While having my breakfast, I received a text from Wrigley’s young trainer. Boy! This is the second ‘Wrigley update text’ I’ve received in less than a week. I think I love having an eager, young upstart college kid working Wrigley!  (He looks a little downhill in this pic – like he has no neck.)

Off to Lowe’s to get 10; 4x4s to create some shade for the horses. Except they didn’t have 10 footers, only 12 footers so I had to get a little creative in my Jeep.

This mess is a corner of our garage. Right now, this is the kitty feeding setup. It isn’t very well thought out. Basically, they all gather in the garage when I’m feeding the horses, so I feed them right there. It will change once I have the tack room set up, etc. All 4 cats are now living outside, using the garage as their home base. We leave the garage door open.

I spent some time working… The only way for me to keep the crazy puppy from barking and chasing phantoms is to let him into my office, which he loves.

A local reader told me that one good way to get the hay up off the sandy soil was to buy cracked grape bins from the vineyards. Luckily, I was able to purchase 4 from the vineyard where Hubby rented his little house before we found this house. These bins look very stable and are the perfect height to keep hay inside instead of spread all around. I will let you know how it goes. *Note, that is Rojo in the background. I have isolated him in the smallest pasture so that I can start working with him again. Yesterday he let me pet him all over. A great start! It is amazing how much they crave ‘touch’.  I still have to reroute all the hoses.  There is a more efficient way to work the water here…

I went to Lowe’s for stuff and coveted this refrigerator that was 50% off!! But, I couldn’t get it just yet.

Our garage is just a big hodgepodge mess of what we have not organized yet. As you can see, we have put our new trees in water tubs to keep them happy during this really hot weather. I’m not sure when we will plant them, but they are happy right now!

I hooked the truck up to the trailer in preparation for my trip tomorrow – back to Grass Valley to get all the things we left behind while trying to vacate so the new tenants could move in ‘right away’.

Hubby’s wild puppy, Bosco, runs the fence constantly, trying to herd the horses who do not respond to him, poor baby!

Wrigley is eating so much (and he needs it, he has always been lean but he got skinny over the past several months when he was in training in GV) that I had to bring him more hay already! So, I purchased for bales to be put into my truck and then I drove my truck up to the Work Ranch and kicked off the bales. I couldn’t lift them, but this way was easy. Anyway, Wrig was begging me to take him home! He doesn’t like the work stuff at all! Ha! Here you can see that he is with all the other ranch horses. Today, he was in the rodeo chute on the side of the ginormous arena. So much for him to watch! He had tons of food, which was great, and lots of water. Eat uup!

Here he is, showing me how tall he has become. I’ve NEVER seen leftover hay in his paddock so they must be free feeding him. Wrig never even touched the hay while I was there. He was actually FULL. I couldn’t believe it. I love this. I want him to fill out and muscle up while he’s there!

I was out of hay so I had some delivered today. I wasn’t sure how much would fit in between these two sheds. I still have not solved the hay storage issue. But for now, this works. The two horses behind the stack are Remi and Sam.

Here I am walking towards the front of the property. What you cannot see is the front field which slopes down from the brown bark part to the road. I still have to fence that part. Right now, it is wild and weedy. It will be nice to have a nice fence and horses cleaning it up out there.  (As you can see, the windshield is the only clean thing on my car!)

A huge rock cracked my windshield and the streak went all the way across in just a day or two. So, our insurance gave us a new windshield – so the guy came out today to install it . So easy! He came, he fixed it, he left!

This was taken in my office just as the sun was about to fade away. My beloved cactus community was knocked over by the cats and traumatized. I lost 70% of it. But, I see now that it is coming back, slowly… The Charlie Brown tree on the right is an evergreen that I got at the State Fair when it was just a slip. One of the horses bit the main stalk right off! I felt so badly for it that I planted it in a terracotta and have been babying it for about a year. We will see how it does. I love having the plants in the lovely shaded sun. Perfect for them. Oh, and the book is about the Madonna Family. They are very prominent in this county. Google THE MADONNA INN in San Luis Obispo. The story is remarkable. My Dad used to take me there when I was a kid to have their awesome breakfasts. I have great memories so I display the book where i can see it.

Such a handsome and distinguished gelding.