Been Busy

After my training clinic I took off a week from work to practice and to blow a bit of leave. I had over 115 hours of leave that accumulated at the turtle pace of 3 hours per pay period (every 2 weeks). that tells you how long it's been since I had a vacation.

Anyway on Sunday the 4th we took a break after almost 8 hours in the saddle the day before, it was nice to relax and let the horses also recover a bit. After dinner we sat out on that new front porch and watched all the "Town Folks" shoot off fire works. 4th of July is the best time to own a home that sits on a hill facing town.you get to watch more fireworks than most people because you can see almost the whole town.

Jazzy and her new buddy hung out with us on the porch and mostly did ok with the booms, but occasionally they got a little scared.

The new dog is doing well and fitting in except for a few minor problems. He jumps on people when he wants attention but with time he's learning how that's not such a good thing. He also did some digging in the gardens but since he's not gotten any plants and it's only happened twice, that's so far not been quite a big issue either. However the last problem is a big issue. He seems to like to yank the clean clothes off the clothes line. The first time I caught him rolling all over my fresh from the washer jeans. I had to rewash three pair. The next time he drug off a couple dry shirts. Those didn't need to be rewashed only the dust shook off. The last time he got 5 or 6 shirts and we had to rewash 3 of them. I really don't know what we are going to do about that because he ONLY goes after the clothes when we are not around. But I can't sit out all day watching the clothes dry either.

So the rest of my week off went really well, I rode most of the time and had fun. This week however has been totally different. Since I'm at work all day I usually get home right about the time the afternoon monsoons are really getting going. Everyone here in NM knows that you can ride in the rain, but you shouldn't go riding in the thunder and lightning. And that's usually what we get with the afternoon monsoon rains. So this weeks riding has been really limited (well non existant so far). My good fortune however is that I get Friday off, (YEE-HAWW) do I hope that I'll get a ride in during the morning before the thunder and lightning show up. Last weekend I did take some time to test out a new saddle pad on Baby Girl because my trail saddle doesn't fit her right with one of our saddle pads but does with a thinner one. So I bought a new thinner one because we were short a saddle pad to begin with and needed one anyway. Keith snuck out and got some photos of me just enjoying a nice quiet ride.




The one good thing about all this rain and cooler weather is that the garden is still going strong. We are up to our eyeballs in lettuce since I'm harvesting as much as I can before it' bolts and goes to seed. We have had fresh salads regularly this past week. Unfortunately we still have to purchase tomatoes and cucumbers because neither of those are ready for harvesting. Soon however we will have some summer squashes and I'll be really happy.I harvest my first bunch of beets and had a great dinner with them. Not enough yet to freeze or can, but enough for a good side dish. Then I saved all the beet greens and steamed them with Swiss chard.