Thought I'd check back in to avoid paying bills....LOL
Sue, the house looks gorgeous! Good for you!
Our vet has just about begged us to take another horse. SnowAngel died of cancer this summer and about a month ago Star came in. (I know, nice, original name, but they come with names usually...) She was being sold as a children's riding horse.
Right.
Busted up knee, club foot, heart murmur. Xrays showed we could not help the knee, but there is pain medication called, for short, 'bute', that she is now getting twice a day. We'll have her put down when the pain gets too much, but she seems pretty happy now. She's a small bay, a cross between a Welch pony and a Mustang. Interesting personality! Learning to trust us. The automatic waterer scared her totally -- I think she thought the hiss as it filled when she drank was a snake or something!
Anyway the little white pony we will be getting in next weekend has a bad leg and is blind in one eye, or almost blind. Mare. About 20. Don't know the little lady's name yet.
SOOOOO, we're moving all the gardening stuff out of the horse barn and into the big storage barn. Punching a back door in the storage barn to make it accessible easily. Moving hay from a nice empty corner of the horse barn to where the gardening stuff was and putting in a pen where the hay used to be for one of the minis so the new pony can have a stall.
Which means we will have five horses and two goats in a three stall barn.
We stripped the half bath and turned it into a small stall for the other mini this summer. So at least everyone has a stall when it rains and the new lady will have to be able to get along with goats! They will share the end stall which has a bigger paddock attached. This is getting crazy! And THIS, folks, is our ABSOLUTE limit. Gina tells me she's heard me say that before....but now there is totally no more room!
Great harvest this year. Two freezers jammed with fruits and veggies. Well, we raise food for ourselves and buy it for the animals. What's wrong with this picture???? :laugh:
Gorgeous autumn starting now. Skies are partly cloudy all day, sprinkles sometimes. Windy in the afternoons. Temperatures are mild and veggies still coming. Leaves starting to turn. Mums going crazy. I love this time of year. Everything is looking good and getting ready for a winter's rest.
After the surgery last week I have been amazed at, after the first couple days of recovery, to see how much energy I am getting back. I thought I was getting tired so easily because of age (not quite 60). But evidently the infection in my mouth -- which I was totally unaware of except for a little bump in my gums which didn't hurt at all -- had not only eaten into my bone, but had been sapping energy for months. It feels SO good to be energetic again and get things really done. Perfect time of year for energy, too, while days are cool and yummy.
We have a speaking engagement in southern Calif. first weekend in October, so that's the next major thing on the list. Barry's new article was just published and is on the web (I tried to link it, but it didn't work -- see edit below)
His DVD on the Christmas Star is finished and for sale at our webpage here:
www.setterfield.org
We tried to contact Andrew to advertise it here on BB, but he never got back to us...
Barry's back teaching astronomy Monday nights and Bible study here Wednesday nights. Chris is hanging in there.
I tried to poison both of us (Barry and me) ACCIDENTLY with some walnuts I got in the bulk bin at Fred Meyers. Evidently they had some sort of fungus we couldn't see on them. I used some in some zucchini bread and we both ended up itching so badly! I was first and ended up in the emergency room a couple of weeks ago, scratching my hands and feet to blood trying to stop the itching. I was like a demented woman at one in the morning. When Barry ate some a couple of days later (before we knew what had caused my itching), and started itching, we got the benedryl tablets down him immediately. He needed them for about two days before he stopped itching!
Wow!
Packaged walnuts from now on, and that's that! Plus we'll keep them refrigerated.
So that's what we've been up to. Gina's doing great, as are the girls, for those of you who remember 'da Gina.' She will finish up getting her AA degree later this year. Anna, her youngest, seems to be doing much better despite the heart defect. Her body is coping much better now than when she was little. Surgery is next to impossible and would pose much too great a risk on her life. So we are VERY grateful for her body's ability to adjust.
Well, better pay those bills before I go out to feed the beasties. God bless you all. Sorry this was so long....just catching up a little.
edit: Barry's article link didn't work. Tried to change it here so it would work, but it doesn't. Please email me if you are interested!
helen@setterfield.org
God bless....again!
That's usually a sign of rheumatoid arthritis or lupus so we'll see what the physical shows up. SIGH
