I saw some very interesting birds at the feeder the other day. They were beautifully colored, and kept passing something back and forth between them.

From Wikipedia: “During courtship the male and female will sit together and pass small objects back and forth, such as flower petals or an insect. Mating pairs will sometimes rub their beaks together affectionately.”

From whatbird.com: “A group of waxwings are collectively known as an “ear-full” and a “museum” of waxwings.”

As Emily mentioned, we currently have another pony.  He’s a very big pony – big enough for Emily and me to ride.  We may buy him, but for now we’re trying him out for two weeks.  We haven’t ridden him yet, but hopefully tomorrow we’ll be able to.  His name is Sancho, and he’s a nice old guy who is very calm and not spooky, even though he likes to race down the road from time to time.  He and Cowboy took to each other right away, and they both seem happy being out there together.

Delia has been using my old microscope that my Dad bought me when I was little.  It works, but it’s showing its age.  For one thing, you have to hold the light bulb in with tape to make it work.  I’ve been wanting to get her another one and looking online for surplus ones.  Emily suggested requesting one on Freecycle, so I did, and luckily for us, someone offered a really nice professional one.  I went to pick it up today and we spent a couple hours this evening looking at my old slides, making our own, and watching all the little tiny creatures that live in pond water.

I think our old chickens have pretty much given up laying, at least for now.  We’re now getting 6-8 eggs per day from our 11 chickens.  Three of them are the old ones.  We can usually tell their eggs because they’re enormous, and the last enormous egg we got was June 7th, and before that they were pretty few and far between.  On other farms, they would be called soup, but on ours we call them retired.  That means we continue to feed them and give them shelter, and they don’t do anything in return except to amuse us with their scratching.

We have another horse visiting, and had an adventure with him on the first day!  He got dropped off Thursday evening, and we just put him in the paddock with Cowboy.  They got along great, we gave them some treats, sprayed them with some bug spray, and that’s it.

Friday morning, we decided to let them out of the paddock.  Where Sancho has lived most of his life, they would bring him out of the pasture and let him just walk around grazing.  I don’t really know why we thought we could do that the FIRST day we had him, but we did.  We are stupid.  We had both he and Cowboy out for a while, but Cowboy was kind of running all over the place so Ryan tied him up, which is our normal thing we do with him, we tie him onto one of those big spools we have with a long rope.

For an hour or two, everything was great.  Ryan was keeping an eye on them and Sancho was staying right around Cowboy.  I had some friends over, and we all went outside.  I was going to try to stay in the front yard away from the horses, but of course things never go as planned and my friend and I and our kids (4 of them – her youngest was still sleeping in her car) made our way to the back yard.  Sancho loves kids, and I wasn’t surprised when he kind of trotted over to say hi.  We got all the kids up on the trampoline because kids around horse feet is just too nerve-wracking.

Cowboy neighed for Sancho to get back over there, which he did, but I guess that’s when Sancho realized HE wasn’t attached to anything.  He trotted back up to us, and then made his way over by the porch where Ryan was.  I yelled for Ryan to come out to try to contain him, but Sancho kept on going.  He went around the house and it looked like he may turn back into the backyard, but as soon as he saw the road, he was off.

Ryan was running after him, but losing ground.  As soon as I saw Sancho go down the road I ran for the ATV, which thankfully THANKFULLY wasn’t still on the trailer from last week!  I chased Sancho down the road, caught up with him once and got in front of him and he stopped, but I wasn’t close enough and when I got off the ATV and went towards him, he started going again.  I had to RUN back to the ATV and get going after him again.  By this time we’re within a 1/8 mile of the highway…

Luckily Sancho turned off into a field and I was able to get in front of him again and close enough while he was stopped to grap his rope.  Which I also realize, while I was thinking it was probably stupid to have it on him while he was out because he could have tripped himself, if he hadn’t had that rope on there’s no way I would have ever caught him – he would have just leaned away if I had reached for his halter.  Whew.  So, I had him.  In our neighbor’s yard pretty much, when I was standing there catching my breath and in disbelief of what happened, Sancho was huffing and starring at this target buck thingie.  He probably thought it was some strange immobile horse.

I walked Sancho over to Ryan, who had run the rest of the way down the road and Ryan walked Sancho back while I hurried back on the ATV.  I was glad my friend was there to be with the kids!  We are super glad it all turned out OK, and that is one BIG lesson learned!  Sancho wasn’t even running fast, just a trot but man.  Horses move!  I was in fourth gear on the ATV, going faster than I normally ever do just to keep up with him.  After he was back in the paddock, Ryan and I had adrenaline pumping and I couldn’t really stop thinking about the whole dramatic thing.  I realized that while I was racing after him on the ATV I was yelling “woah Sancho!” and Ryan told me he was doing the same thing from 50-75 feet behind him!  Needless to say, that didn’t work.

So, that’s Sancho’s first day here.  He’s a 20-22 year old (that’s old – we were worried about his age but I’m not anymore!) quarterhorse/shetland pony cross, which basically means he’s a really big pony.  Really big, I think – I’d call him a horse but maybe I’m just wimpy.  He’s big enough for Ryan or I to ride, which is cool, and very very gentle and a great learning horse for all of us.  We have him on a two week trial, so as long as we manage to keep him alive we’ll see how it goes.  If we do keep him, it’d be really really great if we could expand the paddock so they can run around a little bit and also get over to the water so we don’t have to haul water in the winter.

Henry has been obsessed with his Bob the Builder dolls – especially the big one, named Big Bob.  He carries him around all the time and when we’re away from home, he asks for Big Bob and wants to go home and see him.  He likes to sit him up on the couch and then sit next to him to watch TV.  Sometimes he puts one or both of the smaller Bobs on Big Bob’s lap.

Delia had her first baseball practice tonight!  It was very spur of the moment.  Our neighbor came over and told us baseball was starting tonight (her husband is the coach, which is great since Delia knows him).  Delia said she wanted to try it, so we did.  It’s VERY informal, and I’m going to be helping out at practices.  The coach pitches and batters get 5 strikes.  The kids range in age from 3 to about 7.  Delia got a hit on her second pitch.  Games are Mondays and Wednesdays at 6:00, and there are 8 away games.  Who knows how long she’ll stick with it, but for now she’s excited.  She wanted to practice hitting when we came home today.

We went to Virginia to get cattle panels to make a movable goat grazing pen, and blades for the lawn mower.

Henry rolled his 4 wheeler today.  He’s fine, but he was scared!  He took it down the road himself and when Emily realized he was gone, she saw him walking back by himself, crying.  He went off into the ditch.  Hopefully now he’ll know his limitations!

The goats are doing fine, and we’re really getting a kick out of them.  They’re all doing well with the bottle now, and they really suck it down.  We’ve gone through four gallons already.  Cowboy still isn’t very fond of them, but the plan is to slowly get them to be friends, so the goats can move in with him.  They love to climb on their little spool in their stall, and on the gravel pile outside.  They get to the top and then head butt each other off.  Moon is still a little scared of me – some times more than others – but Cosmo is very friendly now, and Banjo is almost friendly to a fault.  They love to be out on the yard, and they stay right near us and follow us around.