Maybe living out in the country makes you think about
nature more. And you start taking a
personal interest in all that goes on around you even though it’s none of your
business—in other words, I’m nosey, but we’ve all known this all along. On drives, we pass one of the many horse
farms around here—one that has two black horses that I’ve never seen
apart. They trot around one after the
other; they stand way into the shelter of
the trees, one beside the other. Always
together. Today we passed by and I only
saw one black horse! For a few seconds
there, I had all sorts of tragedies going through my head and wondered what
could’ve happened to make them be on the outs from one another, then I saw the
other horse slowly walking over to his friend.
All was right in the world again.
There’s another horse—a Palomino, I think—that stands all
day inside this shed without anyone to talk to.
I always look for him and I’m so happy when I see that he is not
standing in the shed—hoping that this means he’s been let out of his fence to
romp around in the fields behind the shed, hopefully with other
horse-friends.
I was concerned about the horses that usually romp around in
the field behind our house because I hadn’t seen them all weekend. These are the ones I’ve written about that
chase the Canadian geese around. Anyway,
on the way home this evening, we got behind a horse trailer going slow, so
obviously the trailer was full and he didn’t want to be slinging around the horses
on the curves. When we got to the
driveway for the horse farm behind our house, the trailer turned in—our horses
are back home.
Driving around here can be treacherous, what with all the
things to look at and the curvy roads and the steep drops off the sides of the
roads on the mountaintops. Not to
mention that up here, it seems that the double centerline in the road is merely
a suggestion. Can’t tell you how many
times we round a curve and see the oncoming car a good bit of the way in our
lane. We followed a pickup truck the
other day who took every single curve by going completely into the other
lane! I was amazed that he didn’t crash
into any oncoming cars.
We put up our tree last night. Well, I should say that Ray put it up while I
ran to the grocery store and I returned home and was back here in the same room
for quite some time before Ray motioned to the tree—only then did I see
it!!! It was like it magically appeared
in that instant before my eyes. How do
you explain that? Very observant about
everything around me except for the huge lit-up tree standing in the living
room.
My bathroom is finally nearing completion. And I LOVE the dark gray paint!!! Such a peaceful and lovely place now,
especially compared to the old colors.
And now we’ve moved on to taking up the carpet in the great
room and putting down the hardwood floor.
I have to admit that the first moment we had one long good stretch of
the hardwood floor in place, I couldn’t resist getting a running start in my
socks and sliding across it like I used to do as a child. So much fun!!!
Putting in the floor itself is NOT soo much fun and is
definitely a learning experience. The
Lock & Fold Armstrong flooring we bought (which we had to go to a lot of
trouble to get because no one carried it anymore in the color I wanted so we
had to drive 2 hours to get it) doesn’t exactly just Lock & Fold. It’s a very different scenario when your
floor isn’t perfectly level in all places.
So after doing 5 rows and having it popping back up all over the place,
we have resorted to side nailing each piece.
It still isn’t perfect, but hey, what is. We have a system going where I get it sort of
locked in, Ray comes behind me and I had him nails then driver to hide the
nails then over and over again for each section. We now have 4 rows securely in. This is gonna be a lot more work than we
thought. But in two more days, the last
inch of carpet should be removed from the entire house. Yay for my allergies!
The fog was so thick this morning. And in the distance on the mountain above our
house, we can hear turkeys gobbling away.
Such a strange and unexpected sound.
And such an unexpected sight as we passed another farm
today—a horse with coloring I have never seen before. He was white but with small ovals of brown
dots all over him. It was like someone
had shaved his white fur in tons of places to let brown skin show through. He was very interesting.
Amazing sunset this evening—so brilliantly orange in color
that it looked like the forest was on fire.
Sunsets
Thick, thick fog
Friends at the gas stations
