Snapshots: Plants and Animals

Plants first!

It's very handy to have children who always have a knife on their belts. Whenever I'm working outside and need a knife, I just yell to the nearest boy and he brings me his knife.

In this case, a giant handmade bowie knife that was more than adequate to cut the year's first cabbage.

As to more general plants, all the rain we had for weeks has made everything wonderfully, startlingly GREEN.

It has also made the mosquitoes hatch, but we won't talk about that.

And now for animals.

Cora the New Horse had her trial ride last night. She got all saddled up without any issues--except for the fact that she was not enthused about the bit going into her mouth, but A. got it in the end--and then A. took the maiden voyage. He always does with new horses, figuring if there's going to be a problem, he'd rather it be when he's riding than one of the kids.

Ready to roll.

The first test drive.

In the end, there were no problems except for the fact that, as advertised, Cora is indeed lazy and is disinclined to move without some firm direction from her rider.

This may not be a positive for a working ranch horse, but it made me feel considerably better about my young children riding her. It seems very unlikely she's going to run away with them, since she, well, doesn't like to run.

In fact, we were so reassured by Cora's placidity that we let every child ride her, in descending order of age.

The younger two didn't so much ride as get led around by A., but they were perfectly happy with this.

I don't ride, so while all this equestrianism was happening, I was holding onto Bill the pony so he could graze near the corral and keep an eye on the proceedings.

He was highly dubious of the whole thing, but calmed down enough to eat some weeds in the vineyard pasture next to the corral.

Also dubious of this whole experience were the dogs, who had to be shut away in the porch out of the way so they wouldn't run the fenceline the whole time, barking and distracting Cora.

Not helpful, dogs. Not helpful at all.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.