Not much new

Not much is new from the past couple of weeks, so I just went outside with the camera to take a few random pictures.


We’ve been watching the back pasture get greener and greener. At first we didn’t believe the farmers around here who told us the grass would be three feet high by October, but given how it’s grown so far, we do now. Selwyn has been reseeding the brown spots, and we’ve been putting in fence poles so we can divide the pasture in three and rotate the horses through it. We’re told the grass has a 21 day growing cycle, so if we keep them in each pasture for a week and continue to rotate them, we should always have green grass.


We may not have enough acreage for the number of horses we have so we may have to also rotate them into the middle pasture, which is really just a paddock where we’ll need to feed them hay, but the back pasture will definitely cut down on our hay bill - although Es and Elphie don't seem to mind the hay.


When I came home from the US, I immediately noticed that everything was greener than when I left. I think it’s become even greener since then, and I finally weeded the gardens so I don’t mind having them photographed. These are the two gardens right outside the front door. During the dry season, most of the plants looked dead, but they’ve made a good comeback.


If you look closely – or blow up the picture by clicking on it – you’ll see that this tree is loaded with tangerines. We have four tangerine trees, and last year we didn’t get any fruit from any of them. This year, they’re all loaded. They seem to like having the vines pulled from their branches and the brush cleared from around their trunks.


Here’s the obligatory picture of Lodo. Isn’t he getting huge? He’s actually starting to approach us now for rubs, although getting the halter on him is still a 2-person job. He only wants to talk to us on HIS terms.


Here’s Recona doing her job, “killing” chickens.


She’s not really killing them, she’s just chasing them out of the pasture, but when our neighbors see her chasing them, they’re sure she’s killing them.


And here she is, her job well done.


It was a tough job, so she needs a big drink. Mel liked to drink out of the horse trough too, although he didn’t have to stand on the edge to do it. And Mel always insisted that it be full to the top because he liked to rest his nose on the lip of the trough (or bowl, if that’s what he was drinking from) and just lap the water up. He didn’t like having to stick the end of his nose in the water to get a drink. Recona, obviously, doesn’t seem to mind, especially when she’s been working so hard killing chickens.