Golden Hour

There are two times each day when 

(on a sunny day)

the sun's rays shine horizontal across the land

making the most wonderful golden glow.

It's that hour right before dusk, the golden hour.

Everything green becomes electric.

The colors of the landscape pop.

It's the perfect time to take photographs.

I was out last evening during the golden hour getting an early start 

to the tuck-in routine.

I mucked the dry lot, cleaned all of the waterers and 

worked on shedding the horses.

I used the shedder and removed gobs of winter fur.

The ponies were quite curious about a muck bucket full of fur.

As I worked on the littles, Moonbeam sniffed around my pockets,

looking for treats.

There's a behavior that is common to horses known as mutual grooming.

I often see my horses standing face to face and neck to neck using

their front teeth to scratch each other on the withers.

While I was working on shedding Red,

he in turn began grooming Ollie and Donnie.

And then, in turn, Donnie began bumping me in the butt,

as if he was thinking about grooming me as well.

"No, thank-you, Donnie,"  and I moved a little out of his reach.

We had a spectacularly sunny day yesterday,

and much of the water from the previous day's showers began to evaporate.

By afternoon it was dry enough for us to get the mowing done.

Interestingly, there are underground springs in our front pasture that

bubble up right into the pasture when the water table is high....

giving us a little stream flowing through the lower end of the pasture.

With more rain predicted for the end of the week, I doubt

that this area will dry any time soon.

Luckily, with all of our grazers, we won't need to mow this pasture

for a few weeks.

The guineas have become systematically laying eggs in the rhubarb patch.

I harvest them and add them to the chicken and duck eggs collected for the day.

(Duck...Chicken...Guinea eggs)

As you can see, they are slightly smaller than the chicken egg.

And both are much smaller than the duck egg.

Little Sissy gave me a worry yesterday,

disappearing from the barn for most of the day.

Even Hissy was worried and meowed for her.

By evening, Sissy had returned.

It seems she is our adventurer...