cooler today

It is halfway through the year. The older I get it never ceases to amaze me how fast the time seems to go by.  Summers were endless as a kid, you finally looked forward to school starting. Now, as July 1st approaches, I think, "It is almost September, that means Thanksgiving and Christmas are around the corner!! and I have a wedding in there too...". But this morning I will enjoy this cooler day. I thought I was going to melt yesterday, it was sooo humid. The horses were waiting at the gate by 6AM to come in. Today is supposed to be less humid, so I am trying to leave yearling fillies and some mares out so I have fewer stalls. The show is over, they can just go be horses for awhile. I may even ride today it is so nice. It is Michael's birthday today and we are going to Cheesecake Factory with his mom. I brought a big cake home last night and we started already to enjoy his birthday- nothing like chocolate cake and ice cream before bed!

post yearling show

The yearling show was yesterday, long day. A friend brought her groom who saved my life, my feet anyway. He was kind enough to walk ll three yearlings and as this judge was a slow one, it would have killed me to be standing in the sun with rank babies. Thank you Alex, thank you. We made the first cut with two of the yearlings but this year my entries were not the judges' "type". He was looking for perfect "sales" yearlings and bumpy knees and on the small side kept me out of the ribbons. Oh well, it makes me realize how lucky I was the year I won the championship with Chessie. It is a big accomplishment to win and losing makes you cherish the win even more. It is always interesting to see which new sires have the winners. Corinthian was the sire of this year's champion. Scipion and Cherokee's Boy had good looking individuals as did Latent Heat. It helps in future breeding decisions to really spend the day looking at the next generation's yearlings.  But there are fewer and fewer Maryland sires worth looking at. Sad for the future I am afraid. This morning has dawned grey and overcast which I am thankful for, as I have a whole barn to clean and sort out this morning as nothing got done yesterday. The horses can all stay out for a while! Now I can look forward to next project , which  will hopefully be completing the Hunt Club calendar and book about our 75th anniversary.

Summer solstice

This picture is a sunset several nights ago, so beautiful.  Appropriate for today, I thought, because it  is summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Maybe will do a movie with a friend, though I might prefer martinis with the hubby and stay out on patio  to watch a sun set about 9:30??? or so.  Might just finally make the s'mores that are in the cupboard. I am very busy working the yearlings for the MD yearling show this Sunday. I won it a couple of years ago and it was very gratifying to actually get a ribbon! for all the hard work. It is lonely, unacknowledged work with babies most of the time. You sell them as yearlings and hope they go on to race well, but nobody really notices the long hours put into mare and foal care.  A client of mine was asked why he had bought racehorses and broodmares and he told me he answered that he loved watching them in the field and it was a stress- reliever. I think that is true for all of us. We love them and love watching them. I know I love the unspoken communication and I take it for granted most of the time  because it is what I do. It is only when I am around other people who do not speak "horse" that I realize it is a language made of of inflection and postures and the tilt of an ear or the glance of a warm, liquid eye. It is "spoken" by the wrinkle of a soft nose or the warm breath snorted gently at my face. I love to watch the boss mare warn the newcomer of the rules or the bitchy mare just be bitchy because....  I have seen foals play "hide and seek" with each other and I currently have a yearling that loves his soccer ball! He kicks it, throws it and just plain enjoys it.  But it is time to feed this afternoon, so, I hope you all enjoy this long evening!

a Maryland Nantucket morning

It is the most perfect morning. I would call this a Nantucket morning, cool and clear and brilliant- just missing the water ( in my backyard anyway).  This is the weather that generations ago, everyone went north for, to Nantucket and Maine, to escape the humidity and heat of DC and the South. From DC and Baltimore they went to Campobello Island (FDR) and the breezes of Nantucket. Farther south they left the rice plantations of the SC and Georgia coasts and went to the mountains, the Smoky Mountains and the Appalachian coolness. The magnificent estates like Biltmore and Greenbrier  were all built by a generation with no air conditioning. I wonder if the summer economies have  slowly dwindle in these retreats as a younger generation with cold blasting in their homes all summer looked for other pleasures, not simply to escape heat. I have never gone to Nantucket because I wanted warmer ocean waters to play in. I went to Nag's Head. But I have friends, who grew up going to the northern beaches because they did as children. These friends had wealthier parents than mine. It is just interesting that they (or we) continue the pattern set as children and take our kids to the same summer places.  Nobody swims in Maine or Nantucket, the water is freezing but you do eat great lobsters. Swimming off NC is one of the best memories I have and I can close my eyes sitting in my backyard and relax for a bit replaying those walks on the beach.  So, today, this is a morning for my Nantucket friends to relax, have a cup of coffee and smell that salt air with a preppy sweater thrown around your shoulders as you sit and enjoy New England memories.

beautiful sunrise

The sunrise was gorgeous this morning. My final snapshot almost looks like molten pools of lava in the sky, as though standing on the rim of a volcano looking down into the heart  of fire. I love the dawn. It is a moment of meditation when everything seems to pause to watch the sunball break the horizon. The birds sing, the dogs sit and watch with me, and the world seems alright again. I think it is that it rises everyday at the exact moment it is expected. How strange would it be to be waiting for the sunrise and have it not appear!!. That must have been the hysteria that came with an eclipse, the fear of what that could portend for the world. Anyway . all is right. The sun came up and lit up the world.
On a somber note, a friend told me of an English friend who was arrested 6 months ago off the horn of Africa and since then has been detained for possible "spying"  in Eritrea. Diplomatic help has been very slow and she is distraught for her friend. Send a prayer for their release.

June hot

The fireball has topped the trees and it is going to be a hot one. Was supposed to replace patio doors today, all three large glass ones, but I postponed it when I realized it was going to be a record breaking hot day. Did not want to try to air-condition the whole back yard!  Hopefully it is cooler next week. Going to do stalls and only work one yearling today. Polly has an abscess and it out for awhile, so horses can chill too. Mares try to stay cool down by stream, under the trees but they are still dripping with sweat by mid afternoon. Tho' it is still cooler out with little breeze than all in barn. I am glad that I don't have babies this year, it is so hard to keep babies with furry coats cool in these temperatures. Thankfully next year they should all be foaled by late April. When the blacksmith was paring Polly's hoof , looking for cause of lameness, we were both peering down and I said , " It's so nice when something just pops and the pus comes right out, then you at least know what it was!" No sooner had I said it that his knife released a stream of black, tarry, yucky something. Not exactly what I was mentioning when I said pus but at least it is probably the cause of her lameness. It looks really old and gross so, hopefully,  soaking and drawing with icthyamol and wrapping will do the job. She is still off but not as bad so fingers crossed.

Chessie's trail rides

The sky is ominously grey at the moment, 6:45 AM, but I am about to go get Chessie and trail ride. I actually love this weather, reminiscent of a stormy beach morning when the ocean is quietly roiling.  Silver on top but you just know it would be a bad idea to go swimming. I hope it does not actually storm on our ride. Chessie is the mare who was very sick last year. She is the most laid-back, laziest horse, let alone TB that I have ever had. Trail riding is the only way to get her to go. Her normal speed, alone, at home, is walk -slowly. She has a lovely canter but she seems to only want to do it with others horses around to see. Reminds me of a prima donna . She will only perform when there is an audience or she is like a dog that thinks "fetch " is only for stupid owners.  "You threw it, you go get it!", is written all over her face. When doing the hunter paces this spring Chessie was smart enough to figure out very quickly that there is no reason in the world to jump a free standing coop, log, whatever. If the jump was in the middle of a field with no wings or fence line she went around. If it was a jump in a tree line, fence , any sort of perimeter she was happy to jump 4 ft . This is one smart horse.
Have to mention something funny that happened yesterday. I like to get a little sunbathing done once in awhile, just to get some color on these pale legs. I only lie outside when I am home alone, it is 80 degrees, not 95, and it is about noon. I take a little siesta on the lounger behind the house, looking at the  back field. Yesterday I opened my eyes after resting quietly for about 20 min. I was probably pretty motionless but was still horrified to open my eyes, squint at the sun and watch 5 or 6 vultures circling high above me. I knew I was white but was shocked to think I looked dead! I looked around for a dead animal but didn't see anything. Maybe it wasn't me they were checking out but I have a bad feeling it was - creepy. I need more suntan or I need to quit altogether! Only on a horse farm do the vultures check out anything white, lying still.

memorials

We went to see Rolling Thunder this Memorial Day Sunday in DC. I have driven passed them many times on my way to the hound show at Morven Park, which always falls on the same Sunday. But this year we went with son Will and girlfriend, Annie, into DC and those bikes just kept coming - for three hours they rolled around the Capital. It was pretty incredible. After 1 hr of a picnic on the Mall and watching curbside where it was patriotic and moving, we wandered into a Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show's photographic history in the International Museum. After reading "Empire of the Summer Moon" it was very interesting to see these old prints of Sioux Indians in full dress- albeit in Buffalo Bill's show- but they are a very noble looking people. We came out and the motorcycles were still rumbling around. I couldn't believe there were so many!  I had a momentary vision of being circled by thousands of Indians on horseback if it had been 150 years earlier.
It has gotten so hot so fast. I only have energy to work the yearlings early before retreating to the air conditioning. Yesterday I watched the Oprah Winfrey finale that I had missed while in Charleston and was surprised at how very moving a tribute it was. Maybe I was just tired but I found myself in tears, choked up many times by the 'thank you's' she was receiving from the thousands of people she has inspired. Especially moving as the Morehead University's tribute from 400 young black men who received her scholarship and their words about that life -changing experience. It was truly awe inspiring that, as she put it , "a lonely little black girl, from backwoods Mississippi, has changed the lives of so many people", and that her example has forever changed the expectations of a generation of women. Beyonce's song about women ruling the world seems prophetic- I bet we do have a woman president before long! A very fitting memorial to Oprah and I didn't even watch her very much!