Tuesday, June 7, 2011

'Til the Sun Drips Blood, part 2

As I drove home from work this evening, I drove out of the smoky haze and into clear blue skies. But as evening wore on I could see the haze moving in. This photo is pointed straight at the sun, unedited, around 6:30PM looking towards the west and the smoke hovering over the city on the other side of the mountains.
I hobbled out to the barn to see my horses. Of course, Sandy was right there with me.

Yalla! will be two years old next week. Since my riding accident, I haven't been able to maintain the feeding program I was keeping and she has lost a lot of weight and conditioning. I am hopeful that she will gain it all back quickly as I am more able to supervise her feeding and work with her again. I was so excited to see her summer coat but I have a feeling she is a VERY sun bleached black or black/bay and I will never get to see her true colors. She's either that or a black grulla which is not a true Arabian color. She still has a dark dorsal stripe running down her back. What does anyone else think her color is?
My son, Trevor is still feeding for me twice a day, but I am going to trek out to the barn at least every evening so that I can be sure all the horses are getting grain and beet pulp mash along with their hay. My son assures me that he has been feeding them grain and mash most of the time but I don't know how two bags of beet pulp pellets and two partial sacks of grain can last almost eight weeks? I do know somebody tried to make mash out of my $38 sack of rice bran and it didn't work out so well. At least there has been no colic, right?

I am ordering a truckload of alfalfa hay very soon in the hopes that they will all benefit from the added nutrition of the legume hay over their current grass hay. Some of the bales recently seem to have an excess amount of stems and weeds so I don't think they are getting enough to eat, especially the young Yalla! and 28 years old Nadia. I hope to ride Nadia soon but I want her to gain some weight first. Fortunately, Scout looks great and Annie looks pretty good too. She has always been on the lean side anyway.

While I was inside the barn tottering about with the grain for the horses, my son called me to come outside to see the red sun. Seriously, the sun was blood red! These pictures are unedited but, unfortunately, the camera made the sun appear pink.





Still, it's pretty amazing, isn't it? And this is still daylight, around seven o'clock.


'Til the Sun Drips Blood - song: Candidate, artist: David Bowie, album: Diamond Dogs

4 comments:

Mikey said...

Those are some crazy pics of the sun. You guys are getting some crazy smoke over there. Nothing here!
A couple of my horses have fallen off too lately. I switched to grass hay (nice grass) but it's not enough and I'm having to supplement a few that I don't normally.

Ed said...

Prett pics but bad air quality, take care..:-)

Maery Rose said...

Thinking about riding? I hope that means recovery is going well now. I was checking out a camera at the Springerville high school. The smoke looks awful. My sister was evacuated from one location and may be evacuated again. I am definitely praying for rain for all the fire and drought areas.

Achieve1dream said...

Wow those sun pictures are insane!!

Poor Yalla has lost weight. She's still adorable though. She'll gain the weight back. :) I have no clue what her color would be considered, but it's gorgeous. I'm so happy you're able to hobble down to the barn now.