleep. Today on my way home from school I went back to Lowe's and bought the River Birch tree cluster I was eying on Tuesday.  Once home I started working on the hole.  It is on the south side of the barn where we had fenced off 4 red maples last summer, later to discover they are poisonous to horses.  We cut them down in the fall.  The birch is safe and will grow fairly quickly. As you can see by this series of photos, I had help with this project.  To better see what is in the picture, just click on the photo and it will enlarge.  The only reason the horses aren't in the picture is because I had moved them to the front pasture.  I got the tree planted but didn't have time to dig up all of the big fern like weeds because Courtney arrived for our lesson. 

Chuck & Flopsie came to investigate.         I dug up the red maple roots
Notice the top fence board has been          and the big fern like weeds. 
broken....Joe put up a new one later.          More chickens came to feast
Also see the volunteer red maple in            on the up rooted worms.
the bottom right hand corner.                     Chuck tried to eat tree leaves.

Eventually the chickens left and Chuck got bored and laid down....and he then fell fast asleep.  Sometimes I really like this cow.

As I progressed, I put the pot in the hole to see if it was big enough.  My "helpers" came back and were only in the way.  I needed to dig a bit more and then I got the tree planted.  Flopsie approves of my work, and I give it a watering containing root stimulator.

Chuck wakes up and plays with the empty pot.  I get all my stuff picked up, set down the bucket of weeds, and walk south to get a picture of the tree with the barn in back.  Chuck proceeds to knock over my bucket of weeds before I can put the camera away and go confiscate them.

     Courtney and I loaded the horses and went to Marj's as usual.  In today's lesson Marj rode Vinni (One of their Paso Finos) to set an example for ours. It helped keep Zorro and Amiga in gate better, riding behind Marj and Vinni.  I was trying out my new bit that had arrived in the mail Monday.  Amiga was mouthing it some, but eventually accepted it pretty well. I was trying one of Marj's bridles, but it was a bit too big for Amiga.  Got home from our lesson just after 8pm and Joe was already in bed asleep.  Friday morning he said he didn't get home from work until 6:30 Thursday evening.  That is 16 hours straight.  CRAZY!  When they run these projects, quite often many long hours are spent in the process of getting them to work. They are running a different one Sunday morning....hope it goes better than this last one.

     Friday morning I woke thanking God it was Friday.  Even though the week flew, it seemed to have been too fast, furious, and exhausting.  I was looking forward to having some down time over the weekend.  Also, because the rains came as predicted Friday morning, I knew outside work would have to wait, so I could get much needed inside work done.  Once Courtney got off work, I picked her up and we went shopping.  We headed 48 miles down the road to Parrish's Tack shop.  I had a very successful
                                          shopping "spree".  I bought a used saddle,
that I really hoped and thought would work, but later was disappointed to discovered it didn't.... lose a few. I also purchased a bridle, a 24"girth, and a picket line with clips. (We actually picked up a few items at Farm & Fleet and Tractor Supply too.) It was after 8pm when I got home, so I quickly did chores and came in to watch TV with Joe, and have my favorite dinner (A Mike's Hard Lemonade and popcorn).  It wasn't long after the exciting episode of Survivor that I crashed and went to bed.  One "adult beverage" will do it to me every time.

     Saturday morning it was mild, moist and muddy.  The clouds that hovered sent occasional rains through-out the morning.  Our Unit 5 website was down so I could not take care of some e-mails (read or send) nor could I work on my school web site.  The frustration I experienced took the wind out of my sail and I sort of flounder all morning, not doing much of anything.  At a loss again.  I wrote Mom a letter but didn't even get it out in the mail box before the mailman came. Just after noon a man came for 25 bails of hay.  I think he got rained on before he got home with it.  I was out putts-ing around with Joe when another fellow (Dave) came up the drive.  He was a former owner, one who had 2 horses here, and had done a lot of fix it up stuff around here.  Come to find out, the guy who bought it from him really let it get run down. He even tore down a lot of the wood fencing.  Dave was glad to see us fixing things up once again.  We ended up walking around and chatting for quite some time.  We learned several bits of information that will be most helpful. After he left Joe and I got back to the business at hand, which was the chicken coop.  We had put old square corner posts around the foundation outside, and then hay on those.  Well, it was the perfect hidden entrance for the rats which had chewed their way through the wall in a few places.  As we moved the post boards from the ground, Kaysha caught one juvenile rat, and once she killed it, I gave it to the barn cats, who after playing for quite a while, ate half of it. Joe saw a much larger rat scurry through the hole into the coop.  Flopsie came to investigate the tunneling and holes.
We didn't have time to clean the bales of hay out from under the roost area in the coop which is where I am sure the rat(s) live....that will be another day.  I did make a way for the barn kittens to get back under there.  Maybe they can help with the eradication project.  Some more heavy storms came back through mid afternoon so I headed back in to work at my desk, since the web site was back up. 

     Sunday I hit the school work hard, accomplishing a decent amount.  Then I rushed off to early Church, (Joe was stuck at work) and after that I went to school where I drained and cleaned 3 fish tanks, their filters, gravel, and plastic plants.  I brought home several more plants from the greenhouse along with the turtle, guppies, and goldfish from the tanks.  Shortly after getting home, Joe helped me load Amiga and I headed down the road to Marj's.  She looked at my new saddle and bridle to advise me on their fit.  The bridle with bit are going to work great.  I rode Amiga for almost 2 hours with the new saddle.  By the time it was all said and done, we decided that the saddle really does not fit and may be hurting Amiga.  So the search for a saddle continues and I will have to make another long trip back to Parrish's tack shop.  Marj did let me borrow and bring home one of her saddles she is not using at the moment.  It was after 6pm when I came in, and I still needed to finish unloading plants and fish from my car. 

These photos were taken today. 

You can see the chickens sunning in the background.  Hercules is warning everybody of my presences.  And Sis is coming over to see what I am up to.  You can see an extra (rather scraggly) plant I brought home from school on the hose keeper. (upper right)


Later, the barn yard pets moved into the shade on the deck to cool off.  There are two chickens under the grill even.  There is another plant in the wishing well (far right corner of picture.)

     Once showered, I threw a load of dirty farm stuff (jeans and saddle blanket) into the laundry, grabbed a bite of dinner, and sat at my desk to read e-mails.  Mid way through reading the posts of my Face-book friend's, my computer server quit on me.  Guess I should have been focusing on something more important.....like school work.  But now that I couldn't get e-mail, face book, Skyward grade program, my Blog site, or my web site....I decided to throw in the towel.  It was after 11pm and bedtime anyway.  You win a few....you lose a few.