Welcome 2021!

It could get worse than 2020 but I'm an optimist and look forward to a 2021 that will be better than the past year.

I woke up to heavy fog this morning, which has, as of these pictures at 11 am, lightened enough to see more than a few feet away.

The crystalline glow of hoarfrost is always a beautiful remnant of winter fog. Once the fog lifts, that hoarfrost will sparkle and glisten, creating a magical surrealism over the world... until it melts off. It's a beautiful start to the new year!

I'm also glad we finally have snow on the ground. The second half of 2020 was drought for my area. Water tables have lowered and water dugouts for livestock are nearly depleted.  We finally received this snow a few days ago. While it's not enough, we'll take it. It was enough for the kids to have some sledding fun.

And inside, I have been growing this over the past month:

Two tomato plants starting to bud.

I had to put plastic around it because one of our kitties took to chewing off the leaves and killed one sprout and nearly two others. Those two, with regular watering quickly shot up to over three feet tall from the soil surface to the top and continues. I think these tomatoes love their mini-greenhouse made of that heavy-duty plastic. At least, they love not having a cat chew on them, and so do I.

Tomato greens can be toxic to cats, but Jack, being Jack, never showed signs of discomfort that we could see. He's our dog-cat. He eats everything, so we have to be careful. We did plant some kitty grass for him in a little potter after he went after the young tomato plants, and he LOVED that! Unfortunately, he also pooped out grass, which doesn't digest and caused him to have poop hanging from his butt. 🙁

Jack with his special cat grass (wheat, rye, barley mix)

Such is life here. We should have fresh tomatoes by the end of the month and will soon start some more indoor veggies. I hope Jack doesn't chew on those... cauliflower, radishes, and spearmint. I may even plant a head or two of lettuce if I have enough room in front of the the deck doors.

So, we're keeping an indoor garden. In one of the pictures above, you can see our regular garden plot. We've been taking out food waste to compost this spring. We have a pail under the sink to dump egg shells, banana peels, and other plant waste to take out and dump to add to our compost, although it appears that something is coming around to eat on some of that, which is fine too. We have wildlife in our rural neighborhood.

As I get older, I appreciate growing my own food more and more. It's a hobby with fruitful results. 😉

getting my cowgirl on

So, I realized that I was going to have to cowgirl up on Buddy. I don't like to do that, because it means getting gritty, but he does need to get over his anxieties. Some horses get more excited the harder you get on them when they act up, until they do something completely dangerous, especially for the rider. I'm not as young and daring as I once was and have been through enough bad situations to have become a bit cautious, perhaps overly cautious... or not.

I know better than to get on an excited horse whose head is lost. It's insanely dangerous. Buddy can be that way sometimes, but I've come to realize there are two things that will do that two him--1) too much excitement, such as other horses running around, like when we're trying to help round up cows and the other horses are doing all the work flying back and forth while he's dancing out of his mind not sure what to make of their activities, and 2) when I put the western saddle on him. For some reason, this always precipitates difficult behavior. I don't know if it's because it doesn't fit right (it seems to it just fine) or if it's because I've always put it on him when we are in the situations of rounding up cows, and a few trail riding sessions. Even our spring trail riding before we tried to do any cattle work had him a little uneasy in the western saddle.

Part of that could be me, because I'm not comfortable in it. I don't like feeling like I'm sitting high above my horse instead of on my horse. My dressage saddle gives me a "plugged in" feeling on his back and I'm more at ease. Western saddles are bulky and heavy and don't allow for any close contact feeling like a dressage saddle does. I also think Buddy has come to like feeling me more closely and relies on the communication of my relaxation through my seat to help him know that he shouldn't worry, since he can't read my body language visually as when I'm on the ground with him. He's a very smart boy and I wouldn't put that past him.

And that all is the long-winded way of saying that I'm working cows in dressage tack and it's going much better with Buddy. However--there is a caveat here--he still gets too worked up when there's a lot of excitement going on around us. Today was quiet and we had a fantastic ride in the pasture and exercised some cows for practice ;) Chasing cows is amazing when you feel close to your horse. He only got worried when the dumb ass, Jewel, started running towards the gate instead of joining us--I let her tag along most of the time we head out on a ride, since the two are best buds and don't like to be apart. That's when I had to "cowgirl up" and deal with his naughtiness from worrying about his friends. I managed to get his mind on the cows, but he still can be difficult when I want him to canter to get ahead--he wants to take control the faster we go and not listen to me, but he's better in our dressage tack. So, we have some work to do this summer, and I'm finally up for the challenge.

He was a very good boy today and seemed to enjoy the workout. I've found that giving him Smart Digest Ultra before we ride does seem to help calm him about an hour after I give it, so part of his anxieties may be due to ulcers, and that's also why I feed it to him before we ride. And afterwards, he earned an extra handful of grain, and then some grass.

He's shed out nearly every last winter hair.

I never have to worry about him stepping on his rope--
he doesn't get upset and just steps off.

A family of Canada geese has been growing up in the pasture dugout pond.

Lastly, I am making good progress on RACING THE ORAST BELT. I've written nearly 27,000 words of it, or around 2/3 done with the first draft. I am aiming to have it done in two weeks, but we'll see. I better get back to it. The day was eaten up by my trip out to work with Buddy after work.

Amazing nature

I encountered this coming out of our neighborhood this morning (facing west):

This morning mist rainbow occurred with the fog obscuring Bismarck, looking to the west with the sun in the east. I don't know if anyone has seen anything like this before, but it was a first for me. I'm glad I had my phone set on panorama!

ps--I didn't know such a spectacle was possible. Isn't nature amazing?