Horses on the Loose!

 These photos are from early 2005. That was an El Nino year & we had a lot of rain here in So. Cal. This much grass is rarely seen and has not happened again since that year. I was turning horses out on the property to give them some grass time. They also used it as running around time.

 The chestnut is SSM Fire Singer aka Big Red (Clarion x Four-K Cassandra, who was all Ina Ish's breeding). The paly is SSM Autumn Wind (SSM W Nicholas Moro x Kenel's Amarillo Meg). Both are 9yrs. here.

Damage from TS winds

 Carport support

 The Manzanita bush looks like it exploded.

 Eucalyptus tree down in horse paddock. The horses are enjoying their toy & are busy chewing off the bark.

 This used to be a pepper tree.

 The nearly 40 year old elm tree which has never had anything broken in a wind.

This horse shelter has stood just fine since 1992. But this wind shoved in the wall.

Sedona--TWH, passed Sept. 2014

She was with me for only six years, but was such a loving, sweet horse that her passing surely took some of my heart.

Contented Cat

And, yes, that is a horse saddle blanket; now it is a cat blanket. I like the way he has half of himself on the blanket & half on the wood. It's a cat thing.

Lil'Red's ride, today

 In the Red Shanks "Forest"

 Some of our boulders

 Lil'Red is admiring the boulders

 More boulders

 Some of the open space out here

 Overlook from the High Road

 More Overlook. It just goes forever.

What goes up, mus come down. The road starts the steep downhill part soon.

VirgaBow!

 Not quite a rainbow because it is not arched across the sky. It is refracted light from a virga, which is a small burst of rain from a cloud that never reaches the ground. You can just see the virga coming down from the cloud and then it catches the sunlight.

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...