A little sunshine
May. 30th, 2009 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoThis afternoon, we saw the sun. Of course, it's clouded over again now and might rain.
Tess is almost normal again. I put her out in the pasture while I was working in the garden and she ran around and enjoyed it. Even better, after two hours, when I went to get her she ran right to me at the gate. I really love it when she does that. It can be a bit disturbing to have 1200 pounds of horse charging right at you at full gallop, but she always stops in time. She's looking the best, I think, that she has since I got her. After she had her foal, Dawn, she never really slimmed down. I've been weighing every ounce of feed she gets for months now, gradually cutting back until she no longer looks pregnant enough for people to ask me "When is she due?" Of course, she tells me that she's starving, but she looks so much more happy and elegant now that it's worth it.
So, the garden. There's a lot to be done there. I weeded out the strawberries today, and removed all the blossoms once more. We aren't supposed to let them flower and produce fruit until after July 1, so they get their roots established first. If it doesn't rain tonight, I'll need to water them tomorrow.
Inspected the apple trees, and all four of them are loaded with apples. So many, in fact, that I may decide to strip some off so that they aren't too overburdened. This is the first year of production for two of them, and the second year for the other two. The varieties are Esopus Spitzenberg, Prairie Spy, Winter Banana, and Red Astrakan. The bumble bees and little native bees must have done most of the pollination, as we have no honeybees left around here to speak of. There were black native bees working the blueberry flowers today, in fact. I know bumbles can't reach into those flowers, so I'm glad to see that we have someone who may be doing the job. From the amount of green berries starting to appear, it must be working.
Asparagus was overgrown. We've been forgetting to check it during all the gloom and mud. I cut back several stalks that had grown to my own height, as well as getting seven or eight that were still edible size. We'll let it grow one more set of edible shoots and then it can make all the leaves it wants.
I was unhappy a month ago to discover that the Brit neighbor has apparently destroyed all the delicious red raspberries that used to grow along the fenceline between our properties. Today, though, I found a clump of them blossoming 30 feet from the fence, next to the stump of an old mulberry tree. We may still have raspberries, yay.
Lilacs and cherries are done, iris are starting to bloom now. Honeysuckle is still going at it. Spring is headed into high summer much too fast for me.
Oh, and I got zapped by the sheep fence. Ouch! I was about to let them back into the barn, and did my usual dumb trick of reaching across the corner of the fence to turn off the charger. I was all sweaty. The top wire just brushed my tummy at the right instant, and my hand was on an iron t-post. Crack! Up my ribs, down my arm, out through my palm. Buzzzzzz. It took several minutes to stop feeling that one. It takes a good crack to stop a sheep, though. They are so well insulated by their wool, that a light buzz won't even phase them. I, on the other paw, was only wearing a sweaty t-shirt. ;p (Well, and jeans, but they didn't enter into the picture.)
Tess is almost normal again. I put her out in the pasture while I was working in the garden and she ran around and enjoyed it. Even better, after two hours, when I went to get her she ran right to me at the gate. I really love it when she does that. It can be a bit disturbing to have 1200 pounds of horse charging right at you at full gallop, but she always stops in time. She's looking the best, I think, that she has since I got her. After she had her foal, Dawn, she never really slimmed down. I've been weighing every ounce of feed she gets for months now, gradually cutting back until she no longer looks pregnant enough for people to ask me "When is she due?" Of course, she tells me that she's starving, but she looks so much more happy and elegant now that it's worth it.
So, the garden. There's a lot to be done there. I weeded out the strawberries today, and removed all the blossoms once more. We aren't supposed to let them flower and produce fruit until after July 1, so they get their roots established first. If it doesn't rain tonight, I'll need to water them tomorrow.
Inspected the apple trees, and all four of them are loaded with apples. So many, in fact, that I may decide to strip some off so that they aren't too overburdened. This is the first year of production for two of them, and the second year for the other two. The varieties are Esopus Spitzenberg, Prairie Spy, Winter Banana, and Red Astrakan. The bumble bees and little native bees must have done most of the pollination, as we have no honeybees left around here to speak of. There were black native bees working the blueberry flowers today, in fact. I know bumbles can't reach into those flowers, so I'm glad to see that we have someone who may be doing the job. From the amount of green berries starting to appear, it must be working.
Asparagus was overgrown. We've been forgetting to check it during all the gloom and mud. I cut back several stalks that had grown to my own height, as well as getting seven or eight that were still edible size. We'll let it grow one more set of edible shoots and then it can make all the leaves it wants.
I was unhappy a month ago to discover that the Brit neighbor has apparently destroyed all the delicious red raspberries that used to grow along the fenceline between our properties. Today, though, I found a clump of them blossoming 30 feet from the fence, next to the stump of an old mulberry tree. We may still have raspberries, yay.
Lilacs and cherries are done, iris are starting to bloom now. Honeysuckle is still going at it. Spring is headed into high summer much too fast for me.
Oh, and I got zapped by the sheep fence. Ouch! I was about to let them back into the barn, and did my usual dumb trick of reaching across the corner of the fence to turn off the charger. I was all sweaty. The top wire just brushed my tummy at the right instant, and my hand was on an iron t-post. Crack! Up my ribs, down my arm, out through my palm. Buzzzzzz. It took several minutes to stop feeling that one. It takes a good crack to stop a sheep, though. They are so well insulated by their wool, that a light buzz won't even phase them. I, on the other paw, was only wearing a sweaty t-shirt. ;p (Well, and jeans, but they didn't enter into the picture.)
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Mending fences...
Date: 2009-05-31 03:12 am (UTC)Re: Mending fences...
Date: 2009-05-31 04:08 am (UTC)Re: Mending fences...
Date: 2009-05-31 04:43 am (UTC)Re: Mending fences...
Date: 2009-05-31 11:27 am (UTC)Friend John got a downed wire snagged in the brass hooks on his boot once and was left jumping around shouting for wife and son to "Turn it off" while from a few hundred feet away they were watching him and looking at each other, asking "What's he saying?"
Re: Mending fences...
Date: 2009-06-01 12:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 11:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 11:30 am (UTC)I don't do tight jeans. I never liked the feeling of tight clothing.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 03:20 pm (UTC)yeah, but who does?
no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 04:30 pm (UTC)I'd rather go without, except that 1) it's not that warm yet; and 2) I'm definitely too old to look anything like tolerable that way.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 06:42 pm (UTC)In horse years, somewhere around 20 I think. That's getting up there. At least Tess still likes me. She's 14 now. That's middle-aged.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 07:03 pm (UTC)Talking to Dawn (Tess' daughter.)
Spinning alpaca.
With Tess.
At work, with library cat Emma.
With plushie (Older photo.)
As a polar bear (Even older.)
At the loom, weaving.
With bunny.
At steam threshing bee (with
With donkey (VERY old, summer 1969.)
Seen enough yet? ;p
no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 02:37 am (UTC)Tess is big enough, though any smaller would be a bad idea. That picture is from an angle that sort of exaggerates things. Asher is an inch taller, but Gary won't let me ride him any more. (Asher threw me off back in 1999 and I spent the night in the hospital with a concussion and cracked ribs.)
There are a few more photos of me online somewhere, I'll have to see where they are...
Moar fotos (old)
Date: 2009-06-02 12:42 am (UTC)One from 1988
One from 1997 (Left, no not the dog.)
From 1996 (Same dog 18 months earlier.)
Another from 1996 (Same day, different dog.)
Fall, 1988
And 1979 (Onstage in a musical review)
That pretty much exhausts what there is available. Surely that's enough?
Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence!
Date: 2009-05-31 06:26 am (UTC)My worst experience with an electric fence was when I accidentally backed into one while trying to adjust a lawn-sprinkler. My shoes and feet were wet from the spray, and I was wearing shorts (in the summer). The hot-wire touched me on the backs of my knees, and it felt like someone had slugged me behind the knees with a baseball bat! The charger I have is designed to energize 30 miles of fence, and I only had about 60 feet of fence! Lots of power in that fence, and it used to be a regular occurence to have stupid teenagers from the nearby school daring each other to touch the fence back when we lived in the city. :)
Re: Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence!
Date: 2009-05-31 11:33 am (UTC)I've never learned enough farriery to want to risk trying even a minor trim on my own. Fortunately we've had good guys available. I know it can be difficult to get a farrier in many places.
Farriers
Date: 2009-06-01 10:29 pm (UTC)Re: Farriers
Date: 2009-06-02 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 11:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 11:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 05:31 pm (UTC)Yeah, I know the blueberries and their relatives are natives. In areas that are (or were when I was there) still sufficiently undisturbed, both blueberries and native bees appear in great profusion. Here in exurbia, though, surrounded by people who spray everything with disinfectants and poisons and believe that the only legitimate plants are golf green grasses and alien species that grow in pots or flower beds, I'd have thought the native bees would have been starved out long ago.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 08:54 am (UTC)Apart from the sheep fence..zappy zappy.
Hooray for the native bees.