Lil' Red Dressed Up for the Gnats

Yeah, there really is a horse under all that. Every morning before the gnats get up, I'm up feeding & dressing horses. Every night, after the gnats have gone to bed, I'm out undressing horses. Only two of them are gnat-sensitive and get the full armor. The others just get fly masks. I also spray all exposed areas of horse to keep the gnats off those parts. But it works. I've not had them go super itchy and need steroids since I started doing this. This fly sheet is in it's second season, and its ability to do that is because it is made of Textaline fabric and I learned how to make patches with old blue jeans & fabric glue (none of the patching shows in this photo).
The things we do for our horses...

Cooper's Hawk

 sitting in the elm tree right outside the window.

Cat working out

And after a hard workout, The Fluffy Cat needs a good rest.

Stuffed Animals

There are two kinds of stuffed animals in this photo. The two with the glowing eyeballs want to be more stuffed. They had just finished breakfast but felt that it was not enough. The horses here don't need to eat, unlike the ones outside. My annual delivery of hay is coming this week. 250 bales of bermuda at 105 lbs each and 70 bales of alfalfa at 110 lbs each. I still have 6 bales of bermuda from last year & 29 bales of 120 lb alfalfa from last year.

Smoke at sunrise

 Photos taken this morning before the sun came up over Red Mtn. Friday July 19.

Mountain Fire

 Photos taken about 1pm Wed. July 17. In this photo, smoke from both branches can be seen. The southern branch is just visible.

 The northern branch, behind Red Mtn.

 The horse w/the fly sheet is SSM Dream Fire, 30 yr Morgan. The roan is Sedona, TWH

 A closer look at the smoke.

 The fire is fairly far away from us. And of more import, we are upwind of it.

Waterworks--I should Know better

I've lived up here for 30 years & never has fixing or putting in new water pipe EVER gone to plan. Why would I think that this would be different? When handyguy Mike cut the 2" main pipe, this is what we got--

Not exactly matching up, is it. Over the decades, the ground shifted and put pressure on the pipe, which caused the weakest place to give away and cause the leak.
 We gave up for the day, Mike capped it so I could have house water & horse water and we re-planned. 
The next day, Mike had to dig out all 3 directions of the pipelines to take pressure off the pipes and make them more flexible. The result was a big mound of dirt and a bigger hole.
It worked, however, and Mike got the pipe ends to line up.

But he could not get the repair coupling to fully seat and thus we had water still coming out. We needed more then just my one large pipe wrench.  We ended up calling handyguy Joe to request back up. Mike went to get Joe & he arrived with a large pipe wrench & a large channel lock. That got the job nearly done. There was still a slow drip but we all agreed that it would probably seal up overnight. It did.
Now Mike just has to come back and fill in the hole.
There is always something fun going on here.