Exciting morning in the barn

This was a rather exciting morning in the barn…  I was finishing up one of the stalls when my eye was caught by the unusual and unexpected sight of four hooves cartwheeling through the air.  I rushed out to the arena to see what had happened and there was Faye, on her back and scrambling to right herself.  Fred was cautiously approaching, trying to make sure she didn’t get tangled even worse in the lunge line, and she did make it to her feet safely, blowing and trembling.  Very carefully and slowly, talking calmly all the time, Fred drew the lunge line through her legs  and it was finally over.  Wow.  He’d tried using side reins on her while lunging her – very loose -  to see if she would adjust her head and neck position a bit, but as soon as she felt the restraint, she panicked and literally flipped out.  No damage done to horse, handler, or saddle, but quite a sight to see!  He rode her quietly on a loose rein for another 15 minutes, then turned her out.  Even though she’s an 11 year old horse, she’s basically a pretty green 2 year old mentally.  If I remember correctly, she had about a year of work under saddle (once a week) when she was around two, then was a pasture buddy for three older mares for the next six years.  She’s very pretty, very hot, and very spooky, so training is a challenge.  She is making progress, though, so Fred just needs to keep it up.

I’ve been dealing with a very achy lower back for the past few days.  I got dragooned into helping Fred shovel out rocks from the pasture shelter.  These are about 1.5 inch, jagged chunks of rock that we paid someone to spread with his front end loader about two years ago.  God, a shovelful is heavy!

In the spring, the shelter was getting totally bogged in deep, sticky mud, and we thought a mix of rocks would stabilize the ground surface over time.  It did, but now there is a layer of loose rocks that get in the way of cleaning, so out they came.  Shoveling rocks in 90 degree weather is not fun!  Plus, I am not in shape to do this kind of work!  Something’s wrong when my life is getting physically more taxing the older I get.  Gawd…    So I’m popping pills and bending very carefully and only when I must!

Grape jelly seems to be a favorite of a lot of kinds of birds.  I’d thought that only the Baltimore Orioles would eat it, but I’ve seen woodpeckers, finches, starlings (another invasive and nasty species!), and blackbirds all eating it with apparent gusto.  Then they have to wipe their beaks on the post to get all that sticky stuff off.

I think the crows would be there, too, but they’re too big to get into the feeder cup area.  They do like the bird bath, though!   Very funny to see one large crow trying to splash in one smallish bird bath.  I should get a kiddie pool for them…

I worry about the bluebird nestlings in this extreme heat, but I'm not sure there's much I could do for them.  Heat is better than getting chilled, I guess.  One more nest of tree swallow eggs to hatch and then I think we're done for this season.  I've been seeing the tree swallows checking out the new boxes - hope they use them!  I'm going to leave the doors on the bluebird boxes open for an extra week next spring to try to encourage the tree swallows to claim the larger boxes.  We're far enough north that the bluebirds don't overwinter here and I think the tree swallows come back first.  I'll be watching carefully!