One more....

 

Wild things and flowers

 I enjoy sitting in the gazebo in the afternoon and watching all the birds that fly along the river; the osprey diving for fish and the cedar waxwings catching bugs as they swoop down from the surrounding trees. There is a stump near the gazebo and every time I sit there the little house wren comes for a visit. 

It is the cutest tiny bird!  

     

Robin (I assume juvenile) with a white tipped tail. Sorry about the crappy photo; taken at a distance in a hurry from my cell phone. 

Then there is this fellow, pretty sure he is the same one I have seen for the last couple years. 

Other than wildlife, there are flowers happening here, finally. 

Cosmos and calendula that self seeded for the last 2  years

This is a tiny flower with foliage that is similar to maiden hair fern

Snapdragons

Portulaca

We had some dramatic clouds last weekend. 

Love it when there are fingers of light poking through holes in the floor of heaven. 

And of course, one must include horses! Dally has literally no forelock left. 

Who needs a forelock, anyway?

Theo update

 

I knew he would be handsome....

Apparently he had a nice long mane until his pasture mate snacked on it. 

His training is going well, he has the usual Beamer easy to work with mind but it is also a very busy mind! Here is a screen shot of a text from his owner:

He was always curious as a baby, I take that as a sign of intelligence. 

He is 14.2 and still growing, so he will be a bit bigger than Beamer and a bunch bigger than his dam Velvet who is only 14hh.  

Love getting such good updates! 

Sunday Silence

 

Wild weather

 The start of summer has been a bit tumultuous around here. Starting with a Monsoon season then turning into multiple warnings for severe thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes.  None of which hit here! 

A tornado did touch down at Rocky Mountain House, which is a 45 minute drive west of us. The clouds that day were quite ominous from our vantage point. 

All is well that ends well though!  The system moved off to the north east of us. What we did get was very strong north wind about an hour later, I thought for sure we would lose some trees, in fact I could hear a tall old spruce tree cracking as I was watching out of our only north facing window in the bathroom. Thought for sure that old giant was going to come down, but it stood strong. 

Now we have rain and smoke.... always something!  But at least it has cooled off. 

We have a lot of cliff swallows that have congregated here- they are very welcome because ever since they arrived, the mosquito population has been decimated- yay! 

This is just a very few of them, the rest were reeling around the sky snacking on bugs. 

My flower gardens are thriving, this is my Jacmani clematis which last year had only a handful of flowers. 

The veggie garden is yielding carrots and peas now  and the potato plants are flowering. That is actually all I planted this year, I still have enough green beans in the freezer from last year. I did plant a tomato that I picked up for 3 bucks, it may or may not have fruit before frost time. 

Tuffy is growing and thriving too! 

Thumper intrigues him. 

Today was vet day, Happy came up open, no foal, so come mid August she will go live with Shayla and I will wean Tuffy early. Vet said wait and see until after weaning on how his hernia is, we hope it will close on its own. 

Meanwhile, the little herd gets to enjoy summer. I will wait until end of August to start working with Dally. 

A horse of a different color

 Speaking of color changes, Tuffy is quite rapidly going grey now. 

His sorrel coal has faded from the intense shade he was born with to a washed out red as the grey pokes through. 

This was then....

And this is now....

He has also grown in the last two weeks; he is now 12.2 hh at the hip and sure has filled out. In fact, one of the ladies at the breeding farm thought he was a draft cross!

Since he has haltering, leading and trailer  loading figured out, it is time for me to get serious about working with his feet, which will soon need a trim. 

Summer lull

 I have flowers! Finally.... 

The one I want to share with you is an iris I brought with me when we moved from Creston 4 years ago. It didn't like the 1st location I chose for it- too much morning shade- so I moved it to a full sun south facing location last year. This year it burst forth in all its glory! 

The name of this iris variety is Starship Enterprise. My sister gave me the rhizome 6 years ago, it did bloom once in Creston and I am so happy that it is happy! I do have one more that I brought with me but it isn't quite ready to bloom this year. I am hoping it is orange, but more likely it will be purple- cant remember which one I brought with me.  

We had a little change of plans with Happy- I am still sending her to Shayla at weaning, but since she seems to be quite healthy other than the melanoma lump on her neck she is getting one more year at least. Shayla won a stud fee to a very well bred stallion called French Eye Candy who is a son of the great Dinero (aka PC Frenchmans Hayday) Barrel racing fans will know who he is. So Happy and Tuffy have been there for the last week; I should be picking them up this weekend. 

Interesting thing about this stallion, he had a color change from sorrel with a flaxen mane to dark chestnut with a darker mane. 

Yes it is the same horse, I checked his markings closely. 

I also have an update. Some of you may remember that Gussie had a foal from Shayla' s Percheron stallion Layne, and she threw a blue roan filly. That filly, Evie, is now 3 years old and getting started under saddle. 

Pretty girl, isn't she? Draft crosses are becoming very popular, especially as trail and ranch horses. 

I got all my hay in the barn now for next winter; I opted to buy last year's hay, same supplier, as it is going to be iffy for putting up hay without rain around here, and first cutting hay will be already over ripe and stemmy, which also means later cut doesn't give much time to put up a second cut. So I figured to get hay that I know is good, even if it is a year old. 

Now, some summer weather please, with no tornado or hail warnings, all of which have been ongoing for the last 2 weeks. 

July already

 This year is flying by, seems that it has just warmed up enough to call it summer and the year is half over already. 

I went on a foraging walk with my niece's partner yesterday, looking for edibles and anything else that looked interesting. 

We found some mushrooms that may be edible but they stayed in the ground.

Not sure what this next flower is, maybe cinquefoil?

Also, a wild rose, love the scent of these and hope there are more of them growing. 

The other day on my way to town,  I had to pull over to take a sky photo, I love it when there are "finger" clouds. 

The barn kittens have gone to their new home.

Fearful Freddy and Sweet Sammy

There are two children who are delighted to have them!

The mosquitoes have come on fiercely with all the rain ( and thunderstorms... and funnel clouds... ) that we have had. Poor Velvet gets the worst of it, she gets huge welts and spends most of the day hiding in the shelter. 

These were not there the day before!

I don't do fly sheets, but I do spray them and I made a bug balm that works well; it stays on them for a few days. I rub it on their bellies, legs, chest and along their topline. Combined with daily spray ( I use Off or Muskol) it has helped a lot. The other horses didn't get it as bad as Velvet . I feel that with her advanced age, her immune system is becoming compromised. 

It's rodeo season here, our local PRCA rodeo starts today, and then it's the Calgary Stampede which we watch on the Cowboy Channel. Watched the Ponoka Stampede on CC, they had heavy rain and it was a lot of fun watching how some of the contestants embraced the mud- a couple of the Novice bronc riders made mud angels after their buck offs. And Crash Cooper, the rodeo clown, getting a pick up man to haul him at speed on a "sled" through the muddy water. The grounds crew did a great job of sealing the surface so it was safe for all the horses. 

There are some blogs that I can't comment on from my computer until I figure out why it won't let me sign into my google account, so I may make "anonymous" comments but will sign my name on them. Linda and Far side and Mulewings are the ones. I don't like commenting from my phone, too hard to type on it with my crooked fingers.