Almost 2 inches of rain yesterday and last night, which should have mostly soaked in (maybe not in the burn scar) since the grass coverage we’ve nurtured has increased resistance to flood and erosion.\u00a0 Grass is really good at holding the soil and slowing moderate flow to slow: it cleans water and prevents damage.\u00a0\u00a0 So it’s time to go out and take a look (since there are no incoming rain bands on radar now)\u00a0 and assess what we need to do as the land dries out bit by bit.\u00a0 I’m not going out on the fire scar yet, since it’s likely to be very muddy and I don’t know how deep–my tall “flood boots” are much heavier than the shorter rubber boots I’ve been wearing.\u00a0 This will take an hour to an hour and a half, to cover the areas I need to cover.\u00a0\u00a0 Come spring I’ll definitely be ordering a short-grass turf mix for the maintenance paths–anything we want to keep mowed for safety–and other areas that need to be snake-safer for walking or riding a horse on.\u00a0 That will make post-rain events easier to deal with.\u00a0 (All those things in the books about how tiring it is to walk in mud of various depths come from walking in mud, much of it on this mud, but some also from walking trails in mud elsewhere.)<\/p>\n
Horses this morning looked at me with scorn and annoyance, because they got fed (gasp!!) 45 minutes late.\u00a0 And, and, and…it was only hay.\u00a0 And it wasn’t as much hay as those hay-bellies wanted (“Is that ALL?\u00a0 Are you trying to starve us into submission?”\u00a0\u00a0 Nobody’s asking you to submit to anything right now but not grabbing hay out of my arms.\u00a0 Back off.\u00a0 “Mean, mean, horrible person.”\u00a0 It was only rain, and warm rain at that, and you are welcome to go out and nibble grass when you’ve eaten the hay.\u00a0\u00a0 “You don’t CARE about us.”\u00a0\u00a0 This, from horses nose deep in enough hay to partly stand on, and munching away, but speaking with their rolled eyes and ear positions and swishing of tails and deep blubbery sighs.\u00a0 You didn’t want to wait for hay nets to be made up.\u00a0 Just eat your breakfast and let me go in and eat mine.\u00a0 “You don’t need breakfast like we do.\u00a0 You’re fat enough.”\u00a0\u00a0 Pot & kettles, ponies; you’re more overweight than I am.\u00a0 I love you dearly but I need my eggs and you already have your hay.\u00a0 (I ate breakfast more than an hour after they had theirs.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Almost 2 inches of rain yesterday and last night, which should have mostly soaked in (maybe not in the burn scar) since the grass coverage we’ve nurtured has increased resistance to flood and erosion.\u00a0 Grass is really good at holding the soil and slowing moderate flow to slow: it cleans water and prevents damage.\u00a0\u00a0 So 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":[52,49,17,51],"class_list":["post-973","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","tag-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973"}],"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=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":974,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions\/974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}