Oh, I saw the cutest commercial with two of my favorite subjects, horse + Amazon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU_c8aabw2Y

Lukas and I along with my nephew and his son and grandsons went Friday for a dry run with the new RV. We stayed overnight at Frontenac State Park, south of Red Wing. It was a beautiful place, and I would really like to go back in the spring or fall. Bet we wouldn’t be the only ones in the campsite then.

Of course we had to take the two little dogs with, since they’re mandatory on any RV trip.

There were a couple of hitches, we couldn’t figure out why the electricity wasn’t working with the generator on, so Lukas couldn’t play his playstation while I was driving. I ordered an inverter that will be hard wired to the house battery so that won’t be a problem on the next trip. We also found out the outlets in the kitchen don’t work, so that will have to be checked out tomorrow when I take the RV in to get a rear leveling jack replaced. Also have to replace the house battery, it isn’t holding a charge. I have a truckers Rand McNally map book coming, for sure need that! Last time I neglected to check that before going on a road, I ended up pulling over and throwing up (from stress of being on a narrow switchback road with no place to turn around).

If everything goes right, in less than two weeks, we’ll be on our way to Florida. Warm sunshine, sandy beaches and ocean, green grass… getting excited!!

Never ceases to amaze me, how huge these woodpeckers are!

And some humor,

A very busy week, what with dog visits to the vet and vet visits here. And what lovely weather we’ve had this fall so far; I was outside in shorts and bare feet earlier this week, and I still have flowers blooming in my garden. Just unbelievable! If every fall/winter were like this, it would be much more bearable. I saw the biggest rainbow I think I’ve ever seen, just gorgeous.

Would you like to see what happens when the gate gets unlocked?

They were certainly enjoying my front lawn.

The vet and farrier came Thursday morning to sedate Beauty and get her hooves clipped. Boy, did that medicine hit her fast! Here she was with Christian holding her,

and within 3-4 minutes of the shot, she was swaying,

At one point when Barry was doing her hind hoof, I was pulling on her halter with all my weight and Christian was in back of her pushing on her butt. I was afraid she was going to go down on him! The vet got in there and pushed her up against the hay bale, so with the three of us pushing and pulling, she got her hooves clipped. Look at that bottom lip,

We’ve been working on her feet during feeding time, pulling them up with a rope and holding them up, and she’s slowly getting better. Hopefully in Feb. when Barry comes back, she won’t have to be sedated so heavily.

My stomach has been churning the past 24 hours. I bought a new (not really new, it’s 10 years old) RV yesterday (contingent on mechanic’s inspection)! I’ve been looking since mid-summer for a different one, and my nephew told me when the right one came along, I’d know it. Well, the right one came along yesterday.

It’s a 35’ with 2 slideouts and it is REALLY nice!!! If I do get it, I hope to be posting some Florida photos in another 6 weeks. Sigh, I so hope it works out.

What a beautiful day! Not too many November days are so nice that I can work outside in barefoot and shorts.

A bit of an emergency with Beauty last night. She didn’t eat all of her feed at chores last night, which was concerning, so we stayed out to keep an eye on her for a few minutes. When she dropped and started to try to roll I was concerned, and walked over to her. She got up and walked outside the pen and went down again, tried to roll and made some moaning noises. I figured colic and called the vet, but being it was after 5, it went to their answering service, and had to wait about 10 minutes for the vet on call to get back to me. Christian went back out to check on her and said she was still laying down, and when the vet called I told him what was going on and he agreed it sounded like colic and asked if I wanted him to come out. Ummm, yes, I do. So while I was waiting for him I went out to get her up and walking. By this time it was dark and I wasn’t thinking too well, didn’t grab the flashlight, so one the way out I grabbed a solar light. LOL, yup, a solar light. What can I say? It did help me find her, because she wasn’t laying down anymore, she was standing in the pasture. Since I had my phone with, I went onto Facebook and the rescue group Saved page and wrote down what was going on. Others agreed it sounded like colic.

She had just taken a dump, and it looked normal, so that was good. But she was making noises in her throat, snorting and drooling, and it hit me that this wasn’t colic. I got her to walk out to the driveway and after about 10 minutes, she was quiet, no noises in her throat, no snorting. So back onto Facebook, and ta couple people said it sounded like choke. I walked her around a bit and she started eating grass, and I was thinking the vet is going to get here and he’s going to think I’m an overanxious horse newbie, because obviously there’s nothing wrong with her. But when he did get here and I explained what had happened, he tried to take her temperature, which she was having nothing to do with, so we got her calmed down and he listened to her heart, lungs and gut, and checked her mouth. I told him about seeing dissolved feed in her nostrils and her snorting; she finally settled down enough for him to take her temp, which was normal. He asked if I’d ever heard of choke, and I said I had, compliments of Facebook. For some reason, he said, they’d been having a rash of choke the past couple of weeks, and most of them were horses that were fed pellets. The horse gets greedy and wolfs down the food, pellets get stuck in the throat and then expand from the moisture, and the horse starts choking. Fortunately she cleared it out herself. So now we’ll be soaking her food before feeding her. Another learning experience…

So anyway, the farrier came out last week to clip her hooves, and she would have nothing to do with it. So yesterday Christian went to the vet and got a sedative, and today he came back to try again. It didn’t even phase her! So next week the vet and Barry are going to come out and the vet is going to administer the sedative and get a proper dosage figured out for her.

My nephew is up for a couple of days, and enjoying farm life.

All summer my chickens have been trying to get to my bird feeders, and finally today one made it, not that it did any good.

An update on our horse, Beauty. Somewhere along the line of auction barns she was in, she got a torn vulva. I had the vet come out and look at it and check her out for any other problems. She checked out fine, the vet estimates she’s in her late teens and weighs around 1300 lbs. Ingrid, the vet, cleaned out the wound and I made an appt. for today for her to come out, clean it again and sew it up.

I’ve never had a draft breed before, and am amazed at the temperament of this horse. She’s been spooked a couple of times, and instead of rearing and shying and running away, she snorts and walks fast. The vet gave her a sedative and then shot a blocker into her vulva, and a couple of times, Beauty tucked her butt in and lifted a back foot, and that was it. I’m glad that’s over, and hopefully the old girl will heal up quickly. In two weeks we have to cut and pull the stitches out.

Some pictures of my nephew and her,


You don’t get the full sense of how huge she is until you’re standing next to her.

Scott was scratching her, and she was almost falling asleep. Cute!


My flowers are all gone now, and the bird migration is about done. The sandhill cranes are all gone.

Some levity,

Some new photos of the horse (really need to think of a name),

The cows are just fascinated with her.

I am just beat! It’s been a very, very busy week, between working on fencing, getting plants in and bulbs dug up, and planting the perennials that I’ve bought the past few weeks.

The 107 amaryllis bulbs (the special ones are separated out into the paper bags).

This was my garden in its glory,

My tuberose sent out the tallest shoots! I had to stand on tiptoe to smell the blossoms, and oh my goodness, they smell soooooooo wonderful!

My flower garden hasn’t had a killing frost yet, so I’ve still got roses, echinacea and dahlias blooming,

Oh yah! I bought/rescued a horse! There’s a stock dealer down in Cannon Falls that lets a woman pull horses out of the kill pen, and she coordinates the ‘bail-out’ of them. You take your chances, some of them are perfectly fine and others have health problems, and some are bought with the intention of letting them live out their last days in a pasture and not a slaughter house. Mine spent 8 hours in a trailer before getting here, so it was dark by the time she came. Tomorrow I’ll be able to get a better sense of what she’s like.

I have no nice pictures to show, only sad thoughts to share. There is a discussion going on at a glass forum that I belong to, with the thoughts that gun laws should be enforced, enforcing gun laws won’t keep guns out of the hands of criminals, anger at people who resist more rigid gun laws, suggestions that more guns are the answer, and so on and on. The same dialog that happens after every episode of mass shootings.

My thoughts, it's not criminals who are doing these mass shootings, it's angry young men with no direction, no goal in life, no sense of responsibility to anyone other than themselves. We have too many guns available to anyone who wants them and a culture that adores violence, a society that seems to think every kid in high school should go to college, so there are no more (or drastically cut) art/music/shop/home economics etc. (do they even have home economics anymore?) classes to keep kids working with their hands. Money is stripped from social and education programs so Wall Street can be happy with the corporations' profits, and we have young people with no future or hope, and any happiness is found in drugs or alcohol.

Gosh, fits right in with 2 Timothy 3:2 “People will love only themselves and money. They will be proud and boast about themselves. They will abuse others with insults. They will not obey their parents. They will be ungrateful and against all that is pleasing to God. 3 They will have no love for others and will refuse to forgive anyone. They will talk about others to hurt them and will have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. 4 People will turn against their friends. They will do foolish things without thinking and will be so proud of themselves. Instead of loving God, they will love pleasure.”

I just spent a day and a half beheading 107 amaryllis bulbs (that’s not counting the babies), taking them out of their pots and putting them in the basement.

WHY did I just order four more?!?!? Sigh, because they look so wonderful in the middle of the winter when I bring them up and repot them and they bloom.

A new calf today! A little bull calf,

Yup, that’s a boy for you, a newborn, and he’s climbing on the hay bale.

Time has flown, summer is almost over, sadly. I am glad, though, that the heat and humidity are going. The plants love that weather, but I sure don’t.
So many photos to show!! An oriole enjoying the water,


A woodpecker,

More orioles,


Young orioles remind me of little kids, they squabble and fight.

A sparkling hummer,

A grosbeak daddy feeding the babies,

I had to move the jelly feeder because someone was getting into it,

Glorious colors!!! I have to store up the awesome sense of color for winter…





Some new beads on Facebook,

And a couple of funny bone ticklers,