september already? a few tidbits from August

Hard to believe it's already September and my hiatus from the internet is over. I admit, about two weeks in I started wondering why I would even come back. There is so much to do on November Hill on any given day I had no real time to miss blogging or Facebooking.

But a few things pulled me back and here I am.

In August we had an earthquake, the outer edge of a hurricane, a number of severe thunderstorms that involved many very close lightning strikes, more heat, and finally a cooling down.

We enjoyed the mourning dove couple's two dovelings who are now adolescents. The four of them hang out in the same areas each day and it's always a treat to see a new generation of birds come into their own.

The fall spiders are here and for the first time ever, one made it into the house and built a big beautiful web by a window. It relocated to the kitchen counter right by the stove, and then my husband relocated it to the back deck.

The charm of goldfinches have entertained me more than usual this year. They fuss when a storm rolls in. Even as lightning is striking and thunder is booming, they sit in the sweetgum tree and fuss fuss fuss. They fuss at the cats sitting on the front porch. Yesterday Muffine Eloise was on the porch rail lounging and at least six goldfinches were in the dogwood tree in full glory chattering away at her.

One evening when the sky grew dark and thunder/rain rolled in, I looked on the front porch and spotted a huge praying mantis standing on the porch rail, looking out over the front field, watching the storm.

We plugged in one of those Feliway gadgets upstairs and so far I am noticing the sisters laying serenely at the top of the stairs. I'm not sure what else it might be doing, but we had a cat marking war going on up there and I decided to give this a try. We'll see.

Out at the barn we had a very interesting incident that I'll be incorporating into my book. As soon as I do, I'll share that chapter here. As usual my equine herd keep me busy with all they have to teach and share.

The pony now has three young beginning riders coming each week and I was surprised by how much he seems to enjoy it. He has been the best pony ever, again, with each one. Cody has one rider coming once a week and I am completely impressed with his demeanor and the care he takes in his work. None of this crew have ever been used as "school" horses and I wasn't sure how this experiment would go. I'm proud that their trust and goodwill extends to young and beginning riders. And I'm thrilled the pony is having such a blast being an ambassador to a new generation of pony girls and boys.

Keil Bay took a turn yesterday and although he behaved with complete restraint, I was given the evil eye on and off the entire time. He clearly has no desire to teach anyone anything at this point in his life, and after slugging around quite literally glaring at me out of the corner of his eye, I hopped on when the rider left and he proceeded to do a quite lovely job of walk, trot, shoulder-in, leg yield, turns on the forehand, etc. His message was pretty clear.

We've done a few upgrades this past month. We brought in a small load of stone and bedded the hay tent. We replaced the very old and ugly electric fence tape at one end of the arena (we keep the tape there so we can take it down if needed to get big trucks in and out) - we decided to match the brown HorseGuard tape we have on most of the farm but instead of wood posts we covered the metal ones with their nifty brown covers. The end result is quite nice and we'll be continuing that in a few other places on the farm.

I have compost piles simmering, a few wood piles that need burning, and a lot more stone work to do.

We also have a new set of neighbors who are renting the horse farm down the lane. They moved in with two pony girls, three horses, a tiny pony, two goats, and several dogs and cats. There is now the daily sound of whinnying up and down our lane, and it's been fun hearing that.

There is more, but I'll save it for another post!  Hope all are well and that folks who were more directly in the path of Hurricane Irene are recovering power, roads, etc.

great news! Calm, Forward, Straight and Val are OKAY!

For any blog readers who know Calm, Forward, Straight and Val from the wonderful Transition to Harmony blog, you'll be relieved to hear that she and the handsome ottb Val weathered Hurricane Irene and although they are without almost all the amenities we are all so used to, they do have hay, feed, food, and shelter, and will be moving forward with cleaning up and getting back to normal life as utilities, etc. are restored.

Miraculously, C. had a non-electric phone and was able to bicycle it to a place she could plug it in and call. She said no one had a working land line anywhere but somehow, this one worked, and she got a call through. On my end, it was miraculous that I was in here to answer - our landline is mostly defunct as we are now all cellular here, but the call came through and I was able to hear the story of the hurricane.

I suspect it was nothing but the magic of horse bloggers and pony fairies that put that call through - we had time to catch up and then suddenly the connection was gone, but C. asked me to let everyone know that she is fine, Val weathered the storm like the trooper he is, and she will post on her own blog as soon as she can.

Send good thoughts for highway building that goes lightning fast and perpetual hay bales. And please pass the word on your blogs so that folks know she's okay.

checking in post hurricane!

Just wanted to say that we are fine, the sun is shining, and we on November Hill were lucky to be on the very outer edge of Irene's effects in NC.

Stay tuned later in the week as I return from hiatus with some changes to the blog - nothing major, but I'm trying to make things a bit more seamless between my website, November Hill Press, and camera-obscura, which may end up being renamed as November Hill Farm.

Growing pains! Ease of use for me and hopefully readers.

Hope all are well - see you later in the week.

Interview today with Unbridled Editor!

Come join me today at 1:30 pm EST. I'll be sitting in a chair under the big oak tree by the barn, talking with Unbridled Editor John Rakestraw about my novel, claire-obscure.

Direct link to radio show HERE.

FEI Admits Reining Abuse

READ MORE HERE.

Thank you, Epona TV, for keeping us posted.

I've forwarded the link to both Purina and Spalding with the question: does this shift things wrt your companies sponsoring Craig Schmersal? If you wonder the same thing, be sure to call or email them and ASK. Whether or not this wins the war, it does help with the battle.