Wednesday Feb 27th 2008

I dont know if I have posted this photo before but it is one of my attempts at "fine art" using photographs. This is a picture of Dream's head looking over Eb and Blaze's back.

What y'all think???? Do you think there is hope for me still as a starving artist/photographer, horse lover LOL.
This second shot is from a farm shoot I did last year. I had to cut him out, he had a wooden fence and a red barn behind him, and put him on a new background. I think it worked pretty well and it printed as an 8"x10" really well.

Taxes' wound is coming along, it still looks awful but we are managing to keep it clean and it doesnt seem to be bothering him from a pain perspective at all. I still have no clue how he did this to himself, so it will remain a mystery. The only thing I can think of is that one of the colts on the other side of the bars kicked him, a lucky shot betweeen the bars, when they were playing.

I am still working on getting my stock photos together, catagorised and sent into the Agency. I have so many pictures and it is going to be a long never ending task. One of my projects I have set for myself is to get at least 5 done each day and so far I am keeping that up.

Had lots more snow again, not quite as bad as Chicago and north of us but it started melting yesterday and then froze into an icerink this morning.

Got another stable stripped today so we are making progress. Hope everyone is staying warm. ((((Hugs))))

Lori
xx

More Snow

I went and posted my pics and post for today on my other blog by mistake (bad when the brain starts failing you LOL) so I am going to link to it there. Just a warning for those who havent been there before there are pictures of snakes and Taxes' wound on this blog but if you just look at this latest one you wont see any of them!!! Promise!!!

http://loriscritters.blogspot.com

Lori
xx

Not a Great Start to The Weekend

I may have posted this photo of Taxes before but it just lifted my spirits a bit as he had yet another accident yesterday and has left a huge wound on his right chest. I have no idea how he did it and he was such an ujnhappy little horse yesterday. The vet opted to leave it open because we are not dealing with flies thank heavens because it is still cold here. I will post pictures on my other blog http://loriscritters.blogspot.com for the more squeemish. I wanted to at least give you the choice of seeing him looking beautiful or the more gory stuff.

The weather has been up and down, we managed to miss the freezing rain but have about 6 inches of snow on the ground. I put the horses out yesterday when the temps came up into the 20s low 30s and left them out last night. It looks like I will be able to do that for a few days because with the ground staying frozen I can feed them off the ground which is easier than having them fighting over feedpans and it ending up spread over the whole field once they have settled down to who is eating which pile!!! It is also allowing me to try to get some of the stalls stripped, we had someone come over for a few hours yesterday and he got two stalls stripped and rebedded and says he will be back on Monday to do some more.

Other than that, nothing exciting has been happening here at this little paint horse farm other than me struggling more every day.

Thanks everyone for your comments and visits, I am lurking at a lot of the blogs and trying to get some comments in here and there and trying to get my life back onto a more positive note.

(((((Hugs))))))

Lori

Another Cold February Day

I was sifting through some old shots again today and found this one. It is one I shot back in April/May last year while we were coming back from the hospital in Fort Wayne in the ambulance when Larry was commuting there. Thought it was a cute little church with the headstones/cemetry on the left side.

We woke up to 3 inches of light fluffy snow this morning and it snowed on and off all day sometimes quite heavy but not a great amount of accumulation. It is still very cold, in lower 20s for highs and will be for a week or so at least. February is usually the coldest month I believe so I suppose we will have to live with it. Tonight expecting freezing rain again, hope it doesnt reach us.

Eb has settled into his new home and has been introduced to the gelding they have who is his half brother and they are getting their pecking order sorted out but no problems thus far. I will go out and take some pics of them as soon as it warms up a bit, I only go outside if I absolutely have to LOL.

Well nothing exciting to report from this side of the world. Hope those in the grip of winter are keeping warm and those of you that are in the southern hemisphere are keeping cool.

(((HUGS)))

Lori

I am back - I Hope (post 2 for today)

I have already posted pics for today but just wanted to clarify on my post from 7 Feb that the snakes and flooding had no connection whatsoever. The Boas and Python are owned by a friend, they are not wild and are kept as pets.

Had a few comments that I needed to clear this up for.

I had the opportunity to photograph the Ball Pyton having his weekly dinner which I have put on my other blog http://loriscritters.blogspot.com/ . Not for those who are freaked out by this type of thing, and as an animal lover I found it hard but it is nature.

Lori

I am back - I Hope

I havent been in a very good place the past few weeks and have been struggling to refocus and lift my spirits so here we go LOL.

Here is Brat baby Taxes!!!! He has grown so much and is now considered a yearling. I have very few photos of him from the past few months because it has been so muddy and he doesnt like getting his little hooves in the mud!! The ground was frozen a few days ago and there was a little snow, enough to encourage him outside, be it very briefly.

He wasn't standing well here as his front hooves were in a bit of a dip but a wild rabbit ran past me across the enclosure and stopped at the fence on the other side and he was very interested in it, in fact he tried to go and see it probably wanting to bite it because he bites everything, little brat.

Here is the culprit and source of interest, which made a quick exit through the fence and into the neighbors yard when brat baby started in his direction.

It was a sad and happy day yesterday. Stan and Valerie came to collect Eb to take him to his new home. I was hoping to go with them to see how he settled in but it was late and I had just got back from town and needed to start feeding so waited anxiously to hear from them. He settled in very well, was very interested in the other horses who he will be separated from for a while until he gets used to them, then he will hopefully be joined by the gelding that Stan and Val also got from us. They now have 3 of our babies and do a lot of trail riding in the summer and are happy and well cared for horses, they also have another older gelding, making their herd 4.

So here was my snapshot of Eb getting into the trailer to go to his new home. Not a great pic as I was herding as well as trying to get a shot, this was the second time he had been near a trailer and had never been transported in one. He did very well.

I will keep it short and sweet and hope to start trying to catch up a bit on everyone's blogs, I have missed seeing all the photos and reading all your stories. Have a great Sunday, we are expecting 50sF and lots of rain. It has been a weather roller coaster the past few weeks which hasnt helped my mood.

(((((Hugs))))))

Lori

A Post About The Weather & Snake Picture Warning

The storms south of us in Kentucky and surrounding states have been devastating, a few nights ago there were more than a dozen tornados in the Kentucky area and surrounding states and they have wreaked havoc. Some of these tornados stayed on the ground for 20 or 30 miles. We dont normally start worrying about this kind of weather until about May.

A story that really got me this morning was a police officer who was searching the debris in the surrounding fields and he saw what he thought was a doll as there were lots of pieces of clothing laying around, but suddenly it moved and it was a 9 month old baby, still alive. Sadly the baby's mother died in the tornado.

There are about 52 dead the last time I heard. My prayers go out to all of those people, if anyone knows of credible organisations who are needing help/donations with the cleanups and especially for the animals which the news reports and everyone seem to forget and never seem to report about, please let me know.

We have flooding warnings around all over the place, with our flat land around here we get roads flooding a lot in the country areas and this is one at the bottom of our drive. This water all runs under the road through pipes and through our field and then under the railway track. Bottom left is the top of our drive and the water on the other side of the road in the trees is about 8 feet deep!!!!
If you look at this pic of our field with the lake which is all the water trying to run through those small drainage pipes into our field and you can see how high the road is, the water is just about level with the road all along that stretch!!!! Our driveway and the flooding area is further to the right.
Yesterday I got the opportunity to photograph a few snakes, two Boas (one about 6 foot long and one 2 foot long) and a Ball Python about 2 foot long. This is the python below and the one under that is the larger Boa.
I am hoping for another opportunity to take some more shots, the last week has been so dull so I couldnt use available light and these guys are really mobile so it was hard to get shots of them, they just wanted to slither all over the place. I just used the pop up flash on my camera so the lighting wasnt great. Next time I will plan it better with my Metz flash.

Well that is it for today, hope you are all safe and warm (((Hugs))

Lori

Playing Catch-up

Thanks all for your comments on my travels ... I will be doing more ... just having a bit of a tough time at the moment and finding it hard to focus and get my enthusiasm going.

The pictures today I took on Sunday. We were supposedly going to have a sunny afternoon and it has been misty, miserable, wet and murky for more days than I care to remember at the moment. This is a shot of our Court House (I changed the sky because the actual sky was grey). I will have to go back and do it again when the light is better but I was quite pleased with the outcome. I took pics of all the memorials which are on all four corners of the block.
I have also been wanting to take pictures of the elk since seeing them a few weeks ago, especially the white ones and again despite the dull misty weather came up with a few pics but will be going back for sure when it brightens up.
These two guys were behind a rise so this was all I could get of them but they looked great, they were chewing on the tree.

That is about it again. We had a long day, had to go through to Fort Wayne for a doctor's appointment for Larry, so that was pretty much the whole day out the window. It is rediculously warm in the upper 50s and tomorrow expecting 30s and below again so everything is a muddy mushy mess and I am stressing. It has been raining on and off all day and all last night, just so depressing.

Hope everyone is well. ((((Hugs)))) thanks for your visits, I hope to be back in the swing soon and will tell you more of my adventures.

Lori
xx