A visit to the fancy arena place....with my bicycle

I'm not giving up on people who could be potential riding partners, even though they have not yet taken me up on the offer, after years.....No, I am kind of desperate for friends. Even when S1 says, "TP's crazy."

I've talked about TP and her husband who own the fancy, Hawaiian Silver arena, you may remember how she took advantage of me when I "crewed" for her at a horse show last August. But also how they let me take some of my first few rides on Mag on their sand.

I really like her personality, she is the same brand of strange as I am. You can tell she likes horses more than people. She's the only person I know in Germany who also keeps her horses at home, so it's always interesting to visit and see the improvements they make to their property constantly. This time the had just installed automatic, frost-free waterers in their outdoor (Summer) stalls. (They keep their horses in stalls most of the time, year round, to protect their grass. I assume that is why they have been advertising for boarders for years, and have never - until this week - had a bite. However they feed them hay up to 7 times per day, and clean the stalls almost as often.)

She's also vain and obsessive about her lovely property, exactly the way I am. So I forgive her, for example, for how she's behaved lately.

Also, she's never domineering, "knowsy*" about her horsey opinions. She's got that humble way about her that is so easy to be around, "I don't know everything, I am learning every day." Me too, I HOPE. You know how distasteful it is to be around horse people who are trying to convert you to the varying facets of their horsey religion? It makes me appreciate her.

* - You can use my new word. It means "I've been a horse person for X long/I've been educated extremely quickly and perfectly ....and I KNOW things whether you want to or not, so listen....."



I asked her if I could come with Mag (at least to let him roll in their deep white sand) and she said NO! It is quarantine time at their place. They have a new boarder and it would destroy all their progress at harmonizing if another tune came into the music. Ok.....*sigh* I get her feelings of stress with a new horse, I've had two boarders here myself, and neither worked out. (Blackie the pony, and an Icelandic mare.)

Oh well. This week she did it again, asking me to come over "right now" and I didn't get the message til the next day. She said I was also welcome to come over yesterday, or today. I tried my best yesterday. I texted, emailed, and even CALLED to say I was coming over at the arranged time. She never replied. WTH. I even did my nails and put on make-up.

At 9 pm she said, "Too late now." I went to bed frustrated again by her.

This morning she said to come over at 3 PM. I said, "I"m there."

My husband is at his theater group this week, so I had the bicycle. He was nice enough to put air in the tires for me.

I pedalled my way up to her house on the hilltop and was cursing my lack of bicycle skills, well, it's J's bike, too big for me, so I am very insecure on it.

On my way there I passed old Frau Harkemann sitting on a bench with her walker beside her. I was panting heavily from biking up our hill and the bike was wobbling as I tried to keep moving but catch my breath. I said, "HEY, FRAU HARKEMANN!--- I ----(gasp) CAN RIDE ----(gasp) ---A BIKE!" She said,"That is very good!" and laughed. Until that moment she'd only seen me with my horse in hand.

At her house TP laughed at how I parked the bike, and said, "I'd forgotten. I hate bicycling up hills on my husband's bike."

She gave me mineral water and coffee and a plate of Bergische Waffles (our regions waffle type). I had already told her I don't eat sugar or grains, so she ate them.

We had a great time talking and finally she showed me the big new thing - the FRIESIAN who  is now boarding at their place. So, for her, very very big changes, very stressful for her, after her secluded, perfectly controlled life.

She told me I could go into his paddock box (stall with attached stall-sized runout) to say hi to him. His long mane was braided, "So he won't step on it" she explained. He seems nice. His name is Rinzuh, based on pronunciation.

Her Arabian was grouchy as usual, but perfectly white, as always.

Her husband's metallic bay TB was much happier now to be a part of 3, TP explained. Hm!

She fed them, and I tried to help, but she said, "No, let me." Again, control freak. I'm not allowed to touch their hay.

She told me how her husband scolds her for the way she feeds, the amount, and I smiled cuz it's so cute that they argue over things like that.

She showed me her Reiter Stuebchen in the making (rider's lounge with tack area) and I was thrilled to see all her fancy products, products I'm only slowly learning about. Like Germany's Show Sheen. I had just bought a bottle of it, and she had it too. It seems to work almost as well as Show Sheen, but it's way, way cheaper (cuz it's not imported). She had a totally OCD towel and brand-new sponge collection. Literally 15 brand new sponges stacked up, and a shelf full of clean towels. And white-horse shampoo, and brown-horse shampoo, and white horse "show sheen" and brown horse "show sheen" - no kidding!  I stood there talking about the ingredients with her and she also showed me some other soaps she uses to keep her horse white. Fascinating. From the looks of it, I did NOT bring up the chemical array I use against my horse's yellow and green.

She told me Rinzuh's owner lives in Wuppertal, but drives 30 minutes every morning to visit him. Wow. There are a million horse stables in Wuppertal. To come so far is not normal in Germany.

Finally it was time for me to go home on that too-big bike and she said, "Hey, let me escort you home on my bike." OK....I had visions of riding my bike right into hers and causing a bad accident. I'm pre-vampire Bella Swan on that bike.

I very, very carefully kept behind her so that would not happen, and she said, "I'd forgotten how much fun it is to ride bikes with someone, and look, our bikes are not going to spook at anything!"

Speak for yourself, but I agreed with her.

When we got to my pasture, happily, Bellis and Mag were right there at the street. I parked my bike against my gate and Mag approached and gave it a long suspicious snort, "THIS IS AN UNKNOWN OBJECT." Then he let TP pet him a while, he's much friendlier than her horses, and then he went back to grazing as the donkey took his spot, refusing to leave TP and me. TP admired my new fly mask, and my stitching in particular. My rainbow stitches, I'm pretty proud of them too but we'll see if the thing holds together. She asked me if it works and I said, "After only 2 days I cannot give you an authoritative answer on this, I need more time to assess." Yes, my German is exactly that eloquent. *lol*

She looked at Mag's mane and said, "It's glistening like silver!" I said, "Not normally, I washed it today, right before visiting you. And the tail too." She said, "But Dakhin's mane is straw colored, I can never get it white!" I don't know what to say, I've never had a horse before with a pure white mane. Baasha and Mag have a lot of grey in it. But if she died and willed Dakhin to me, it would be the first thing I did with him - attempt to get his mane white, even if it meant cutting it all off to start. Oh, wait, no, I'd remove his shoes. Oh, wait, no, I'd trim his freaking long fetlock hair. He would be so much prettier without. And I'd quit the ugly tail banging thing.

Actually, TP noticed, "Do you cut his tail short on purpose?" "Yes, I hate long stringy thin tails, so I try to trim it in a way it does not look cut, and just below his hocks." I love the medium tail length look. I'm still trying to get back to the adolescent tail he had when he arrived here, thick and short. I'm getting better each time. See who is obsessive now?

Then she said goodbye, hugging me, and rode on to go through the woods, where she would have a massive hill to climb to get back home. Respect!

Everytime I hang out with her, I like her so much. And her husband too (and I'm very careful to keep my distance from him cuz all I need is her thinking I want her man. And many horse women would love to have a horsey man, so I understand this.)

But as you all already know, it's frustrating that she never offers to ride with me. Or do anything with her horse and mine. She wants me to come over and drink coffee and eat waffles and enjoy her farm and her horses. But to DO SOMETHING with them? Not yet. Will it ever happen? Hm!

I don't have photos from my visit, but I do from the end of June when our pasture was finally mown. I LOVE having the grass turn to hay and be taken away (which is done at no cost to us, and we get 1/3 the harvest ourselves).






Mag's old fly mask, which I destroyed in the washing machine. Story to come.



It looks even better...GONE! Unbelievably, they only made 6 large, square bales here this year. They call them "Quadrat" bales - huge square bales that hold more than round bales.

We personally saw very tight ones, that J and I checked at midnight, with fireflies as accompaniment. Wonderful, magical fireflies!They were packed as tight as bricks, and larger than round bales. We learn, even though were are city folk, we learn.



After the hay was baled, I let my animals out on the mown pasture. For FOUR nights only. And after 4 nights, I found them back on the grazing strips that surround the pasture. Cuz tiny grass tastes better than even freshly-mown grass. OK THEN. I shut them onto the strips and will only make them larger in increments, eventually. For now they seem to prefer the tiny grass. Horses, that is one thing I'd change about you if I could. That and thrush.











You cannot quite tell but in that field behind ours, they planted a crop for the first time in the  8 years we've been here. The hillside is so steep, there were always sheep on it in Winter, nothing else. Now - CORN! I'm thrilled at the change in the landscape, and very curious how they will harvest it, because it is so steep most tractors will tumble over......SPANNEND! as the Germans say.