Sultry Saturday

Well, I DID go get those wash rack mats this morning.  

But wash the horses? . . . afraid not.  It was just waaaaay to hot.  By the time I got done cleaning the stalls and turning the horses out, I was about ready to pass out.  Literally.  And I was having horrible cramps in my feet and legs.  So I came back in, threw a dog blanket over the leather recliner (since I was dripping wet), turned the ceiling fan to "high" and drank and drank and drank plain ol' water.  Whew!  

Besides, although I might be able to attach a line to that lowest branch on that tree on the right, I'll have to go get a LONG piece of chain to go clear around the tree on the left since there are no branches low enough to fasten anything to for a cross-tie arrangement.  And I'm not entirely sure at the moment whether those vines on that tree are something  "evil" or not.  I don't THINK they're poison ivy.  But I keep remembering that "leaves of three, let them be" saying, and it IS a 3-leaf vine of some sort . . .  What I'll probably do is just wait for Mark to get home this week, then he can screw giant screw eyes into the two trees and we can use them to attach chains to for the cross ties.  That should work just fine until we build an actual wash rack.  (No hurry for that compared to a lot of other stuff!)

As for the horses, when I looked out from upstairs later in the afternoon, the girls had both nodded off under some trees in the shade.  But  where was Duke -- the only one prone to sunburn? . . .  why out in the bright sunlight, of course!  The boy is hopeless.  

View of the pasture from upstairs (through a screen).

Went down to see if I could do anything about that, but he was having none of it.  

As I walked out toward him, he raced off to the other end of the pasture -- still in the sun, so I said "what the heck -- I'll be darned if I'm chasing him around the pasture in hundred degree heat in the sun" so I just came back inside and collapsed again.

I looked out just a little while ago (4 o'clock) and couldn't see anyone anywhere!  I began to worry whether they had collapsed from the heat, as well.  But when I walked outside to check, there they all were -- back in their stalls with their gates wide open!  I have to say, that barn IS the coolest place they can be at the moment, even with no electric to run a ceiling fan or anything.  That reflective stuff we put in the paint really DOES make a difference.  It's probably about 10 degrees cooler in there than it is out under a tree in the shade.    So if there's no wind - and there isn't today - it feels a lot better to be in the stalls than outside in the heat.  Not to mention their water supply in their stalls.  Very sensible of them.