No skiing this weekend, primarily because we spent Friday and Saturday night at a Poor Man’s Whiskey/Railroad Earth concert at the Crystal Ballroom. Talk about a sweet bluegrass session…despite working all day, once PMW started up, I was on my feet and down on the famed bouncing floor, clogging my heart out. An eminently danceable band, with a good mix of bluegrass, rock and spacey music (to give you an idea, one of Poor Man’s Whiskey’s CDs is titled “Dark Side of the Moonshine” with one disc being PMW’s version of “Dark Side of the Moon” and the second their regular stuff).
Railroad Earth was its usual stupendous self. We had an interesting mix of old folks sitting around us both nights…one night was a Texas lady who had moved to Yreka (and didn’t miss Texas worth a bit) who despite her Very Straight Hairstyle and looks, was, um, shall we say, quite the hippie chick? The other was a couple from Eugene. Folks were friendly, social, and from quite a few other places besides PDX. Like several other bands, RRE attracts a tour following, and it was definitely a mellow evening. We didn’t last to the end on either night, but hey–a fun time was had by all.
Saturday, I primarily rode Mocha and scraped winter coat off. She’s shedding heavily now and so, after a hard work, I was able to skin a lot of hair off of her. More to come, but she’s distinctly less hairy than she was. This week has been interesting. She’s processing stuff from the horse show, things she observed and things she started yielding and doing. I got more softening from her this week, and she’s stepping a bit higher after watching the Saddlebreds move. No, really.
She had a good attitude after the show. You always have to wonder, first time back up after a long spell in the saddle. But she showed no soreness, no sourness. If anything, she was more intense about doing her work. I started adding in some Horsemanship-type patterns and she’s really getting into that.
Today, DH and I did yard work. Here’s some before and after of what I did:
Before (well, halfway through)
After:
Now maybe the day lilies and columbines will have a fighting chance against the grass.
Meanwhile, DH attacked the Norfolk pine that’s threatening to conquer the back yard, overshadow the garden and the Grimes Golden apple we planted last year, and encroach on the neighbor’s property. A big branch broke off of it during our heavy snow this winter, revealing that the durn thing is pretty brittle. So we decided to take it down before it got too big to take down easily.
