In Bloom At The 4 Rs

I have a few flowers Sadie hasn’t picked yet.

My star gazer lily seems paler than normal but it is still pretty.

These African daisies were on the clearance rack at Lowe’s.  I have never grown them before so I thought I would give them a try.

When the blooms open they are white.

Then they eventually turn to a bright purple.  Too bad they are only an annual. 

I had a couple of foxgloves volunteer.  I might need to try harder to cultivate them.  They are stunning. 

The blackberries are in full bloom.  Hopefully, we will have a good crop.  

Despite my efforts at removing the infected plants, some are still showing signs of orange rust.  I’m not sure how much longer we will have this blackberry patch. 

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  I love how the flowers spill over the edge of the border.  Those British gardeners with their fancy borders don’t have anything on me. (I may be watching too many British gardening shows.) 
  
  
  The most stunning display right now however, is from my Mother’s Day lilies.  They keep multiplying and I keep dividing them.
  
  

I am ending up with them all over the yard.

Exciting News!!!

I had a large animal vet visit today. 

Can you guess what she found?

Here is another hint, she was working on Draper.

She is pregnant!  This will put her foaling sometime between April 7th to April 22nd more or less.  It will be a long wait.  

And while we are waiting, there are still plenty of other chores to do.  This morning we worked another group of cows and calves.

To clear up a question about the ear tags, heifers are tagged in the left ear and steers in the right.  We use to use Ralgro growth implants in the steers. It was easier for Joe to inject it into the left ear so we tagged them in the right ear so it be out of the way.

The little H at the top of the tag means the calf is out of a first calf heifer.

And the 4- is for the year 2024.  If you zoom in you can see a little extra in the ears, ticks. 

Sadie and Allie Saturday

Sadie and Allie came over Saturday afternoon. 

Sadie thought the flowers needed watering before we started picking them.  Glad she knows they need some taking care of and it is not all just picking.

Finding bunny rabbits has become part of flower picking now.  If something isn’t done about them we might run out of flowers.  They have been busy eating them.

 I think Sadie looks like a child model. It is so easy to get a good picture. 

Allie on the other hand, barely stands still long enough to get a picture. 

Next, Sadie wanted to go ride horses.  Allie stayed with Virginia at the house.  Sadie wanted to give the horses a treat before riding rhis time  

She loves using her sparkle brush.  She also loves wearing dresses.  But a long dress may not be appropriate riding attire. I might have to get her a side saddle.   She did wear cowboy boots though.

I pulled out the purple show pad and she liked that it matched her helmet.  Otoelene was a dream, and completely sound for a three year old to ride around in the barn. 

Afterwards, Sadie wanted to lead her back to the field.

Allie arrived about that time and after some screaming did manage to touch Otoelene. 

                                          

Yet another model photo. 

And what’s a visit to Mimi’s house without feeding some baby goats.  

Sadie was taking a treat to the grownup goats too.

Allie got in the field but would not get close to the goats.  They are getting chickens soon.  Hopefully, those won’t scare her.   Sadie wanted to spend the night.  Since she hasn’t stayed in awhile I said sure.  

A little more spoiling with a trip to CJ’s Pizza, then it was time for bed when we got home.  It will be another full day Sunday.

Birding Cheat?

Before we went to Ecuador, Emily suggested that I download the Merlin app.  So I did.  But I didn’t have time before we left or while we were there to figure it out.  Then, when Emily and Keiran when here last weekend, Emily spotted a new bird for her list.  That inspired me to head out birding again.  The problem was that with the leaves on the trees now it is hard to see the birds.  But I could hear them.  So I recorded some thinking I would message Emily and ask what they were.  Then I remembered about the Merlin app.

And looky there, they have a way to down load a recording and identify the bird! 

You can also walk around with the id sound on and it will tell you what birds it hears. 

 When I was riding Hugo today, I had my phone in my pocket and by accident was recording on the app.  It identified 22 birds.  I am not sure how accurate it actually is.  It seems to do be better when I downloaded a single bird.  There were several it identified that were not on my eBird list.  So, is it cheating to add those when I didn’t see them?  It sort of seems like cheating to me.  But this spring I did add an owl that I heard while laying in bed.  I didn’t consider that one cheating.  Anyhow, it is a fun app, check it out. 

Hugo’s Turn

I noticed a couple of days ago that Otoelene looks a little off (lame).  I wanted to ride yesterday so I lunged her first and yes, she was favoring her left front. She hasn’t been lame since her navicular diagnosis almost three years ago. (Go HERE for a reminder about that) I 

am hoping it is just her special shoes needing to be reset but I did give her some bute  (pain medicine). I will probably continue that until the farrier can come out. 

Since I could not ride her it was Hugo’s turn. 

 He just hangs out at the barn anyway. Since he is hard to catch and prone to fatness it’s a good place  for him to be.  I timed it yesterday and he only trotted around for 6 minutes before he stopped and let me catch him. 

We had a nice ride outside around the field below the barn. If Otoelene doesn’t straighten up soon Hugo may be taking a lot more trips. 

I just noticed this is post 3191, a prime number for you math nerds out there. 

Repurpose

I have this little metal table.   It had been in the barn for awhile.   It is suppose to have a glass top.  I don't remember what ever happened to it.  But a couple of years ago I cut a piece of plywood to fit so I could use the table on my deck.  I painted the top white.  The paint didn't last and was flaking off everywhere.  I decided to sand the plywood and repaint it.  However, while I was doing that I started to think of other ways to finish it that wouldn't be as time consuming, messy and temporary.  I considered different types of plastics like an old table cloth or shower curtain.  

What I ended up with was an old feed bag.  

It was free, durable, easy to clean, waterproof and there was a nice picture of a horse.  What more could you want.  I stuck the plywood in the bag, stapled it to the back, and Bob's your uncle... updated porch decor.  
 

Late To The Party

Allie’s birthday was today.  She is two!  Virginia and Mike were having a big birthday party for her.  I asked what I could do to help and Virginia gave me the task of making an eclair cake and hash brown casserole.  Easy enough.  After feeding the goats I had to head to DG to get some ingredients and maybe do a little couponing to make the ingredients cheaper. When I got back I had just finished the eclair cake when Joe came in and said we had a backwards calf.

I asked if just the tail was out or were there feet.  He said there were feet.  So I had hope that it may not be too terrible. 

And thankfully, it wasn’t. Since the feet were already out getting the chains on was easy.  And we were able to pull it by hand which is always a plus. 

Backwards calves are at a high risk of being born dead.  But since Joe jumped on this one so fast, it was live.  But it did put us behind for getting to the party.  And I still had the casserole to make.  

We were the last ones there but since we had the most to do we were excused.  There was plenty of good food.

Sadie commandeered a unicorn headband Allie had received. 

And Allie liked the cow Gigi got her.

There was a big crowd but in Virginia’s new house, we were not crowded. 

Lot and lots of presents 

The aluminum baseball bat was quickly moved to a safe place.

And Allie learned to not hammer on the window.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our newest 2 year old!!!!

Spiderwort

I noticed something the other day that had never caught my eye before.  I have three different colors of spiderworts. Yet I have only ever planted one.

I think this is the original color.  It came from my brother years ago.

This one is a little less blue.

You can appreciate the difference a little better when they are next to each other.

Then there was this one that was much lighter, and some are double!

There is definitely some mutating  going on out there.