with a thousand smiles they give to me free

Pie and Sovereign have had very full dance cards recently. Mom and I rode on Friday around our farm. The trails and honeysuckle were magical in the woods. We have wild roses that smell heavenly and mingle with the honeysuckle scent. There is also a Chinese Chestnut tree blooming, which is stinky up close, but from a distance creates a heady mix with the other two. When we were riding, honeysuckle blooms fell off and covered our boys rumps! I saw this white and yellow confetti all over Sovereign when they were walking in front and I realized that it must be honeysuckle. I turned around and Pie had the blooms all over his rump too. When we popped out into the field the bugs were awful - probably extra bad because of our honeysuckle "perfume".

On Saturday afternoon and evening Pie and Sovereign attended a graduation picnic! Our friends who live in the farmhouse on our property held a huge party for their daughter to celebrate her high school graduation. Pie and Sovereign's pasture fence is directly beside their lawn. The boys inspected the tent raising and entire pre-party set-up. The festivities started at 1pm and Pie and Sovereign were the biggest black ants at the picnic. They never left their post just in case a stray apple or carrot might come their way. They are so funny with no tact - they don't realize that they are staring. They just stand and stare at all the people and food and tiki torches and games - everything. Brian, Maizie, Mom and I went over to play tennis in the evening. Our tennis court is very close to an adjacent pasture, but Pie and Sovereign could not be coerced into coming into our pasture and leaving the party. They were so mesmerized by the music and laughter down at the farmhouse. What characters!

On Sunday morning Mom and I went for an early morning ride. It was cool and sunny and just perfect. We rode through our woods and then off our property and out to an adjacent woodland trail. We had to cut across a printing press business and Sovey left a manure present in their grass - we went back and cleaned it up later! We had another great ride.

Last evening I hopped on Pie bareback for a quick walkabout. I used a tall ladder to mount. Pie was sort of antsy so I ended up mounting from the off side. I have always heard that it is good to teach your horse to stand for you to mount from either side so we tried that and it worked well. He was so good even though Sovey was cantering around in the pasture trying to stir up trouble. Mom and Maizie were playing a Parcheesi game in the yard and Brian was milling about. Pie was so interested in the human activities that he couldn't be swayed into jumping around with Sovereign. Good thing for me!

Yesterday afternoon I was so tired from all our recent horse adventures that I came home for a nap. The breeze was blowing through our soft blue bedroom and it was so inviting - but some little Noodlebug beat me to it!