Update from Hell

Our dream has hit the fan and turned to shit. Our neighbors have gone beyond problematic. I don't understand things that are not logical or not reasonable. It's like giving a computer a bad command that sends it on an infinite loop taking it back around to the bad command. So we had the arrogant doctor purchase the place north of us. We started off by trying to be good neighbors and allowing access, selling land off that we didn't really need/want, and offering a 15 foot easement on the corner to move sheep and farm equipment. Then it all started with not even the courtesy of letting us know what was going on and the worst fencing one can have around horses put on the property line. All the trees being cleared so that the golden silence and enchanted forest is extinct. Property damage, inconvenience, constant bleating of sheep and barking of dogs ALL day and ALL night. We brought damages, timber theft, and their worrying our animals to their attention to no avail. Somehow, because we had problems with this arrogant doctor, our other neighbors decided they have a problem with us and started treating us in the same manner as the arrogant doctor. Disrespect and telling us what they could do on our property. An easement does not mean our property is public land. These neighbors didn't repair their fencing and their horses kept getting loose and coming over here. We were lucky because our horses were always locked up in the barn when this happened. Our luck ran out on October 15th, 2015. Diesel is dead. Our hearts are broken and our life as we knew it was completely shattered. Mike rushed back here to the cabin from Oklahoma. Let's just leave it at Mike was upset. Mike is now overseas to put distance between him and the dickhead neighbor. (I'll pause here for a moment. Yes, he's in another country right now. It's best as people like our neighbors are not worth one's freedom. Diesel was Mike's buddy. You've seen all the pictures. We feel we have lost our equine son. We are devastated. I've been doing Winter here all by myself. It has been rough is an understatement.) We knew what happened was no skin off their noses. Not so much as an apology. Then a couple of weeks ago, the "adult" daughter of the man responsible for Diesel's death, her dog took a package off my mailbox and opened it and I received the remnants in a couple of crumpled, used grocery bags thrown to the back of the inside of my mailbox complete with snow packed into the cap of a hand blended, natural perfume oil and chewed up bits of wrapping paper and some of the other items I ordered. I left a message for her to put a check in my mailbox for $79.20 and to get her animals under control, that they had done enough damage to my family, and to continue to stay away from us as it is in everyone's best interest. I thought I was just direct and matter of fact. I didn't swear or threaten. The phone call I received is beyond believable. Snarky, snotty, abusive and downright cruel. She berated my behavior right after I watched Diesel do this pitiful whiny, cry thing and take his last breath. Her father arrived to retrieve his murderous geldings just a moment after the horse we raised from a baby and was part of this family for almost 13 years died right in front of me. I make no apologies for swearing at him and who knows what else I said. The "adult" daughter's rant continued snarking at me and told me that it had been four months, animals lives don't matter, get over it bitter bitch. Needless to say, at that point I broke down. I couldn't believe the cruelty and what I was hearing. I said, "What? You're going to pick on me about my behavior after I just watched my horse die?" "Yeah, so. We said we were sorry. Okay. Get over it," she said. And, did you know, that we are the bad neighbors? All I could muster was that no one ever said they were sorry. Needless to say a person like that is pleased with her ability to break someone down and not pay for damages caused by her animal. Like father, like daughter. We are "lawyered up." A couple of letters from our attorney have been sent requesting payment for our financial loss of Diesel. Those letters could have also caused some of this wrath from this vile person. I'm a bit concerned with being here by myself and the actual lawsuit hitting their mailbox. Diesel's death left a huge emptiness in our lives. This is no longer home. I'm sorry I ever dared to dream. We would have NEVER done this had we known it was going to cost us a member of our family. As a side note: Diesel's stablemate, Keira, is okay. She is lost without him and I'm trying to help her through her grief as much as I can. We did locate a small pony and he's here trying to keep her company. Keira's a bit despondent. She is eating and drinking. She understood that Diesel died. She was in the round pen and quietly stood on the other side of the fence by his dead body until I put her up in the barn in anticipation of the backhoe's arrival. I did make sure she got to see, sniff, and touch his dead body. She did this cry, squeal thing and pawed at him. She's never called for him so I know that she understands in whatever way a horse understands death. We're all like Keira right now. Lost. If I had some place to go, I would load up what's left of my animal family and throw a lit match on our way out.

Still here.

Ok. So we did NOT move to OK. Oklahoma for those that haven't been following along; I couldn't resist saying Ok as in okay and OK as in Oklahoma in the same sentence. Anyway, our buyer's agent down in OK, in our opinion, was not working on our behalf. He was advising us to do some things that  even without my having a law degree were obviously not in our best interest. Between the real estate BS and getting the "rest of the story" on the job which was only perceivable by actually working the job for two and a half months, it became clear that investing in a piece of real estate down there wasn't something we wanted to do. Yeah, their governor did sign some crap law into effect that is going to financially penalize those with solar panels and the drones/sheep/collective were all rattling off some stupid "yeah, they need to pay their fair share" nonsense because people that generate some of their own electricity apparently need to pay for electricity that they don't use from the utility company otherwise they're not paying their fair share; hence, the word nonsense. However, that didn't have much to do with our decision. There is a unprecedented, mountainous pile of BS that has gone on since my last update but I'll try to take it easy. Let's do a photo essay.

I got a purple rock for my birthday from The Husband. It's technically Charoite. Kind of reminds me of the sky in van Gogh's Starry Night painting. I should probably note that I collect pretty rocks and a man should probably not buy a woman a rock as a gift unless she asks or hints at such a gift, least the man have the gifted rock thrown at him. I've only been collecting rocks for a year and a half so I'm no expert but I feel pretty safe saying that this one is not for throwing.

The feLIONs continue to do their usual impressive feLION things like throw their toys in their food dishes.  

Token photo of this year's fawn crop.

Turkey passing through. I like these kind of turkeys much better than people who are pain in the butt turkeys (understatement).

Once again, we had our annual Summertime bat in the cabin with feLIONs in hot, chaotic pursuit. This year topped last year as I spent a bit of the evening feeding the mosquitos out on the balcony while I freed this particular bat from one of those sticky fly strips. Lovely.

My sister and I posted on Facebook our 4-H Fair flashback photos during this year's Monroe County, Michigan Fair. It was lots of fun. This was my 1983 photography entry and below is....

my poetry entry.

It was pretty cool when I posted this 1979(?) picture of me and Jag (front) and my first show horse Tag with his new owner right behind us. I shared my memories of that Fair and ended up reconnecting with the lady pictured on Tag and got to hear her memories of that fair.  

A moment with The Husband in Lake Superior, at McClain State Park on one of his brief visits home from OKC.

There were some ducks at the lake that day too.

Oh, what is going on here? Yep, that silver car is a Chevy Volt and….

it's being charged by the Sun. While this is easy to plug in, it's not so easy when one is laughing her butt off because she thinks it funny that the plug in thingie is shaped just like the gas pump handle at a gas station. I will have more to report to you on The Volt Experience. 

Unfortunately, Diesel's donkey friend passed away in February. He spent the Summer all by himself. He did okay but really, horses are herd animals and they are happier with a buddy. This is Keira.

Keira is mostly hair and yes, you are smelling hair conditioner through your computer screen. It took two and a half days to haul her up from Scottsdale. Emphasis: she was in a trailer for two and a half days. You would think that trailer would be a stinky mess. Nope. Smelled like hair conditioner. The barn smells like hair condition. Sitting in the cabin, we can smell hair conditioner. We know exactly where the horses are at any given moment by the smell of hair conditioner. That's all you can smell now that Keira has joined the family. PM and for a small fee I will tell you the brand as a stock tip.

Sigh. Diesel's impression of an Unicorn. We go through this every Fall with the burrs.

Keira is a Southern girl and needed a light Fall weight "jacket."

The lighting and textures were great this Fall.

I found a Fairy Castle in the woods.

Ya know how when you cut your own hair and then you keep cutting and trying to fix it and before you know it, you're basically bald. And then you go to your hair stylist and he screams when you take off your hat and he's completely horrified and you end up surrounded by three exasperated men working feverishly and they manage to fix something that was truly unfixable. No? Okay, cringe, me neither. Anyway, imagine that phenomena only with trees instead of hair. For the second year in a row,  even more trees were murdered over the Spring, Summer, and Fall. I'll spare you the drama of trespassing, timber theft, and making a mess for me to clean up and just say the neighbor isn't trying to fix any thing. When the leaves fell this Fall, we saw the Lake from the balcony of the cabin. 

Keira is a 5 year old Gypsy Cob born and raised in Scottsdale, Arizona. This Summer she learned to graze on pasture. No pasture in the desert. And this was the first time she saw snow. She's pretty laid back and doesn't get rattled but she didn't seem too sure about going out into the white stuff.

She kept eating snow. She's got burrs in her hair too. I'm probably going to be doing burr removal all Winter with this one.

More fantastic lighting and shadows.

White birch is one of my favorite trees. Yes, I say that about a lot of trees but….look at the fabulous texture.

Put your limbs in the air like you don't care, la, la, la…

Well, that was our Spring, Summer, and Fall in snippets. I've had worse years but this one was pretty exhausting. A good side effect, though, I've been spending a little more time doing Art in an effort to maintain my sanity. Speaking of Art and sanity, I'll sign off for now with a quote I just came across today: "Artists, while painting, are quite literally out of their minds." ~ Plato

From the Dept. of Homeland Security

Diesel. Sigh. I'm almost at a loss for words. Diesel is truly the oddest horse I have ever known and I've had horses pretty much all my life. He appears more comfortable here now that this has been his home for a little over a year. He's grazing more of the acreage this Spring. Last year, with the exception of finding a trail to the neighbors and performing a free, organic mowing and fertilization service; he stayed pretty close to the cabin, barn, and garden shed. I see him becoming more territorial and aggressive with offending wildlife and the few incoming vehicles that dare pull back here. He charges the vehicles just like your dog would. Only, it's 17 hands and 1200 pounds of charging animal. I really don't like that he does this because it's irresponsible and rude to let your animals do something like that. But, it's his yard. If I know someone is coming over, I put him up. The deer come out of the woods to browse our Diesel's clearing after Diesel has been put up for the night. We have pretty much daily visits of coyote. Diesel runs them off. Ears forward, he does an easy jog in their direction and they scoot back into the woods with tails between their legs. Everyone always asks me, "coyote or wolf." I always tell them I don't know the difference. "Oh, you'll know." I never really gave it much thought until this past week. OMG, they weren't kidding. Remember when you were a young child reading Little Red Riding Hood, and seeing the picture of the scary big, bad wolf. Yep. They've got huge paws. They have a distinct body shape. They carry their heads low like they're going to eat you. Crap, they are scary. We aren't sure if they were eyeing up Pumpkin (Diesel's bad little donkey friend) or the compost pile Pumpkin was near. Diesel chased them off once. They came right back. Cripes, I thought I didn't like having to tell somebody more than once. Twelve hundred pissed off pounds of "I said this is my yard Dawg" tore after them again. Diesel isn't usually that aggressive and it concerns me that he felt the need to be that aggressive. They ducked into the woods and haven't come back.Yet. Meanwhile, Beware of the Guard Horse.

Like one of those vacuum robots

Only it mows the field. And it's all terrain. Doesn't use any of the cabin's power. With it super hot this is one of Diesel's favorite spots in the "yard." It's kind of low and I think it's cooler. I wasn't real sure how we were going to handle the pasture situation here at The Secret Cabin when we first moved the animals in. I've got a decent size round pen for him. We used it last fall when he first got here. This winter was so  cold, he didn't want out of the barn. Plus, I was worried about frost bite. In the spring, we started using the round pen again. At first, I would lead him from the round pen to the barn in the evening. Then, I started letting him just make his own way to the barn. When I was confident that he was settled in and that it looked like he felt the barn was his home, I started just opening the gate to his pen in the barn and let him roam the property. Apparently, his jobs are mowing, chasing deer, chasing coyote, supervising my every move and following me around as if he were a dog, standing in the UPS man's way, and greeting everyone that comes up the drive. Be forewarned, it's a little Jurassic Park. All that's missing is the screaming and roaring.