Como is really pretty!

This time next Monday, I'll be done with the first day of the bar. Whew.

Last Saturday, I took a bunch of pictures of my uncle's place as I went tooling around on Champ. I was going to post them right away, but, well, I didn't. Here we go...

I went by the farmer's market downtown and picked up some veggies for my aunt. I had the camera with me so I took a couple pictures of my dad, selling his (totally awesome) birdhouses.
Here's Dad:


And here's a couple of his birdhouses. The one on the left is a facade, just a little "pretty" to hang in the house. The one on the right is an actual birdhouse, probably for a wren:


Then Cersei and I drove to Como and caught Champ. The weather was (typically) awful - 90F, with about 65% humidity, and sunny. I wanted to ride, but I didn't want any of us to get heatstroke, so we kept it very slow. We went across a big field to a pond, along the pond, and across another field to a second pond. Champ was greatly displeased with the whole affair. He wanted to turn around and go back to his herd, but I cruelly insisted that he trot part of the time and even gait a little! To top it off, I made him canter for like 20 yards on the gravel road. Can you believe my nerve! It's maybe a mile from the second pond to my uncle's house, and it was just too hot to ask Cersei to trot that far with no water, so we turned around at the second pond.

The second pond is ugly. It's a cow wallerin' pond. The cows love to hang out in that pond, looking like really fat hornless water buffalo. Cersei just loves it because it's shallow, so I let her play in that pond for a bit but didn't take any pictures.

I started taking pictures as we headed back to the first pond, the one closest to the horses' field. Isn't this pasture just gorgeous? There are trees, but not the dreaded Just One Tree.* There's a bunch of different kinds of grass. Unfortunately, I don't have a clue what the species are.


*You never want to put your livestock out in a pasture that has just one tree. The cows/horses will huddle up under the one tree in a storm, and that one tree acts like a lightning rod, and BLAM you come out and find your livestock electrocuted under the tree. One tree bad, no trees bad, several trees GOOD. At least that's what they tell me.

Cersei had a blast playing in the pond.



She looks like a small furry hippo here.


I got a couple pictures of Champ too. Riding him with a group of horses, I have a 50/50 chance of an interesting ride. Half the time he does his "zombie plow horse" imitation and just plods along behind the other horses, and half the time he is offended by the other horses and fights me to pass them, because he is obviously better than them. But regardless of what he thinks of his company, he never pays much attention to what's going on around him.

But when we're alone, it's a different story. Champ is constantly alert, on the lookout, being a Wild Horse and scanning the horizon for lions or bicycles or other Horse Eating Monsters. He feels lighter, he's more responsive, and he's constantly thinking about spooking. He rarely actually spooks, not like Silky or the spotted mare, but he's always thinking about it. A lot more fun!

However, being a feral stallion* is hungry work.

*Domesticated gelding.

I have a few more pictures to share, but I'll save them until tomorrow. I am going to try to post more and bring a little normalcy back to my life.