Happy Things From This Week

This week has been busy in both happenings at this little place here, and in things that take me off the property (like three days that involved picking up assorted grandkids from school and/or babysitting in their home part of the day).  By Wednesday evening, I was feeling kind of run over.  

Almost two years ago I had started the habit of trying to list three 'happy' things that had happened before bedtime each day, and while I was trying really hard to come up with something good on Wednesday to list in my little journal, I reread what I'd written about the previous handful of days.  That reminded me, tired and feeling overburdened as I was, that this busy-ness wasn't all bad and there had actually been many happy little things going on simultaneously. 

So here's some of the happy things I experienced this week.

+Some of the maple trees are starting to turn colors. 

The first red leaf!

+A big group gathering for soup and vacation planning.  On Saturday afternoon all my kids, kids-in-law and grandkids came over.  We had a potluck style soup supper--three soups, salad and bread plus cookies for dessert--and set a date for a (huge NINETEEN people!!) family vacation next summer.  For a handful of years we've been kicking around the idea of trying to coordinate everyone's vacation days and go somewhere as a group, and DH decided now was the time to get serious and actually set things in motion.  So we have a target date, a destination in mind, and now we can book lodging for everyone before all the 2 and 3-bedroom suites at our desired beachfront destination get taken.   Plus everyone can go to their employers and put in for the same vacation days for next summer as well as begin budgeting so they have a vacation fund ready to go next July.

+Saturday morning, DD1, Faline, Buck and I had gone yard saling nearby, as there was a 'country block' yard sale organized where there were 9 stops on different roads ranging from 5-7 miles from this little place here.  The only thing I bought, which I think was quite a great bargain, was a set of 4 wooden tray tables, with a carrier/storage rack for them, for only $5.  Some of the tray tops have water rings, or other discoloration on them, but they are all sound and otherwise in great shape.  This is something I'd been thinking about getting for a couple of years now, and when I saw this set for only five bucks, I quick grabbed it up! It came in extremely handy at our soup supper/vacation planning gathering later that day. We discovered that, as long as we weren't using huge plates, we could sit two people per tray table.  The grandkids thought it was the coolest thing.

+The Yarn Thief, newly turned 11 years old, is still very spry and loves to climb and hunt. She still thinks horses are horribly scary creatures that might potentially eat cats, but she will, at least, sit on a fence post and hunt where she knows they are locked out of and can't possibly reach her.  The fewer mice in the vicinity of the barn, the better!

+Free white peaches!  Given to me by an internet friend that we figured out about 20 years ago doesn't live very far from me (maybe 20 miles).  She also happens to be the LBM's farrier, and was out this week to trim her hooves. This friend has a peach tree that is overloaded this year.  She had brought a couple of lunch bags of peaches with her and offered them to me.  I'd never had a white peach before, but I love the 'regular' peaches, so I gladly accepted her generous offer.  While not exactly the same flavor as yellow peaches (just like different types of apples have slightly different taste), they are delicious!

+The local library hosted a puzzle exchange this week.  I took in three puzzles that I had done and was planning to donate to Goodwill, but this sounded like a better option. I came home with three new to me puzzles.  I'm hoping this becomes a regular event, at least annually if not more often, as you can't beat a free puzzle and even though we're a tiny community we could keep swapping the same puzzles among us for years (assuming none lose their pieces) and still not do the same puzzle twice.

What little (or big) things brought a smile to your face this week?

Lines of Geese

 The Canadian Geese are migrating through these days.  Actually, for a couple of weeks now we've been seeing (and hearing!) them fly overhead.  At first, it was small groups; six here, ten there.  But lately it's much longer strings of geese, fifty or sixty or more birds long, followed by another string, and another string.

Typically, they fly over in the morning for a few hours.  Then I don't see any during the mid-day, but more come through for a couple of hours in the evening.

For the most part, right now, they are flying from East to West.  Heading out towards Lake Michigan, maybe?  I don't know.

In late September and in October, the migrating geese are usually flying North to South.  Different geese, I guess, different winter destination.

Either way, I can be easily distracted by the sounds of incoming geese.  I'll stop what I'm doing (unless I'm on horseback) and go outside to see how many there are this time.  If they are low enough, and everything else around me is quiet, I can hear the sound of the air rushing around their wings.  It's a sound I always find wonderous.

Not only do I listen, but often times when my eyes lock on a line of geese, I'll try to count them, as fast as I can, by twos, before they have flown past too far to see individual birds.  Really, I'm just a nature loving kid in a 53 year old body.

Make My Horse Life Easier Tip #4

 Here's something I spent maybe $10 on (but I'm pretty sure it was closer to $5) that has made my horse-related life so much more pleasant:

A whip rack.

Such a simple thing, but oh how much more pleasant is my life since I had DH install it on the barn aisle wall near the cross ties.  Prior to that, the longe whip either laid on the floor along the wall, where it was constantly in the way for the daily sweeping of the aisle, or leaned up against the wall inside the tack room, where I'd half the time forget to grab it until after I was outside with a horse in hand on the longe line.  Which meant trekking back into the barn with the horse, apologizing to the horse for the confusion when it thought it was time to longe, and try to go into the tack room to grab the whip without the horse following me through the doorway.

Once DH used his little torpedo level (because, level; I mean, I'm not a dressage rider for nothing!  Picky, picky, picky!) and two little screws to install it, I no longer forgot to grab my whip on the way out to longe a horse, and my whip was never blocking where I wanted to sweep.

And bonus! Now I can bring a horse in from longeing, snap the whip into the rack and put the horse in the cross ties all in one easy maneuver.  No setting the whip down on the floor so I could tie the horse, then having to pick the whip up later and put it in the tack room (or sweep the floor!).

As you can see from the photo above, there's lots of room for lots of whips.  I think it has slots for a dozen (? don't quote me, Google it for yourself if you're in the market) and will hold various lengths and types of whips.  I currently have my long longe whip, a shorter longe whip and my 40" (? again, I didn't take measurements before writing this post) dressage whip stored there.

Could I have stored whips in an old bucket?  Yes.  I've worked at several places that kept them that way. Could I have stored them in a fancier 'whip canister'?  Yep, again, worked at places that were a little more upscale that had a more decorative and metal bucket called a whip canister that whips sat in when not in use.  But both of those tend to collect dust and debris in the bottoms after a while (and occasionally a mouse nest if the whips aren't taken out and used regularly) and they can be very easy to tip over especially if the whips are all leaning in the same direction.

To me, this whip rack and the vertical storage it supplies is ideal.

What I Did This Summer

 In honor of the old-school first week back to school writing assignment, I present to you my (more outline style than final copy style) report on What I Did This Summer. (Caveat: I did a lot more, but this post is pretty much just those things I did that I didn't really post about here during the summer.)

>Rode horses (Poetess and the LBM) 5-6 times each week, with the exception of a week or two where I only rode 3 times.

>Kept the garden weeded and watered.  YAY!  After having the last two summers where my health was s**t in one way or another and subsequently the garden went to s**t, it was a major goal of mine to keep up with caring for the garden this year.  I did it!!  Not to say there wasn't ever a single weed in the garden, or that there aren't some out there now, but I kept them under control and they neither went nuts nor crowded out and smothered my veggie crops.  Good job, Me!

>Visited a couple of the newer 'farm markets' that have sprung up in my area in the last handful of years.  Their schtick, mostly, is 'local'/made in Michigan products and produce.  While I didn't really buy anything at either one (kinda disappointed in the 'farm' product aspect and didn't see any veggies or herbs I needed--desperately seeking fresh dill heads being the impetus for the visits), I got a new perspective on how bougie DH and I live.  I mean, looking at the prices on the 'artisan' handmade breads, the 'gourmet' packages of seasoning mixes, the artisan pickled veggies, I  a) was surprised at how much this stuff that I make as a matter of course goes for at retail and b) realized that a lot of what we are so used to that we take for granted is unique and custom made to a whole lot of people.  I may work my tushie off, but I'm blessed.

>Finally (after years of failed attempts) kept flowers in containers alive at my front porch!!  Yay Me!  I have tried, every year for at least 10, to have flowers on/at my front porch.  And every year, I start off good, but somewhere along late June, I just can't keep up with remembering to water them (or, DH and I go away with grandkids on vacation) and, well, that's the end of that.  Fried, crispy, dead dead dead flowers.  Not so this year!  This year I DID IT! What's kind of funny is that some of the pots I didn't get planted with the flowers I'd wanted.  Somehow, instead, I found morning glories sprouting in them.  Morning glories are fine with me. And ironically, when I purposely try to plant morning glories I don't get much germination, but these, 'wild' seeds that fell into the pots of soil I had sitting awaiting me to put in flower transplants, they sprouted dozens of little plants and soon were trying to vine their way up the balusters of the front steps.

>Went strawberry picking for the first time in several years and without other family members for the first time ever.  It was way faster and more convenient (schedule-wise) than going with others, but I have to say it lacked in the fun factor a little.

>Went to five (or was it six) free local concerts with DH.  While it took some effort to get our dinner made and eaten on time, and the horses' dinner prepped and them in their stalls early in order to get to the concerts by the time they started, it was a nice experience to 'take the evening off' so many times.

>Made a couple of recipes I'd been wanting to for a long time, but kept putting off because I felt like I should 'save' them for when we would be having company (but then those company plans would get changed).  Finally, I decided to do them for me.  The first was summer-themed sugar cookies that I decorated with colored sugar before baking rather than frosting after they were baked.  I made (and saved because so much!) the colored sugar for these.  The second was Scotcheroos (no pictures of those).

>Picked (and ate, no preserving!)  mulberries, black raspberries, raspberries and blackberries growing around the property at this little place here.  They made a yummy addition to my typical breakfast of yogurt and granola.  I also made a batch of mulberry muffins which was basically taking a blueberry muffin recipe and substituting mulberries for the blueberries.

>Took random pictures of wildlife I happened by in my day to day living.

And that, with the exception of maybe one or two more things that will get their own dedicated post, is what I did this summer.

How about you?  What things that maybe weren't momentous or impress-the-world worthy did you do this summer?