Last weekend, our son Justin was here from Nez Perce, Idaho. He has a buyer for the Porsche that we've been storing for him, so bye-bye car and hello camper. Justin brought down an old camper for his dad to fix up. It's the strangest thing. It's really more of a 1/3 camper, as it's only about 4 feet long and fits inside the pick-up box with about a 6-8" hangover on each side. It has 2 seats and a little table in the center and windows on each side, and a full-sized door in the back. There's a slider window in the front that matches up with the slider window in our truck. You can remove the table and it converts to a single-wide bed. We're thinking to use it as a dog-hauling camper. :) Cool!! I'm sure the dogs won't agree, but they'll get used to it. They are just too big to be in the cab with us when we go on trips or whatever. Annie sprawls all over between us and poor Ruby ends up on the floor, or sitting atop of Annie. Just a little too cozy for our comfort! So after hubby replaces some of the wood, which has dry rot, we'll make good use of it.
My friend Claudia delivered our second order of fresh produce from Bountiful Baskets. You don't have to order, but if you want the produce, it's available every other week. We did pretty well with the last delivery, eating up almost everything that we got. Except for the two sweet potatoes and a few remaining apples, everything is gone. We ate the spinach a couple of nights ago, and oh my!!! It was heavenly!!! I'm going to be preparing fresh spinach a lot more often...delicious! I rinsed the leaves, removed the large stems and cooked it in a frying pan with about 1/2" water, a pat of butter and about a teaspoon of minced garlic. I didn't even add any salt or pepper and it was just too good to be true!!
Here's this weeks' bounty of goods. There's a 5 lb. bag of baby Yukon Gold potatoes, 2 large pieces of broccoli, 2 bunches of lettuce, some Fuji apples, oranges, lemons, limes, blood oranges, 2 papayas, a piece of ginger, a coconut, 2 pineapples, 2 vanilla beans, carrots, leaks, bananas and some fresh mint. I think that's about everything. Whew! I love having all this fresh produce to pick from. :) I'd never seen purple or yellow carrots before, but they taste the same as the orange ones. Who knew? I think I'll try making chips or mashed potatoes out of the sweet potatoes. They are not favorites of mine, or my hubby, but we'll eat them so they don't go to waste. And, they're really good for you.
Here's one of our dinners from last week. Steamed green beans, spaghetti squash with a little butter, salt & pepper and a hamburger. Oh my, the spaghetti squash was delicious!! I'll definitely be buying that more often. And so easy to prepare. Just cut in half (this is the hardest part) and lay face down in a shallow pan with some water. Bake for about 30ish minutes or until you can easily scrape the squash out with a fork. So good! Oh, and don't forget to remove the seeds. Silly me, forgot that part! :)
We had a very quiet weekend. We took our little horse trailer down to the local car wash and pressure washed the mold and dirt off of it, and washed our truck too. Amazing how much better everything looks when they're clean! We stopped at the local feed store and bought a few bags of Purina Senior for the horses and then stopped at the grocery store on the way home for some milk and some bread. I love how there's so much less shopping to do when fresh produce abounds. Justin took us out to dinner to our little Mexican restaurant in town, and it was delicious. My hubby ordered his usual Taco Salad Cazuela and JP and I ordered veggie burritos. My favorite!! They grill all kinds of fresh veggies, add some rice and beans and roll up in a giant tortilla, add some burrito sauce and top with sour cream and guacamole. So good!!
Good grief, all I'm doing is talking about food. Sorry...told you it was a quiet weekend. :)
I haven't yet ridden little miss Sugar, but I want to. I think our weather's supposed to clear up a bit, so maybe I'll get a chance this week. I hope so! It sure doesn't take much rain to muck everything up again. We're still doctoring Harley's eye. He has a corneal abrasion in his left eye, which formerly was his best eye. Now, with this most recent injury, he's seeing pretty much nothing. I feel so sorry for him. It's actually been much worse since my boss came out and debrided his eye. I'm not sure if that made it more sore, or if the eyeball itself suffered more damage when the abrasion was being scraped. All I know is that we've been faithfully putting the medicine in his eye morning and night, and he's been on Banamine twice a day for pretty much 2-1/2 weeks now. Without the banamine, the eye still swells dramatically, so I'm still giving it to him. I can tell that it's still painful because he's always squinting and the eye tears all the time. I don't know what else to do. We keep his fly mask on if it's even a little bit sunny out, not sure if that helps or not. I've had to put the bell on Kadie again, because poor Harley totally freaks out if he doesn't know where she is at all times. It just breaks my heart to see him upset and uncomfortable. I hate to think what he's going to be like when something happens to my sweet, old girl. I can't even bear to think about that. Harley's my baby. He was born into my arms and he's just the most sweet-natured horse ever. Shouldn't have happened to him. I just hate it! But there's not a damn thing that I can do about it. I pray all the time for healing and recovery, but for whatever reason, my prayers are not answered where Harley is concerned. Faith isn't always an easy thing. And especially when someone we love is hurting. Sure wish I understood why...not that it matters. It is, what it is.
This is a picture of my sweet Harley peaking above his beautiful momma's neck. He still had his sight then, and we had no idea what was looming in his future. His mom had bum luck in her life too. She had laminitis or chronic founder. We were never able to figure out why because all tests came back negative, she had never over eaten any grain, or spring grasses, wasn't overweight, none of the usual suspect things. She never had retained placenta either. The only thing we could theorize was a cause, were hormonal changes that occurred each spring when she began having heat cycles. We tried for years to keep her sound, but eventually had to let her go. She was a perfect horse with unsound feet. She was an angel and I still miss her to this day. I still feel blessed to have loved and cared for her though. And she loved her boy, more than anything, she loved Harley. They were quite the pair. He looks very much like her. Dear, sweet Scooter. Her registered name was Mis Star of David and she had an impressive pedigree in the ApHC with several famous horses in her lineage. We got her because she was built like a tank and had the most beautiful coloring that I'd ever seen...she was my dream horse. I rode her only a handful of times, and then sweet Scooter gave birth to a little Harley. I was right there when he was born, and I'll remember it always. Incredible, awe-inspiring miracle of birth. I'd never even seen a puppy or a kitten being born before that. I was all alone that morning, and I was terrified and so very excited. I stayed with Scooty the whole time, petting and talking softly to her, and then when the foal was halfway out, she took a break. I cut the sack from Harley's nose and he looked into my eyes and blinked several times. I was in love! We'd planned on selling the foal, but there was no way! When Scooter was rested, she finished her job. True to his nature, Harley layed there nickering and looking around for almost 2 hours before he even thought about getting up. When he was ready, he got up and nurses. He still prefers sleeping in to waking up early, even now. That's my boy! He's relaxed and always takes time to smell the roses. :)
Blessings everyone,
Lorie @ Cingspots
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