Happy Feet

Wiseguy, the cutest miniature horse in the world, just had his first hoof trimming while in my care.  The farrier said he had nice feet and they were not as long as I thought they were.  The wind didn't blow and the farrier showed up on time, so it was all good.  He was expensive, though.

It was $45 to have his feet trimmed.  Now, I heard that it is $25-40 around here.  Still, he was good, he showed up on time and I am happy so, since I only own one horse and since this only has to be down every 8 weeks, I think I will keep him.

Wiseguy was a perfect gentleman and stood nicely for the farrier.  He backed up when asked and held still for the nice man.  He sniffed all the pockets on the farrier for carrots including the apron pockets.  Wiseguy is such a cookie monster.

The farrier thinks that it is no problem for Wiseguy's feet that he goes on asphalt, road base gravel and dirt.  He did say to make a mud puddle for him to stand in the day before he comes so that the inner part of his hoof can soften up.  I told him that just wasn't possible in our sand.  So, he suggested that we put lanolin or pine tar on his feet for the three days prior to the pedicure appointment.

Because it is so dry here, I have been moistening the area in front of Wiseguy's  water trough most days by dumping the water into the sand and refilling the trough from the hose.  Maybe even sprinkling the dirt a little extra.  The farrier thinks that is great.  So far, so good with my cute little guy.

I have been taking the little guy for walks and he is a most curious little horse.  Makes me realize that he had a certain environment in the boarding stable and this is a lot of new stuff around here for him to see.  He is a real people person [okay he is a horse but you know what I mean].  Once he meets a neighbor, he looks for them when we are walking.  It is very cute.

Wiseguy and Wheels

I am thinking about getting Wiseguy out of the cart for a few weeks and working only on making sure he isn't spooking at cars and motorcycles going by him and that we are on the same page with reining.  I am setting up a tire drag so we can pull that around.

I have been walking him around the neighborhood on a lead so that we can see new things and have cars go by without him being hooked to a cart.

Honestly, we have been doing great in the cart except a couple of times but last time we went out was one of those days that we couldn't pull it together.  I thought I was going to have to lead him home with his cart!  We finally got turned around and made it back home.

I think we will keep working on whoa while being led and then while dragging a tire.

I can't get a hold of the trainer and I will have to get through this on my own.  I have a message in to one of the nice ladies in a town up north hoping to ask her a few questions and I posted on a forum for minis to get a little advice.

I think Wiseguy and I can work through this even if I am a beginner.

Hot and Cold

95 degrees day, 49 degrees overnight.  Today should be around 90 degrees.

We open up the house and let it cool off overnight and then close it up.  We did run the A/C  from about 5pm until about 8pm  last night.  By 10pm the outside was 74 and the inside was 74 and we opened the house up and went to bed.  60 degrees inside the house this morning.  If I get lucky I won't have to run the A/C at all today.

I took the little horse out for a nice walk of about 1 1/3 miles yesterday.  Wiseguy did really well.  He was quite curious about the neighborhood.  He walked fine.  No spooking or anything.

I think I haven't had the cart set up quite right after reviewing some info in a post on the major miniature horse website so when I put him in the cart again I think I'll do a bit better with it.

In the meantime I am going to take him for walks and try to get a tire drag going.  That way he can pull something around the neighborhood with his harness and blinders on and not have a set of wheels hooked up to him.  I got a little more info on the tire drag and the rein set up for the tire drag online yesterday.  I'll be reviewing that as I go along.  I need to make a singletree for the tire drag.  When I go to town I will need three eye hooks and some snaps or caribeeners  for clipping the harness to the trace chains and the tire to the singletree.

Okay, we did not run the A/C at all yesterday.

We worked on the final two shutters for the front of the house.  I'll have to get some photos.  We have the one glued and screwed but we were a bit short on materials so we ran into town.  We picked up a redwood 2x4 and 3 redwood fence boards plus 3 eye bolts and three snaps.  The eye bolts and snaps are so we can build the little horse a singletree and have him drive around with a tire on it.  That should be a great training tool!

I still have to take the tire with me on Friday and get the rim taken off the tire from the old pick up truck we sold.  That little Toy tire should be just the right size for a little horse like Wiseguy.

I took almost all the plastic buckets from planting trees and shrubs in the yard to the State Nursery while I had Hubby with me to help.  It was a lot of buckets, for sure.  I am trying to get the place cleaned up.  Not that it looks that bad but if you don't stay on top of the junk, the junk is soon piled up all over the place.  Now I can re-stack what I am keeping and throw out some more items, like old plant six packs, that we aren't going to use.  That will leave me with quite a bit of usable pots and six packs for next spring.

I told Hubby we are only 20 minutes from the Red Lobster by the time we are at the State Nursery.  Let's go out to eat in Reno.  So we did.

We then went to dinner at the Red Lobster.  Yummy.  They have a dinner special for $14.95 right now.  Soup, salad, entree, cheese biscuits AND desert.  Not a bad deal.  We both got the coconut shrimp and grilled pineapple shrimp combo plate that included plenty of broccoli, wild rice and our shrimps.


Today is supposed to be 93 degrees.  We are at 64 in the house this morning.  We will close it up and see if we can avoid running the A/C again today.

Veggie Garden

First of all the fire is out!  Yeah.

Hubby and I have managed to replant the veggie garden.  Let's hope we get something out of this garden this year.  Today is hot and windy.  The thermometer on the breezeway is reading 99 degrees.

Yesterday I took the little horse for a walk since my arms are sore from cleaning so many houses and I didn't want to use my arms for driving.  Today I am still very sore.

I wanted to get a lot done outside yesterday because the weather is supposed to be rough today.  I got two sets of sheets washed and hung out to dry.  Also, a couple of other loads of clothes.  Can't dry laundry outside when the wind is doing 25-40 so today will be out of the question:)

I planted the petunias I bought.  I also planted the red hot pokers I grew from seeds even though they are tiny.  I am getting tired of keeping them watered.  I hope I get some of them to live since the two I already have are really awesome.

I have three sage plants to get into the ground.  They will be a nice addition to the yard.  Hummingbirds love them.  My hummingbird yard is starting to mature and there are hummers buzzing all over the place.

So, today I went ahead and hooked up the little horse to the cart early before it got hot and windy.  He and I had a very rough time.  He didn't want to do a tight turn at all.  I don't know what his deal was.  I will have to get back out there and try again at the first opportunity.  I am not giving up on my efforts.  Every once in awhile we have a really bad day.  So far, the next time out on the road ends up being fine so we shall see.

Terry says maybe his feet are sore but he was quite happy to trot around without a cart yesterday when I took him for a walk and he is out there prancing around in the wind.  The farrier is supposed to show up in another week.  Crossing my fingers that it will not be windy since I would definitely like to get his feet trimmed and check to make sure they look okay.

I am running the water in the veggie garden for an hour this afternoon to try to keep those new seeds hydrated.

Fire on the Mountain

We had some dry lightening yesterday.  I saw a stroke of lightening and then I saw a small plume of smoke in the hills beyond the river, heading south.  We called it in right away.  So far the news is claiming one hundred acres burnt.  Sagebrush and cheatgrass.  Honestly, there isn't really any sagebrush on that set of mountains.    Those mountains are called the Desert Mountains.  Only the saddest, poorest looking desert plants you have ever seen grow over that way.  The plants that look dead almost all the time.  They don't get very tall either.

Even though it is cloudy, you can see the smoke coming off the fire in this photo.  This is about an hour after the fire started.

This magnificent cloud is the culprit that started the fire.  It tried hard to be a thunderstorm but didn't quite have the energy to become a thunderhead.  It did produce some dry lightening none-the-less.

You can see the fire towards the top of the ridge in this photo as the sun was setting and it was starting to get dark out.

It was interesting to watch the fire spread from a small plume of smoke to orange glowing rivers of flames.  You could see when a breeze came up by the flames moving and glowing orange.  Fortunately, there wasn't much wind.  Nothing grows out that way and no people live over there.  Certainly nobody hikes or 4-wheels or spends any real time at all over there.  There is nothing to see and just about no roads.

Worming

I bet you all thought this would be about having earthworms in the garden.  Nope, 7 years and we still don't seem to have earthworms.  We had some red compost worms last year that made it through the winter under some straw in the vegie garden but no sign of them this year.  It was too dry, I think.  Not a tiny bit of rain all winter and spring.  Oh, what an exciting day it was in Fernley when we found our first earthworm after only living there a couple of years.  Here in our sandy realm, so far not a one.

Nope, today we wormed the cat, the two dogs, the three goats and the miniature horse.  We generally do this in early June every year.  I don't recall why we do it in early June but we must have had our reasons when we first started this tradition.

We are worming the cat and the dogs specifically for tapeworms.  Penney had tapeworms a couple of years ago.  I thought is was shocking.  In all my years of dog ownership, I had never actually had a dog with known tapeworms.  There are no fleas here so we thought we were safe.  Turns out that if the cat or dog eats rabbits [and ours do] the rabbits all have tapeworms which the directly pass on to the dog or cat.  Isn't nature fascinating!  Yuck.

Any way, it is real and we are working to prevent problems.

I finally found a farrier that will come out our way.  I got a recommendation from the vet tech at the animal clinic we have been taking the dogs to occasionally.  Honestly, we worm and give the basic shots ourselves so unless your getting neutered or need rabies or are really sick, when you are a pet around here you don't see the inside of the vet's office.  Saves us a ton of money.

My Climate Sucks...So Why do I Live Here?

Yeah, I ask myself why do I live in this gardening hellhole sometimes.  Look at this.  The moon going down as the sun is coming up.  That is why I live here.  So beautiful some days.  Wide open spaces.  Plus, no fleas on the dogs and cat.

A couple of my domesticated pennestemmons. One in purple and one pink.  This variety is called Origami.

Speedwell or veronica in the front and alfalfa in the back.  Both a love purple blue.

Chocolate flowers.  Yep, they smell like chocolate.  They are a western flower and cannot take the humidity of the south and east. if I recall correctly.

Cleaning Lady!

"Cleaning lady!", I holler as I unlock the door.

There was a time when I liked being a cleaning lady.  I lived in Las Vegas.  I owned my own business. I had lots of clients and those clients treated me pretty good.  I even grew large enough to have employees.  I did advertising.  I went to business lunches.  And, yes, I cleaned toilets.

That all changed when I moved to Northern Nevada.  For some reason people here don't seem to mind living in what is basically filth.  The first job I did up here, there was a shed gopher snake skin in one of  the bottom cabinets.  Why not?  There were plenty of mice to eat in that trailer.

I didn't clean many houses and I found a "real" job.  Later on I got married and I moved to a small town.  I started a new cleaning business there.

The people were okay.  They didn't tip me a full days pay at Christmas like every single one of my clients in Las Vegas did.  They gave me a basket they had gotten at work and didn't want or $5 or a tiny jar of homemade jelly even after working for them for several years.  Gee, thanks.  They give me the key to their home and they refer me to their friends and they love having someone they can trust coming into their homes and they adore me since I am good with their pets but a tip is out of the question.

I didn't feel well respected like I used to n Vegas but I could live with that.  I had a thriving little business and I was happy enough.

Then I moved down here to this area.  Every time I get a referral, it turns out to be nasty in their home.  They all have pets that pee and poop in the house.  No offense if this the type of pet you have but I have always considered it my duty as a pet owner to devise a system where the puppy learns to pee and poop outside.  I always clean up every puppy mess with doggy deodorizer.  If you can't afford doggy deodorizer, you probably shouldn't pretend you can afford a pet.

I never, no matter how tired I am, I never let dog pee or poop sit there on the floor or the carpet.  I clean it up and then I use doggy deodorizer.  If you leave any trace of the smell the dog wants to pee and poop there again.  How hard is it to understand that and just do the right thing?

Even the nice houses I clean seem to have dogs that pee and poop in the house.  Really, people shouldn't have pets.   They don't want to learn anything about these animals and they don't want to spend the time or effort it takes to train them to be good citizens.  I am not a member of some wacko pet group.  I just don't get why you have a pet if you don't want to learn about another species and how to interact with that species and what it takes to train it to a minimal standard like not pooping and peeing in the house.

All this goes double if you have a cat.

Then there is the mouses in the house issue.  Sure, we get a mouse in the house once in awhile.  We have traps and we trap them out immediately.  We don't let them stick around building nests in the cupboards.  These houses have mice running around on the counters.  On the dishes and pots and pans. There are mouse nests in the cabinets.  There are chewed open boxes of food.  Ick! That is disgusting.

On top of all of that there is the weird lack of repairing faucets that seems to go on.  The one client has had a faucet that doesn't just wiggle but has come completely loose and is just hanging by the pipes underneath on her kitchen sink for a couple of years now.  Surely, a person could find the funds to buy a faucet and pay a plumber to put it in sometime in the last several years.

Another place had a hand held shower unit that was frayed and sprayed water everywhere when you turned on the water.  I suppose that is fine if you are naked but I am wearing jeans and a T-shirt and I don't want to be soaking wet from cleaning the shower.  Ridiculous.  This went on for over a year.

At one of the places I quit cleaning,  the kitchen sink was backed up for weeks.  The guy was old but he has children that live in town and they did not step up and call the landlord for him.  He had mice, too.  Fortunately he didn't own a pooping, peeing dog like all the rest of my clients.  I did finally tell him I quit cleaning since I just couldn't deal with the mouse issue anymore.

That's my rant.  Every year for the last couple of years I have said I will clean for one more year. I also said I wouldn't clean anymore of these mouse houses but here I am heading over tomorrow to clean that darn house.  I should have told my friend I wasn't interested but instead I said I would go over and see what I could do for the nice lady.  And the lady is nice but her house is disgusting.

My one more year is half over and this time it may well be my last year of cleaning even the few houses that I do now.

Cold Nights

We have had a series of extremely cold nights.  Last night was thirty four degrees but the water in the horse pen had a skiff of ice on top so it is definitely ridiculously cold.  We reordered seeds on a two day air since we have to get the veggie garden moving soon to be able to have any chance at success.  So far, it is not looking good for the veggie garden.

The rest of the yard is thriving and I am thrilled.

The winds have been bad this year.  Some years are like this.  Every year we generally get a couple of 90 MPH winds.  This year we have had some 60 MPH winds  but they are just the worst of it.  Just about every day, it seems, we are having some major winds.  We had a year like that about six years ago but I think that year was very warm.  This year it is mostly very cold.  Yesterday's high was only 70.

This area of Nevada is always weird, weather wise.  There is no really normal year.  This year is, however, exceptionally cold for June.  I am threatening to put up one of those giant hoop houses so that we can do the veggie gardening without having to worry so much about the temperatures.

I have wonderful penstemmons this year.  The trees are growing larger.  I used the pressure pot on the irrigation lines and fertilized the yard.  So convenient.

Time to get out there and clean up the horse pen.  Supposedly it will be 77 and only 7 MPH winds today.  I would take the little horse out to play but I am exhausted and have to go to town to get my hair cut.  I cleaned a house yesterday for almost nine hours.  I am getting way to old for this.  It isn't done yet and I need to go back again tomorrow to try to finish it up.  Unfortunately,  it is such a mess that that will only be the living room, dining room, den, one bathroom and the kitchen cleaned.  The gal is in the hospital and absolutely does not want me to clean the bedrooms or the other bathroom which is fine by me since this has been a ridiculous amount of work already.

This house has dog pea on the floors and mouses have been living in the kitchen cabinets.  Ick!  I keep cleaning houses because I like contributing to my family but I kind of have to make myself keep cleaning when I end up at houses like this one.

A Tragic Day...for the veggie garden:(

The wind howled.  The weather report said 25-33 MPH winds.  What a reporting travesty.  My front trellis broke due to winds.  Those winds had to be twice what was reported.  Trees were going sideways but all the trees seem fine.  It is the veggie garden that has been hit so hard, I don't think it can recover.

The weather reports and the thermometer at our house said the low was 43 degrees but the warm weather plants - the beans, all four kinds;  the summer squash, all three kinds; the 6 or so melon varieties and the butternut squashes and the acorn squashes and the pumpkins.  Also the corn.  All wilted and it looks like they have been hit by a hard frost.

Even the onions look bad but they will continue on.  The tomatoes were protected in the walls-o'-water.

Tonight could be even colder.  This sucks.  This reeks.  Oh the horror.  We are going to try to see if we can order replacement seed really quickly but I fear that much of the garden will be hopeless.  Even if we get stuff in we will not have enough warm days to get a harvest.  Darn it.  This is the worst veggie garden disaster we have ever had.

Gardening in Nevada is he!!

Got Fish?

Hubby and father-in-law caught some beautiful trout.

Father-in-law caught these three beauties on the final day before we left and came home.

Bringing the fish in.

The weather was fantastic and a lot of fish were caught but the small ones all went back into the lake.

There was a couple of insect hatchings going on the one evening and the little fish were leaping and gulping and generally causing a stir while the fishing was going on.  Not a fish was caught that evening.

I am having a couple of people over for dinner.  Hubby is going to cook the trout on the grill and I am going to make Rice-a-roni and an almondine sauce for the trout.  No veggies from the garden yet so I am going with canned green beans.

Yeah, I should have run to the store since we are out of everything.  No powdered lemonade mix. no sodas, no fresh veggies but...it is hot and I am working hard around the house and yard, so we are all going to have to enjoy each others company and the food will be pretty good.

I raked up one wheel barrow load of weeds today.  Off to the compost pile.  I cleaned out the horse pen.  There's another wheel barrow trip to the compost pile.  I swept off the breezeway and cleaned out the dog kennel.  We keep straw in it to keep the dog warm in the winter.  There's another  wheel barrow load.  Then, another round of yard raking.  Wheel barrowing again.  At least that is caught up.  I took several loads of stuff to the wooden shed.  There's three more wheel barrow loads.  

I managed to get the laundry washed and hung out.  After a couple of hours I brought it all back in and got it put away.  I cleaned the kitchen counters.  I linseed oiled the maple counter top and the wooden cutting boards.  I swept and sorted and put away a ton of stuff from the breezeway. I washed off the table that sits out there.  A lot of grime builds up in a winter and a spring.  I feel like the area is "caught up" and should be easy to keep up with now that it isn't the mess that it had become.

Camping at Wild Horse Reservoir

This is an arm of the lake.  You can't see them in the photo but there are about 10 antelope on the far shore.

The area is definitely sage brush country.

Sagebrush, my new used Toyota Forunner and the lake.  The flat top mountain in the background is pretty awsome.

This is a lucky photo.  A blue heron was right by our camp when we woke up on Thursday.

Blue herons generally don't like people and this one was no exception.  He's walking off to go behind the boat and around the bend.

The weather was exceptionally beautiful and it was a lovely trip.

Fishing photos tomorrow:)

Notable Quotable

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, he said:

“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.
And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;
the result being that he does not live in the present or the future;
he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”