holiday start

involved no lie in....took loads of photos of molly with and without saddle, saddle with and without numnah/pad underneath. Have now put the wedge panels in, and shims and we'll see what that looks like in the morning - it was TOO cold to wrestle with them at the yard, never got above about 3 degrees all day, and the very slight breeze made it feel huge amounts colder. For the first time this year, the tap was frozen - happily, it only took a kettle of hot water to sort that out.

My new winter thermal jodhpurs are really toasty - to get them on over my ordinary jods i should have bought a larger size again, but didn't need the extra layer i don't think. recommend them to anyone (from annadressur on ebay) - better than fleecy chaps, as chaps don't keep your bum warm.

didn't ride, did go to try longlining but she wouldn't stand still (possibly because the mares in the field next to us decided to have a hooly) so just lunged - and amazingly, she went right with no argument, so I decided that was the good note i wanted bearing in mind previous issues with going right, and left it at that. was conscious that farrier was due, and he duly turned up dot on time! left her all done.

still haven't bought our christmas dinner - that will be the very first job on Monday after i've turned the horses out (volunteered to go down and do that, since partner has to get up and go to work anyway!).

whilst we've been at work the last few weeks the gardener has been beavering away in our back allotment. which now looks like this:

This area where the pond is now used to be an overgrown herb area, with huge amounts of overgrown bushes (lilac, forsythia, a ribes of some description that i never liked, and weeds) with a collapsed/blown over fence behind it. we will have water plants as well, but they won't be got until the spring. you can't quite make out the two acers to the right, one bloodgood and one sango kaku, as they're both leafless at the moment!
and this used to be fruit bed that had, when the wall was built, become a disaster area with mounds of soil, rubble etc ...raised beds are going to be much more practical. the raised bed beside the trellis is going to have raspberries and blackberries (thornless ones - the wild ones run riot and are impossible to control!) and the trellis will also be useful for other climbing veg (shame partner hates peas). will get some new strawberries (the previous ones needed renewing anyway) and the whole thing will be much more manageable.


the bare soil is the middle third, and is going to be lawn which can't be put down until the spring.

It's a nice surprise every Saturday when we can actually see it in daylight to see what has been achieved during the week.