Odds n ends

Notice anything? (other than the adorable little drop of water hanging down from her muzzle)

How about now?

Yup she has a mohawk tail! Just in the last week. It's rather ridiculous!

I keep hoping she will get her mama's flaxen mane and tail.

Speaking of mama, she has an oddity too:

That's not dirt (I tried to brush them off) those are smutty spots, more commonly seen on palominos- or maybe they are just more obvious on lighter colored horses.

I noticed this the other day; if you zoom in you will see that above the dark line of the barn roof, the sun is highlighting thousands of bits of poplar fluff. I have to use a sieve to scoop it out of the horses water troughs.

It has been 35 C (95F) here for a couple of days, breaking a heat record, but it has cooled off a few degrees. All my roses have popped their first blossoms and my peonies have opened too. 

I promised someone to post a photo of my purple iris- this is the first one, I do have a darker one that blooms a little later.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Little bits of everything

We continue to be blessed with rainbows here, I guess it's the upside of rain; but we are now back into the hot and dry weather. Tomorrow Ted and I are heading to Eureka Montana to visit the folks we bought Beamer from. We'll be going past the Libby dam, and I hope to get a couple of photos of some of the scenery there.
Gussie is healing well, the swelling in the knee is gone and she's walking normal so now it's just waiting for the cut to heal before I can ride her again; probably a week.
I got permission to ride my horses through the cow herd , so maybe this evening I'll check them on Beamer; I'm keeping an eye on them this weekend while the rancher is away.
The face flies are driving the mares crazy to the point where they are galloping around to try to outrun them, then they just stand around twitching miserably, so I took pity on them and bought fly masks. Not the best quality ones, but all that was available.

The black ones are the new ones; the one Gussie is wearing is a few years old. The mares welcomed the relief from having scads of flies in their eyes, but they were still tickling their noses so they got fly spray too.
The flies don't seem to pester Rio as much.

We had a little excitement here last night. You ever watch the TV show Cops? We should have been filming last night- we had action right in our back yard. We live along a road that leads to the river, where all the party types go on a weekend evening to drink and carry on. About 10:30, we had just drifted off to sleep when I heard the sound of a vehicle pulling into our driveway- fast! I jumped up and looked out the window, and a pickup with the police in hot pursuit stopped just outside my window- stopped, because if they had gone any further they would have hit my hitching rail, and you all have seen how stout that is- it would have severely damaged his truck. The two guys jumped out and ran, and I told the officer- "they went thataway!" I did- I've always wanted to say that!- Eventually the passenger was caught, but the driver got away. However, his truck got impounded; and the towtruck driver was my old boss from the job I worked at last year. So we had a good visit with him while he waited for the paperwork. It was midnight before everyone left. Of course, every time a vehicle went by for the rest of the night, I woke up! Hope you all are having a great weekend, and I sign off with another shot of the rainbow.

Wordless Wednesday

Crazy day!

Sometimes on the evening of a new moon things get a little strange. Like today. There were 5 motor vehicle accidents here today; two of them were at the intersection of the place I work. The first one was someone who panicked because he thought someone was going to turn left in front of him (that car was actually stopped and waiting) and ended up end over end in the opposite ditch; he will probably be a paraplegic- and the second one was a car that was turning right to come into our gas station and was rear ended by someone else that didn't see them, 5 people to the hospital. There was a fatal head on over across the valley at Wyndell, and two more. A lot of this is because of the 5 day music festival called Shambhala which draws a big crowd of young people ( think drugs and alcohol) with 10, 000 tickets sold; it was sold out this year. It ended last night and most of the people were travelling home today, burned out it seems. I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who drive under the influence of either drugs or alcohol; my sister was killed back in 1967 by a drunk driver who got off all charges.

One of my sisters had her car give out on her today, and get towed away, and another sister got evicted. What the hay is going on! Does anybody out there have any good news from today?

I give up!

Go West, Young Men!

As I arrived to work today, I saw a horse and rider preparing to head down the road. I talked to the fellow a while and found out that he is riding across Canada on his Quarter Horse mare, Chevy and has been three months on the road. His mare looked to be in great shape, she was busy grazing the lawn as we spoke.

He averages 30 miles a day with her has had her reshod 4 times, and had her vet checked recently with a clean bill of health.

Originally there were two men travelling together, but one dropped out for family reasons. This is Dirk Pfau.

Ahead of him is about forty miles of the highest mountain pass in Canada, the Salmo Creston Skyway. At the summit there is a rest stop, I'm sure he'll make use of it! There is a lake there, and some grass for grazing. I intend to take a drive tomorrow with some supplies for them.

A short time after he rode off, there was a storm front roll in with high winds and driving rain, strong but short-lived. I hope he made it to some shelter before it hit! I asked if he has a tent, he said he sleeps where the horse does, only underneath a tarp. He also said he'd never do this again!

Sunday Stills

Today's challenge is "Potluck- anything fun and interesting" so here is my take on it.

Where I work

My custom horn cap

Relaxing with candlelight and sherry

The brilliance of the tulips at our church

Two inquisitive fillies

And you knew I'd have Beamer in here didn't you? He's both fun and interesting!

Once in a lifetime

From Space Weather- check this out!

BLUE MOON ECLIPSE: On Dec. 31st, the Blue Moon will dip into Earth's shadow for a partial lunar eclipse. The event is visible from Europe, Africa and Asia: map. At maximum eclipse, around 19:24 Universal Time, approximately 8% of the Moon will be darkly shadowed. Click on the image to launch an animated preview:

Blue Moons are rare (once every ~2.5 years). Blue Moons on New Year's Eve are rarer still (once every ~19 years). How rare is a lunar eclipse of a Blue Moon on New Year's Eve?

A search of NASA's Five Millennium Catalogue of Lunar Eclipsesprovides an approximate answer. In the next 1000 years, Blue Moons on New Year's Eve will be eclipsed only 11 times (once every ~91 years). So this is a rare event, indeed.