Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Program

I was hoping 2010 would be better than 2009.

aHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA!

Yeah, right.

The short list: both our cars are part of the major recalls (Toyota’s sticking accelerator and Honda’s exploding-shrapnel-creating air bags). Michael had a major back flare (ow!). Then there was the identity theft… the family member hospitalized (lots of worry but everything’s OK now)… the dental woes… the toilet that broke… the… well, never mind. You get the idea.

All in all, a stellar start to the year.

Not.

As an aside, and to put it in perspective, what we’ve been through is nothing compared to what my neighbor’s family has gone through in the last several weeks. His lovely wife is Haitian, and I swear, if I hear anyone else on the “righteous right” saying that Haitians “brought disaster on themselves because they made a pact with the devil,” I am going smack them up the side of the head until their brain cells begin working again. It’s called a natural disaster, folks. Deal with it, stop blaming the victims, get off your self-righteous butt and do something to help, like sending a donation to Catholic Relief Services or the Red Cross. Geez.

Anyways, I promised eons ago when I last posted that I was going to take a trip through my old archives and see if I could find some nice photos of Beth, our beloved Morgan mare. And I did find some!

This is Beth doing what a good broodmare does… keeping an eye on the young’un and eating. That handsome young fella by her is Rain, Beth’s last foal (he’s a registered Morgan, too). Rain went on to do his momma proud, and became a specially trained search and rescue horse for the U.S. Forest Service.

Here’s a close-up of Beth’s face. I took this shot when she and I were out on one of our many long walks, and she paused to look at a distant deer. I think she’s about twelve years old in this photo; she lived to be a month short of 30!

And here’s Rain, aka Mr. Cutey, himself, at his inquisitive best, having a little conversation with me. Morgans are hard to photograph, btw, as the minute they see you they’re right up in your face, socializing and checking everything out to see if you’ve just happened to bring along a tasty snack or two. Even young Morgan foals like Rain are incredibly curious and friendly. They learn very quickly, too, just how nice it is to have a human scratch their itchy spots, especially when they start to shed their first coat of baby fuzz.

And, as a bonus, look at this photo I found stashed away! This is a young black Morgan mare I’d leased for a while, Twilight, and her newborn Morgan foal, Starlite. I took the photo shortly after Starlite was born.

Oh Best Beloved, you’re seeing Starlite just as she’s figuring out how to safely stay balanced on those long spindly legs of hers. Isn’t that neat?!

Looky What I Found!

I’ve been doing a bit of browsing through ancient files copied off from a long-gone PC, and discovered this image. It was taken during one of the times that Beth and I participated in the Circus World Museum/Ringling Brothers Great Circus Parade.

That outfit is really… pink. And really… purple… And really… poofy… and really circus, to its core.

I absolutely hated the costume, but I wasn’t the one picking out outfits. It was custom designed and sewn as a sidesaddle costume for me as part of the “Field of Cloth of Gold” troupe, by the wardrobe mistress of Ringling Brothers circus. I’m not a pink and purple and frills sort of gal, and never was. This was the frothiest, pinkest and purplest glittery concoction imaginable, with lots of fake jewels and my very own crown. I’m sure it’s what most little girls who ever fell in love with a Disney Princess imagine themselves wearing. Even if it wasn’t my cup of tea, these kinds of costumes are intended to please, and from the crowd reactions they did.

Six of us rode sidesaddle on our matching red-bay Morgan horses, representing queens of England and France. Our costumes were a palette of matching shiny satin pastels–pink, pale purple, soft green, and pale blue, each color outlined with panels of gold cloth and the whole coated with lots and lots of glittery circus jewels. The horses were draped with trappings of gold and “jewels,” and even their bridles and saddlecloths were covered with sparkly gold cloth and circus jewels. The entire troupe included dozens of costumed riders, each as spectacularly costumed as the last. We looked like the ultimate in medieval bling.

My mare Beth (also known as The Greatest Horse Ever) was quite a trooper, as she had to present herself as the perfect ladies mount for spectators whilst literally surrounded by any horse’s worst nightmares–lions, tigers and bears (oh my!), elephants, snakes, the odd pygmy hippo and baby giraffe, and a score of other unusual critters, dozens of marching bands, over fifty antique circus wagons pulled by teams of thundering draft horses, and unimaginable crowds of spectators (at just one of these parades alone we had over 1.5 million spectators!). Oh, yes, and there also were television crews from the major networks and PBS that would run up right in front of us or from either side with extra lights to shine in Beth’s eyes, with crew sporting all sorts of spooky equipment. That was always fun… almost as much fun as the balloons popping and clowns shooting off blanks from their pistols as they raced about.

Nary a snort. That’s my girl.

She never put a foot wrong throughout, my Beth, even though she was anything but a dull or placid horse.

I’ll have to rummage around and see if I have some better photos of her in her hey day. I may even have some photos around of her with her last foal, Knight, a rascal if there ever was one, who grew up to become part of a U.S. Forest Service’s Search and Rescue Team.

Hm, I wonder where those are…

Guess I’ll have to take a road trip through my old CDs!

Poking Around Under The Hood

Doing some changes under the hood to the code and layout. If things appear wonky off and on for the next several days, that’s probably why.

We’ve had 14.5″ of snow since last night.

Fourteen and a half. Inches. Of. Snow.

The local Fox TV meteorologist says that it’s the seventh largest snowfall recorded for a 24-hour period since the State started keeping records. It’s a bit… much… even for us.

The wind was incredible, too, so we have some amazing drifts, a few more than three feet high.

Right now, Michael is testing out our new snow thrower, creating a path for the bunnies to get around the yard more easily to get to his shop. It’s a powerful but small electric model that is a replacement of the one we bought last year. That one had a factory defect, which made it eat its own drive-belts like candy. We finally boxed the thing up after repeatedly fixing it, shipped it to the manufacturer and asked for a new one. Within two business days we had a brand-spanking new replacement in our frustrated paws. That’s my idea of how customer service should resolve legitimate problems with defective items!

We filled the feeders before the storm hit, and I’m glad we managed to get that done. We had a rush of cardinals as evening set in, looking for dinner. They’re the first birds I’ve seen all day, as the heavy snow and winds have sent all the wildlife into deep cover.

One thing this storm has done: I always want a white Christmas, even if it’s only an inch or two of snow. It just makes it seem like “Christmas,” somehow, to have snow.

After today, I think that’s covered, for this year at least!

Turkey in the… Park?

This, Oh Best Beloved, for those who have never seen a turkey lest it was frozen and in plastic wrap, or nicely roasted and waiting on a Thanksgiving table, is a wild hen turkey.

She was hauling butt, so these shots, the only ones I could get of her, are frame captures taken from the low-resolution video I shot of her racing past our car. So the photos are more than a tad blurry because wild turkeys can really book.

Wild turkeys aren’t anything like the domestic mass-raised turkeys I’ve encountered, who are bred for meat, not brains. Turkeys like this hen are amazingly intelligent, wily and fast-moving birds.

And they’re as delicious as the domestic variety, according to my friends who hunt…

Which reminds me. It seems a little sisterly advice is in order for my brother, the Rev Dawg, when it comes to hunting wild critters for the dinner table.

Dawg, bagging a buck with your crossbow and then “bagging” a second deer an hour later with your SUV on the way to the butcher? It’s a little unsporting using your vehicle that way, don’tcha think?

(Glad you didn’t get hurt!)

Who’s On First?

In the universe of Bad Karma, I’m apparently near the front of the “let’s make life a little more nasty than nice” line. I really did hope to start blogging regularly again. Unfortunately, that requires both a working computer and a working ISP. Since last Friday, both of our computers have been wonky, and both of our ISPs have been mostly down.

I’m viewing it as just another example of How The Universe Enjoys Picking On Me.

Harumpf.

In hopes that both problems are now resolved to the point of limping along, I thought I’d give a bunny update.

BB is not only fine, she’s grown into a favorite of mine. She’s definitely from Stewart’s lineage: slightly smaller than average, with the patchy coloration from his line and quirky as can be. She also is easy to pick out from the horde (yes, we have a horde of bunnies–which is somewhat more than a litter and somewhat less than a thundering herd) as she has a little white crescent-shaped mark on her forehead. We’ve noticed that many of our bunnies have this as babies, but BB is the only one who hasn’t had hers shed out as she grew.

Michael asked me last week if perhaps Stewart had passed along a gene for “overly friendly wild bunny” to his descendents. I’m thinking maybe so…

Our bunnies are typical wild bunnies around neighbors and strangers that come into our yard, but are perfectly happy to hop all around us, to the point where we really do have to shoo them out of the way when we are doing things.

I told BB last week, when I was poking around under our spruce tree and she appeared, that she was supposed to hop away from the scary humans when they were doing something in the yard, not to hop TO me to investigate what I am doing. She yawned.

YAWNED.

Then she proceeded to groom herself and finally hopped away several moments later to nibble on a patch of late clover.

We’ve had several other batches of bunnies arrive, and one of the latest also has the “friendly” gene in spades. I’ve named him “Dude,” as he is the most laid-back yard bunny to date. He’s so reluctant to move from “his” spot when I come across him that I’ve actually had to reach down and threaten to nudge his little rump to get him out of the way. As he hops off, he clearly slings over his shoulder, “Hey, Dude, what’s the deal? That was my spot!” Hence, his name.

We have one other, of the five originally in BB’s litter, who has also remained with us. We call her “Snug” as she likes to snuggle herself down into the grass. She has “radar” ears that are constantly moving from one direction to another, and has a particular fondness for Michael. She will sit on the stoop of his shop when he’s inside it, or snuggle down in the pathway from the house to the shop, wait there and then refuse to move when he appears. Me she just tolerates.

Most of the other bunnies from this year’s crop have hopped to other abodes, or been lost to predators when they made mistakes that left them vulnerable. If they hadn’t, we would be awash in bunnies by this point!

In terms of other regulars for this summer, we’ve had a redtail hawk that checks out the yard regularly, to the great consternation of the furry folk and the songbirds. We also have a Coopers hawk that flies through the yard at about shoulder height, scaring the bejabbers out of me every single time, and has even roosted on the back of one of our lawn chairs. The great horned owls are back, too, giving concerts, and with the oncoming winter I see bald eagles often.

And lest I forget to mention them, the Canada geese are starting to fly through in flocks that number in the hundreds, landing on the river to form gatherings of thousands of geese nightly. Two days ago a small flock flew so close to the house that I could hear the beat of their wings, and see individual feathers.

Oh, and one other thing… it’s already been snowing. Hasn’t stuck, yet, but it’s truly snowed–several times now.

That doesn’t bode well for a nice easy winter.