New endeavors

A long, long, long time ago I told my therapist about a little shop I’d found on the Upper East Side that had Christmas decorations from Finland and Sweden. In the course of discussing why this was such an exciting discovery, he learned that I’d been a high school exchange student and spent 6 months in Finland. He said “You’ve been coming here for almost a year. From what you’ve been saying, this was an very significant experience for you, and I’ve asked you many times to talk about things that are important to you.  Why have you not mentioned this before?”

I replied “It was over 10 years ago. I was in high school. No one from high school is a part of my life. Why would it be important to anyone but me?”

And he said “Anything that has been important to you should be important to anyone who cares about you.”

So this post is about my horse and me.

I bought Raven last summer (after a disastrous previous new horse), and because she was so lacking in training I asked a very capable VTC student to ride her twice a week, which this young woman did for free, because she liked the horse and disliked the former owner.

This spring my VTC student was nowhere to be found, and it became clear that I would have to do whatever training Raven needed. I am unskilled and Raven was a handful. Wouldn’t go out of the barn unless the other horses were out. Wouldn’t stand still enough for me to get a saddle on her. Things came to a head when I walked her down to the riding ring about 3 weeks ago and she pushed me around, behaved badly and pulled my shoulder hard enough that I went to the doctor!

Thelma couldn’t help, because of her hip surgery, and Thelma doesn't have a lot of confidence in my ability to learn and use the horsemanship skills that are second nature to her. So I asked my next door neighbor (Alberta, Berta for short), who is a good horse trainer, for help. She offered to work with me and Raven once every week or so, show me what to do, and Raven and I would practice the rest of the week. On our first lesson Berta said “She knows what to do. She just won’t volunteer.” After two weeks of practice (4-5 times/week), Raven will walk with me, stop whenever I stop, and back up when I ask her. We’ve walked down the road, and into the Howard’s woods. She’s stopped worrying about where the other horses are.

Today Berta said “I’ll show you how to work her on a lunge line.” This is a very long canvas strap that you use to get your horse to travel around you in circles. You can drive a horse nuts with this, but it’s one of many ways to get a horse to pay attention. It lets the horse burn off excess energy. And it’s part of a set of very basic lessons called “ground work”.

Berta is a good teacher. She demonstrates and explains things in a way that I understand the first time. After 20 minutes of Berta’s teaching, I tried lunging Raven myself and we did well. Raven and I only worked about 10 minutes because it was hot and humid, and the flies were driving us all nuts. Bear in mind that we don't think Raven has ever been on a lunge line.  Then she got cooled down with the hose, which was another New Thing. And she took all these new things pretty calmly.

Raven accomplished a great deal, but I accomplished more. I’m learning how to do this work of starting a horse-rider partnership. I’m feeling the possibility of being a rider who can do more than stay on. I’m beginning to believe that my instincts are right, that I do know something about horses, and about this horse, and that I have a lot more than a lucky buying choice going for me.

Flowers!

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were stifling.  Awful. Then Wednesday night we had a summer thunderstorm of incredible proportions, with non-stop lightning, a soaking rain, 2 heavy downpours and a couple of minutes of pebble-size hail! No damaging wind.  Thanks to the hail, leaves litter the ground, and the purple iris (the picture is pre-storm) were shredded, but the tomatoes and most everything else came through. And now the temperatures are much more bearable. 

The picture above is one of several patches of batchelor's buttons, which turn out to be a long-lasting cut flower, although the buds won't open in water.  And now more pictures (click to enlarge), a mere hint of things to come:

"Sun Power" hosta from Vermont Flower Farm

Camassia lilies to the right, a super late-spring/early summer bulb.  Below, the old purple iris, in the garden when I bought the house, always the first iris to bloom, and "Ballerina", another early and very short iris that is thriving in the worst soil imaginable.



This is a Preston lilac, a late bloomer,  that is thriving thanks to Tim. On his last visit he moved this and its pair from their original spot, where they were dried out and competing with burdock and other weeds, to the shed, after he took down an old and overgrown shrub that was beyond reclamation. Look! Flowers!

 

And finally, the first daylily, accompanied by Coral Bells (heuchera):

 

Garden time!!

We're about to have a week of summer: it started warming up on Friday, and the weekend has been a prime gardening (and lawn mowing, and horse training) weekend. During the week it's supposed to be hot and dry, so I've been really busy.

It took 3 45-minute sessions to get the lawn mowed - May and June the grass grows like mad, but I lowered the blade so that I only have to mow every 5 or 6 days (instead of twice a week) and it hasn't grown to ankle height.

I've been weeding like crazy, but with the temps so warm it was time to really get going on the garden. So I bought my tomatoes (one cherry, one early salad tomato, one heirloom variety and two later, larger varieties).  I had bought new tomato towers that are taller and sturdier than the wire cones.  I'm going to be diligent about feeding the tomatoes this year (Miracle-Gro and Epsom salts), and hope that we don't have a soaking wet summer like last year. And I've already put grass clippings around them.

Pictures of tomatoes will have to wait a bit, but here are the pole beans that got planted today.  The spinach went in last week.

The beets went in a couple of weeks ago and have started to sprout.

The arugula and lettuce have been in for almost a month. I will eat my first home-grown salad tonight for supper.

I spent most of Sunday working on flower beds.

I dug the dandelions out of the daylilies, and started clearing out the bed by the brook, that has the yellow iris (Tim will remember digging it out) and phox, and catmint and valerian. 
These beds by the brook got ignored last year and they'll take a lot of work to get in shape.  But my determination to make the gardens take care of themselves is starting to pay off.  Most of the plants are moderately invasive, but easy to control by pulling them out (not digging!).  So I can have a nice full garden without it being a jungle.  (This does not apply to the garden by the fence, though.)

Tim will be happy to know that the maple that he tried to loosen the roots around is trying to get a shape.  My friend James said to fertilize it and TRY AGAIN, after the brook repair happens.  He says the contractor is likely to loosen up a lot of the surrounding soil.  

Tuesday I'll plant the red climber and the morning glories.  The seed has to be scratched with a nail file or sandpaper or something rough, and soaked over night. I don't have time to do that until Monday.

Lots of pictures coming in a few days.

Some days getting up early is worth it

I'm an early riser but a slow mover. I'm usually up around 5:30 am during the week because I need to have breakfast (and I do mean breakfast, not just coffee) and pack a lunch, to say nothing of making myself publicly presentable, before I leave for work at 7. On the weekend I'm usually up about 6 because I'm so used to getting up early.

Today I woke promptly at 6 because I've hurt my shoulder and it's hard sleeping, and because the wind was blowing a gale, with dark gray clouds racing eastward toward Chelsea, and light rain showers.  I was pouring out some cereal when the sun shone on the hillside across the road (a number of miles away). Lo! a rainbow!

Most of the rainbows I see are to the east, not to the west. They're way over past the interstate, and sometimes far enough away that I can get a picture. No doubt there have been rainbows to the west before, but I've never seen one. There it was, growing out of a hillside that my map tells me is somewhere in Roxbury, or even West Brookfield.

I was transfixed. Should I put on a robe and shoes and try to get a picture?  If I stop watching will it disappear? I stayed at the kitchen sink watching, and it grew, and grew, and in about 10 minutes (because the sun came and went) it was a complete arc, all the way down to Randolph!!

And there was no way I could get picture of that arc, because it was too wide and too close. It's been coming and going ever since. Just marvelous to watch.

At 7:03 I caved in. Out the deck door in nightgown and robe, garden shoes, uncombed hair, camera.  On the left, the Randolph end. On the right, the Roxbury end. Use your imaginations. Click to enlarge the pictures.

Now the dark clouds have moved in for real.  Looks like a thoroughly rainy day. What an early morning treat!

one of them days

I had plans and lists, but at 8:28 pm I don't have much to show for it.

I started the day with a visit from a water resources engineer, plus a similarly-credentialed engineer from the State, because the brook is about to invade my yard and damage my septic system. This repair must be done by pros, because there is no place on the property for another septic system.

We had 30 minutes of very interesting conversation about the properties of water running downhill, and the 2007 flood, and the size of the culvert (it should be bigger, but the town will not replace it unless it fails, and it's pretty solid), and the beaver dam way up at the interstate that is causing repeated problems. In the end, though, I got the words I wanted to hear from the state engineer.

1. "Of course the stream bed needs to be dredged, and it needs to be done before winter."
2. "You do not need a permit, just engineering plans."

What great  news!! The private engineer is knowledgeable, understands budgets, and came well-recommended. He'll draw up plans by mid-June and after Residency is over I'll call contractors to see who will bid. I will take pictures, because this is likely to be interesting. Apparently this work is in the $5,000 - $6,000 range. Not cheap. But a new septic system is almost impossible.

Then I went to the dump, to the hardware store to buy a wheelbarrow (finding the one I want on sale!), read work emails, snacked, did the laundry, did work emailing, ate lunch, did a little non-email work, asked my upstreet neighbor to help me get my obstinate, stubborn horse started, went to Thelma's to pay attention to said obstinate horse, visited Thelma, and really frittered the day away. When I'm done with this entry I will complete the frittering by watching the latest Netflix item, "The Truman Show".

It was hard to get enthused about the day because until 5pm it looked like the rain would pour down any minute. It's also hard to get enthused when on May 2 it was like summer, and now it's May 14, we had a hard frost on Monday night, and we're still lighting our woodstoves. And it's in the 80s in Florida.

Oh! I forgot about the aloe plant.  Stalks are longer, buds are larger.  Yes, it's touched the ceiling and is bending over. Click the picture and it will enlarge.

flowers, flowers, flowers

The aloe in the living room is at it again.  Here's the flower stalk. Two buds this time. There will certainly be pictures when it blooms. When it's done my friend Beth will help me repot it. It needs a bigger pot, but a bigger pot won't fit on the shelf, and it clearly loves this space. Maybe Beth and I can figure out something.

It was hot enough to be out in a tank top. But did I put on sunscreen? No. Did I go in when I felt my back getting really warm? No. (Heavens! I would’ve had to take off my dirty garden shoes and gloves.) So now my back looks and feels like a cooked lobster. Dumb dumb dumb.

But I got a lot done. Half of one flower bed doesn’t sound like much, but believe me, it is.

About 4pm Ernie wanted his dinner and the sky clouded over. Bright overcast often produces nice pictures, so after I took care of Ernie I went out with the camera. If you look at the Venal pools entry in April, you’ll see a great picture of the bloodroot when they first came out. Now the leaves have emerged, each one surrounding an individual bloom like a little coat with a standup collar, and the blossoms have started to go by.

There’s a macro setting on the camera that I’m trying to learn to use well, but you have to hold the camera really steady and now I know I’m not so good at that when I’m propped on my elbow on the ground. So I think I’ll use the zoom, since I mess with the images anyway. I’m still fascinated with daffodils.

 

  

No, I did not take this picture on purpose. The bee was there. Discovery is what makes image processing fun.

For instance, the pulmonaria, which has two colors of flowers. This is less than 15% of the original picture, but the color balance (thank you, flowers!) and the out-of-focus background (thank you, camera) made for a great closeup.

Time for supper, and then catching up on "inside work". Paying the April bills would be a good thing.

A very satisfactory day

Thelma is recouping from a hip replacement.  Betsy is staying with her at least until May 12 (the post-op visit), and I help with chores one evening during the week, and Saturday and Sunday morning.  So this morning was chore morning, and then  "restorative coffee", while we despaired of the weather.  The forecast had been for mostly sunny and the best we could make out was mostly cloudy.

But it turned bright, sunny and warm in the late morning and I spent the afternoon gardening.  I set up another 3' x 18" raised bed for BEETS and a couple of basil plants, next to the bed that keeps me in lettuce all summer.  Then (since raised beds need to be filled with soil) I decided to see how much compost I had.

I am a lazy composter.  I have two big round bins, without covers, and an informal small pile way back in the yard.  I think these are basically for leaves, which I don't really have) but all spring and summer I pile in horse manure, plant stalks, lawn clippings (when the grass grows too thick to leave the clippings on the lawn) and kitchen waste.  I throw in some dirt from time to time. In August I take the bins down, turn the piles, and put the bins back up.  That's it.  In the spring I remove the top layer of plant junk, dig out the compost from the bottom, and put the remainder of the pile back together.

Last week I'd taken down one bin and put the compost around some struggling lilacs and some plants that are by the shed. This is an area that isn't really a garden but could use attention from time to time.  So I only had the other bin, and the small pile in the back.

Wow! There was enough compost in the back pile to fill the new raised bed!  And there was enough compost from the other round bin to make an impressive soil improvement in the veggie part of the garden, with some left over for the flowers!  I was surprised, because my laziness doesn't serve the garden well most of the time. 

Now I'm excited. The lettuce survived the snow and is coming along pretty well.  I'll start some spinach and beets now and transplant the parsley that's been over-wintering in the house. The bean seeds go in May 15, and I'll buy the tomato plants to put in around Memorial Day. I might try some Swiss Chard this year. If I work my way through the flower beds an hour every day after work and several hours each weekend, the place should be in decent shape by the end of May.

Unless it snows again.