I have been dying to put the horses out on the grass.  But frankly, there hasn’t been any.  Usually, I start the season’s feeding in the third week of April.  But not this year.  Our winter left prodigious amounts of snow on the mountain, but the spring brought no rain.  Not for over a month.  

The grass is deep green, which is right, seeing as I dragged that spreader all over it in late March, but where the blades would be a foot high by now, I barely have a lawn’s height anywhere on the entire acre.  Last week, I lugged that sprayer all over for the second time, looking for thistles and mare’s tail, and got quite a bit.  But as I put the fence posts in this week, I found tons more.  I am not pleased with Adam for having us thrown out here where the weeds never seem to lose.

I had enough hay to tide me until the second cutting of alfalfa.  Much confidence.  Wondering where I’d put the left over when then new harvest came in.  Not now.  I’m lucky if I can make it till then.  So last week, I started putting up the electric fence, in hopes that irrigation would kick things in to gear – assuming the water ever started coming down the ditch.I was late getting ready anyway – what with M leaving for South America and the trip to Disneyland, and G leaving Kansas City for the East and my Aunt being 88 and delicate.  But now, after doing a little every day, I have got most of the fences up, and I have only two more days on the charge for the solar energizer.

I let the five of them out on the grass Tuesday, May 6th, for fifteen minutes, which was really more like twenty to twenty five.  I had checked Sophie’s feet for a pulse before that and had felt absolutely nothing.  When I brought them back in – and they were surprisingly obedient, which is to say, I only had to yell for five minutes and swing ropes and chase back and forth – they ran back down the drive to the arena quite handily.  But I didn’t get down there myself, what with having to chase Sophie along, so they hit the arena bucking and throwing their heads, circled the thing and came pounding right back out again.  I wasn’t stupid enough to think they wouldn’t run through me, so I was philosophical about it; I’d closed the gate to the grass, so all they could do was get down there and moon around, staring over the fence, before things heated up again.  And sure enough, here they came back again.Zion actually seemed to be listening to me.  He was the first to give in, and led the charge back up the drive and into the arena.  Sophie lingered, eating the grass on the verges till I fetched her with a personal invitation.  I put her into the jail – well, she chose it – and once I had her eating a little hay, took her pulse again.The pulse in the white foot is a little easier to feel every day.  

Today was their third day on the grass.  I’ve fed them each a flake of hay in the morning to fill them up.  Then let them out as time allowed – an hour after the hay the first day, but several hours later the next day – it was the first day of irrigation, which means I was in the middle of a day-long anxiety attack, and the first thunder storm since last year.

 I was at the hospital with Scooter – four days old and with pneumonia already.  I asked Stan if he’d open Hinckley’s gate and bring the water down for us, which he was glad to do.  But as it turned out, John had shut the water off way up at the river not an hour before we needed it (WHY?????).  So Stan went to the river and turned it down.An hour later – still no water in our ditch.  Poor Stan went up and down the main ditch, looking for the danged water, which seemed hung up between Goodmans and our place – while the thunderstorm raged around him, pounding him with rain and hail.  He gave up after an hour.  Fifteen minutes later, the water, with all the power of the river behind it, came roaring out of the gate, pushing a massive plug of dead leaves and trash in front of it.  All of which is now strewn all over my pasture.But we did get the water.  We got two inches of rain in two hours, and two cubic feet of water on top of that.  If the grass can’t deliver after that, I’m quitting the business and buying rabbits.

 No.  Not rabbits.

Anyway, Sophie is already reacting to the grass, so I’m going to have to go very carefully with her.  The pulse is still slow and still faint.  But it’s there.  Dratted girl.  But everybody looks in good weight at this point – including old Jetta.  I’m not seeing ribs.  The Baby, Tiger/Hickory – he’s gotten so tall so fast, I’m not surprised that he’s the thinnest of all of them.  We’ll see how it goes.

 I have about eight bales left. If the grass is strong, it may be enough to carry me through.

Why do I do this to myself?  Maybe because of Zion, who ran up the drive today, and then stood there behind the open arena gate, watching me as I came up the drive, his white blaze all attention.  He waited patiently there, as though it were a fence, making no move to escape, which he easily could have done.  And so I gave him an extra handful of alfalfa leaves.