Happy Birthday Camille

My beautiful baby girl is 18 years old today.  How did that happen??

Happy Birthday Camille!  You are the sunshine of my life -- for the way you make me laugh, for your compassion and for the joy you spread with your quick smile and easy laughter.  I love you to the moon and back!

Dinner Dance

On Memorial Day, Brett and I had dinner on the viewing stand.  We barbequed hamburgers, nibbled on chips, drank a bottle of wine and watched the horses do their dinner dance.  I love the evening light in the pasture so I took pictures of them as they moved from feed bin to feed bin.  We divide the hay between four bins plus the run-in shed.  They rotate from station to station, pairing up.  The donkeys hang together, Flash and Kalvin are inseparable, and Winston and Jackson have a love/hate thing going on.  Winston made Jackson go with him to get a drink of water at the pond (herded him down there) but in the next minute, chased him away from a particular bin.  Here's the dance -- or musical chairs.

Went to the dr for my toes yesterday.  I couldn't take the pain anymore.  He sent me for x-rays -- second toe is very broken and there is extensive ligament damage in the others.  I must say Flash was thorough when he kicked me/Winston.  I have an appt with a specialist Thursday afternoon. 

Brett's Been Busy

Last weekend while I sat on the couch like a sack of potatoes, Brett was busy with his projects. 

Have I mentioned that we have rocky soil?  Granite boulders, shale and stones everywhere.  On the weekends, I hear a constant hum from the lawn mowers, weed whackers, and tractors mowing the wild grass that grows high all over our community in the spring.  Brett wears full riot gear when he weed whacks -- jeans, boots, goggles and a hat -- because rocks get kicked up no matter how careful you are.  This year, for the first time, we had property damage due to flying rocks.  On one side of us, flying stones from the neighbor's week whacking took out two windows in the horse trailer.  Brett's been trying to find some place that replaces horse trailer windows.  So far, no luck.  A few days later another neighbor took out a vinyl fence post with flying rocks.  He and Brett worked together to reinforce the post and give it a new vinyl cover. 

After working most of the morning on the fence post, Brett started replacing the wood kneeling boards around my raised garden beds.  The current boards were old and brittle.  I couldn't kneel on them anymore without them breaking or falling off.  He bought thicker redwood this time so they should last at least fifteen years.

Before:

During:

After:

He's the best:

Macro Monday

Bearded Iris in the Rain

Sunday Stills: Music Groups or Songs in Pics

Foggy Foggy Dew

When I was a child, my father sang to us while we were driving
 or while we were riding our bikes with him to the doughnut shop on Sunday mornings.  

My sister loved the song "Scarlet Ribbons" 

I always requested "Foggy Foggy Dew"

I didn't understand it, but I was drawn by the love story

and the melancholy tune of the old English folk song.

We had foggy weather Friday morning 

so I snapped some pictures.

Added a couple from the archives.

Voila:

 

Brett's Day

Since my days are all pretty much the same right now: sitting on couch, foot on a pillow, with pile of reading and writing stuff nearby...

I asked Brett to carry the camera around with him today and take pictures of his projects and whatever else caught his eye. 

The wood ledge on my garden raised beds is breaking off.  One of Brett's projects is to replace all of it.  He went down the mountain today and bought supplies.  Wood for my planter boxes and gold gravel to fill in the area by the pool where we took a tree out last year.

About a month ago, Bella's collar went missing.  We looked everywhere for it and then gave up and I bought her a new one.  Brett found it today -- it looks like a squirrel caper to me.