Friday, June 30
Jul. 1st, 2023 01:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
More beautiful weather. Pretty hot again. We don't usually have such warm weather so consistently.
Getting the dishes done shortly after getting up. Nice to start the day off with getting something visible done.
We worked together on digging up more grass where I want to mulch.
Then we went to see River. I drove the car, and my Sweetie rode his bike. It's not that far, but I was surprised that he would bike on such a hot day.
He showed up at the barn as I was still getting ready to ride.
The number of granola bar wrappers has dropped dramatically. I only found one today. Still such a mystery!
We rode again today, and I felt that he was doing better with the transitions and more comfortable with the contact from the bitless bridle (we were riding without a bridle pretty much all winter and spring, until I started working on the equitation again).
We are still working on getting him to pick up the correct lead for the canter going to the right. He's not wanting to move that left hip over to pick it up. We did finally get it today, twice, but it's not consistent yet.
His breathing was not too bad, and I gave him lots of breaks because of the heat.
One thing that keeps coming up, is that I need to get more impulsion with him. That has been an issue from day one with us. I often FEEL like he is moving out fine, because I'm used to it, and he's a big horse so even a slow trot covers ground. The impulsion is what he needs to collect and to give him the "spring forward" energy for transitions.
It's hard to keep him in good enough shape for impulsion, because over the winter we ride in a tiny indoor arena and I can't get him too hot because of the freezing weather, in the summer his breathing can make it hard for him to work hard enough to improve his fitness.
Oh well. We do try.
We came home together (he put his bike on the bike rack of the car) and I worked more on the area I want to mulch, and he did the final wiping of the tiles in preparation hopefully for actual grout application.
I had to move a clump of day lilies out of the area I want to mulch. They were there from when I had a perennial bed in that spot before we did all the construction. I had moved most of it over to the garden area, but I guess there were a few roots still in the ground. In the few years that they were left undisturbed, they've already multiplied a fair bit.
Of course they were very full of grass roots, so I dug them up, by then my Sweetie joined me, and we cleaned off most of the soil and grass roots from the rhizomes, and moved them into the area by the garden.
It ended up being quite a job.
I'm amazed at how tough day lilies are. They were in fairly poor soil and I didn't water them through that extreme dry spell, and they made it.
I know a lot of people turn their noses down at them, because they are a little "common" and can be almost a weed, but I like their blooms and their toughness. Once you get a good patch going you hardly have to do anything with it, except clear away the dead leaves in the spring (I leave them over winter to protect the roots).
Then we came in and watched another movie we got from the store; "Champions", with Woody Harrelson. Yes, it falls right into that feel good "Mighty Ducks" genre, but it is also FUNNY. I enjoyed it. I love how Woody always has this kind of understated, nuanced delivery of his lines. He doesn't oversell.
I learned that there are honorary members of the Harlem Globetrotters, two of them being Popes.
Ten people have been officially named as honorary members of the team:[55]
Henry Kissinger (1976)
Bob Hope (1977)
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1989)
Whoopi Goldberg (1990)
Nelson Mandela (1996)
Jackie Joyner-Kersee (1999)
Pope John Paul II (2000) – Press agent Lee Solters arranged a ceremony orchestrated in front of a crowd of 50,000 in Saint Peter's Square in which the Pope was recognized as an honorary Globetrotter.[56]
Jesse Jackson (2001)
Pope Francis (2015)[57]
Robin Roberts (2015)[58]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Globetrotters
More beautiful weather. Pretty hot again. We don't usually have such warm weather so consistently.
Getting the dishes done shortly after getting up. Nice to start the day off with getting something visible done.
We worked together on digging up more grass where I want to mulch.
Then we went to see River. I drove the car, and my Sweetie rode his bike. It's not that far, but I was surprised that he would bike on such a hot day.
He showed up at the barn as I was still getting ready to ride.
The number of granola bar wrappers has dropped dramatically. I only found one today. Still such a mystery!
We rode again today, and I felt that he was doing better with the transitions and more comfortable with the contact from the bitless bridle (we were riding without a bridle pretty much all winter and spring, until I started working on the equitation again).
We are still working on getting him to pick up the correct lead for the canter going to the right. He's not wanting to move that left hip over to pick it up. We did finally get it today, twice, but it's not consistent yet.
His breathing was not too bad, and I gave him lots of breaks because of the heat.
One thing that keeps coming up, is that I need to get more impulsion with him. That has been an issue from day one with us. I often FEEL like he is moving out fine, because I'm used to it, and he's a big horse so even a slow trot covers ground. The impulsion is what he needs to collect and to give him the "spring forward" energy for transitions.
It's hard to keep him in good enough shape for impulsion, because over the winter we ride in a tiny indoor arena and I can't get him too hot because of the freezing weather, in the summer his breathing can make it hard for him to work hard enough to improve his fitness.
Oh well. We do try.
We came home together (he put his bike on the bike rack of the car) and I worked more on the area I want to mulch, and he did the final wiping of the tiles in preparation hopefully for actual grout application.
I had to move a clump of day lilies out of the area I want to mulch. They were there from when I had a perennial bed in that spot before we did all the construction. I had moved most of it over to the garden area, but I guess there were a few roots still in the ground. In the few years that they were left undisturbed, they've already multiplied a fair bit.
Of course they were very full of grass roots, so I dug them up, by then my Sweetie joined me, and we cleaned off most of the soil and grass roots from the rhizomes, and moved them into the area by the garden.
It ended up being quite a job.
I'm amazed at how tough day lilies are. They were in fairly poor soil and I didn't water them through that extreme dry spell, and they made it.
I know a lot of people turn their noses down at them, because they are a little "common" and can be almost a weed, but I like their blooms and their toughness. Once you get a good patch going you hardly have to do anything with it, except clear away the dead leaves in the spring (I leave them over winter to protect the roots).
Then we came in and watched another movie we got from the store; "Champions", with Woody Harrelson. Yes, it falls right into that feel good "Mighty Ducks" genre, but it is also FUNNY. I enjoyed it. I love how Woody always has this kind of understated, nuanced delivery of his lines. He doesn't oversell.
I learned that there are honorary members of the Harlem Globetrotters, two of them being Popes.
Ten people have been officially named as honorary members of the team:[55]
Henry Kissinger (1976)
Bob Hope (1977)
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1989)
Whoopi Goldberg (1990)
Nelson Mandela (1996)
Jackie Joyner-Kersee (1999)
Pope John Paul II (2000) – Press agent Lee Solters arranged a ceremony orchestrated in front of a crowd of 50,000 in Saint Peter's Square in which the Pope was recognized as an honorary Globetrotter.[56]
Jesse Jackson (2001)
Pope Francis (2015)[57]
Robin Roberts (2015)[58]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Globetrotters
