Progress!!!

Whoa! Check me out! I quit reading and y'all get 3 posts in 3 days! hehe

Anywho, on to my very exciting story of progress...

So I've had Midori for going on 4 years now I believe. When I got her she was really, really green. She had been a trail pony and could go down a trail quiet as can be but didn't have much steering, no back, no brakes, not much of anything other then go forward, follow the leader. So I've been working hard to install things like power steering, brakes, bending, giving, etc. etc. The one thing that I've been wanting to do on her and have made my personal goal and mission in life for the past 3 years is flying lead changes. I believe I've mentioned the elusive flying lead changes here before. We have not been able to get them. I watch her in the pasture and she doesn't generally do them naturally either. So this year I've been trying really hard to work on the basics behind the flying lead change so I can maybe, just maybe, get this goal accomplished.

For a little background I'll tell you how I've been taught to do flying lead changes. I know there are all sorts of different ways to do it, but this is the way I've been shown and the way I try to do it. You basically make a big figure 8 in the arena, going straight across the diagonal, around the short end, down the diagonal, around the short end. Say you start out on the right lead. You come around the short end and head straight down the diagonal lifting the right shoulder and kicking the hip in to the right. To ask for the lead change you then push their hip the other direction and lift up their other shoulder. With that, they should change leads, back to front, and continue on their straight line down the diagonal, around the short end, up the diagonal, repeat.

Those are the basic mechanics of the flying lead change I'm going for. I've never actually taken a "real" (aka paid for) lesson on flying lead changes, but it is what I've picked up from the short little free Tuesday night clinics I've had the opportunity to attend and wherever else I can glean information from. Funny story: as much as I'm a total book whore, for some reason I am not great at transferring techniques from book to horseback. I don't know why, but it's never helped me much to read about how to do things with my horse.

Anyways, I've been working really hard on getting her hips to move and her shoulders up the last few months. We've always had a hard time with her hips so I've been paying extra special attention to that. Every time I ride I make her move her hips in and out, in and out. I've been doing lots of forehand pivots and backing in circles too. All trying to get her moving better off my legs.

Apparently it's paid off! I still have a very looong ways to go, but in the past week I've gotten a few flies out of her. The first time I was at a friends house riding and decided, eh, what the heck, I'll give it a try. First time, NAILED it! Unfortunately I was not able to replicate it that night, but it certainly gave me some food for thought! Then tonight our drill practice was cancelled, but I had already hauled to the arena so I decided to get a good ride in anyways. After watching the boyfriend show off for a while on Sugar (she does effortless flies) I decided to take another stab at the flying lead change thing. The first one she changed the front right away and then the back a few strides later. Try number two, she nailed. Try number three, got the front, back a few strides later. Four, nailed. You noticing a pattern here? She can change from right to left pretty easy, left to right - not so easy. She is also much better moving her hip right to left, not so much left to right, so I'm not terribly surprised.

So WAY exciting that I'm getting some flying lead changes in! I'm absolutely ecstatic that I'm getting there! Unfortunately, I do still have quite a ways to go. What I didn't mention is that by the time we get the fly in we are doing mach 5 around the arena and as soon as she changes she dives into it. After the first one she takes off as soon as I put my leg back and pick up the reins. Then when I ask for the change, she changes, then drops the shoulder I'm trying to lift and totally throws herself into a turn, even though we are in the middle of the arena. The taking off part isn't a huge deal like it used to be. I know she is still under control and all I have to do is pull her into a small circle at the end of the arena and she slows right back down. Or if I wanted to I could sit down and ask her to stop and she would, on a dime. It's been a while since I've been comfortable going mach 5 on her though so it's kinda fun. Plus, I'm getting flies out of her so I'm beyond excited!

I know I've still got a loooong ways to go, but I know I'm getting closer! And any progress on this very frustrating and slow to come goal is very exciting for me! At least now I know we can. I just have to work on getting her to slow down and move her hips without racing and stay on a straight line. I think now that I'm at least getting the fly in it should be easy enough for me to break it down piece by piece and get it going better.

That's all for now. I just had to record this momentous day for posterity. :)

Another Fun Day

This is my favorite way to spend a day...

And that is how I spent a good chunk of my day today. I was a happy girl! We had a horse show, but even after sitting on my horse for a solid 4 hours I wasn't ready to be done with her when I got home. I jumped on bareback with the halter and let her graze while I sprawled on her back, trying to figure out how the heck I used to be able to do that and not fall off! Sometimes I really miss being a flexible, bouncy little kid! It was a nice way to wind down from the show for both of us.

The show was fun, but the cow gods were not smiling on me today and Midori and I just weren't on the same page. I was sore from battling thistles the night before and she felt stiff and I could tell her head wasn't in the game. She was hanging on the bit and not bending and I just had a feeling it was not going to be our day.

It wasn't. The cows we got were little pistols. They shot out of the gate and stood there, tail and head in the air, just daring me to try to push them around. I've been trying to let Midori work more on her own lately since she's really been cowing up, but that didn't work out so well for me today. By the time I would realize she wasn't going to stop and turn on her own with the cow and got to telling her what to do myself the cow had already turned and we were behind. It just wasn't our day. We lost our working advantage twice. That's the first time this year that's happened to me and to have it happen twice in one run was very frustrating. I may have cursed the second time it happened. Loudly. I still made it out of there with a 65, the lowest score I've received in my lengthy cutting career (4 shows), which landed me in 5th place out of 10. Not horrible, but I was a little disappointed with our run.

The boyfriend, on the other hand, was a total rock star on his run! Sugar was amazing! She was all over those cows like white on rice! She totally cowed up and he got a couple really good cows and they had a really great run, scoring a 70, which put them in first place. It also marked the first time the boyfriend has beat me at cutting. I'm sure I'll be hearing about it for a while.

Even though my run wasn't the greatest it was still a fun day. I love spending time with my horse and the boyfriend so I can't hardly complain.

In other news: Day 2 of no reading just sucks. I'm trying to not think about it, but I did catch myself in the office looking at the "books to be read" shelf. I made myself go outside and feed the critters and finish weeding around the raspberries instead. When I was finished with that I came back in the house and layed on the couch staring at the ceiling for a while, wishing I had a book to read. Then I made a pound cake and strawberry soup. While the pound cake was baking I was wishing I had a book to read. So I loaded pics from the day and got to blogging. I'm sure as soon as I'm done with this I'll wish I had a book to read. Maybe I'll just watch a little tv. Or maybe I'll go grab a book. I did do a bunch of laundry, baked a cake, did the dishes, finished weeding the raspberries...all very productive, so I deserve a reward, right? A reward like, say, getting to pick a book to read, right?! *sigh*

Off to watch a little tv and try to be good atleast a little bit longer.

Catching Up

Whew! Man, what a busy couple weeks it's been! I'm pretty well wiped out and so happy it's Friday! Of course we have a horse show tomorrow so I don't get to sleep in as much as I would like, but a couple hours is better then nothin'!

Here's a few little tidbits about what I've been up to...

I've commenced the all out WAR on the weeds at my house. I'm DETERMINED to get them under control this year! I think this war may be the death of me though. Holy cow do we have weeds! And I think they are all super charged.

Wow. Just, wow.

I haven't gotten any real pictures of our jungle over here yet, I will have to do that one of these days. It's scary and they are EVERY WHERE!!! I took a little walk around the property tonight and pretty much couldn't go into the bottom half because the grass was up to my shoulders and intertwined with thistles and sticker bushes and nettles and all sorts of viney crap that I didn't feel like fighting with.

This is one of the weeds that is taking over our fenclines.




It was pretty for all of about 4 days while it had these cute little fuschia colored blooms on it. Now, it's just 2-4 foot long vines that have very strong roots and are rather difficult to pull up. They also seem to be rather invasive.

But then, everything seems to be invasive right now!

The war on weeds is going to take some time. We've already broken down and ended up having to spray the nice lush green areas that are supposed to be gravel. We're hoping if we're really on top of it this year, spray the hell out of everything and kill it all good and dead, then hopefully we can be a little more environmentally and critter friendly in the coming years and just maintain it. That's the plan anyways. I have a feeling the weeds didn't get the memo though.

That has pretty much been my life lately. Weed, weed, weed and weed some more. There is lots of cleaning up and just general maintenance and catching up to do around the yard too. Since we didn't do a whole lot with it last year and it had been empty for a while when we moved in, there is just lots and lots of catching up to do.

We'll get there eventually. I know it's not going to happen over night.

Anyways, on to happier subjects!

All of the hanging pots and planters that I did are alive and thriving! YAY! You don't even know what a relief this is to me! I spent some dough on getting those all put together and I was very afraid I was just wasting my time and money because I tend to have a not so green thumb. In fact, lately, I've taken to calling it my black thumb of death.

This is one of the pots that sit in the corners of the porch. It was dusk when I took this so the tall flowers in the back (no clue what they are called, sorry!) were closed for the evening, but they are still looking pretty snazzy, if I do say so myself!

Here we have one of the hanging baskets. Check out how big everything has gotten! Just in the last week or so the petunias have exploded and started to bloom. I have to smile every time I pull in my driveway and see the baskets because they are just so pretty! Which, of course, was the whole reason for doing them!


Next up we have one of my absolute favorite parts of this time of year...

Is there anything better then a cleaned up, ready to eat bowl of fresh off the farm local strawberries?!?

Ok, so maybe the raspberries from my garden are even better, but I do love me some strawberries!!! I'm lucky to have one of the best fruit stands around right by my work so it's super duper easy to swing in and get a box of berries. The stand finally opened this week and I was so happy to have a box riding shot gun on my way home tonight!

I love having fresh strawberries! I like eating them plain, and probably end up eating about a pint of them just while cleaning up the half flat. I love strawberry soup, it's so good over ice cream or pound cake or just with cream. I love strawberry daquiris and margaritas. I love freezing strawberries and having them on hand for later. My favorite pie EVER is fresh strawberry pie. Mmm MMM! My sister makes one of the best cakes I've ever had with fresh strawberry slices and bavarian cream in the middle of a white cake. Atleast I think that's what it is.

So strawberries are here, summer has begun! :)

Other then that I've been working, trying to ride my horse as much as I can, which is working out to be about twice a week: when I work buffalo and when I have drill practice. Three times a week if I have a cutting show. I've also been trying to kick this very time consuming habit I've been rather obsessive about lately. I can't stop reading. Like, really, I think I have a problem. I had been reading a book here and there last year, probably averaging like 1 every few months. And then I got sucked into Twilight, which lead to the rest of the series. Twice. Then the Host, then the 8 books of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series. With a few other random books thrown in in between. I just finished the latest BDB book last night and told myself I need to do some other stuff for a while. Just hold off on starting another book for a bit. But man, I'm jonesin'. It hasn't even been 24 hours and I feel lost not having a book to read! It's bad.

I'll take reading over watching tv any day of the week. I love reading. Trouble is, if a book is any good at all, I'm rather obsessive about finishing it as fast as I possibly can. Which means I'm picking it up any chance I have. Usually instead of doing something productive like weeding or dishes. It's been rather problematic lately since the days are long and the sun is out and the weeds are growing like...well, weeds. I have other things I need to be doing, but all I want to do is curl up with my book. It doesn't work so well. So I told myself that since I'm finished with the BDB series as far as it's gone so far that I'll just hold off on starting another book for a little while so I can get some stuff done around the house, maybe cook a meal or two, ride my horse a bit on my own, take some pictures, heck maybe even blog a bit and say hi to the boyfriend, see if he still remembers what I look like when I'm not buried behind a book.

I just didn't realize it would be quite this difficult. I wonder if I can quit cold turkey. Is there a support group for people like me? A 12 step plan?

Anywho, hopefully if I can stick to it I can actually get caught up on the blogs I read and blog a bit more often myself. We'll have to wait and see!

Hope you all are getting to enjoy some sun and summery stuff!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Silhouettes

I had all sorts of cool ideas running thru my head for this one, but the weather and my week just did not cooperate. So here I am, pulling from my archives. I do really like all of these pictures, but tree silhouettes were not exactly what I had in mind!

This was a full moon a couple weeks back. Or maybe it was a new moon. I dunno, I don't keep track. I loved the way the clouds were around it though and it gave me a good excuse to experiment with shutter speeds and different settings on my camera. Who knew it would come in handy for a SSC on silhouettes?!?

This was a sliver of the moon a couple weeks before the above picture. I liked the way it was hanging right over the mountain and the little bit of color from the sunrise and the dark trees in the foreground.

This picture was taken on one of the sunny frozen mornings last winter. It's a huge tree that we have in our front yard.

I still want to play with this concept one of these days. Hopefully the weather will cooperate some time this summer!

Not Enough Hours in the Day!

Whew! Do you ever just feel like there aren't enough hours in the day? Or enough energy in your body?

I think I usually feel like that. There is always a long "To Do" list for tomorrow that never gets all the way done and keeps getting rolled over to the next day. It just seems like it's been particularly bad lately.

This time last year we had just moved into our new home and were so busy getting it put together and then getting our land cleared in a panic (I swear I'll tell you that story someday!) and then with drill and my best friend's wedding, the whole summer just disappeared and the yard, with all of it's flower beds and overgrown gravel, was sorely neglected. We're paying for it this year. It's been a lot of work to get it back under control. We're still not there, but we're getting close.

Trouble is, we're also trying to get fencing done, pastures cleared, cleaned up, graded and seeded, arena-to-be's done, the barn fixed and stalls put in. We also need to get piping ran from the well house to the barn and various pastures for water. Most of the inside of the house still needs painting and we're planning to pressure wash and re-stain the exterior and the decks, after we fix a few boards. All while we're doing a cutting show series and practicing on buffalo once a week, along with my drill practice once a week, on top of full time jobs and all the other fun stuff that comes with being a responsible adult and home and animal owner.

Geez, no wonder I'm tired all the time. Just looking at that list makes me want to take a nap!

Problem is, I also like having atleast a little bit of a social life. And riding my horse in the arena. And going for trail rides. And spending the day at the lake. And laying out in the sun. And I love, love, love reading. And taking pictures. And blogging. And reading other blogs. I would also like to have barebeque's with friends and family and get togethers and do fun stuff like that. There just hasn't been much time for any of that stuff lately though. Yard work has been consuming my life!

Another "Someday" project is to rip up our entire front yard and redo it. It's not level, which drives the boyfriend insane. It's got lots of humps and bumps and a couple pretty good holes that I swear I hit and roll my ankle on every single time I pass them. I also want to get rid of about two-thirds of the insanely huge flower bed in the front, make it part of the lawn. I figure if we bring it in tighter to the house and just have a few azalea bushes or something it should be pretty low maintenance. And another hundred square feet or so of grass to mow will be nothing. I like low maintenance. Low Maintenance is my best friend when it comes to yard work!

Until we get to that Someday though, I have a crazy big flower bed to take care of. It's currently growing more grass then our pastures. And some black berry bushes. And clover. Have you ever tried to get rid of clover in a flower bed?!? We have the stuff that has the dark leaves and the root system on those suckers is freakin amazing! Drives me insane. And since I didn't weed much last year everything is reseeding itself like crazy this year. Grrr!

And then, silly us, we decided to plant a veggie garden this year. What were we thinking?!? It was fun to put it in! I'm sure it will be fun when it starts producing edible veggies (assuming it survives me and my "Black Thumb of Death"), but until then, can you say high maintenance?!

We also have raspberries that got completely out of control last year. Of course since it was the longest, grossest winter ever this year and still frosting in May (!!!) we didn't get anything done with them to get them back in order before they started their season. Oops! I'm currently chipping away at the very tall grass and weeds that is trying to completely over take them, but it's a lot of work and there are new shoots every where and I have to crawl around in between them to get everything cleared out. Did you know raspberry bushes have thorns? Not big ones like blackberries, but little needly ones. My arms were toast after Round 1. I looked like I had been in a fight with a bunch of cats. Seriously. It's been a lot of work to get them freed up. Almost done though.

I have tons of before pictures of projects we've been working on, but it seems like every time I really start making some progress on one, another more urgent one comes up and off I go! One of these days I'll get them finished up so I can do some after pics.

I'm also dying to read thru the Twilight series again. And I have a crafty projects that I owe people. And I have Lover Avenged to read. And, since I'm a dope on a rope, I started yet another series that I'm totally diggin'. And I have lots of DVR'd shows to catch up on. And lots of other things that I'd absolutely love to be doing.

But I know the satisfaction of having my yard under control will be worth it. If it ever gets there.

Someday.

Twi-Hard Alert!

Excuse me for a second while I act about half my age...

The official New Moon trailer was premiered today!!!

OMG! OMG! OMG!!! I SOOOOO can't wait to see the movie!!!

If you want to see it, you can go here or here.

November 20th baby!

Ok, that is all.

What the... ?!?

Could someone please tell me just what the heck kind of deer this is? I'm pretty sure it's not native to the area. It's certainly not the typical little black tails you see!

I think this little guy may be one of the babies of the odd ball group of deer we saw hanging around the neighborhood about this time last year. Of course I didn't get any pictures of them at all, but we saw them quite a few times. There were two does and three babies. One of the does looked like this guy and the other one was all white. Not albino, it had dark eyes and no pink skin that I saw, but white. I guess she would actually be grey in the horse world, but not sure if it's the same in the deer world. The white doe's baby was mostly white with some brown spots. The other doe's twins pretty much had this coloring.

Makes me wonder where the rest of the clan is. I wouldn't mind seeing them again. I'd love to get some pictures to prove that I wasn't imagining them! :-)