Meanwhile Back at the Ranch... (A Photo Blog)

In the tradition of sharing photos along with associated comments, here's my contribution.

Okay. Yeah. You got me. I didn't have time to come up with an actual blog this week, but you know what they say...a picture is worth a thousand words. So here's 19,000 worth. Bam! :D

I'm enjoying my first summer without a day job and I must say, "Ah, this is the life. Please pass me another raspberry iced tea." But that's probably a little further from the truth than I care to admit.

Aside from spending a good amount of time inside parked in front of my computer (hey, wait...isn't that what I did when I worked for a living???), I do have a little more time to enjoy some of my other previously neglected pastimes.

White Petunias

Liiiiiike [ta da]...enjoying the flowers in my patio garden.

The patio garden has marigolds, petunias, tomato and pepper plants.

A shady place to enjoy. Yes, that's a weeping willow...
though a pretty anemic one...at right. It doesn't do
that well in our climate but it's well over 20 years old.

Purple Petunias


 



White Asian Lilly

Orange Asian Lilly

Tulips from earlier this spring.

White Tulips around a Black Locust.

We have a lot of Black Locust trees that we've planted
over the years. Black Locusts have beautiful clusters
of white blooms that smell really heavenly.

This is a cholla (choy-yah) cactus. We've eradicated acres of these buggers from the property because that have very nasty spines that are extremely painful for dogs, horses and people.

The soil and water conservation district actually paid us to chop them down and haul them away as a pasture improvement project.


The older ones have a very thick trunk at the base almost like a tree, and are so tough that they'll bloom months after they've been cut down.



We left this one stately old grandfather cholla in the front of the house as a legacy.

Each spring it flowers in these gorgeous, bright magenta blooms. We're just careful not to get too close to it.















My two house dogs, a pair of black and tan miniature long-haired dachshunds--one solid, one piebald--are more affectionately known as "The Minions" and "The Muppy Puppies."

Say hello to Katrina and Luna.

Katrina (solid) is eleven and we've had her since 2009. Luna (piebald) was just acquired this summer and is five years old. Both dogs came from the same breeder and are, in human terms, aunt and niece.

These two are the fourth and fifth mini-longhairs I've owned dating back to my teens. As you can probably guess, I'm very partial to the breed.

Here they are enjoying a little patio time.

Katrina (front) and Luna (back).

Luna is very curious. She wanders around to check everything out.

(Argh! Ya caught me in my slippers.)

Then there are the equine inhabitants of our little rancho--three Thoroughbreds and an Irish Sport Horse. 

Here they are grazing in the grass of our very, very dry pasture. (Pray for monsoons!) I'll explain who's who and what's what in the captions.


This is Blaze. She's dual registered as both a Thoroughbred
and as an Oldenburg after completing confirmation inspection
and being accepted into the sport horse registry.

This is Blaze (right) with our other Thoroughbred broodmare,
Soulful, or "Sofie." Blaze is the dam of Blazing Away.
Soulful is the dam of Echo Eight.
 

This is our yearling filly, registered as Inherit the Stars.
We call her "Star" for short. Her dam is Soulful.
Her sire is Stellar Rain, a son of Storm Cat and
millionaire race mare Stellar Jayne.
Velvet, our Irish Sport Horse, is behind her.
Irish Sport Horses are half Irish Draught and half Thoroughbred.
 

Velvet is more visible in this picture (on right). Her registered
name is Irish Touch, but she served a number of years as a
U.S. Blue Devils military mount, where she was known as
Midnight Mission. We bought her in Michigan as a four year old.
Her sire was imported from Ireland and named County Down Sam.
He was reportedly owned by a partnership that included Ted Nugent.
 

So now you've had the nickel tour around our place. Hope you enjoyed the photos.

Have a great week.

Laurie