ranch notes, mmxviii-vi-xiv

Cora and I had an excellent walk today.

ranch notes, mmxviii-vi-xiii

now that's a clean paddock

garden notes, mmxviii-vi-xii

We saw this young cardinal ate a bougainvillea flower petal. We don't know why.

Guess he just had to try it.

(More accurately, a bract. The actual flowers are tiny.)

ranch notes, mmxviii-vi-xii

ranch notes, mmxviii-vi-ix

ranch notes, mmxvii-vi-viii

Western diamondback, about five feet from head to toe. I was moving some round bales when I saw it uncurling from under a pallet. (The playful end is facing the camera; its head is just past the pallet's middle board.) Tough gig, being a snake: the first question everybody asks is, "Did you kill it?" Reader, I was armed with a plastic muck rake with two broken tines and a tractor, and there were too many trees in the way for the tractor. It slithered off to the neighboring property, but we will keep an eye out - administering first aid to a horse bitten on the nose doesn't sound like fun at all.

ranch notes, mmxviii-vi-vii

Cora and Donatello in the water trough and Cora Elegantmule in her new halter. 

ranch notes, mmxviii-vi-vi

Donatello this morning and Cora hiding yesterday. (We tried putting Cora in a paddock with Wyatt but Wyatt was a jerk so we moved her back.)

Cora did a couple surprising things today. She was lying down in her paddock like she was taking a nap but then she slid her head flat and sideways against the ground under the electric fence to nibble at a tiny fringe of grass on the other side. That's a new one. Then after work I tested her ability to "target" an object, which is where you ask them touch something with their nose and then reward when they do. Either she understood it right away or she's done it before; I asked her to touch a grooming brush in three different locations (up high, down low, to the right) and she nailed it all three times, but then we ran out of carrots. (We'd been doing some other stuff already, like forward and back steps. She typically gets three or four little carrot slices as a reward and she works for them eagerly.)

ranch notes, mmxviii-vi-v

ranch notes, mmxviii-vi-iv

horsemint by the front gate and Cora after a rough night

trail notes, mmxviii-vi-ii

Got so caught up in the mule thing we missed peak of the May wildflower season, along with the grand opening of a multi-gazillion-dollar dam upgrade that's had the Brushy Creek lake trail closed for the last couple years. All caught up now.

And a lingering bluebonnet along the way.

The season after summer has begun. It shall not be named. (We don't want to draw its attention to us.) It lasts till October.

(It was 98 degrees on the last couple days of the hottest May ever.)

they's multifaceted

wild-born prince of early light

dude with manure rake up his nose