MY GIRL'S ARE LOOKIN' GOOD!

Well, here's a "Horse Post" for a change.  It's been all about Murphy for awhile and no talk about my girls.  So unfair!  Chuck had some trouble with his van yesterday and we had to drop it off at the shop.  When I picked him up and brought him home, he decided to let Dixie into the outer pasture to play with her Mama, Susie.

If you recall, Dixie has Laminitis in her hooves and the poor thing has been 'quarantined' in the barn yard, on a diet of only hay and water {and her morning carrots} since July.  Partly so her hooves could heal and partly so she could lose a few hundred pounds.  We figure she's lost about 200-250 lbs and she sure is looking good!

I showed this picture to Chuck and he said that Susie was "giving me the tail"! How funny!! LOL

The did have a great time running and playing and I got a few more shots of them with my trusty iPhone before I headed to town.

 It's actually quite nice to have some pictures of them with the barn and OUR house in the background!  Usually I'm snapping shots from the yard near the house and our neighbor's house/trailers/dead vehicles, etc are the backdrop.  Ewww.  This is much better :)

It doesn't look like Chuck's X-Mas gift is going to make it in time for the big day and I'll have to wrap a picture of it for him, instead.  He won't mind, but I'd rather have it get here in time.  Mayhaps it will.  I ordered him a horse weathervane for the barn and he'll love it!   Anything to do with the horses and he's good to go. I used to dazzle him with new tools or guns, but at this age...he's pretty much got everything in those departments!  As for ME, there are no strange gifts under the tree with my name on them, but I do know that he and Deb have had their heads together a couple times the past couple weeks.  Although she and I have never had a "what do you want for X-Mas conversation", it'll be interesting to see what they came up with.  Hee hee.  We're giving Deb {Casino} money and getting her lovable Redneck Hubby a carton of smokes and a case of beer.  Neither one of them would like anything better! 

And we are also giving them a night off, so to speak.  Their boys (grandsons that they are raising) Corbin and Noah are going to spend the night with us tomorrow night.  Corbin (9) is looking forward to baking X-Mas cookies with me and Noah just wants to "hang out" with Chuckie (as the 5 year old calls him :) ) and watch westerns.  It'll be interesting.  I adore them both and Corbin often comes down to help me do stuff or to just hang out.....just the 2 of us.  He thrives on the one on one time and the attention.  Poor Deb works long hours and their time is limited.  HOWEVER....when the 2 of them are together, they are a force to reckon with, so I repeat.  It will be interesting......sigh......

Camping Trip and Me, Me, Me,Me, Me

We took our motorhome out of moth balls and went on a camping trip with our neighbors and good buds, Roy & Debbie for the long holiday weekend.  We left Thursday afternoon and came home yesterday {Monday} early afternoon.  We only went about 30 mile from home, but it was a great campground on Table Rock River and our sites were right on the sandy 'beach' of the river.  Sweet!

Their 2 grandsons, Corbin and Noah were along {as they live with Roy and Deb} and Saturday was Corbin's 9th birthday so we had a party for him.  Their daughter & her hubby and youngest daughter {5} also came.  It really was lots of fun.

In my last post I was sounding off about how well I am doing post-surgery.  Well, that changed in a big-ass hurry.  After helping the farrier with the horses Wed. AM, I proceeded to spend the rest of the day gathering stuff up for the motorhome, doing laundry and shopping for the trip.  Thursday I spent the day cooking for the trip and trying to load stuff.  I made potato salad, brisket, salsa, birthday cake, beans, guacamole and other dips.  The motorhome has actually been at an RV place, as we have been trying to sell it, so it was EMPTY.  Not set up with all the basics like it always used to be, so gathering and loading was a major chore.  Needless to say, by Thursday PM I was wiped out and spent Friday and Saturday in quite a bit of pain.  Did I remember to take my meds for my leg spasms?  NO.  Did I remember my Tylenol PM so I could sleep at night even tho I couldn't get comfortable?? NO.  What an idiot.  Deb found some Tylenol PM, so that I did get some decent sleep Saturday PM.  I should have driven home for the other meds, but it {like everything else at that point} seemed like too much effort.  But that's enough bitching. 

Well, maybe not.  Wednesday PM, after having helped the farrier for about an hour and a half  that AM, Chuck and I pulled over 40 Seed Ticks off me. They were everywhere.  The big ticks don't bother me, but the Seed Tick bites itch and fester like fire ant bites and those have been driving me nuts.  We treat our yard, but in thinking back, the farrier set up his stuff off to the other side of the pasture, where no one ever really goes and apparently Chuck doesn't treat.  After he was done helping me "tick pick", he went right out and sprayed the horses.  If I got so many, imagine what they had going on!!!  Poor girls :(

Putting my 'discomfort' aside, it was a great weekend!  We're gonna go again a time or 2 before it gets to be too cold for these Southerners.  LOL  I'll just do things a bit different and be better prepared.  That, and leave more stuff for Chuck to do, like he told me to, to begin with.  Just gotta learn to listen!

Roses and Horses and Finches....Oh My!

My lovely daughter, Terri, has a faboo friend that is quite the gardener.  She has gotten Terri into it big time.  So much so that M constructed Terri a greenhouse and built wonderful garden beds for her!  Anyway, Shany {Terri's friend} created a rose garden as a memorial to her mother.  Shany lost her mother to cancer a few short years ago and seeing as how her mother loved roses she planted a lovely plot and even had a nice sign made.  That got me thinking.  My Mom loved roses.....yellow roses.  AND....roses seem to grow really well here in BF Arkansas.  Everyone seems to have thriving rose bushes, except me of course, because I always thought they would be terribly complicated and I would kill them for sure! Anyway, after seeing Shany's rose garden, I decided to give it a go.  I also had some influence from our dear Poolie, as she has some incredible roses under her care!

My plan was to have my Timmy help me build a rose garden while he and Riley were visiting.  He has really gotten into helping Terri and Shany with their gardens and we had a plan!!  Alas, time ran short and Chuck didn't have time to do HIS part in all of this, so Tim and I didn't get to build my rose garden together :(.  HOWEVER!  As luck would have it, the lady at the end of our road {who used to work for a nursery~and who's house was surrounded by gorgeous plants and flowers, including many roses} is moving!  Last night on his way home, Chuck stopped to see her and came home with 9 rose bushes and 2 HUGE SunPatiens plants (a form if Impatiens only HUGE)!  What a surprise!!

The plan is to build a big bed out of some rock we have that he made me a couple other flower beds out of.  And since the bed he made me for my Hydrangeas has taken off and done so well.....and since roses allegedly like the same conditions as Hydrangeas, he will make the bed for me in the same area of the yard.  Which, BTW, just happens to be near the pasture fence and in direct line of my view to said pasture, from my computer and sewing machine!  If they live, it will be prefect!!  She seriously pruned them, as you can see, but I suspect she knew what she was doing.  Her only advice was to water in the morning and again in the early afternoon and give them rose food once a week.  She said they don't like to "go to bed wet".  LOL  So....I think I can handle that.  I think I can, I think I can.......Of course I will be researching online and will greatly appreciate any and all input from any of you that are successful rose growers!!

And, in other news.......I was quite envious of Poolie's daily gathering of finches at her feeders!  I often see finches out on the fence and flitting by the window, but only after her influence did I finally decide to acquire some finch feeders.  Well, they went undetected for so long....5 or 6 days.....I was about to move them one morning, when lo and behold, I had a visitor!  That was about 2 weeks ago....and all this time I only ever saw just the one.  But 2 days ago, there were 3!  And this AM there were 5!  I am thrilled.  I love having birds around, just outside my windows and although I do miss my favorites in Alaska, there are so many down here that don't live up there!  The gold finches (only visit Alaska briefly), Cardinals, Indigo Buntings, Blue birds, House Finches, and I musn't forget the Hummingbirds!!  I'm still working on pictures.  For some reason, they seem to take flight when I quietly open the door, with camera in hand and a rambunctious Cocker Spaniel comes out of no where and goes bursting thru the door!  I just need to remember to camp out on the back deck, while Gus is at work with Chuck, and quietly wait for them!

And Dixie is doing a little better everyday.  Although I wish we had a horse size scale so we could weigh her and see if her "water and hay" diet is helping yet.  Can't see any difference yet, but with horses it does show fairly quickly.  She had to come over and investigate while I was watering the roses this AM.

Actually, her appetite hasn't been that great and she hasn't even finished all of her hay until yesterday.  Apparently it is improving, as she appears to be liking the taste of the fence......better keep an eye on her that she doesn't start eating it LOL  And I just noticed the ripples in the water trough!  Susie was taking a drink, just out of sight of the camera/phone.  :)

I Need Your Input

My dear friends.........please tell me.........is it "normal" for a 13 year old boy to spend {literally} hours riding his bicycle back and forth on the short road between our houses, singing {VERY badly} at the top of his lungs, or just talking, to his imaginary friends I assume {because he has alienated the other kids in the neighborhood} and hopping off his bike to dance and sing in the middle of the public road???

Yes, I am referring to the "terrorist" next door. Anyone that has been reading me for very long has heard me mention him from time to time.  This is the same kid that sneaked up into our hay loft and cut the twine on about 100 bales of hay.  The same kid that I found in my yard throwing rocks at my horses.  Poking at them through he fence with a metal rod and sticks.  All this after being told to not go near the barn, horses or into our yard unless Chuck was out there.  The same one that "stalked" Maggie and Emily last summer and this summer is "stalking" the 10 year old girl across the street.  Chased her into the woods on his bike the other day, and whislt trying to escape she fell and split open her toes on a fallen tree.

We have been neighbors for 5 years now and I have tried so hard to like this kid and I can't.  When he comes over here, which is rare these days, he smart mouths me and talks back to me.  His Mother blows it off, so I went to  his father's place of business and talked to him about it 2 years ago.  THAT worked a bit better.  I told his Dad that his son was a frog's hair away from getting knocked on his ass, so he better do something!    I don't believe in hitting kids.

This is coming from a woman that spanked her only daughter ONCE, when she was about 8 years old and 2 minutes later I was in her room hugging and kissing her while be cried together!  After that, we were always able to talk stuff out and reason it out.  No need for spanking.  Guess I was just lucky to be so blessed with this child of mine, and to have 5 grandchildren that are successfully being brought up the same way!  Sadly, Chuck spanked her twice.  Both times for things I had told her it was okay to do, but he didn't get the 'memo' in time.

Anyway, in addition to the 'terrorist', we also have a girl across the road that wants to spend all of her time with Chuck and/or me.  Preferably Chuck. She's the 10 year old that the Terrorist chased into the trees, BTW.  The story with her is that her Step-Grandfather bought an empty lot across the road from us and moved a trailer in.  A nice old, kinda run down trailer.  Yay!  he and his wife lived there for awhile, then they split.  He is off living with his new girlfriend and the trailer is inhabited by his daughter {who just got out of jail, for God knows what) and her boyfriend/husband....whatever.  It's not clear.  So, the little girl, H used to be around on weekends and would be over here alot because of the horses.  Well, her dad found out that his ex-wifey was doing meth, so he went and got H and she now lives with them.  They don't do anything with her, tho' so she spends ALL of her time over here.  I try to be nice, but am forced to chase her off from time to time.  That works until she sees Chuck's van pull in at night and over she comes.  It's pretty much gotten so that if I need to talk to Chuck about anything, I have to call  him...but that can be another post.

Now that I have managed to drag myself away from my computer for 25 hours a day and get back into reading books, I like to sit outside and enjoy the quiet solitude and the breeze with only the occasional nicker of a horse as background noise {music to MY ears}.  Between H popping over and the "Singing Terrorist" it just doesn't happen that way very often. Very frustrating, indeed.

In 5 days Timmy  and Riley will be here and I shall be very possessive of my time with them....which means, if I have to become "The Bitchy Old Lady" in the big house, then so be it!