Pre-winter whinney

Brrr, it's getting a bit chilly out there. Tuesday it was 2 degrees, right now it's snowing. Duke has quite the winter coat...he looks like a big plushy toy.

But he still enjoys his daily roll, mud and all.

Pre-snow rolling, of course.

Last week during his daily turn out he engaged in a little friendly game of sparing with another gelding.






Mr. Tough Guy. Ears pinned, nostrils flared, seriously mean look. "Back off!" He looks very serious, but this is all what makes horses who and what they are. Everything they do is driven by order, establishing a hierarchy...a pecking order. In a herd of two or more, there can only be one leader.




When I'm around, when it's just me and Duke, I'm the leader. It's taken me months to earn Duke's trust. Every day he tests me because horses vote for their leader every day. Every day he checks to see if I'm paying attention, if I'll let him get away with this little thing or that. He's teaching me a lot.



And when I watch him interact with another horse, I've observed something interesting. The dominance games he used to play on me are now directed at other horses.



Another gelding checks out the scene.

Sweet Days of Summers End

While typing this entry, I heard a character on television say, "Winston Churchill once said 'The further backward you can look the farther forward you can see.'
Okay.  I've been wanting to write this entry for the past few weeks, but I struggled with it and resisted, unable to share or reflect on the little things that enrich my life and bring me joy, when so many people have lost so much.  Is it guilt, or just the feeling that singing my happy song would seem insensitive or inappropriate at such a time as this?  Either way I need to ground myself again and reconnect with my souls appreciation for those simple joys in life.  Get back to life.
Rewind.

Back a couple of weeks.  Labor Day weekend camping trip at the lake.

The night air is cool--long sleeve shirt, long pants--cool.  Early morning the air is crisp, but not too cool for shorts and a t-shirt.  And the days are warm, rich with the warmth of a thousand days of my summer youth.  I feel it the minute the trailer door opens, it gently tingles my skin.  I smell it with that first intake of morning air, I feel so alive.  There is just something about that first breath of early morning summer air; it always takes me back in time. 

Outside the trailer door, just a few steps away is a trail lined with blackberry bushes heavily laden with summer fruit; vines dripping with hundreds of berries.  Berries so ripe they burst in your fingers when picked, staining the skin a deep bright red.

 

Picking blackberries requires long sleeve shirts and pants, as the vines and leaves are thick with sharp knife-like thorns that prick and scrap tender skin. Those parts of the bushes right on the path are over-picked; all the campers have berry picking on their 'To Do' list this weekend. The biggest, ripest and sweetest berries are easily seen, but not so easily reached; those are the berries hanging high, just out of reach. I spent two days dodging those demonic thorns while picking the sweetest berries. Finally, Sam and I came up with a system; he used his height to reach up and cut the whole clusters from the vine, while I sat on the ground and plucked the ripened berries off each freshly cut cluster. We ended up with just over five gallons of berries. Just enough to make a couple of batches of blackberry jam.  :)

Late summer and early fall is a busy time for me. Aside from baking zucchini bread, I've been making jellies and jams. I usually make concord grape jelly, but our grape vine had to be torn down this summer when we replaced the outside deck in July. :( Hopefully it will grow back in a couple of years. Not one to be deterred, I made blackberry jam, green pepper jelly, and pear honey (aka pear conserves). Lots of yummy sweets!

Across the street at the Christmas tree farm is a peach tree, just dripping with fruit. I've had my eyes on those peaches for the past couple of weeks now. If I'm feeling ambitious this weekend I might just try my hand at peach preserves.
Maybe.