Exams are DONE!

AhhhhhHHHHHH! Finally! I'm done with school for the semester!!!! I just took my last final today! I think I did well in all my classes but we'll see when I get my final grades. So, now begins a summer of pregnancy, gardening, horses, and volunteering with a local vet. I'm also planning to take next year off school to be with baby and return the following year.

A lot has happened at our place in the last couple of weeks. Some good. Some bad. We had to put one of our dogs down because she attached our neighbor's dog. That was very hard, and it is still hard to believe that she's gone. Thankfully (for me) Jasper and Sage were not involved at all and so are still with me! I don't think I'd have dealt very well with having to put one of them down, even if they'd done something horrible.

We also picked up our little pony mule. She's doing great. She is so cute and very friendly. I don't have any pictures of her yet, but don't worry, there will be some soon. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to really like living with the cows. I mean, she's doing fine and hangs out with them just fine, but I can always hear her braying/neighing to my horses across the valley. She'd like some horse companions. Anytime anyone goes up to the barnyard, she comes running down for some attention.

We got our garden prepped and some of it planted, but I need to finish planting now that school is done. We got the cold weather stuff in two weeks ago.

I took the following pictures last week but I haven't had the time to post them.

Here is my herd hanging out with the neighbor's herd. They are conversing across the fence. They have a 12 foot space between them so they cannot actually interact, but they like to pretend.


Here is my front flower bed. It looks a little sparse now, but all those little green things sprouting are a wildflower seed mix I planted, so by mid-summer this bed should be absolutely exploding with color (at least that's my hope).



Here is our side yard that we recently planted in grass seed. The grass is finally starting to sprout. We had our doubts for a while, but I think it just needed to get warmer. Behind the hay mulch is our garden, and further back you can see the horses in the pasture.


This is the only part we got planted - these are onions, lettuce, sugar snap peas, beets, and radishes.



My herd has plenty of pasture now, but we still have a lot of hay left, so to reduce their pressure on the pasture, we keep the feeder full. They come in to eat out of it periodically throughout the day. They've become quite the close knit herd. Kachina and Griffin crack me up all the time - they both have so much energy and are always playing with eachother, rearing, running, just messing with eachother. Chico often gets implicated in these episodes too. But never Cody or Catlow.


They are almost all shed out now. Chico has dapples again this year. He had them last summer too, but I never saw dapples on him in Idaho (I never saw dapples on any of my horses in ID).


Kachina has shed out her dull faded winter coat into a bright peachy red summer coat. She looks very pretty.


But Cody's spring dapples beat every one elses! They are so vivid! Cody is a dark dark sooty buckskin and she now gets these dapples every spring as she sheds out of her dark winter coat into her lighter summer coat.


So, Griffin, Kachina, and Catlow do not get dapples, but they are beautiful none-the-less. Here Catlow shows off her lovely flaxen locks.