Heaven

My apologies for my extended absence.



But I was in the most beautiful place in the world.

More soon...

Finneversary #5

Late July 2005 (as a two year old), the first time I saw him.


The end of May 2009. He was coming back from his "fence accident" when this was taken. He had been out of regular work for close to 4 months.


August 2, 2010

My horse is a beast.

Happy Finneversary to us, to us.


Those massive shoulders. Awful to fit a saddle to, but so great to nestle behind.












Our favorite summer activity.
(I am fully aware of the dangers of this photo... and I don't really care. For the sake of a nice picture)


To many more Pretty Boy. <3

Night riders

Last night was the kind of night that I wish would happen more often. I had an absolutely lovely ride with friends. It was sort of a last minute thing, and by the time we got on the sun had mostly set. My barn owner is an incredibly gracious person. She's always said I could use her horses for any friends that want to ride. My former barrel racing friend hadn't ridden in a long time, so she rode the western pleasure lesson horse. My other friend, a fellow SCAD Equestrian dropout, had never ridden a gaited horse. My barn owner has a little Tennessee Walker mare who is such an odd ride if you're not used to gaited things. It was hilarious on both counts. I rode Finn, and let everyone have a turn on him. We laughed, and played, had a beer or two, and sweated our butts off. Yes, even light riding after dark and I still came home soaked to the bone.

Anyway.

The latter of the two friends, has known Finn since I got him. Our horses are two months apart in age, so they both just turned 7. We've had them both since they were babies. We have decided that 7 is quite a good year. All of a sudden our babies have become "real horses". It's kind of hard to describe what we mean by that, but it's like all of a sudden they have come into themselves. Suddenly I have A Real Horse, and not a dimwit baby. He stands still, he travels in a straight line, he is polite. It's amazing. I mean, he still has his moments, but he's 99% better than he was even 6 months ago. He has just been blossoming and being all sorts of amazing lately (knock on wood). I'm so proud!!!!

Also... I have had the Finn-monster for 5 years this week. I plan on doing an anniversary post this weekend, after I take new conformation shots of him. Finn and I have quite a history in only 5 years together.

Tonight I am working on art stuff, but man... I lost a sketch I did for something and it's driving me crazy!!!! I had this great image in my head, I sketched it out so I wouldn't forget it, and I lost it. Crap.

Adventures in gardening

I wonder what would happen if you could purify sweat. Could you bottle it all up and reuse it? I doubt it, but somehow I wish it was possible considering the amount of it that came off of me today.

Ken and I worked in the yard all day. I checked weather.com at one point, considering I was on my 3rd set of dry clothes, and it said the heat index was 122. Wunderground.com said it was 105. I'll just average the two together and call it even.

We got a lot done. Ken worked on the arbor that we started, oh... over a year ago. We had to meticulously unwrap the wisteria from around the support poles. Some of the new vine got broken in the process, but I think it'll be ok. He put lattice along the sides, evened the poles out, re-wrapped the wisteria around them, and now all that's left is the top.

Meanwhile, I was playing in the dirt. This spring, I had the grand idea to remove all these old lillies and crocosmia that had taken over the west side of the house. They were probably planted by someone that meant well, many moons ago. Then the house got sold to some SCAD boy's parent to provide his son & his friends with a place to live. Something tells me college boys aren't into gardening. The flowers were left to grow wild, and oh did they. When I removed them, there wasn't much soil there. It was one huge mass of bulbs, roots, bulbs, roots, and more bulbs. I was moderately successful. Except that I didn't really have a plan of what I was going to do with that side of the house after that.

Later on I realized that I really liked those flowers after all. Of course. When I moved the flowers, I didn't believe that I could throw a perfectly good (nonpoisonous) plant away, so I threw them all in pots together. Miraculously they survived in the pots, with no soil, only sun and water. Today, I put them all back. However, this time I did what that good old house inspector told us to do when we bought the place. I pulled the plants away from the house with a good layer of rocks & weed blocker to deter them. They seem happy to be home so far. I did have to throw away some of the bad ones, so I guess I successfully thinned out a flower bed... in a very roundabout way.

I also planted some new hosta and some siam tulips in my other beds. I will have to take pictures, because I just adore them both.

So... success! In one way or another.

time after time

Some days I just sort of float along in my own little world. Always have. I've been this way since I was a kid. My Mom would send me to clean my room and I'd end up reading all the magazines I was supposed to be putting away, or playing with the toys on the floor. Hours later my room would still be a disaster.

I would love to be able to get up at 6am and be all ready to go say hello to the world. I could eat a nice breakfast, workout, walk my dogs, maybe go ride my horse. It would be so nice. I could get so much done. In theory anyway.

Instead I just kind of float along until it's time to make dinner. I feel like I'm getting more focused. Maybe that's why I've always sucked at time management. Lack of focus. I'm always off daydreaming in some distant land. It makes life hard sometimes, but that's ok. I'm getting there.

What do I daydream about? All sorts of stuff. And then sometimes I go and do the things I daydream about.

Like taking my horse for "nature walks" like a giant dog. We discovered a network of trails that lead to a huge field by our barn. Man, he was stoked.



Now we just have to go ride out there. I have a lot of courage issues with riding. Maybe if I daydream about it enough, I can make it a reality. I mean, it's worked for me so far.

the vines

Here is something I've been working on lately. I'm not sure where to go from here, but I like it so far. It needs color of some sort. It's also very small, but small is ok. I like it anyway. I'm still working on remnants of wood from deck building.



At the moment I have so many ideas, and so many thoughts I want to get out. Things I want to paint. Things I want to share with the world. Things like that. But oh have we slammed head first with ours eyes closed into "the busy season" at work. The weather has also been LOVELY. When I'm not at work, I've been walking the dogs (with much rejoicing on their part), or making vain attempts to ride. That's the curse of an outdoor person I guess.

I've decided I need a hammock. Mmmmm yes.

new ventures

Today I painted in oils for the first time in my life. How I got through 4 years of art school without painting in oils is beyond me. Today, however, I tried and it actually wasn't a disaster. I'd known I wanted to do it for ages, I just never made the plunge. Perhaps... this is a new direction. We'll see. I'll post it when it's all done and mostly dry.

I've been in the house painting all day. It was pretty cool, but I'm going a little stir crazy. I didn't ride today or yesterday because of The Cold. The high in this part of country today was 45. While that may seem tropical to most people, for Savannah it might as well be the north pole. No one else at my barn wants to ride in this, and I hate riding alone, so sitting at home painting under the glow of the space heater it is.

I did brave The Cold and walked the dogs yesterday. They were most grateful, but really dogs... despite your persistent begging it's not happening again this soon. You have a wimpy southerner for a mom.