Ready or not...

I am so not ready for Christmas. I have one batch of cookies baked and in the freezer, and that's it. So I guess I'd better go get a tree this weekend, and start making those squares I've been planning, and I sure hope it isn't too late to mail cards! Need I say I haven't done any shopping either? Yikes! Only 2 weeks to go- I'd better get my butt in gear. Of course, it doesn't help when I step out my front door and see this:

Yep, it's not going to chop itself and jump into the woodshed.... there should be an app for that.
 I was battling a Chinook headache yesterday and was pretty much immobilized. Today my plans to ride Chickory were preempted by some much needed afternoon nap time. I'm not really procrastinating, just having a hard time getting motivated when my husband is working away from home (pout).
Maybe this will help...

Wordless Wednesday (sort of)

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Some links.

For those of you who missed the post on Rio getting injured, here is the link. I find that lower leg injuries take a while to heal. Also, here is a link to Young Living's main website.
While we are on to links, if you haven't been following the story of Janice's 34 year old horse, Tex, here is a link to the whole story; start at the bottom post to read it chronologically. Yesterday's post was quite moving.

Running around

It was a no time kind of weekend- Ted was home, but had no time to relax; the weather was nice but I had no time to ride. Saturday was run around and get things done- like having to deal with the cell phone company with a phone that quit working, only to be told that the techs will have it figured out in 3-4 business days... yeah right.
Sunday- s'posed to be a day of rest- sure, after we went up the hill and cut firewood! At least it was a lovely day for it- but then Ted had to leave for work. So it goes...
Rio's wound is healing well. I know I said I was going to get some Uniprim for him, but I checked with the vet, and would have had to pay to have the vet visit and tell me what I already knew, plus they would have had to order it in. So I went with what I knew best- my essential oils. I cleaned the wound with a mild solution of Theives cleaner, and used Purification and Melrose blends to get rid of the infection. That took about 3 days. The wound was really deep; to the bone, and an inverted v shape. The Schreiners Solution that I originally used tended to close the outside of the wound, which didn't allow it to drain, hence the infection. Once the infection was gone I applied Ocotea oil along with the others- and wow did it start healing fast then. I have also added Lavender, which regenerates tissue. All the time, Rio has been really good to treat. He stands quietly while work on him, and when I pull his foot forward and hold it between my knees as I apply the oils he doesn't try to pull away, even when I take the time to go through all 4 oils. Good Rio! I did have him penned up for a week as he'd get to running around and reopening the wound when he was out with the mares, but it's healed enough that he's back with them now. Happy Rio!

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If anyone wants to know more about the essential oils, email me or leave a comment and I'll try to answer your questions. Also, I suggest you check out Gary Young's blog - he's the founder of Young Living Essential Oils.

Sunday Stills

Out photo challenge this week was to use backlighting, and there were some lovely examples of backlit leaves as examples. Alas, no leaves here! But I did get my flag, backlit in the morning sun.

This is a photo I took of Tex, Janice's 34 year old horse, who is featured on her blog every Tuesday with her "Tuesdays with Texas":

Photographing Beamer backlit usually ends up looking like a silhouette.

Sometimes I am lucky with a backlit shot, like this one:

And this one is from my archives- a little color to brighten up your Sunday.

For the birds!

When the goldfinches first came to my feeders, there were only a couple of them. If you recall, when I first showed photos of them, I hoped they'd tell their buddies all about the free groceries at Diamond Lazy H farm- well they sure did! I'm now feeding a flock of around 100, and they empty both feeders every day. I think I need to buy stock in the sunflower seed company!

They clean up the seeds they spill, too. The cats seem to be leaving them alone.

I've been watching for other types of birds to come, and yesterday I spotted this Grey-Crowned Rosy Finch.

He wouldn't come down and eat, but he watched carefully, and I expect he'll be back, probably with buddies.
Went for a nice bareback ride on Beamer, and we saw our hawk again. Perched on top of the tree, he watched us approach, and once again, graced me with a photo op- this time from behind.

This hawk does fly-bys over our yard, so I'm very careful with Merle- he's always on a string, close to me.
My ride on Beamer was wonderful as usual, and I practiced bareback posting a little- can you say sore inner thighs? I always practice riding with no hands , inspired of course by Stacey Westfall, and it's a lot of fun. We can sidepass, circle, and stop, and we are working on the spin; if I start it with the reins, I can continue without them, and we are working on the bridleless back up too. All at a walk of course. This next pic is for Janice who says I never show Beamer all dirty; no matter how much I brush I can't get the residual summer dust off him. I may have to vacuum him.

I took Chickory for a walk, in hand, and we checked fence in the summer mare pasture. She was very patient with me as I wound up a lot of electric fence wire that had fallen down- it's the small wire that she was tangled in earlier in the fall, and tore a bunch of it down. She didn't try to dive to the grass and graze as I was struggling to wind up all that wire, and showed curiosity and calmness even when we got a loop of it around her front hoof, standing quietly while I sorted things out. Good Chickory!
 I noticed that she has a chapped eye, and I wonder if any of you know what I can do to treat this:

Poor girl! I'm not sure if it's pink eye, the other eye is just fine.

Wordless Wednesday

A good Monday

Monday is my day off, so I spent it on "me time"  which, of course, means horse time. First I got on the tractor and cleaned the mare pen, turned the manure/compost heap as much as I could. In the afternoon, I took Beamer out for a ride, just a nice walk and trot around the hayfield. We worked on shoulder and hip control, which with him really isn't necessary as he's so light I just have to think what I want and he does it.
What we were doing looks like this(sort of!)

Working in a straight line, I moved his shoulders over (not just his head and neck, the front feet had to track off the line of fall) for a few strides, then went straight, then asked him to move his hip out of the line of fall, all the while riding a perfectly straight line. We did both directions for shoulders and hips, and then did a more difficult maneuver- ask all four feet to go straight while bending in the ribs. You can't ask for much bend before the feet move out of the track, but it's a good exercise to work on keeping your aids light and your horse responsive. This whole exercise will also tell you if your horse is sore or stiff in any part of his body.
Beamer was so good, we just relaxed for the rest of the ride. We checked out the neighbor's cows, and used the opportunity to see where individual cow's flight zone was. Some didn't move at all as we approached, and some were turning away at 50 ft.
As we rode along the edge of the hayfield where there is a drainage canal, we spotted this hawk at the top of a tree.

The tree was tall and my camera was maxed out on zoom. Beamer kindly stood still for me, and I was real happy to get the next photo.

Also, I wore my new helmet; it was quite comfortable and fits really well, I hardly noticed it. It was a really good day, topped off by a prayer service at our church in the evening. Life is good- at least, as good as it gets- I can't wait until Ted is back  home from working out of town.

Shopping list

If you check my sidebar to the left, you will see a list - consider it a shopping mall! I would love to add more links to it, and if you see your link there, and don't want it on there, or want it edited, please let me know.
C'mon bloggers, I know there are more of you that sell stuff online- leave me a comment with your link. Also, any of you may feel free to copy my list for your own blogs.

Making a halter for Rio

Rio has outgrown his baby halter- at 7 months old he is as big as some yearlings. I bought 50 feet of rope a while ago, enough to make a couple of halters- cost, $10.
Here's a step by step on how it looked to make it. I start with about 21 feet of rope. The first two knots are the noseband knots, with the left one 82" from the end, and the next one about 10 inches away.

(Sorry about  the fuzzy photo!) I'm using a simple overhand half-knot. The tape marks where the next knot, the Fiador, will end up.

Making the Fiador- start with the right hand length (the long side)

The Fiador before tightening it:

And tightened, it becomes the knot below the chin that the lead line gets attached to:

Remove the tape, and using the long  (right side) end make a knot 6 " away (5 " for a yearling) - the jaw knot. The next knot is 9 inches away (7 for a yearling) and becomes the knot and loop for fastening the halter when it's all done.

When you tighten this knot, leave about a two inch loop for doing up the halter.  Take the rope and run it 9 inches (7 for a yearling) to the noseband knots, making another half knot inside the existing half knot, which now becomes a double overhand knot. Here's how you make a double overhand knot:

The first overhand half knot

Making the second overhand half knot inside the first one so that it becomes a double overhand knot and looks like this when tightened:

Then do the next noseband knot, making sure there are no twists in the rope. The next knot is for the offside and is the last knot using this part of the rope- it should be 9" away (7 for a yearling).

 The remainder of that piece should be plenty long enough for tying the halter. Next, take the original short end that comes out of the Fiador knot, and make a knot inside the jaw knot. Then run it up to the last knot you made in the other rope -9' for a horse, 7' for a yearling:

Tie your last double overhand knot there, and even up the remaining lengths. Before you really tighten down all the knots, it's a good idea to try it on the horse first in case you want to adjust the length in between knots, as every horse is different. 

You can finish the ends in a number of ways- copper tube, shrink tube, splicing. or what I used is some industrial grade reflective safety tape. 

The best part is trying it on Rio and it fits!

I made one for Chickory too, and have enough left over to make puppy chew toys for Merle.

She really needs a new lead rope.

Sunday Stills

This was an educational challenge for me. I've heard the term bokeh, but never really knew exactly what it was referring to.

Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. Bokeh is often most visible around small background highlights, such as specular reflections and light sources, which is why it is often associated with such areas.  However, bokeh is not limited to highlights; blur occurs in all out-of-focus regions of the image.”  

So thanks to the posted explanation of how to achieve this, I think I got it. There was only one really sunny day this last week so I took my camera and did my best to get some good images.

None of my photos got the really sparkley bokeh, but I think I kinda got the hang of it.

Christmas shopping idea

I meant to post this a while ago, but forgot- sorry! Gttyup was kind enough to award me a gift certificate to Heart of a Cowgirl who makes wonderful things to sell in her Etsy shop. I picked out these lovely earrings:

There are quite a number of talented bloggers who make things to sell, and I would like to encourage you to do some of your Christmas shopping by supporting them. There is jewelry, photo products, calenders, soaps, artwork, so many things. I'd be pleased if commenters would mention some of their favorite bloggers who have online shopping. You may include links. Let's support each other.
Edited to add: Links to your own site are welcome!

Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving to all the folks in the US who read my blog, hope your day is happy indeed.
I  was thankful this morning to wake up to such beauty:

Especially thankful that the snow stayed on the mountain tops, and that the rain quit, and that the ground thawed out and Lake Beamer mostly disappeared.
Thankful, to see that my hardy little pansy is still valiantly blooming through all the nasty weather, including being buried by snow.

In fact, I am amazed that I still have viola flowers,

and that my Bee Balm looks like it has new growth.

(Even though it did get knocked over by the snowfall.)

Rio is improving, and when I run out of penicillin tomorrow, I'll get some Uniprim (thanks for the reminder Sherry- I have used it before, but forgot about it ) so I don't have to keep poking holes in his poor little self. Also, it's pretty certain that he will be a big brother next spring- what do you think?

White to wet to green

A few days ago, it looked like winter had set in. I spent a couple hours plowing snow and watched it pile up til we had 8 inches of the white stuff. Then we got a coastal rain system moving in, and within 48 hours, it looked like this:

Yep- Lake Beamer is back. (Yes, he does have high ground, this is the middle of the pen )

All that's left of the snow is the pile from plowing the yard- and it's still raining. One good thing- the frost has gone out of the ground, so all this rain should soak in, once it stops raining. Assuming it doesn't freeze hard immediately!
Some bad news, Rio's cut isn't looking good, it was slow to heal, and yesterday I managed to scrape off the dead skin and get it draining again, but it looks infected so he is on penicillin now. I'll spare you the graphic images. I've got him penned up again, and I'll be keeping a close eye on things. At least he is -so far- easy to give shots to, he'll be getting the penicillin every 12 hours, so I'd bet he gets fed up with needles after a day or two, poor boy.

Wordless Wednesday

Playing in the snow

We got another blast of snow today, and I'm happy to report that my little birds did indeed tell their buddies about the free groceries over at Diamond Lazy H - there were a bunch of them all squabbling over the best position at the feeder:

This poor little fellow not only got kicked out, he had some snow landing on his head:

It was fun watching them; I made sure to keep the cats inside while they were feeding.

I did put up another feeder today, now that I have enough birds to warrant it. Third winter here, and this is the first time I've had birds to feed. About time they found me!

The snow finally quit around 3 PM, so I fired up the old Kabota tractor and plowed for almost 2 hours. We have a fairly large yard, so it's time consuming. I got to thinking :
You might be a redneck if:
Your wish list for when you win the lottery is topped by one of these:

source

Having been a snowplow operator for over 16 years, I love plowing snow- but the tractor I use is so worn out that every time I tilt the bucket, I have to use both hands to hold the linkage together. Sigh.

Sunday Stills

Portraits around here are usually about the critters; not too many people around here, unless I set up the bathroom mirror so that it makes multiple images! Ted has been working out of town, so critters it is.

Merle

Foose

Thumper

and, of course,

Mr. Handsome.