Lake Louise

Two weeks ago I wrote a piece about how ready I was for rain. That quickly manifested this past week-end with three days of gentle non-stop precipitation. When the sun finally came out I checked the lady bug rain gauge; it registered almost three inches. That is a good rain for us here on the high desert and we so needed it. You can almost sit on my front porch now and watch the grass turn green. There are islands of brown spots at the moment, but I think they will come around with a few days of sunlight.

My horse paddock has turned into Lake Louise. It glimmers in the sun, no more than an inch deep. Off to the side sits our round pen, a perfect circle of raised sand and panels with another lake on the inside! And then there is what I call affectionately call “poop soup”. If you have ever given a small child a warm bath, you know what floaters are. I will leave you for a second to draw your own picture. Okay. Feeding the horses will be messy and slippery for a few days until the earth can soak up all the excess moisture or the sky takes it back up only to drop it somewhere else later! Eventually it will all settle and dry in the warm weather forecasted. We will go out with our rakes and forks and clean the debris. I love looking over a freshly groomed paddock, knowing full well it will be no more than a fleeting moment of accomplishment ~ kind of like cleaning the cat box. It is the perfect practice for “living in the moment”.

* annette