SO much done this past week . . . good AND bad -- sigh

Well, on the plus side, we've fixed up a few things here in the house -- and outside.  I got new curtains for both the kitchen and our bedroom.  They were orginally very dark -- the kind that didn't let light in.  But the new ones are a bit less heavy and they seem nicer now.

I put up that curtain up in the dining room when we first got it without having  ironed it - I'm hoping it will look okay eventually without me having to do that - but we'll see.

Anyway, we're going to get someone to paint the kitchen cabinets to match
that aqua color now instead of the current olive green.  Hope we find someone.  

And here's the new curtain on our bedroom window
(that photo there on the right is of a cat we had who died a few years ago).

Then we also removed all the things that were stuck out on the side of the front porch and put the big glass table over there that we've had out on the back patio for years.  It'll be better over there on the side of the porch instead.  Who wants to sit out on the patio - it's way nicer to be on the porch.  

There's that table at the end there, but we hadn't hauled all the
chairs out from the back patio to the front porch yet when I took this photo.

Then of course there are more seats over at the other side of the porch as well.
(We're going to have to cut back that bush outside that end of the porch --
it's obviously trying to grow inside through those panels over there.  Not good!)

So we moved all those things that were there on the front porch that weren't being used back into the back porch -- Gigi's room.  Then I also took down all those horrendous curtains on Gigi's back porch and washed them out and then we put a smaller gate that had been stuck out in the barn for some time in there so that we could put things in that area where Gigi couldn't get to them.

That gate keeps her away from all those things back there in that area of her porch

Gigi likes to lay down out there on her rug.  Those curtains are stuck behind that metal so that the wind can't blow rain inside the porch.
(Those metals are up there to keep Gigi from breaking through the screens.
Actually, they got put up originally back when we had Bruce Lee, a Rottweiler.)

And Gigi does have plenty of space out there to play in case it storms outside. 

Okay.  All that was just fine.  But then yesterday after the horses had been out in the front yard all day, as they generally are all the time on the weekends whenever it's not raining, I suddenly noticed that the huge Magnolia tree wasn't appearing normal!  Look at that trunk -- 

This was the view from the porch originally . . . see that bark that's been scanned off of the trunk of that tree?  -- but I never saw any of those horses messing with it so who knows which one did it!

All three of those horses generally hang out around that tree all the time -- they all seemed to love it.  But yesterday at least ONE of them (I sure wish I knew which one!) obviously RUINED it !!   Look at this!

Once the horses got sent back to the back pasture I came out with my camera and found that the entire base of the tree was even MORE terrible than I imagined!  We may need to take it down, but I guess we'll wait and see if it dies or not first.  It's extremely large and gorgeous so I sure hope we don't need to replace it.  But it sure looks like we probably will.

Good grief - how awful, huh?

All the bark is down on the ground from all the way around it.  I guess I can't get incredibly aggravated at any of them since I don't know which one actually did that.  So it's a good thing for their sake that I don't know which one it was! 

And it even looks like whoever did that not only pulled off the bark on the outside but they also ate even more of it inside!  See those chewing marks on there?  

Well so much for THIS week.  I guess we better figure out what we need to do next.  But for now -- let's just relax, huh?