hints of summer

I'm delighted that my pallet garden survived our winter--being only a few inches of dirt I figured the plants would freeze. Apparently the winter was mild enough that they all survived! I'm excited for the purple coneflowers to come up. the snow-n-summer and my flox are battling it out quite well with the rosemary and the mint. The mint doesn't appear to like the rosemary very much, it has moved to other parts of the pallet. There is a bald spot in the pallet still, I'm hoping that the yellow ground cover and the dark blue one I took from my mother's garden will gain confidence and spread. I may be able to tip the pallet upright this year.

Maverick

boyz

anything within reach is fair game

Maverick and his nanny, Thornton

Maverick is a Ham. Maybe that's why they get along?

breakfast and the mini journal



my new coffee mug, co. of the Boy Scouts in OKC



when Zorro and I make breakfast together, it's always amazing, but sometimes it's REALLY amazing




the calendar journal

 Weekends at home are a treasured time. Zorro and I guard our Saturday mornings fairly closely because it is the only morning we really have to sleep in and just be. Usually just being also includes making a scrumptious breakfast. I often try to catch up on journalling on the weekends. I like to know what happened in my life (and there is a part of me that wants biographers to have something to go off of--I guess I've read too much history) but of course usually there is so much happening I don't really have time to keep my journals up to date. Usually the most exciting things get left out.

Enter the calendar. I usually hunt for a monthly calendar, and work really hard to find one without the weekly breakdowns because I never use them for scheduling. I tried once and was always surprised when I turned the page. Tend to rely on my calendars quite a bit to know what I've done in the past--suddenly this spring I realized that I could make journaling attainable by using those weekly bits to write a sentence or two about each day. The space is so small I can't get overwhelmed, I just write a line or two about something notable that happened that day. It's just enough to trigger memories.

I've really enjoyed my mini journal, and thankfully the monthly/weekly calendars are everywhere, so I won't have any trouble finding next year's mini journal.

34-more pursuit

(Episode 1- How It Began. Episode 2-Lavinia . Episode 3-Gambling . Episode 4-Fortune Favors Episode 5-A Little Fire 6-Quill 7-the Gig 8-Southward Ho 9-City of Color 10- Water 11-Dinner for 34 12-The Counsel That Wasn't 13-Almost Eaten14-Into the Labyrinth 15-Rocks 16-Best Laid Plans 17-By Wing 18-Walking
19-Den of Thieves 20-Soldiers 21-Some Panache 22-Footsore and Fancy Free 23-The Counsel that Was 24-Official Business - 25- Snooping, 26-the Latest Gossip 27-More About Peaches 28-Into a Jam 29-Hell and Highwater 30-Just High Water 31-Salve 32-Fly on the Wall)

34-more pursuit

I was glad to have Hook back under me and moved easily with his rhythm. The endless black spires of the badlands were less annoying when I had my horse carrying me and not my own weary feet. Hook’s familiar presence was comforting enough that I could feel tiredness and the ache of my back rising from the dark corner I’d pushed them to. I stuffed them down. We were hardly done with this ill-fated daytrip. We kept a weather eye out for the marshal, though if he was anything like me he’d ridden quite hard at first out of sheer fury. We could set a good pace without catching up to him too close to the thieves’ lair.

We followed the tracks along the river. It was only when I caught sight of the stone bridge where we’d spent the most of the day that I realized we were going to have to ride through the afternoon’s carnage, or whatever remained of it. My insides coiled at the thought. Both horses broke pace and started to put more energy into dancing around than moving forward. The breeze carried a heavy sweet yet rotting smell. Quill and I pushed our nervous mounts to a walk; I can’t say either of us was any happier than the horses about pressing on. I hadn’t looked toward the road when we’d left the bridge however many hours ago. Was it blocked with wreckage and jam and bodies? If the road was passable, was it safe to ride it?

“Could we maybe try to cut through parallel to the road?” I suggested, though I wasn’t sure I even liked that idea. I didn’t want to risk getting lost any more than I wanted to risk getting eaten.

“Except that we’re tracking someone,” replied Quill ruefully. As if the bridge reminded him, he swiveled to look at me. “How’s your back?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Still attached. Charming of you to ask.”

“I should hope that it’s attached,” his frown scolded me for my non-answer, “It’s rather responsible for holding you together—I need my Zare in one piece.”

There were a thousand ways to take his need and his Zare and after they raced up my spine I stuffed them into the same hole I was keeping my tiredness and my gashed back. “I’m close enough to one piece that we should be alright for a while yet,” I replied.

He swiveled back, satisfied. Silence settled back over us as we reached the road and turned onto it. The wagons had been moved. It looked as though the thieves had taken the ones that still rolled and pushed the others off the road. I didn’t see any bodies so they must have cleared those, too. I was relieved.

Then both horses shied, then leapt forward. Quill’s mount made it a few strides further than Hook before we regained control of the spooked horses. Both creatures pranced and then stood stock still, I could feel energy balling up inside Hook and searched about for the cause of the spook. I nearly choked when I saw it. “This place is cursed.”

On the side of the road monstrously large lizard hunched over the carcass of a cart horse. The lizard was at least the size of a large pony and had frighteningly articulate claws.

“Damned thing is a dragon,” cursed Quill.

If not a dragon proper it was some little cousin. It stared at us, chewing watchfully. Keeping its eyes on us it took another chomp out of the carcass. I felt Hook shudder under me. Perhaps the dragon-lizard adhered to the bird in hand adage. “Maybe we can just move on,” I said.

Quill let his horse walk and we started to ease past the lizard and his midnight snack. Abruptly Quill halted again. “Hullo, someone doesn’t have quite as good a seat as us.” He hopped off his horse—who shied and bobbled around at the end of the reins for a moment before calming enough for Quill to investigate his object. “It’s our marshal. Thrown by his horse, I expect.”

“Better get him out of here before he’s the second course,” I cast an uneasy look at the lizard, which was still chewing and looking right at us.

Quill crouched and picked up the ragdoll marshal. His horse side stepped as Quill tried to heave the man across its back. “Care to help?” grunted Quill.

I smirked. “Maybe,” but I slipped off Hook and came to the horse’s other side, holding the nervous creature steady as Quill shouldered the marshal across the horse’s back and jumped on behind him. I remounted Hook and we moved off slowly.

We passed two more dragon-lizards on our way out of the canyon. Then Quill stopped, “Hold on, he’s waking up.”

Copyright 2012: The Legend of Zare Caspian is an original story by Abigail Cossette for The Raven's Landing.  If you enjoy the story, please share and link back! Please don't copy it. Contact me if you would like to publish a portion of it in any way, shape or form. 

bareback on Midas

Navarre really spoiled me. Those glass smooth gaits have completely destroyed my ability to sit unruly trots. As such, without taking a lot of time to practice in saddle, I have not yet attempted trot without a saddle on King Midas. But, I actually think that we are getting to the place where that would not be catastrophic.



We've learned a lot just walking bareback, though. The simplest shift of weight  light leg pressure, twitches of reins...he handles like a sport car in the low key, low pressure environment (even this is at least something no one used to expect of him). I've learned that Midas knows his stuff, and he's learned that not everything has to be a defensive getting game.

When I ride him into the ring, though, much of his low-keyness goes away and all his bad habits come storming back. I guess he associates the ring with a lot of back pain and boredom and he has an array of dirty tricks like a pony. I'll start working on that disassociation next. Though I expect everyone who rides him will have to run a gauntlet of dirty tricks. Which is, in fact, the best way to learn how to ride.



I've got a long list of things I want to do with Midas. I'm getting closer to bareback and bridleless work (See that? That is a halter! Never thought I'd see that day) and also getting closer to him understanding (and consistently obeying) stay and come commands on the ground. I'm hoping to post a video of some of our ground work at some point soon. The point of all of this, besides the coolness of having a horse who knows to lead without a rope and comes and stays on command--is both relationship and mental retraining. By teaching Midas to respond to tiny cues on the ground, in a non threatening environment, I'm making the riding easier. He's more used to taking cues from little ol' me, and used to more subtle ones, and used to it not being a bother or a bullying matter.

The reason I think the ground work (and of course a lot of day-in-day-out-riding) is essential for overcoming this tick of Midas's is that he hasn't really been bullied since I met him five years ago. Whatever this issue is it is deep seated from his past (he's eighteen, I think) and needs something a little different to get him out of his shell and thought patterns.

Last week when the Ham and the Padawan came out to ride I had them go warm up their mounts by themselves, the Ham came back and said: "I remember when [Midas] was scary beyond all reason, now he is SO MUCH FUN." Music to my ears.
The Ham is a better rider, and Midas is a better horse. :D

the food trip

Remember a really long time ago Zorro and I took a 27 hour trip to NYC? Well....I'm getting around to telling you about it now.
We may or may not have planned almost the entire trip around food we wanted to eat in NYC.


everyone sells cheesecake







pizza! at the Metro Cafe





m&m store

 We had a list of other things that Zorro wanted me to see (he's been a couple times) and we were taking a bustrip up with the Photographer, the Stylist and Zorro's folks (and 50 other people we didn't know).

We ate pizza almost the moment we got off the bus. Well. Ok. It would have been, if the hotel had thought through the fact that the tour bus of people coming and staying in a pre-booked block of rooms would all be arriving to check in at the same time (like they do every year). So after it took 20 minutes to check in and leave our luggage we headed for Times Square (hoping to catch Dance Ad Deum at Project Dance)


We went up in the Marriot while we were there, it has quite a view from one of the lounges, and the lounge itself wasn't half bad either.





on the way to the hotel

 We managed to catch a little bit of Ad Deum at Project Dance, and we swung by a couple of times to chat with my brother (whose dancing we missed, but was then running the sound system). I think we tramped alllll over Times Square, and also explored Grand Central, and that is where I had a bagel.

We retired to the hotel for an hour break after that, then made for Little Italy for dinner. We arrived later than we intended, but still got seats at Nico's and oh my word was that good food. Good coffee too. Reeeally good coffee. Best I've had since being in Italy.


Little Italy

 I think we started dinner at 8, and around 9 we went to hit the rest of our sites to see. One the list: WTC, Wall Street, Brooklyn Bridge, and Lady Liberty.


subway

Our plan was to take the Staten Island Ferry, which is free, to get a nice view of Lady Liberty all lit up for the night. We just missed one ferry, and with our hour to kill (the hour between 10:30 and 11:30) we walked down for a view of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was really gorgeous glittering above the water.


We caught the next ferry, which takes about a half hour to get to Staten Island. We got some pretty awesome pictures of the Statue of Liberty. (We also got to sit down, which was great)

And then our ferry docked just as the ferry we needed was leaving. And we were stuck on Staten Island from 12-1am.


we were pretty wiped out at this point, it was comedic


The city mostly sleeps, the people out at this hour of night are interesting. We sat in a row watching the small crowd gather in the ferry terminal waiting for the next ferry.
1:30 am, dock on Manhatten. We walked to the nearest subway stop and stood there waiting for a train for at least 15 minutes before we realized we should have walked to Bowling Green. Then we walked to Bowling Green and waited there.  We made memories. I was just happy that I wasn't hungry and that I had gotten an amazing cappachino at Nico's.


yeeeah


We made it back to the hotel around 2:30am :P about two hours later than intended. Which meant that Sunday we got moving about 2 hours later than intended.
There was a monstrous line at Esse's bagel shop, but once laden with our creamcheese stuffed bagels we walked to St. Patrick's Cathedral and then the Rockerfeller Center on the way to Central Park.

St. Patricks

Lego store at Rockerfeller Center

sunshine in Central Park

 under the bridge by Balto

the carousel

young talent in the subway

After a delightful hour in the Park lazing around listening to musicians and riding the carousel we went back to Time's Square for some cheese cake at Roxy's. They give big peices. I got the German Chocolate, it was very tasty, but I was still kinda full from the bagel (which had so much cream cheese on it...) so I couldn't finish the whole thing (Zorro ended up eating it while I was in OK :P )


german chocolate cheesecake


After stuffing ourselves with as much cheesecake as we thought wise, we headed to the other end of Times Sq. to catch up with my brother and his fiance before leaving.

15 minutes really isn't enough time

We had to really hoof it back to the hotel to grab our bags and then Zorro, the Photographer and I made a dash for pizza to take with us. I love this picture because we look so freshly arrived and breathless, still spinning from the momentum for 27.5 hours in NYC. Thank God it was downhill back to the bus!

33-Pursuit

(Episode 1- How It Began. Episode 2-Lavinia . Episode 3-Gambling . Episode 4-Fortune Favors Episode 5-A Little Fire 6-Quill 7-the Gig 8-Southward Ho 9-City of Color 10- Water 11-Dinner for 34 12-The Counsel That Wasn't 13-Almost Eaten14-Into the Labyrinth 15-Rocks 16-Best Laid Plans 17-By Wing 18-Walking
19-Den of Thieves 20-Soldiers 21-Some Panache 22-Footsore and Fancy Free 23-The Counsel that Was 24-Official Business - 25- Snooping, 26-the Latest Gossip 27-More About Peaches 28-Into a Jam 29-Hell and Highwater 30-Just High Water 31-Salve 32-Fly on the Wall)

32-Pursuit

“You will regret threatening the Head Marshal, my lord Thief.”

“Not half as much as he shall regret threatening me,” spat the Head Thief in reply.

A wealthy all-knowing mole. Little wonder we’d been so doomed on this venture. Rapid footsteps told us that the audience was over. Quill and I slipped even further down the dark corridor as a man strode out of the lit room with a foul look on his face.  He was dressed like a ragged traveler, but he walked like a soldier. He was clearly furious and didn’t look around as he marched straight toward the mouth of the cave. Quill and I slunk after him as quickly as we dared. If it were indeed true that this whole mess was due to a treaty between the Marshals and the thieves, we needed proof.

At the mouth of the cave the man paused, silhouetted in the dying bonfires. He turned to the drunken sentry and sent him sprawling with a kick. The sentry yelped, trying to scramble to his feet but the man was already striding away. The sentry slurred out a curse and slumped back against the wall at his post.

I was torn between wanting to curse him for waking the sentry and wishing I’d been the one to kick him. Now the blasted drunk was awake. Quill and I exchanged glances. Hide in the cave and hope no one comes, or risk discovery by the drunken sentry? Quill put his hand on my arm and steered us back a few steps into the hallway closest to the entrance. He faced the main tunnel and I faced the darkness watching and listening for anything coming our way. Sentries are usually the only people moving about this late, and since liquor had given a hard sleep to even those, the caverns were eerily quiet.  After a few minutes Quill touched my arm and we were off again, past the slumped guard and his bottle and through the canyon littered with sleeping brigands. Thankfully the raging marshal had restrained himself from kicking any others.

We scanned the canyon looking for our quarry, and then heard the sound of hooves. Off to the left we saw the marshal emerging from behind a pillar mounted on a horse. He was riding toward us and there was a chance he had already seen us. Quill swaggered into me, nearly knocking both of us to the ground as I caught his weight. My back protested and I wanted to stab Quill with my eyes.

“Giggle,” he hissed in my ear.

Oh. I tittered and pulled Quill’s arm over my shoulders.

“Than—youuu, daaalin,” slurred Quill in the loudest whisper I had ever heard.

“Shush!” I giggled again and fought the urge to drop him on the ground. We tottered forward one or two dramatic steps at a time with Quill spouting the occasional compliment and me giggling as the marshal trotted through the canyon and past us without a second glance. Quill carried himself, then, but we kept toward the stable with a tipsy swing in our gaits and a few drunken laughs till we reached the pillar the marshal had come from.

Several dozen sleepy horses lifted their heads to look at us when we rounded the rock and found the corral. My horse. I climbed onto the fence before Quill could stop me and called softly. I figured a whistle would draw more attention than just Hook’s, assuming any of the sentries were awake anywhere. I scanned the herd while Quill climbed in and picked out a mount. I called again and noticed a dark horse start moving slowly in my direction. Recognizing Hook’s step I climbed down and made for that lazy creature. He nickered when I got close and dropped his face into my hands. I gave his face an affectionate scrub and jumped on. “No time to socialize, we have to catch up with that marshal.”

Quill was already at the corral gate, and had managed to find a bridle for his horse. We trotted over and slipped out, leaving it open behind us. With any luck the vindictive marshal would be blamed. We rode out at an easy trot, pretending we belonged in the canyon. Once past the canoes we stopped to look for signs of our quarry. Quill hopped down and examined the shore in the moonlight.

“We should have kept Wace with us,” I said.

Quill tossed a grin at me. “Don’cha trust me? Besides, there wasn’t room under the bridge.”

My cheeks warmed and my back tingled at that thought.

 I must’ve huffed because Quill flashed me another grin before swinging back onto his horse. “I think he picked up a brisk pace, so we should be alright to put a bit of distance between us and our friends.”

“Good, then let’s ride.”

Copyright 2012: The Legend of Zare Caspian is an original story by Abigail Cossette for The Raven's Landing.  If you enjoy the story, please share and link back! Please don't copy it. Contact me if you would like to publish a portion of it in any way, shape or form.