A day's work

Today is the first day of school for our state, and I am determined to find a job this year.

But today was filled with running the lawn mower again, and my left calf is throbbing from running into a nasty nettle plant. A battlewound from a day working in the heat, trying to stay hydrated and not die out there in the field. 4 hours I pushed that lawn mower in our pasture, under our fenceline. I only managed to do about a quarter of our pasture fenceline, but that part sure looks great! Hopefully tomorrow my man can turn on the weed whacker and get what I could not reach. We have so much long green grass, it is ridiculous. I am kind of hoping someone will stop by and say they have a horse that can help out, but really we are waiting on a herd of sheep to come through til I can find my horse out there.

Mornings he comes running to me in the pasture, after a night of feasting on our grass. He comes in for his mash and eye cleaning and medicine, and then gets locked in his stall all day. He really doesn't mind, he loves his stall and the flies are not a problem now that I have my Super 7 from America. And EquiSpot. He hates the fly spray, it must feel like a million flies at once to him, but afterwards he doesn't stamp his feet all day long due to flies.

After my mowing adventure, and after placing a frozen washcloth on my head and drinking grape koolaid, I saddled up Baasha to go to Aldi. He is not sound right now from all the confinement, so hand walking is what we're doing. I put three grocery sacks on his saddle, and we went shopping. He knows the routine now, and gazes into the store as I shop. I can see him through the window, he stands still like a statue. Well, I tie him so short he has little choice. He stands on a patch of clover and if he poops, well, it's OK. I started to worry that it's not dignified to use a horse to carry groceries home. It's old fashioned and quaint, but is it dignified? Hm. I carried half, so he wouldn't feel completely used. (grin) But before we left a little girl was asking her mom about him, and we stopped to talk. I said, "Did you notice that Aldi had no carrots today!? I had to buy my horse Haribo to reward him for waiting. He loves Haribo!" Actually Baasha loves it when I come out of that store, he nickers at me like "Finally!" and he gets lots of gummi candy. I am just waiting for someone to come tell me he will get cavities, there is no such thing as "your own business" in Germany.

On the way home a neighbor stopped his car to say "Hey, you're back!" That was nice.

Another neighbor said hello and what a shame it is that the construction project is detouring cars down our normally quiet street. I said "Yah, and it is supposed to be FIFTY!" glaring at a car racing by. He agreed. Geez. We need to get a speeding camera down here!

Baasha gets lots of plums cuz they are falling off our tree in front of his stall. I was happy to see he has learned to pit them, he spits the pits out. I think he would like it if they fell directly into his stall, but oh well. He is not too interested in our apple trees, even though they are loaded with apples, cuz they are not yet ripe. He will eat one if I pick it for him though.






His eyes are much better, thankfully, and I think we will beat this thing. He comes to me bright eyed in the morning, and only squints after his medicine is in.








His coat is shedding and fluffier by the day, and I am getting a lot of use out of my Grooma Soft Touch curry thing. I tried to get a pic of all the hair coming off.







Sadly, our zucchini plants have some condition called "blossom end rot" meaning they only get so big, and then start to spoil on the vine. Calcium deficiency. We will fix that for next year. I have so many zucchini plants, that I am still getting enough to eat. I had planned on having way too many though.

Oh well, the tomatoes are making up for it. We have about half of our huge greenhouse full of tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes. They reach the ceiling and they are finally ripening regularly. They taste awesome. I snack on them all day, and make salads. I need to bring some to the horsey neighbors next door, cuz I don't think they have a garden. Yah, I use Baasha's mash bucket to go gather tomaotes...








Our other neighbors, Isabel's parents, brought us the world's biggest cucumber. I couldn't believe my eyes. I said to my man, "Make your wonderful cucumber salad!" and he did. We have been eating cucumber salad for days!







And thanks to this country way of life, and healthy eating, I am finally feeling better about myself again. That's cuz there are no Mexican restaurants to tempt me here.


Agh, just as I was typing this, I got an invitation to go riding with the pony party people. (sigh) It pains me that I cannot ride right now. But I need to just be thankful that he is recovering, and hope that he will feel better once turned out 24/7 again.

My man and I went geocaching with Baasha yesterday, just to depost a travel bug into the cache nearest our home, and it was fun for me to have Baasha along for caching finally.
















Baasha seemed very interested in the cache, and I giggled at his inspection of the cache container.













Oh dear, I am sunburned. Part of a day's work.