Worms and Time Travel

This past weekend was packed with gardening activity: shoveling, planting, mulching, sowing thinning and weeding. Once again, I couldn't control the urge to plant things out too early, so all of the maters, peppers, and half the basil are now in the garden slurping up all the compost we shoveled in. We also scored a couple of truckloads of year-old horse manure and made another bed. When I opened the tail gate of the truck part of the horse manure came off in a big chunk and you won't believe all the red worms!





I planted this lettuce bed back in March, but didn't keep it warm enough so the lettuce grew very slowly. The dirt in the bed is also less then ideal as it was just some bags of top soil bought at Lowes. But now that everything is mulched with compost and the weather is warming up the lettuce, spinach and broccoli are growing well. Do I sense a salad coming on? :)






Remember the strawberries and raspberries I got from Raintree Nursery? I put them in the ground only five days before these pictures!











I can just taste those berries now!





On the horsey side of things, I finally found a vet that will geld Maverick. I still have to trailer him to the vet's office, but at least it's only about 45 min away instead of several hours! The call to the vet went something like this:

Recptionist: Would you like to schedule it during the new moon?
me: uh, why?
recpt: because when they're gelded during the new moon there's not as much bleeding or swelling
I had to mull this one over and wonder if we had just moved to a different state or a different decade!
me: no, I'd rather just get it done sooner before it gets too hot and the bugs get worse.
recpt: ok, suit yourself

um, I think I will. What do these people smoke up here? Or is it in the water??

Semi will be going with him to get a wellness exam and blood work if necessary. She and Junior both lost weight when I had to separate them, but my 21 yo high-maintenance TB has gained it back and is looking great already. My 22 yo air fern STB has still not gained all the weight back and she's not shedding out as quickly as everyone else. So off to the vet to make sure its nothing more than a broken heart that's keeping her down. At least once Maverick gets home and heals up everyone can be a herd again and not just touch noses over the fence.


I just realized that I still haven't posted pics of the other horses yet, so here's a distant pic of Junior. I'll take better ones this weekend and get everyone up here. I took this one on Sunday after he'd eaten lunch and grazed in the yard for awhile. This is how he tells me that he wants back in the pasture. On my less observant days he'll walk up onto the porch and poke his head in the door to find me. One of these days I WILL get a picture of that!