Well, what a difference a week can make, especially here in the prairies in spring. It finally stopped snowing and raining, the clouds have departed, and the temperatures have shot up. In fact at the moment, early evening, it’s still too hot (28C/82F) to take the dogs out for their post- supper walk, and I have the air conditioning turned on. As with all short-nosed, deep-chested breeds, my Boxers don’t deal well with heat and can suffer serious health consequences from heat stress. We’ll have to switch to “summer hours” for walking, later in the evening when the sun and the temperature have both dropped. Suits me fine. I don’t deal well with heat myself, although warmth is sure welcome after the past month or so.
It’s been a good week with a variety of photo ops and lots of time spent outdoors, in the home yard/garden, at the stables, and at a client shoot. Funny how a person can switch so quickly into a whole different mode according to the external temperature. All the stuff that I “needed” to do indoors (even in the studio) now suddenly seems sort of irrelevant and definitely something that can wait to get done (other than meeting a few client deadlines, that is!). Goodness knows there is lots to do in the yard, and outdoor puttering is the order of the day. We’ve had a late start for many of the permanent plant residents (aka perennials, shrubs and bushes) and there are quite a few that look like they didn’t make it through the winter at all and won’t be “starting” ever again. This includes some plants that we have had in our yard for many years, but those are the breaks. We had a very odd fall, very mild then suddenly intensely cold, so that the normal fall “shut-down” and internal winter plant prep didn’t happen, with a relatively high mortality rate as a consequence. I’m trying to look at it as an opportunity to renew the parts of the yard that were hardest hit.
I made it out to North Fork stables to do some photos on one of the first lovely days last week. Shot one shows Orion, one of the youngsters from last year’s foal crop. He was a tender little baby last year when I photographed him, quite unlike the strapping yearling (full of attitude and joie de vivre) that he has become. Here he is running the fence-line with his sire on the other side of the fence.
Shot two is also from the North Fork photo session. Here is part of the mare and foal herd thundering off. So far this year there are five foals on the ground, three more to come! If you compare these little guys to the visuals of Orion in shot one, you can readily appreciate how much size these horses can put on in one short year.
Today was herd health day for the “old boys club”, of which my retired Thoroughbred, Lord Native, is a charter member. Club headquarters are at my friend Donna’s acreage south of the city. Shot three is one I took this afternoon as I was heading out there. Nice to see the farmers out and able to work the land in preparation for planting. One of the things that always amazes me (and I’m from here so I shouldn’t be surprised, but always am) is how fast it gets dusty. It can be pouring rain for weeks on end (as indeed it has been), but usually within about one day of the rain having stopped, there’s blowing dust. Unless, of course, you’re looking at the turnout paddocks at Ebon Stables, which seem to defy this law by staying deeply and intensely muddy forever.
We don’t get bluebirds in the city, but in the countryside to the south and west of the city, they are plentiful. There are many areas where the locals have installed numerous bluebird houses along the farm fences, and these are well used by the returning bluebirds. I took shot four of a mountain bluebird at Donna’s while I was waiting for the vets to work on Native. Despite the fact that we are nowhere near the mountains, we are in the summer breeding range for this species.
Shot five shows Native himself, hanging out near the neighbours while his regular companions were in the barn getting checked out. He was relatively calm for a while, but just before I needed to bring him into the barn, he suddenly decided a frantic search for his missing room-mates was in order, and he covered quite a lot of territory in a relatively short time in the process. I haven’t seen him do anything other than a slow amble for several years, and it was really nice to see that his trot and canter are still there and in good working order. I was trying to get his attention as he was rushing about the pasture in search mode, and since he is fairly blind (which is why he didn’t know where his friends had gone ) I was a bit concerned that he wouldn’t see me in his path and stop before he ran over me. I got enough of his attention with voice and waving arms to get him stopped so I could get a lead shank on him, luckily for me. Didn’t have the camera with me through all this action, sadly, as it would have been nice to get a few shots. He is thirty years old (and the youngest of his group of three) and all things considered looks pretty darn good. He’s still got some long winter hair to get rid of, but compared to the thin wreck he was last fall, he now looks great. Donna takes it as a personal challenge to keep the ravages of time and the elements away from the old boys, and she does a pretty darn good job of it. We think his big weight loss last summer was related to the fierce insect attacks of mid and late summer, so I’ll get him a fly sheet this year and with any luck that will do the job.
On the way home today I noticed a couple of largish birds hovering over the fields along the river. I stopped and got a couple of shots of them, not sure if they were a pair of hawks or the ravens I had seen there before. They were fairly high up, and mostly silhouetted against the sky, so a little hard to see. When I got the photos downloaded and zoomed in on one to see what it was, I was surprised to see that they were turkey vultures. If I’d realized that at the time, I’d have hung around a little longer in hopes of them soaring a bit closer. I’ve only ever seen turkey vultures once or twice before. It does explain why the shapes didn’t seem right for either a hawk or a raven, though! If I do get any decent shots, I’ll post them here.
©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
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