… and greener!

A tip of my cap to your green Tuesday! I was up and out right after breakfast today. There was such a great breeze (okay … wind) that the black flies did not stand a chance. It was glorious. The donkeys were up in the woods when I went out. My favourite place to find them. It didn’t take long this morning for them to notice where I was and race to join me.
Ede came up with a brilliant idea yesterday … why not make a donkey grazing area out of the ‘garden space’ in the backyard beside their paddock? We were going to add another gate anyway so that next winter I could plow the snow directly west … By the time I finished up my afternoon desk work I joined her to find she had unrolled all of our extra fencing and had figured out we had enough to get to work right away!
The grass is really rich. That means we can’t just let the herd graze in there all the time. We need to limit their access. No problem. And, get this, the donkeys don’t eat any of the flowers!! They avoid the lilies, the hydrangea, the irises, and the ‘out house flowers’. (No, we don’t have an out house. That is just the name we know these tall ‘mum’ type flowers by.) I let the donkeys munch away while I clean up the back paddock. Then they follow my ‘chk … chk …’ signal to move on out of there.
Our next stop was the top of the hill in the woods. See how green the trees are! I swear today I could ‘see’ the leaves growing larger. There is a tiny grass grazing area here that the donkeys keep closely cropped.
While I was emptying one of the Bully loads into the compost bin a torrential downpour started. At first I thought I’d just wait it out in the compost bin … but that was proving rather ‘slimy’. 😉 So then I figured I would hop into the Bully and hope the roof would keep at least some of the front seat dry … or … maybe just not so wet.
No dice! The wind and the rain had me soaked through to the skin. I hauled at the gate and drove like a crazy lady through the lower paddock, up the hill and back into the Bully Garage. The donkeys followed me down to the paddock. The girls high tailed it into the hay barn down there … while Paco settled down to lay on the knoll in the pouring rain. That guy does seem to like a good hard rainfall.
By the time I sloshed to the back door the sky had already begun to clear. I had enough time to get changed into something drier and then popped back out the front door to put out the rest of the hay and close up the barn. Have you ever seen the steam rise off pavement on a hot summer day after a rain storm? That is what Paco looked like!

I’m loving these spring days. Lots of time to be outside, lots of time to putter at my desk and even plenty of time to keep playing away at Zendoodling. The fair book is done. The Little Theatre video is next on my list. I’m almost finished ‘The Source’ by James Michener. If you’re wondering at all about the history of Israel and Palestine it is an incredible journey through their history. A great spring day.

Meadow Hugs to you!
Wendy