Weekend Wrap-Up

Beautiful weekend, for November.

Saturday dawned a beautiful day, cool and clear, so much to do today!

We went to HomeDepot for paint supplies for the hallway project wrap-up and wall mud for the 'blue room' project. Skimming the walls to eradicate the popcorn-look in this bedroom is the easiest way, but any way this is done it will be labor intensive. By far the ugliest room, and because it looks awful, he's been reluctant to entertain the idea of setting up our bed in it. We really can't keep our bed in the living room forever, can we?

Measuring the closet for future installation of doors and closet enhancement features for this bedroom, too, will need to buy mini-blinds eventually. From this room we have an excellent view of the future pasture on the Northeast side, the parking lot and barn. To me this is the best views in the whole World!

After we got back from the stores he started working on the prep for the mat installation in Skip's stall. This created a feeding dilemma. Skip is notorious for his 'site fidelity.'

When we boarded Skip the protocol for that barn was to hand-walk all the horses in and out of the barn. There were a handful of exceptions to this rule and Skip became one of them. His ground manners are atrocious and the barn help was reluctant to handle him. He was even hard for them to catch him in his stall! Early on he broke free of the help and he walked himself into his own stall. From then on they allowed him to walk himself into the barn. He never stopped along the way to snatch grass, he never walked into another's stall or started a fight with any other horse, never did faster than a walk. He was always the gentleman. Go figure, right?

Also on Saturday his mother came out for a short visit. She's allergic to my house, but she did want to see the new floor and the blinds and curtains. She approves, she said nothing this time about the bed in the living room.

After she left I ran out to the grocery store, back in time to feed all these kids!

Saturday evening we brought Skip into the aisle to eat because his stall now is off limits until probably Tuesday after dinner. He was not happy about this arrangement. He was startled by the traffic that he can now see coming up behind him. He also kept going outside to look into his stall. We closed the barn doors, that's the way it is going to be. He's a slow eater and has so much to eat, waiting around for him is a huge time-waster.

We started a Bonfire Saturday night, got so many things cleared out, but not all of the Hurricanes' messes, we still have a couple, three bonfires in our future. Full Moon, mild temperature, beautiful clear night; felt more like April than November.

Sunday he cut the mats to fit with the utility knife; the circular saw was not effective, smoking, melting and burning the rubber. We loaded the pieces, one at a time, onto the wheel barrow, marked the puzzle-piece's location in chalk and dropped them in the aisle. I cleaned up the dry paddock, filling up the manure spreader, again. Those little guys are full of you-know-what!

We then loaded the boys up and headed out to the Patuxent River State Park, parking in the big field on Annapolis Rock. We weren't the only ones with this idea, the field had eight other trailers and cars parked there, too. After our initial sightings of other horses, we saw no one out on the trails.

Even he noticed that KC was calm and relaxed. He does love a walk in the woods and is confident that his momma is the scariest thing out there!

On the other side of Hipsley Mill Road a large tree had recently fallen across the path. This tree is massive, huge. An equally large portion of it had also fallen across the Patuxent River. We figured out how to get around this kerfluffle by going across the river. The bank was steep, but only one stride for the horses, and the river bed is hard and mud free. Getting up onto the bank on the other side was OK for me and KC, but when Tom came into it Skip ended up in a mud quagmire.

Skip was awesome. He had sunk in up to his hocks and his front-end was sinking, too. I know Tom was panicking, but I told him to stay centered, hang on and let Skip get out of it himself. When they came out of the mud, Skip's legs were covered in thick mud. He seemed to be OK, but we walked off a short way and 'rested' for a while. Skip's athletic abilities were able, once again, to rescue himself and rider from a harrowing situation.

We followed a trail up into the side of a steep ravine, winding our way further from the river, onto dryer trails. We came back onto a roadway, crossing it into a harvested corn field. The hand-held GPS was useless, it could not find itself. My phone was slightly better, and KC knew we were closer to home than the trailer. My phone said it was Hipsley Mill, so we skirted the corn field and entered the woods, literally hacking our way down the hillside.

We found a trail that was slightly better than a deer path and followed that until we came upon trails that were very familiar to us. KC knew where we were, too, and headed back to the trailer.

So much potential unrealized in that park, unfortunately. The invasive Multi-flora Rose has taken over and it is horrible. We'll address that when we have more time, so much wasted parkland acreage, given over to non-native sticker bushes!