Dream Come True

As a horsewoman, having had a few horses in the past, it was always my dream to get an unbroken colt and make him my own. The colt would be gray and I would ride off into the sunset with him. You know, the kind of dream that 16 year-old-girls who are crazy for horses have...

In 2000, the opportunity to realize that dream came true. I was offered - for free- to take a mostly wild colt off some friends' hands who had too many horses. The result is Skipper Delight - I just call him Skipper or Skippy - now seven and a wonderful companion and trail horse.

He was a bit of a handful in the beginning. My friend Paul and I trained him to lunge - or work around in a circle on a rope - by first tying him to a tree, so he wouldn't drag us all over the property. I groomed him as often as I could, worked with his feet and slowly he bacame more accustomed to people working on and around him.

Worked him with me on the ground for the first year and ultimately put a saddle and bridle on him. Got on, for the first time, in his 3 year old summer and he didn't flinch a bit, only bumping his butt once, when he decided he'd rather stay under the apple tree than to move on.

Now, he lives right near a public recreation area with horse trails that can be ridden for hours and he has friends in his pasture and I have buddies to ride with.

What started as a dream at 16 became one l;ater in life. It's never too late for your dreams to become real.

The mighty Oak falls

While driving home the other day I witnessed this travesty...a huge, mature - had to be 200+ year-old- Oak was felled in the name of progress. The lot had been cleared of the existing house and, in the "need" to clear the lot for a new house the giant Oak was felled.

The worst part is that the tree was cut up for firewood - and the bole or trunk was sliced up into rounds - more easily manageable for making into cords of wood. Rather than calling a saywer or furniture maker who might have saved this precious resource for something other than the fireplace or wood stove - the thugs with chainsaws chose to do otherwise...

We'll never see another tree like this in our lifetime...if you see this kind of activity going on in your backyard - please try and inform the people who are cutting down our natural resouces - that they can , at least, contact a local sawmill to process the wood and save it from being chipped or burnt.

Morels

Mushrooms as they emerge from the ground, are one of nature's small miracles. The lawn and woods will be mushroom-free and suddenly after some moist weather will poke up, seemingly overnight. As I was walking around my small city lot quite a few years back, I noticed a mushroom that looked like a brain on top of a stalk. I studied it - thinking "morel..." but certainly didn't pick it or eat it.

I've mushroom hunted before, many years ago, with field guide and made spore prints of the caps. What I found out is that many of the edible shrooms have toxic look-alikes - so I wasn't going to risk it on my first found morel.

Then the following year when more morels showed up - this time in the front yard I was talking to a friend who happened to be an avid morel-hunter. She agreed to come out to ID them and I said she could keep the harvest for her boyfriend's morel soup or steak and morels. Both of them came out and found quite a few with several being quite large. We decided that the morels were feeding on the dead elm roots from the tree cut down in the front yard.

This last year an elm tree in the back yard became fodder for the morels with bunches of them showing up last spring. I now eat them and find them tasty sauteed with home-grown asparagus in a bit of butter. How I love a garden and a Creator that produces free food for the finding.

The Ice Storm

Jan 15 and 16th 2007 -It wasn't much, just a crystalline sheen on all the branches. Just got a digital camera and when the sun finally broke out I had to capture this moment ---light glinting off the branches in the garden. Luckily a thaw came soon and only a few branches broke off and heaved themselves to the ground. No power outage here, but it sure made a good show.

Can you believe I went out in public like this?

Thought this was a strange and funny photo of me when I was wild and crazy in college... Thought you might enjoy it too. Should I be nominated for the TV show on TLC "What Not to Wear"?

Looking Back on old photos

Have been scanning in photos from the past...trips, people - old faces, bad hairstyles and clothes. Finding that many of the older pics have degraded and need to be scanned into digital to save them. This is my first entry and I'm trying to upload some pictures of my late husband. What a good sport... he was a gemini - brooding rock n roller at night and a science nerd by day...wish me luck so I get this page to look the way I want!