Dreaming of a Brown Christmas?

My wife has had horses for 20 years or so but I’m still learning.  And still stunned by how much they can destroy.  When we moved into our house, it came with a really nice lawn.  While we’re having a barn built and a pasture area fenced in, we just dropped the horses into this big metal pen.  It was great for a while but a few big rain storms and two horses who seem to enjoy destroying things and here we are.

One of the many things I’ve had to learn over the years is that horses can handle cold really well.  You throw them a flake of hay and within minutes, they warm right up and the steam is coming off of their thick winter coat.

But while they’re very self-sufficient and good with cold weather, they shiver when it’s wet and windy.  They look all indignant when my wife throws a blanket on them.  And since they can destroy everything, that includes the blanket.   I want to ask the horses why it seemed like a good idea to ROLL while it was still muddy.  If you look close, you can read their faces saying, “Take this stupid blanket off of me before my friends see it“.

This was a yard when we moved in.   But when you get a couple of inches of rain and you put two knuckleheads on it, that’s the recipe for creating a muddy mess.  Luckily we have an area we can move them to for a while so they don’t have to stand in mud up to their knees.  The funny thing is that when the ground is soft, they make deep hoof prints.  Those holes fill up with water when we get a big storm and you’ve got the makings of a swamp in no time.  I think I missed a meeting when it was decided we were getting horses.

And this is a bad picture my wife clicked of a wild pig that wandered into our back yard Sunday morning.  I was just having a cup of coffee and looking out the window when here came a wild pig.  My neighbors have pigs but they don’t look like this.  This little guy looked almost like a wild boar without the tusks.  Just what I need.  Something else to tear up the yard.  I’m determined to have a nice lawn at some point but my friends are in for some good laughs between now and then as I try.