Good bye May...

That's a wrap for May 2024.

We made it one more month!

Spring did its Springing and babies were born. I saw a newly hatched Sandhill Crane! I saw leaves sprout and come out in full force!

Yesterday, after checking fences, I saw a fawn standing in the pasture staring at me. When I pulled the photos from the trail camera in the woods, I saw another fawn. They are cute little buggers aren't they?

I found 3 morel mushrooms.

I found several meals of Golden Oyster mushrooms!

We saw some amazing lights in the sky with the Aurora Borealis.

We had rain. Rain, rain...

and for the first time in a year, we had water flowing in our creek again!

Our Ridge had a new human birth! Now the little ones out number the elders on the ridge!

We mowed our yard more often in May than we did all last year.

I took a sneak peak at my 'logged' hikes/walks which are not terribly accurate because I don't always take my cell phone with me when I go check fences and whatnot. This month I had 27 miles of hikes that I actually was mindful of 'logging'.  

I enjoyed 4 great hikes. Two at Duck Egg and two at KVR. All of those hikes were meandering hikes up and down hills while searching for spring flowers.

I'm looking forward to June.

Tomorrow I am doing a long hike which I've done before a couple of times. Two ladies from the gym are joining me. So this should be very interesting.

One youngster is a nurse who visits our local nursing homes. She is easily 20 years younger than me. The other lady is closer to my age. She raises show quality sheep. We kayaked together last year on the Mississippi River.

We aren't going to try and break hiking records, but are going for fun and I'm sure the conversations will be interesting. Put three ladies together on a journey and you each learn more about each other.

Goodbye May.

Welcome June. 

Camping

'Oh Gramma, it is dark in here!'

I look around and indeed it is dark in the gooseneck of our horsetrailer. But we were camping out...Ariel's first real campout.
Well, not out in the woods in a tent camp out, but a camp out inside our horse trailer sleeping quarters...camp out.

So this was a grand new adventure.

'It's not SO dark Ariel if we move the curtains and let the starlight in.' I parted the curtains on each side of the sleeping area.

The starlight flowed in and lit up our sleeping area.

'Oh, I see Lil' Richard the pony!' She was quiet for a moment then said. 'But Gramma, what if something tries to get us?'

[every little kid's fear, I guess]

Lil' Richard was tied to a stake not far from the horse trailer, doing what he does best, trimming.
We could see him in the starlight, his white patches seemed to glow.

'Well,' I said, 'Lil' Richard will keep us safe, he is guarding us. If anything comes this way, he will whinney and prance and scare it off.
Besides, we have Morris and he'll also keep us safe.'

'Oh good,' Ariel patted Morris who wiggled happily. [Morris is always happy!]

That seemed to satisfy Ariel enough so that she could cuddle down with her blanket.
Morris of course had to find the perfect spot between us to sleep. He too was tired and took no time at all falling asleep.

We'd had a very busy day. Hiking in the woods, finding morel mushrooms, visiting with the animals...and taking walks.
Ariel, Morris, and I fell asleep with the starlight filtering through the horse trailer windows and the noises of farm animals eating hay...an owl hooted in the distance...

...and all was peaceful.

Of course until the sun broke the horizon and the animals began to bray...
then it was time to get up and Ariel was bright eyed and ready to go.

Grandma was a bit bleary eyed and ready...well ~~ I got up anyway, for I knew I could get some coffee in the house.

Today we were going to go riding on the mules!