lemons and lemonade and all that

Sometimes things just come in bunches, threes, my grandma and mom have always said, and we may be on our second set of three about now.

Dickens is still not home, though a neighbor called to tell me that she was at church on Sunday and after the sermon the minister held up one of our flyers and asked everyone to keep an eye out for Dickens and pray for his safe return. Even as someone who doesn't participate in organized religion I found that heartwarming and very sweet. It's been 10 days now and I find myself hoping but preparing. 

Saturday Cody started exhibiting the telltale signs of a hoof abscess and that's always worrisome until it starts to erupt. 

Yesterday I was in the garden planting more fall vegetables when I came upon a fire ant mound in one of my beds. I decided to use the boiling water approach since it was so close to the back door and the kettle on the stove. Husband boiled the water for me and set it down inside our little Corgi-proof garden fence. I carefully lifted it and then for some unknown reason lost my sense of caution as I marched forward, hot kettle in hand.

A big slosh of boiling water went into my left muck boot and I immediately put the kettle down, removed as quickly as I could the boot and sock, and grabbed the already-on hose to let the cool water wash over the burned area. It was painful and after 5 minutes of hosing I came inside and started researching. Honey seems to be the state of the art treatment now, and we had good local honey on hand. I let the burn dry on its own and then layered on the honey. The intense needly stinging stopped completely in about 20 minutes. The burn is slightly less than the size of my hand, and there is one small blistered area. Husband made a run to the store for non-stick dressing, and raided the horse supplies for some soft gauze wrap. Near bedtime I layered on more honey, wrapped it carefully, and this morning it looks better. Still a burn, and after letting it air I'll re-dress it for the day. 

After the burn and first aiding yesterday husband went out to put a new head on a muck rake. The old bolt and screw was not coming out of the old rake and somehow he cut his finger pretty badly. There was enough bleeding that we had to wash the deck! That pretty much put the end to Labor Day and chores!

But as the sun set I noticed Cody was out grazing, which means the abscess is progressing, and we watched a few episodes of X-Files and had a nice dinner. 

Today I've removed the dressing, aired the burn for a few hours, and I'm getting ready to wrap it up with more honey and go get a load of hay. Horses got to eat! 

And I got to heal - it looks like our highs at week's end are 80 for days in a row, which says Time To Ride to me!