MUSSELSHELL RANCH WIFE

LIFE OF A RANCH WIFE, LIVING ON THE MUSSELSHELL, TRYING TO FIND TIME TO PAINT

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Grrr this blogger photo thing!

I am not a computer whiz. I blunder around and happen to get a few things done. I might even be able to help my husband get out of a computer jam or two. I can email and do a search. BUT......for some reason......I can't seem to get a picture up on the blogs I am following. I have signed in signed out over and under and can't seem to figure it out. Is it just the way I see it from my computer, or do you all have me, under "followers," still as a silhouette (oh and i can use spellcheck, thankfully or you all would think I didn't get an education)??? Any help would be appreciated. I even signed up to follow my own block so it would show up under "followers" on my own blog and there is a photo there. It would sure be nice to hear that all this time there has been a photo and I just didn't now it and my panties are in a bunch for nothing. :-)

Monday, February 15, 2010

wild burros


The area of Arizona we were in was west and north of Phoenix. It was pretty, but very flat. I claim to be a flat lander but I really mean hills and coulees and trees and bluffs and stuff. This was flat, but then, way off in the distance, were Mountains, really rugged, beautiful Mountains.

We took a loooog drive one afternoon on a 30 mile loop through some amazing country. I am just so thankful that there hadn't been any rain for a week or so. For some reason I was a little flinchy about flash floods. Maybe it was the 6" or so of rain they had about 10 days before! We drove through some pretty tight spots. Coulees that had, at one point in the not to distant past, been raging with water. The county had a patrol and backhoe out fixing things, almost like it was just for us.



I have to say that one of the highlights of our trip was getting to see wild burros. The only way to top that for Jay would be to have seen some Havalinas. The wild pigs. (Not sure of the spelling and spell check didn't know what to do with what I spelled.) At one point during our drive, he slams on the brakes, I am scrambling to grab things sliding around on the dash, yelling, what, what!!! Jay finally finds his tounge and sputters "burros"! Well I couldn't see the little buggers, i looked and looked, then, there they were.
Kind of like "Where's Waldo." I was so excited. I grabbed my camera and dashed across the road. Jay is hollering there's another one. Where , I can't see it! oh there it is. Oh Oh!!! Then Jay yells "you'd better look out. Hey I think he's gonna take you!" Well how could I see that with a camera plastered to my face. He was rustling around in the brush and stomping his feet. But what the heck there was a little coulee between him and me.
Can you see the third one in the brush in the middle? He was the one getting huffy! My camera doesn't zoom in much so I was wanting to get closer but Jay and the coulee prevented that. Probably a good thing!
Oh and Jay was getting excited about all the river rock we were finding. He was willing so i had him load up some bigger ones. Beautiful. But then he worried about whether we could do that or not. I wasn't worried at all, i was planning a landscaping project for this spring. Burros and rock! hummmmm.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

I am still alive, and have been living in AZ...



We decided some time ago that we were going to try to take a vacation in the winter as often as we could. We have seen our parents regretting that they didn't do more, when they could have. Isn't that the way of the rancher. Can't leave the ranch, the all consuming, ever demanding, ranch. So we started last year with a cruise to Mexico. It was wonderful, hard to come back from the sun and the sand, but that was all the more inspiration to do it again. Well, Jay has talked lots about his trip to Arizona when he was 20 or so. He has alway wanted to go again. So we packed horse trailer with horse, hay, tack, ropes and a little money and off we went.
It was sunny and warm, although it could have been warmer, and so beautiful. We had a ton of fun. We stayed with friends, in a beautiful new home, and Jay roped to his hearts content. I got to shop and run in sunny, cool, crisp mornings with no ice under foot. I brought home a ton of pictures and the front end of the tack compartment full of river rocks. In fact Jay was the one that kept seeing more rocks. But then, alas, all good things must come to an end, and so too, our trip.
Back to the Arctic North! Where the roads are slick and the snowbanks are deep. Where the wind howls and the wood stove is stoked! Going someplace warm for a few weeks sure makes one think that spring is just around the corner, but I peeked around that corner and for some reason I can't quite see it. But my house was sure glad to see me and I was glad to not be a guest any more. Home is wonderful even if it is cold.