Weekend of Fall Fun

Last weekend was perfect fall weather - sunny days and cold nights, crisp air and beautiful leaves. On Saturday we had a "fall festival" at our church and Luke and I provided pony rides with Luke's horse Logan. He was a huge hit and we had everyone from the very young to the not-so-young on his back.

Then, on Sunday evening, Jonathan arrived from Boston to spend a couple days with us! After dinner he and Sadie enjoyed cuddling on the couch, enjoying the warmth of the woodstove.

On Monday we all went apple-picking near Saratoga. Jonathan and Luke worked hard to find the best apples left in an already-well-picked orchard.

Even Sadie had fun chasing after fallen apples! And at the end of the day we came home with lots and lots of crisp Empires and HUGE Ida Reds. Fresh fall apples are the best!

Fall Foliage

Ask most people why they live in New England, and they'll say "the fall." This is the time of year when our usually quiet, sometimes sleepy little towns wake up and are bustling with foliage tourists - "leaf peepers." :) To those of us who live here, the foliage can just be normal. But when you actually stop and look, it's truly incredible. Here a few pictures of the beautiful foliage up at the barn, taken early in the morning when the sun was just rising.

The view from the top of the driveway, looking down towards Jamie's house.

George and Jasmine and the trees by the house.

The trees surrounding our big grazing pasture.

The big tree on the side of the driveway.

A close-up of the big tree.

On Completing a Quarter of a Century

Yesterday I turned 25. Sadie was the first one to wish me a happy birthday (Luke was still asleep). Then it was Luke's turn: "You're 25... that's scary!" Later in the day my mother passed on a bit of sage advice received from her mom on the same birthday: "The reason you feel so much older is because you round up to 30 now." 30, really?!?! That still seems like a long ways away.

But not as long as it used to. 5 years ago, 5 years seemed an eternity - 25 seemed a long way off, and I had a long list of things I thought I would have done by now. Some of them happened: getting married, graduating from college, finding a job, although it is certainly a job I never imagined. Some of the things on my list, I'm still waiting for. I certainly never would have been able to predict 5 years ago where I am today, living only 20 miles from my hometown and riding horses for the same trainer I worked with in high school! Somehow I know I thought I would have travelled a lot farther by now - be living farther away, perhaps using my psychology degree in a more direct way working with kids or even adults, occasionally travelling the world or even the country. Instead I stay close to home to care for animals that never take a break from living, so we cannot take off for 2 weeks and not care for them. And I am dealing with people's fears and insecurities in a much more indirect way as I teach, trying to instill confidence in a nervous kid, helping an adult to overcome their self-consciousness, pushing another student to develop a strong work ethic and sense of responsibility. It is very different from where I thought I would be, taxing in many ways, yet rewarding as well, as we see a young horse develop from a ball of nerves to a confident and accomplished partner with the ability to calmly do its job and take care of the person on its back, or as a young student, after several years of half-hearted riding, suddenly becomes inspired and blossoms into a beautiful and hard-working rider, a joy to teach and watch.

I have come to realize that our lives are always in transition - no matter what goals we may accomplish, whether or not we stay at the same job or in the same area for years on end, the strands of our lives never remain the same. Many times the changing of strands is painful - the loss of a friend and student, personal pain that opens your eyes to the suffering of many others, seeing those you love suffer unanticipated hardship. At other times it is joyful - reconnecting with an old friend, meeting new students and clients, seeing a favorite horse go to a wonderful home. The goal of life cannot be to achieve some static state, or else we will be constantly dissapointed at the inevitable changes in life. Instead, our goal must be to use the strands we are given to create a beautiful tapestry - ever-changing, ever become richer and more deeply layered as we learn, feel and grow. Though we have had our share of heartaches in the past year, we look forward to the year of change ahead with anticipation.

My prayer for this year is that we - I - would accept and embrace the changes more gracefully, trusting that my loving Father knows best where my path is headed and how the strands of my life must intertwine with others to create the tapestry that He is weaving. Though I have no idea where the next 25 years or even the next 5 will take us, I know we will be held in the palm of His hand, wrapped in His love and guided by His light.

Yard Progress

I have been making slow progress in the yard this summer - the first bed of hastas is growing, one more bed of hastas is put in and two of the new plants even sent up flower shoots!

My asiatic lilies finished blooming about 10 days ago and now (finally!) my beautiful stargazer lilies are blooming!

The morning glories are sending up their long shoots and a few deep purple blossoms have ventured out. I transplanted some of the stems to the other side of the porch steps so we'll eventually we'll have railings covered with green vines and delicate flowers.

I love how the garden changes from month to month. The picture on the left is in late June, with the astilbe and asiatics. The picture on the right was today, with the morning glories and oriental Stargazers.

Luke's parents are visiting right now and have been helping in the yard as well (yay! :)). Luke and his dad cut down one of the huge pine trees on the side and are thinning out the others - now we just have to get the old red shed torn down and we'll have a lovely little picnic spot!

Luke's mom has been tearing out the weeds next to the porch and has cleared a large area which I plan to use as an herb garden. So far she has found several large pieces of slate and one old brown glass bottle, still completely intact, in her digging.

The next steps are to add some small flowers to the hasta beds, start planting the herb garden and mulch all the beds to cut down on the weeds. By fall I'm hoping to have cleared out the red shed, put in one more hasta bed, made a good start on the herb garden and lined as many beds as possible with stones (gathered from the paddocks at the barn!). We'll see how far we get... :)

Summertime

Yesterday was not the hottest day we've had this year, but it was buggy and muggy and just not much fun. Neither the horses nor I had much motivation to do anything, so I just rode a couple of them and then organized... cleaning out the trailer from the show on Sunday (which was a lot of fun!), updating feed and turnout charts, administering the bi-monthly dose of wormer to all the horses (it comes in a tube you stick in their mouths and squirt into the back of their throats but it tastes horrible so it can be a little bit of a "catch me if you can" game), etc. Even with less riding than usual, I was hot and sticky by the end of the day and was grateful and excited to get a phone call from Luke suggesting a dip in the nearby Battenkill River. He ran by the house and picked up my swimsuit, and off we went. Although the water was a little colder than he had thought it would be, it felt delicious. Those of you who know me to be a cautious cold-water-enterer should be very impressed that I was the first one to jump all the way in underwater! The public-access spot we stopped at was not very deep, so we didn't really "swim," but it still felt wonderful just to be in the cool water.

After a short detour back to the barn to check on a horse, we came home to a lovely light dinner of toasted pita bread, raisins, feta cheese and homemade tabouleh from a dear Iranian friend.

Yummy! I haven't had good tabouleh in awhile, and this was wonderful - it even included dried mint from our friend's sister in Lebanon! A perfect ending to a hot summer day. Thank you Wassim :)

A Summer Surprise

At 7:30 yesterday morning, as I was about to jump in the shower, my phone rang:

"Hello?"

Luke: "Hey, Jasmine had her foal last night, and Judy found it in the ditch this morning!"

"Oh no..."

"No, no, it's alive!"
"Really???"

"Yeah, it's a little colt. Judy carried it up to Jamie's house, and then they took it back down to Jasmine, I'm on my way to Rite Aid to get a couple things for them."

"Okay, I'll be there shortly!"

Sure enough, upon arriving at the barn, this is what I saw:

We knew Jasmine, the mom, was pregnant but didn't think she was due until Sept. or Oct. because she and the father are both wild and can't be handled. But she tricked us!

"Beamer" is an athletic little bugger, standing and walking much easier than Bailey did, probably because he's about 1/3 of the size Bailey was! Judy, one of the women who does morning chores at the barn, found him outside the pasture in the ditch by the driveway and at first thought he was a baby deer! We're guessing he stood shortly after birth, fell, rolled under the fence, tried to stand again and then toppled down into the ditch. He was shivering and mama was franticly calling for him, both were MUCH happier when reunited! However, Jasmine was nervous and kept moving, not letting him nurse for quite some time. Luke and Eric came and moved their shed, cleaned it, put rubber mats and shavings down, and then we carried Beamer in and Jasmine followed. They were both more relaxed in their "palace," with shade and fewer flies to bother them.

I stayed through the afternoon and ended up going in and standing on one side of the shed to block Jasmine so she had to stand still and let Beamer nurse. After doing that a couple of times she settled right in, and by late afternoon was nursing well all by himself. Yay!!! He's already quite the character - he took a 10 min. nap standing up yesterday, which is how adult horses sleep most often but I've never seen a foal able to do that at only 12 hrs. old! I was cleaning the stall out all around him and he didn't once flinch or even bat an eyelid.

He eventually woke up enough to nurse a little more and then lie down for a real nap. He loves to sleep with his knees tucked up under his chin, and I told Jamie he's practicing to be a jumper when he grows up. We'll see!

Jamie has always wanted a BMW and there's a (very nice) used one for sale in Hoosick Falls that she really wanted for her birthday (in mid-July) but knows she can't afford. So, she got a surprise equine Beamer for her birthday instead! Our lives are certainly never boring. :)

Our New Truck!

Luke's truck has been wonderful for many years. It has pulled many heavy loads and made many long trips over the years. It brought us all the way across the country from Montana to Boston with all our belongings in the back three years ago, moved us from Boston to Hoosick Falls, hauled horses to horse shows, demonstrations and trail rides and brought many loads of hay up to the barn. It was a great truck.

However, it also had a lot of miles on it and was starting to have various troubles. Batteries, u-joints, pinion seals, and a very expensive part about the size of a calculator called a power train cellunoid, among other things. Keeping it running was beginning to cost us a lot of money.

So, we decided to bite the bullet and buy a new truck! It was a hard but necessary decision and we are very, very happy and relieved now that everything is done. We went and test drove several trucks on Thurs., made a decision that night and finalized everything on Friday. At 5pm on Friday evening we drove away from the dealership in our beautiful 2005 Dodge Ram 2500 Cummins Turbo Deisel (the best part ;)). Here are a couple of pictures from the dealer's website - we'll take more soon with Luke's signs on it, as they look very snappy!

Although it looks somewhat purple here, it's actually a deep maroon - "molten red" is the official color. :) It's so nice on the inside, I said to Luke today it still feels like I'm riding in a rental vehicle, not one that actually belongs to us! We are enjoying our new vehicle immensely.

Luke and Erin and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Well, I didn't wake up with gum in my hair, but I did wake up to the third day in a row of temperatures above 95 and high humidity as well. Let's just say high heat makes me feel sick and it affects Luke's brain in about the same way it affects my stomach... but off to work we both went, about 8:00am.

When we arrived at the barn Paladin had lost a shoe and the weekend had been crazy so the barn was a mess. The summer help we hired to work Sunday nights is not working out so well, so there were many things left undone and the things that had been done were not done well. Judy, our faithful morning person, was behind in chores from having to pick up the slack and already drenched in sweat from the heat, so I jumped in to help her and Luke agreed to come back later (after meeting with a vet about another horse) to put Paladin's shoe back on. Things out of place, a couple of horses with cuts and scrapes, mess everywhere... but we motored through and were finishing up by about 11:30am. There were some hay wagons parked in the arena and it was blazing hot outside so I decided to leave for a few hours, do horse laundry at the laundromat and go home for the worst of the heat, then return in the evening and ride. Estimated time of departure: 12:00pm.

Nope! Luke called and said he was on his way to put Paladin's shoe on and put hay out in the pastures, so I stayed to help. New ETD: 1:oopm. Just before Luke arrived, Eric (Jamie's husband) and some workers from the dairy farm arrived to stack the hay on the wagons in the hay barn, and they were using the tractor needed to put hay out in the pastures! So Luke decided to help them finish. I figured since I would be waiting, I might as well ride. By 2:00pm I had the horse groomed and saddled and my riding clothes on, and Luke was ready to do hay! So I help him, we agreed that he would come back in the evening when it was cooler to do Paladin's shoe, and he finally headed off to his "regular" Monday job of carpentry. I decided that since I was riding one horse I might as well get the few necessary horses done, so I'd have 3 to ride, head home for 5 hrs. or so and then return to do night check. New ETD: 4:30pm.

The horses were all very good, I happily packed my things, excited to be heading home to get out of the heat. Nope! The lock button on my ignition would not pop up. I fiddled and fiddled, but to no avail. I tried to call Luke, but only got his voicemail (his phone has not been holding a charge lately, so is often plugged into his truck where he can't hear it). I decided to wait for him to call when he finished work and started helping with evening chores since I was at the barn anyway.

6pm, still no return phone call so I called again, several times, without any luck. Fiddled some more. Yay, I got the button to pop up! Oh no, now it won't release back down for the key to turn and the car won't come out of reverse! More phone calls, still no answer. So, I decided to drag the arena since that needed to be done and I was there. Got halfway done, when the 4-wheeler started to run out of gas... run to the utility room, hmm, all the gas cans are empty! So now it's 7pm, the 4-wheeler is stuck in the middle of the arena, I'm stuck at the barn and still can't get ahold of Luke. I start cleaning stalls since I'm there anyway.

7:30pm, FINALLY the phone rings! It's Luke! "Are you still stuck?" "Yes." "Sorry, I didn't have my phone on me." No kidding.... =P Luke arrives and fiddles with the ignition. Checks the manual. Checks the repair handbook in the trunk. Takes everything around the ignition apart, but discovers you can't actually get to the ignition without putting the car up on a lift and getting underneath it (for those of you who are confused by this, the ignition on Saabs is in front of the middle console, in between the driver and passenger's front seats. You don't want to know what Luke thinks of this design...). So, we give up and go home, tired, hot, defeated. Luke is ready to break my car at this point. Actual time of departure: 8:30pm. Yep, my short day turned into over 12 hrs. at the barn in the heat.

10:30pm, we head back to the barn to do night check after Luke has done some online research. He manages, somehow, to get my car to start! Afraid to turn it off, we leave it running until we're done (I don't want to know how much gas that cost us...) and then head home, finally getting home for good at 11:30pm. I turn the car off but not all the way to the lock position and leave the keys in it overnight. Early this morning we drove it up to the Saab mechanic and left it there until he has a chance to work on it.

Luke vows he is buying me a new car as soon as possible, and he also vows that we will never own another Saab again. Too bad, I kind of like my quirky little car...

Looking back on the day now, it's almost comical - like a comedy of errors, or a "fortunately, unfortunately" day. I'm sure there are several lessons in there somewhere, probably at least one of them about patience.

Today it's supposed to be 100 here with severe thunderstorms this afternoon, chance of hail, winds up to 70mph and a tornado watch! No riding today! So I'm home cleaning house and remembering to be thankful for all the good gifts we have been given, even when they cause us frustration and angst.

Three Whole Years

Today we celebrated our third anniversary... boy has time flown by! It doesn't seem like it could've possibly been that long ago that we got married, although we have managed to cram an amazing amount of activity into the past three years. Here are just a very few pictures from the historic day ;)

Today we both worked until mid-afternoon at the jobs we love - riding and shoeing - and then took off to the Cheesecake Factory in Albany for a delicious dinner. We returned absolutely stuffed and happy, and are now headed to bed. So here's to another wonderful year ahead, full of the things we love and enjoyed today - hard yet satisfying and fulfilling work, sunny days, and fun times of refreshment and relaxation together. I love you more than ever sweetheart!

Our Yard

This morning I took some pictures of the beautiful crab apple trees in our back and front yards, and the beginnings of some gardens I put in last fall. I hope to continue the work this summer and have many more blooms next spring!

The tree in the back yard, with some of its blossoms:

The front tree - actually two that have grown together, creating a beautiful combination of white and pink blooms (and my peonies coming up underneath!):

The front garden by our driveway - asiatic and glory lilies in the back, astilbe in the middle, and chives and some little white and yellow ground cover in the front. Morning glories also climb up the railing in the summer!

The hasta plants I put in last fall in the side yard are starting to come up:Sadie keeps watch over the yard while I check the gardens and take pictures. :)

Fun with Sadie!

Don't we have a beautiful little girl? Sadie loves the barn, not only because she gets to pose for her beauty queen shots ;), but also because she gets to play with the jumps in the arena! Here are a few action shots of our flying pup doing her own version of agility:

Flying through the air with the greatest of ease!

...ears flapping in the breeze... :)

Look at that form!

"Yay, I LOVE to jump!"

"Geez mom, that was hard work - hold me up and get me some water!"