There's something wrong with this picture, which I took from our balcony at Grand Case Beach Club on the French side of St. Martin. Click to enlarge. Maybe then you'll see the problem.
Still don't get it? Well, you're not a 13-year-old girl on vacation. The problem with this picture is that there is no horse in it.
Lily was in paradise for a week -- and kept longing for Buddy.
Lightning will strike twice and I'm here to prove it. I haven't been posting or visiting lately because I haven't had Internet access. The first time it struck and knocked out my modem. We have cable Internet, so I had to wait for the repair guy to come out this way. That took a few days. The modem was partially damaged but he connected me a different way and I was back online.
Then, on July Fourth, God put on a tremendous fireworks show with a great blessing of rain and enough lightning to power the U.S. if only we could capture and control that energy. This time the lightning struck us more than once and knocked out our telephone, Internet and cable TV. It took days and days to get a repair, and it's not quite right yet (so I get to wait for the repairman all day Friday). It fried the cable connections down by the street as well as the one leading into our house. We heard it when it hit. Yee ha! That'll get your attention.
But I'm back. And as I type this, I see another storm coming. Our Thunder Hound, who is afraid of lightning, has already stood on his hind legs to look in the window to tell us, "Let me in!" And he's in, probably trembling by my daughter's feet downstairs.
The grass is green and life feels good. One of my hay suppliers has already had a first cutting (which he saves for cows). Soon, surely I'll be getting 2008 hay. When it rains every day the grass grows -- but the farmers can't cut. As long as the grass is growing I'll sit here happy.
And my tadpoles are getting really big. No legs yet. They look like little black shiny whales.
So I'm back -- for now.
There's a giant puddle around our watering trough. That's good news because it means that we've had rain. But that's also bad news because that means I'm raising my very own home-grown and hungry mosquitoes. There are squiggly larvae everywhere.
So, I went to the pest control section of my handy-dandy feed store, which sells everything from farm fashions (really nice stuff!) to mailboxes to plumbing and electrical supplies, and checked out my choices. They had exactly the right thing. A little doughnut-shaped thing you drop into standing water and it kills the mosquitoes. But what about my horses and birds? Does it hurt them? I couldn't figure out the answer to that question, so I didn't buy the stuff.
I decided to instead dig a trench and drain the pond/puddle. All went well and I had the water running out until I realized that the mosquito larvae weren't the only things in there -- there were also a zillion little black tadpoles. Yikes!
Hmmm. Frogs good. Mosquitoes bad. It's a life or death situation. Both die. Or both live.
The tadpoles were quite small, but I decided that they will grow (I hope) and just might feed on mosquito larvae. So I chose life.
I filled my trench in and added some water to the puddle.
I feel like a crazy person. My garden is overgrown, I haven't planted some plants that sit wilting in pots, and I'm here cultivating a tadpole/mosquito puddle. Not to mention the paying work that I could be doing, or the meal I could be cooking for a neighbor home from the hospital.
Next I'll be putting a net over my tadpole/mosquito puddle to keep the birds from eating my tadpoles, and then the horses will get tangled up in the netting and I'll have to drive them to the University of Georgia for costly horse repairs.
I guess I'll skip the netting, will look the other way when the birds visit, and I'll just keep watering my tadpoles. Congratulations will be in order when they've all turned into frogs.
I love summer.
I'm a worrier, and of all the things I worry about with horses, drowning has not been on my list. A man jumped off of a horse and drowned yesterday. Here's the sad but strange story from The State:
MAN DROWNS AFTER JUMP FROM HORSE
MYRTLE BEACH -- A 24-year-old Conway man who trained racehorses drowned after he jumped off a horse and into a pond, according to a preliminary autopsy.
Jonathan Durant, who worked at Nobles stable on Rogers Road, died at 10:24 a.m. Monday after the horse he was riding stepped into a pond on the property, said Horry County Deputy Coroner Tony Hendrick. He said Tuesday that Durant may have panicked once he was in the water after he jumped from the horse.
It's unclear why Durant jumped into the water, whether he could swim or why he could not get out of the pond, which was about eight to 10 feet deep, officials said.
He was pronounced dead on arrival at Conway Medical Center.
"There's nothing suspicious about it. It was accidental," Hendrick said.
"I just am not sure why he was unable to get out of the water."
Officials are waiting for toxicology results, which will take up to 12 weeks, Hendrick said.
Durant trained and rode horses for the Nobles Stables, owned by Bonnie and Leneau Nobles, according to his older brother Corey Durant.
"I couldn't believe that it was him. I went to the hospital. I saw him on the table, looking out of it. And I couldn't take it anymore, I had to leave. It seems like a dream to me," Corey Durant said.
"All he would say was he loved when he galloped and the speed to the finish line," Corey Durant said.
"We always stuck by each other. He was always pushing me to be stronger. I've been through a lot of trouble. He always came to me and said 'chill out' and 'do better.' He was almost a big brother, more than I was to him," said Corey Durant, 28.
Corey Durant will have to celebrate his birthday on Friday without his younger brother. The two had plans to go to the beach.
His mother, Virginia Durant Washington, said Jonathan Durant loved horses as a child, and that he started riding seriously after he graduated from high school.
"Ever since he was small he wanted to be a jockey. He said, 'Mama, I love to ride horses,'" she said.
Jonathan Durant's second cousin Denise Santoro shared his passion for horses. She used to compete in jumping horses over hurdles and dressage.
"He was so excited to tell me, 'Cuz, cuz, I'm a jock,'" she said. "We all have to die. At least he died doing what he loved."
-- The (Myrtle Beach) Sun News
the smoke bothers me so we don't burn our manure pile. It grows and grows until a composting friend or relative comes to get it (and they are always so excited). But after a while, even your friends and relatives don't want your manure anymore.
So, when I read that there were manure thieves on the loose, I was excited. I thought I might put out a sign, "Manure Thieves Welcome. Steal All You Want." But it turns out they're in Germany.
Here's the story, excerpted from Fox News. There were no pictures, which I guess is a blessing: BERLIN,
Germany — A woman trying to make "manure bombs" using stockings,
slipped into a slurry tank and fled the scene naked, German police said
on Friday. Two women entered a farm
in the northern village of Eberholzen on Wednesday evening and started
to fill the stockings with manure. "One of them
slipped into the manure tank, right into the cow muck," said a
spokesman for local police. "The other one helped her out. We found
their clothes in a field. One seems to have run off completely naked,
the other in her underwear." Police said it was
unclear what the women had intended to do with the "manure bombs," but
added the incident could be linked to victory celebrations surrounding
the Euro 2008 semi-finals on Wednesday evening, when Germany beat
Turkey 3-2. "The women can get their clothes back from the local police station — unwashed," the spokesman added.
At 13, Lily's too young to get a summer job, other than babysitting. There are no babies that need sitting in our neighborhood. But something even better has come through -- a neighbor and friend who does competitive driving and dressage needed a working student. So, Lily has a job, a place to go in the morning and she's learning a lot. Right in the neighborhood.
I just hope it's paying off for her employer/teacher. (Lily gets lessons, formal and informal, in exchange for riding horses, doing light chores and having fun at the neighbor's barn. Too good to be true!)
They usually quit around lunch time, which is a good thing because it's 100 degrees today. Lily rode three horses (including Buddy). She looks worn out but happy.
I was so afraid she'd spend the summer in front of the TV, and while she's getting her TV hours in (and has been reading a lot), she's gainfully employed in the morning.
Summer -- I love you!
I'm down to two bales of hay but know where I can get some more -- if they don't sell out first. We've had some rain so surely somebody will be cutting soon.
I'm happy to report that my two horses are in good shape. Lucy is, in fact, overweight. She looks like a big orange pumpkin. A shiny, cute, fat pumpkin. All is well at my place. (Except for the stupid whining cat stuck in the hayloft.)
I'm telling you all this because sometimes it feels like horses all over America are starving and being left on the side of the road. And it feels that way because -- guess what -- it's true. I'm sad to report that some lowlifes left a horse to die on the side of the road in Clarendon County, S.C., yesterday. Yes, they trailered it there and left it to die. Guess they were too ???? (poor? heartless? on drugs? couldn't be bothered?) to feed it and too worthless to bury it. The horse was 500 pounds underweight and was too weak to walk onto the trailer when animal rescue came to save it. They had to put it on a board and lift it.
When they got it to the vet's, the horse ate a little, drank a little, then died.
Now, if that horse's owners had enough gas and a trailer to take the poor creature to the side of the road to leave it, why didn't they take it somewhere 400 pounds ago?
If you can stand it, you can read the story and view a video from WIS-TV here.
The growing problem of horses being abandoned because their owners can't afford to keep them has caught the attention of Time magazine. I'm not sure you'll learn anything you don't already know, but here's the link.
Here I am, scrambling to find hay, keep Buddy's back relaxed and schedule summer riding lessons around everything else and Dipstick, our FIV-positive barn cat who was my mother's cat nobody wanted, decides that he'll slip up to the hayloft and get stuck there almost every day.
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to climb up in the hayloft and get a whiny cat down when you're wearing your pajamas, bathrobe and slide shoes?
But I've found a service that will deliver cat food. Wonder if they'll deliver it to the hayloft and let me skip that climbing-up-the-ladder-in-my-pajamas step? (Domino's pizza won't deliver out here....) It's at holistic cat food.
Come to think of it, it would be a good thing if my cats, especially Ye Olde Cat in the Hayloft, got extra high quality, healthy cat food. Dipstick is healthy now, even though he's FIV-positive, but holistic cat food would probably give his immune system an edge.
And if they'd deliver it, life would be easier. I spend a lot of time trying to find hay. I spend no time at all looking into cat food, and I'm afraid my cats get whatever's on sale.
After all the pet food scares lately, surely they deserve better than that. In addition to holistic cat food, they also have dog and other pet food. All probably healthier and higher quality than the food the people in this house consume (but not higher quality than the hay and feed served down at the barn).
Now, if only they'd deliver holistic people food, already prepared.
Now that Buddy's better, we're on a program to prevent his sore back from recurring. Here are the written instructions from our vet:
This is wonderful news!So now you want to keep a close eye on Buddy, watching for pain to return and catching it before it gets to the bucking/bolting stage. It would be good to incorporate some strengthening/stretching exercises in his riding. Your instructor can help you with this- asking him to lift his back, for example: warm up, then either start or finish up the ride with 3 to 5 minutes of "long and low" large serpentines/changes of rein -or- a few ground pole exercises (3-5 poles) -or- trotting or slow cantering uphill in 2-point. When you get off and groom him, ask him to lift his back several times by running your hand under his midline, then have him stretch his nose down to between his front legs for a treat. If he begins to get sore again, we can catch it early and modify his training schedule and/or help him out with a little medication.
Isn't our vet great? We love her and hope to see her infrequently.
Lily enjoyed having instructions to follow this morning. Buddy enjoyed getting treats for flexing his neck. And no, he wasn't cussing.
