Is it Spring or Winter??

February is the month that spring arrives in Southern California.  It is also the month when we receive the most rain.  We don't get very much snow up here.  Even though we are on a mountain, we have the Pacific Ocean just to the west moderating things and the desert is to the east.  When it does snow, once or twice a year, it most often happens in February or March.  Although it tends to be a dusting or maybe an inch, once every five years or so we get a foot or more.  The spring snow wrecks havoc with my orchard.  I have NEVER gotten any apricots from my tree.  The tree blooms early, and then it gets nailed by a hard freeze.  We have hard freezes continuing into May sometimes.  April for sure. 

On Wednesday, we got our first (and maybe only) snow of the season.  It had switched to rain when we went to bed so I expected to find only sloppy mud in the morning.  But, it must have switched back to snow for a bit during the night because we woke to patches of snow here and there. 

The sun was out -- and the snow was completely gone by noon.  Today, we have another warm clear day so hopefully the arena will dry enough to be usable this weekend.

Jackson is improving.... I think.  It's one step forward, one step back with him.  Yesterday morning, he was in so much pain that he didn't even want to eat his bucket of sweet feed, vitamins and bute.  Brett said he ventured out of his stall into the run out and stood in the sun for awhile.  This morning, he was back in the stall and doing the lift one foot, then the other, thing.  But his eyes were bright and he ate his bucket with gusto.  He also nuzzled me constantly while I was mucking all the dirty straw out of the stall and replacing it with clean (a twice a day job right now since he won't/can't walk outside).  It's slow, but his feet do seem to be settling down.  Phew!  I am so not ready to say goodbye to that horse.