Today was a lovely day, clear, cooler than it has been (though quite warm in the sun in the afternoon until about 4pm, not stifling) and with just enough breeze.\u00a0\u00a0 Yesterday, I’d gotten a new pair of riding tights, summer-weight, ordered last week.\u00a0 They’re a style recommended by one of the staff at the Dover Saddlery store, even though that store doesn’t carry that model.\u00a0 They’re a rich chocolate brown.\u00a0\u00a0 I followed their size guide, and feel that these re a touch large, but they are comfortable, they have a cellphone pocket, and two other small pockets…one about driver’s license\/credit card size, and one big enough for maybe a small tube of sunscreen (it’s on the back at the waist).\u00a0\u00a0 Nothing that will hold Mrs. Pasture’s Horse Cookies in the quantity I need for the two horses.\u00a0 So I carried an odd thing I saw online, bought, and have modified some, which is working well.<\/p>\n
R- was trying to get in some mowing while it was relatively safe (from fire danger, wind, etc.) so I didn’t ride until late afternoon\/evening and it was beautiful.\u00a0\u00a0 I wore my new riding tights, and a denim shirt over a T-shirt because of the coolth (and the bright sun.)\u00a0\u00a0 We started at quarter to six, and finished about six-thirty.\u00a0\u00a0 After a very short walkover of the pole pattern, we went into the Near Meadow and west to exit at the grass crossing of the old ditch–then west again to the creek woods.\u00a0 Rags spotted some cows right up next to the south fence, and stopped to stare at them.\u00a0 They stared back, as cows do.\u00a0 After a brief time of mutual staring, I insisted we needed to move on and after a couple more stops (why WERE the cows up by that fence…had they come there to gawk at us?) we turned north on the creek woods outside trail. Somewhat to my surprise, no deer popped out to startle Rags.\u00a0 We took that trail all the way up to the place several trails meet, just shy of the fencerow trees on the north fence, and then turned to approach the dry creek and cross it.\u00a0 Rags was quite willing to do that, and then to continue up the trail near the north fence.\u00a0\u00a0 We turned south into the very shady trail that runs mostly out of sight of the west fence, but not far from it.\u00a0 When we got to the West Woods, Rags turned toward the little horse trail, and once again stepped carefully over the fallen osage orange tree.\u00a0 Then a short bit down to the creek bed, and a quick heave up the slope, turn, turn again, and climb the rest of the way to the Southwest Meadow and Owl Pavilion.<\/p>\n
This time Rags did not balk at the mysterious gravel-filled bowl–ignored it in fact, as he did the previously scary solar panel that runs the pump in the wildlife waterer.\u00a0 “I’m not scared of any of this,” he announced, stopping neatly right next to the pavilion and turning to look at me and see if a cookie was forthcoming.\u00a0 When he had the cookie, I turned him back east, to circle the young grove that’s come up in this meadow (we aren’t short of meadow and I had wanted this one to contribute to the woods acreage if possible.\u00a0 It’s mostly cedar elm, one live oak, and some bumelias and thicketing plums.\u00a0\u00a0 They’re all still smallish, but they’re there, and bird nests are in some of them.\u00a0 We rode back west to find the entrance to the trail we’d come in by, and then down the bank, across the dry creek, up and over the fallen tree, out of the West Woods and onto the Fort Cedar\/Gully Trail.\u00a0 We came back into the late sunlight there, riding north alongside the gully system, then right to angle back to the north fence just shy of the Tractor Ford crossing of the main, alas dry, creek.<\/p>\n
Once out of that low area, we were in and out of the light going back south to Center Walk.\u00a0 Off to the left was the open West Grass, with the line of trees and elbow bush of the Dry Woods showing some fresh leafage.\u00a0\u00a0 It was beautiful…the green beginning to show in teh grass, the stubble from mowing, and the clear blue evening sky above.\u00a0 Rags wanted to go into the Entrance Meadow, so we went in and around it twice, and then came back out…and had a brief Argument.\u00a0 He wanted to go straight south; I wanted to go upslope on Center Walk.\u00a0 So we did that, and he wanted to jog part of it, and I let him, but didn’t try to post, just tried to sit is quietly.\u00a0 (But mostly bumped instead.)\u00a0 We turned back SW to Cloud Pavilion when we got to the alternate trail, and he had other moments of fascination with the neighbor’s cows, especially a brown one (most are black) that came to the fence to stare at Rags.\u00a0\u00a0 We did some more leg yields, and then…he wanted to rush to the ditch crossing and get into the Near Meadow, and I insisted that we needed to stop briefly and stand still.<\/p>\n
Stand STILL?!\u00a0 Rags was NOT willing.\u00a0 He sidled around and switched his tail, and I kept on keeping him on the spot until he relaxed a moment…when I said “OK, NOW you can go.”\u00a0\u00a0 We finished with a final walk over the raised poles.\u00a0 A good and pleasant ride,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today was a lovely day, clear, cooler than it has been (though quite warm in the sun in the afternoon until about 4pm, not stifling) and with just enough breeze.\u00a0\u00a0 Yesterday, I’d gotten a new pair of riding tights, summer-weight, ordered last week.\u00a0 They’re a style recommended by one of the staff at the Dover Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,48,16],"tags":[52,49,17],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-80-acres","category-horses","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-80acres","tag-horses","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1237,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions\/1237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}