The Art/Writing - Sky Scapes

Sky Scapes

These are still unaltered - as the computer generated them. I never tire of looking at the sky out here. 

 

 

Big Sky 1

 

 

 

Big Sky 2

 

 

Big Sky 3

 

 

 

 

Big Sky 4

 

 

 

 

Storm

 

 

 

 

Storm Coming 1

 

 

 

 

Storm Coming 2

 

 

 

 

Sunset in the West

The Art/Writing: Watercolor Beginnings

Watercolor Beginnings

I have been searching for a way to start painting again. I still need to clear out the studio to make it truly functional. But that has been less of a stumbling block than my not knowing where to start with the work.  My dear friend, Linda, who has nudged and cajoled me into this blog and into a writers group, also told me about a free app for my iPad that turns photographs into images that look like watercolors. I was skeptical - very skeptical. 

But it turns out that most of the photographs I take are the beginnings of watercolors, anyway.  It's the way my brain works and my eye sees.  And this app, while generalizing and inflexible compared to actual watercolors, is fast, and it lets me lay the ground work for thinking about the watercolors without actually having to take all the considerable time of laying them in by  hand.

Below are the first landscapes.  I am experimenting with printing them on different papers so that I can work back in to them with real watercolor, gouache, and/or colored pencil. 

Moonrise Over the Bijou

Sunrise

 

Sunrise 2

Sunrise Over the Bijou

The Animals - Jasper's Mice and Other Diversions

Jasper's Mice and Other Diversions

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Jasper has had a mid-life crisis of some kind.  For one thing, early last fall, he stopped eating all of the mice he caught.  Well, he ate some of all of them, but he no longer ate all of all of them.  I think he decided we were taking him for granted, that we didn't know how many mice he caught each night; how much he was helping us out.  And he was right.  We didn't know.

I got some idea a few years back when I had a bout of stomach flu and took up sleeping in the guest room because it was near the bathroom.  I was so sick I didn't know if I was coming or going, so to speak.   Jasper was keeping an eye on me, though.  When I had been sleeping fitfully for a few hours and got up to run to the bathroom once again... I looked down on the rug next to the bed for my slippers and there, lined up like little dead soldiers, were three fat little mice ready for me to have to settle my tummy.  I thanked him weakly and took them and flushed them.  I always hoped he didn't see me.  But if he could come up with three mice in the space of as many hours for me, how many must he be wolfing down on his own every month?
About the same time as his taste in mice changed, he started yowling to go outside.  YOWLING!  And this from a cat who for the past five years (all of his life with us) was afraid to look outside if the door was opened.  So we let him out.  At first he would crawl on his belly like a snake and circumnavigate the house close to the foundation.  He would go out the back door and then want to come right back in the front door.  This went on for a few days, maybe a week.  And then he got braver.  He started venturing further from the house.  He began exploring - everywhere.  He made friends with the barn cats (all guys).   He started hanging out with them and eating, just a little, of their food when we fed them at night.  Just to show he was one of the guys, I guess. 
Now he lives in both worlds.  He didn't go  out in the extreme cold, but most days he patrols outside and inside.  It was very interesting watching him confront his fears and overcome them, one  by one.  I have new respect for him.  And he hasn't left a mouse for me to clean up for months.  He must have gotten his appetite back!



(For now my blogger won't let me post his picture ... maybe later)

The Grass/Land - Finally, The Monsoon!

Finally, The Monsoon!

The rains did finally come this summer.  It was too late for our hay crop, but it was so nice to see the clouds building every afternoon.  The cooling winds and rain have been such a nice relief.  I don't know if the drought is officially over, but it feels broken to me.  Our fields have greened again at a time of year when  they are often brown. 

The Grass/Land - Putting Up Hay

Putting Up Hay in a BIG Way

The drought was such that there was no hay to cut in our hayfield last year.   We turned the horses out on to  it after the first frost so that they could eat what there was and we could stave off feeding the hay that we had bought.  But feed it we did.  We ran out sometime in April and had to start buying hay by the pick-up load every weekend at retail prices which climbed as high as $18.00 a bale for small bales.  Finally this year's grass came up and we got some relief. 

But it soon became clear, as the grass once again began to head up when it was barely six or seven inches high, that there would be no hay for us to cut again this year. 

The local folks, who liked selling us hay by the pick-up load, assured us that there was no way we could get a semi truck in and out of our tight driveway.  But with a little perseverance and a lot of luck I found a local rancher, with irrigated  hay fields in Colorado and Nebraska, who barn-stored his hay and would bring it in by the semi-load, and stack it in our barn for us. 

His driver was a wizard!  He came in fully loaded through our front pasture, sideways on  the hill and through a narrow gate, and backed up to the barn door.

The whole family was there to help, along with the members of the local high school church youth group.  They arrived at six in the morning.  Some of them were still in their pajamas!  It took them about an hour and a half to unload the semi and then they went off to their day jobs.

This is the biggest single expense to raising horses, even when we cut our own hay, but especially when we have to buy it from someone else. 

We have enough hay to last over a year now, and that is a very nice feeling.  We did eventually get rain.  Not soon enough for this years grass, buy hopefully next year we can cut our own hay again.

The Riding/Training - PJ Tears Her Ear Open

PJ Tears Her Ear Open

 

 

 

PJ has discovered that if she squeezes her  head in between the gatepost and the fence, the hot wire is insulated and won't shock her.  She thought this was a very clever way of getting more grass from the other side of the fence.  She didn't seem to notice that none of the older, more experienced horses used this method.  They apparently hadn't explained to her that there are sometimes nails sticking out in places like that: places where horses heads should not be in the first place.  Well... she found out this weekend... right on cue to be injured for Championships again this year. 

 

But we called the vet, and he drove all the way down from Golden on a Sunday when he had already had three colics, and stitched her up.  She is on antibiotics and should be fine by September 19th. 

 

 

 Has she learned her lesson?  Will she stop sticking her head in places where it doesn't fit?  I doubt it!

The Grass/Land - Weeds or Wildflowers?

 Weeds or Wildflowers?

The recent rains have caused an explosion of weeds in the garden, but also an explosion of wildflowers around the house and barn and along the road to the farm.  Interestingly, they are much the same plants in both locations.  I just think of them as "weeds" in the vegetable garden and as "a wildflower garden" when they pop up in places where a little variation in color and texture is a welcomed punctuation to the now riotous and luxuriant green of our pastures. 

A brushstroke of yellow or purple ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What would you call them?   "wildflower gardens" ... or "weed patches" next to the barn and in front of the house?   Whatever you call them, I love them and they won't be pulled or poisoned as long as I have a say!