It's certainly not getting any cooler these days and we had our first big thunder storm late last night. Lightening was slashing all over the bay, the waves were beating the shore and bouncing the surf miles high, and the wind had the palm trees bent over asking for forgiveness.

Seems like the perfect time for a long overdue mare to foal, huh? The Mexican owner said the mare was due at the end of May and we believed him since she was obviously carrying a load of watermelons or a nice foal. The baby didn't come at the full moon. The baby didn't come at the new moon. The mare acted like everything was fine just leave her alone and she would make the calendar choices. Finally last night with the heavenly fireworks and the people safely tucked in and not paying any more attention she said, ok, now is the time. I guess the owner forgot what month he bred her.



Can you imagine this baby is less than 12 hours old?!



Mama is a good 15.2 or 15.3 hands.



She's not mine to name, but I think June Monsoon is fitting.



And Bella thinks she's still a baby and should have all this attention too.
"Hello!"

What I did yesterday with all that extra daylight in the day. I remembered to take a picture of my bright tree. I love that front yard tree at this time of year. It just blooms it's heart out and looks so lovely from far or near. Most of the year it drops those little leaves all over the patio but nevertheless it provides shady cover. I don't know what it is called because I've had several different names offered. Someone said it is a Red Jacaranda, and it probably is.



Then, Olivia (my friend's grand-daughter) and I took the girls out into the desert for a brief excursion. The sun was unrelenting and the whole group was ready to go back home within the hour. Olivia is a new horsewoman convert. Everyone welcome her into the club now. I put her on old Mochie because he would be the safest of our multi-safe horse family. Olivia is 10 and is about to sleep, eat, dream of horses. I have given her some of my most elementary and important lessons when working around horses, but haven't scared her off yet. Stuff like don't get down on your knees when cleaning hooves. (How many of you started sweating just then?) There does seem to be a very fine line in teaching respect for what the horse is capable of and the pure joy of being around them.

Happy Solstice

My daughter and I look forward to this summer solstice for 6 months. It's like Christmas to us. But when it's over, it's over. Since we are so far south now our day/night length of times doesn't change nearly as much as it did when we lived in Washington. My sun rose down here this morning around 5:30 and will be set by 7:30 tonight. Now don't you northerners laugh at me. I know you have 43 hours of daylight per day.

So let's get the most out of our daylight today.

Little Sonora at her first birthday. That cute little white nose makes it hard to get a pretty picture of her. She is the sweetest little girl ever and has no bad manners. Diane halters her, ties her, picks up all of her feet. I predict she'll be very easy to train the rest of the way because she just doesn't have a mean bone in her body.

There. That's a little better view of her beauty. And you can see that white marking around her neck that I call her pearls.

And here's handsome Billie, waiting his turn for a tidbit of attention.

Since the weather has heated up considerably many of the northerners have fled back up across the border and left us to enjoy the town with vacationing Mexicans. A few of my horse owner friends left explicit instructions to spoil their babies like I do my little Paris-Hilton-Bella, Princess of the barn. I love them all (except one big red gelding who must have been abused because of his attitude) and it's easy to want to spend extra time on each one. Yesterday I got Pony out to brush and curry and then applied the bright pink Swat to her belly sore. I also took her around to the hose area and sprayed off all the unwanted pee splatter from her back legs. Next I got out Billie to brush off and have a little chat with. Poor guy. He has really missed his man and yet is too proud to show it very much. I did catch him standing in the corner looking at the wall. He is a handsome paint who thinks he is in charge of the mares...which I guess most of those geldings think. After that the barn owner came out and said we should just put all the horses out into the desert for an hour so they could roll the flies off and chew on a few bushes. They were all thrilled for the freedom and the babies kicked up, caused havoc, and acted like it was a jail break.

About a week ago, little Miss Bella was out with her mother and sisters in the desert. Mom and the girls all came home in a few hours without Bella. Luckily Joe had seen her hanging around McCoy, a big black quarter horse gelding who roams the desert most of the time within a mile radius of his owners' home. Diane knew where McCoy hangs out on hot days and so went out looking for Bella. There she was standing over him as he lay under a tree (smoking a cigerette no doubt.) Diane had taken a rope along and easily put it over her head and started dragging her back home. Bella called back to McCoy the whole way home. When I showed up that evening Bella was staring longingly out the gate at McCoy who was waiting for her. She had that I-love-Shaun-Cassidy look on her face that my daughter used to get when looking at her poster-filled room. Poor little girl. Next heat cycle she's grounded.

Today is Sonora's first birthday. I'm going to go and try hard to get a good picture of her. She just doesn't photograph as cute as she is. I'll share if I get any good ones.

Dressage artistique/Artistic dressage

I guess Bella and I have quite a ways to go to achieve this.

Estados Unidos

We drove up and loaded up this weekend. The car was embarrassingly overfull on the trip back. A friend had requested 12 (twelve!) new bed pillows. Well that would have filled the whole back end so we only piled 6 in. It was a nice trip and, oh, we bought my husband the Sirius radio for his car. It's pretty wonderful to have live radio in English when we drive through the desert.
What did we buy besides pillows and a radio? Let's see. Tons of groceries. A new clock. Some blank DVD's. A new cheap phone. More groceries. A few bags full of Trader Joe's goodies. Some Asian food things. Soup. Celery salt. Of course, cheese, wine, mustard. BREAD.
I can buy some odd things down here that I prefer buying in the states. Maybe it's just because I'm used to my certain products. And, little by little we are finding more and more common products down here.
We lived in North Carolina way back in the mid 70's. At that time there weren't any Mexican food products there. So, I would haul refried beans and tortilla shells back from California so we could indulge. I guess my whole married life I've drug food from one location to another, so this isn't so completely different.
Oh AND I've got some new horse feed to introduce to Bella. I'm anxious to see how she responds to it. The old baby food I was supplimenting was so delicious that I'm sure she will be disappointed. We'll see.