She's baaack...

Well this past week we watched the snow levels rise and fall on the Blues three times, getting a bit closer to the ranch each time. Yesterday, we could tell by the slow warm up of the morning, that we were going to be socked in with clouds, high winds, cool but not cold temperatures for the day. So while I was checking emails, etc. Kittee was on the phone with a couple of folks and petting her cats.

How many Kittees can you count in this pic?

It had been awhile since we had sit around with the Cospers, so we gave them a call and headed upriver towards the South Fork Horse Ranch. We left the house expecting to be gone for a couple of hours visit, and ended up staying upriver for about five hours. It was nice to see those guys again, and have some most thoughtful conversation and a few jokes. I told Dale a new joke about a cross-dresser and a rancher woman… thought he might fall out of his chair laughing over that one.

Saturday was a pretty busy day around here. After breakfast Kittee went straight out and rode Derby in the cool of a bright sunny day. I worked on the ‘puter doctoring our Walla² Fly Fishers blog site, then I went out and prepped Misty for a round pen workout. During this time Kittee put Derby out to pasture, saddled up Nugget, and took him to the arena for some fast action canter riding.
I also brought Misty up into a canter for awhile as we worked out in the round pen. After riding, Kittee milled around with the mare herd. There was about six mares sunbathing and dear Sunny was laid out flat and snoring up a storm (I could hear her from about 30-40 feet away). As I was pulling the tack off Misty, I found Kittee kneeled down petting Rosey which was laid out resting. I went to get the camera to get a picture of that, and when I got back everyone was on their feet except Kootenai and Kittee.

Kittee was then kneeled down and petting her.

After our riding sessions/ hanging out with horses it turned into about 2 p.m. and we packed up the horses trailer and Blue and headed up towards Walla Walla to pickup our little girl Ginger, who we sold to Jennifer a bit over a year ago, I think. Jennifer is now in nurses training and needed to move her horses, and ask if we would keep Ginger for her until next spring, so we said yes to Jennifer and our baby pony.










On our way up towards Walla Walla we pulled in to our favorite Hwy 11 bar and grill and got our favorite bacon/cheese burger with French fries and a beer… that was a good mid-afternoon roadside lunch. We then picked up Ginger, headed home expecting a big homecoming splash from Jasmine.
When we got home, we put them out to pasture together, and it was like they had been separated just long enough to go get a drink of water.

Earlier during the week I finished throwing out the rest of our red delicious apples for a apple bobbing/ lip licking good time that everyone in the paddock enjoyed.

Lick those lips, Baby. Mmmmmm, good

I have found it to be quite interesting that Rusty will not eat a red apple, a ripe plum, or pears, but really enjoy golden delicious apples. To each his own.

This past week, I also "finished" cleaning up the garden area and burned off the mowed weeds and stubble. I am thinking that this year, I shall not till the garden rows as they are so loamy with horse manure/mulch and just work on keeping the weeds burned off between now and next spring. I'm thinking I will not get/put so many weed seeds into the soil by not tilling until spring.

I am hoping that by the time I am 60 I will have figured out how to shape up this garden, keep it watered adequately at 105º, and make it grow while having time to regularly ride our horses.

That is about what we have been up to this past week, beside going to work each day, and I think I remember having an afternoon ride with Misty and Travis our trainer. I know Travis wasalso here working on a couple of boarder’s horses this past week and “broke” one to ride. He did a pretty nice job, the horse co-operated nicely while under saddle.

Life around the ranch in November --- Dale