A Poem I Was Inspired to Share...

I follow the blogs of a number of authors that I admire. It's a great way to find out about their work in progress, and many of them simply share fascinating information and stories on their blogs. Earlier today, I was reading Terri Windings blog, "Myth & Moor", where she was sharing pictures she took along with quotes from some of her favorite authors. Another reader of her blog was inspired to write a poem and share it in the comments section. I felt a very visceral response to it(that's a good thing). So I am posting a picture that I took and, with the author's permission, sharing his poem.

Windswept (photo by Zhi Zhu)

Dreaming Awake
by
Austin Hackney

I am dreaming awake.
Both awake
and dreaming.

Between fantasy and reality there is
a boundary.
In the boundary there is
a gate.

I can open the gate
with my thoughts

or with my heart
with my pen
my brush
my voice
or my mandolin;

or by meeting your eye
or by touching you
or by walking away
or by lying alone in the dark
on the moss
under the moon;

by speaking sometimes,
sometimes by listening;

or by as many other
simple magics as
there are moments
and stars.

Either way,
a boundary once traversed
is no longer a boundary.

The gate swings both ways
in the endless wind.

There is no lock.

So awake.
And dream.

Austin Hackney has his own blog, "Omniscript: A Writer's Workshop", which you might want to check out.

Ziggy Makes a Mud Puddle

My husband's horse, Ziggy, loves playing with the water. On the rare occasion when the hole in the ground we laughingly call a tank has water in it, he will trot into the water and gleefully splash around. With the Texas drought and all, we haven't had even nice sized puddle for him to play in for quite some time. So, apparently, he decided to make his own.

Shadowfax: Dude, I'm trying to drink here. Ziggy: Splashing is fun!

Shadowfax: You know I don't like getting my pretty prancing Portuguese pony feet muddy. I'm outta here. Ziggy: Splashing is so much fun!!!

Ziggy: Look! I'm making mud!!!

And Ziggy just kept splashing and splashing and splashing...

Throwing more and more water out of the trough...

And making a bigger and bigger mud puddle...

He got really good at making a BIG splash...

He figured out to dunk his nose deep...

And really pull the water out with his mouth...

He kept playing with the water...

Until he made a mud puddle big enough for all four of his feet.

Now we know why we keep having to refill that trough so often.

Do your horses like to play with water?

Shadowfax Playing

A while back, my husband managed to get some pictures of Shadowfax running around the pasture and playing. This is quite an accomplishment, because usually, as soon as the critters hear us open the door to come outside and take a picture, they stop whatever cute thing they are doing and turn and look at us. It is very frustrating. I just want to yell,"Ignore the human and keep playing!"

Anyway, my husband's camera is pretty fancy, and if you hold down the button, it will take a picture every 1/4 of a second. The following seven pics were all taken only 1/4 of a second apart.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superhorse! (Maybe I should have named him Pegasus.)

Yup. My horse can do a complete 180 in a little over half a second. That's how he threw me. He didn't buck. He just sort of ducked his head and did a 180 so fast it sling-shotted me off his back.

Here are a couple of more pics of him showing off his athleticism.

And another sequence of pics shot 1/4 of a second apart.

Not something you really want to see up close.

Don't worry, for that last shot, the photographer, Foxfire, was actually about 20 feet away and on the other side of a fence. Shadowfax was not trying to kick him, he was just playing.

Flood Aftermath Part 2: Tangles of Debris, Downed Trees and Broken Bridges

The flood left frightening tangles of debris along the southern edge of our property. It knocked over several trees and ripped a bunch of branches off of others. It also washed away part of the bridge that's at the southwest corner of our property, and left pieces of asphalt spread over our land. And as I was wandering around taking pictures of the damage, I noticed one piece of debris upstream from the bridge that I am very glad didn't make it down to our property.

A bunch of broken branches and a few whole trees washed downstream onto our land.

Part of someone else's welded wire fence and some fence posts got swept off of their property and onto ours.

Part of our fence, I think, that ended up further downstream on our property.

The flood waters were powerful enough to knock over several of the trees along the creek. Some trees weren't completely knocked down, but seem to be permanently bent over.

A small tree on the other side of the creek that was knocked down.

A couple of larger trees on our side of the creek that were knocked down. It looks like the flood just washed the land right out from under them. So... not only did the flood wash away our fence, it also washed away part of our "property".

These trees seem to still be alive, but even days later, they have not straightened up. I don't know if they ever will.

The flood also damaged the bridge at the southwest corner of our property. It is the only way into and out of the the back half of the neighborhood we live in. We're on the side that can still get in and out, but many of our neighbors were stranded for the duration of the flood.

You can see how many layers of black top were washed off of the the surface of the bridge on the upstream side.

Several large pieces of asphalt that the county so kindly left on our property even after they came out and "fixed" the bridge.

More pieces of asphalt spread along the corner of our property that we don't use because of the frequent flooding of that area.

The bridge was really badly designed. It's basically a solid dam of concrete with one large hole and three small holes for the water to go through. As long as there is not a heavy rain, it works well enough. But every time it rains heavily, the holes are simply not big enough to let all that water through. And then of course the holes get clogged with the debris that the flood is carrying and there is no where for the water to go except up over the bridge. AND onto our property. (The bank on the other side of the creek is much higher on the upstream side of the bridge, so all the water and debris comes onto our side of the creek.) If the bridge had been built properly and not like a glorified low water crossing, that corner of our property (which is NOT part of our pasture for obvious reasons) would not flood so often.

Admittedly this particular flood was not caused by the badly designed bridge. (Though I'm sure it exacerbated the problem.) This flood was caused by a combination of getting 12" of rain in 24 hours and the fact that the city and county have not been planning for drainage with all the new construction that they've been putting up all around us.

There is one positive note. At least this piece of flood debris did not make it downstream far enough to affect us.

Look closesly. See that large green cylinder. That's a forty foot(or so) silo that the flood knocked over. (BTW, that little trickle of water in the foreground is not the main creek. It's usually just a dry wash (natural ditch) leading to the creek.

I don't know where the silo originally came from, and who knows what will happen to it with the next flood, but hopefully, it will never make it past the bridge. Or maybe it will take out the bridge (without damaging our property) and then the county will finally have to build a proper bridge.

Any way, that's all for now. I know that I am about a week and a half behind on posting about the aftermath of the flood, but Foxfire and I have been spending almost every waking moment working to clear the debris and damaged fencing and then to re-build everything that was damaged or destroyed. My next post will probably begin describing the clean up and debris removal.

Flood Aftermath Part 1: Fences and Pump House

The morning after the flood, Foxfire and I looked at how badly our fence was damaged and decided that it was going to take far more than a day to fix it. Since we couldn't leave the horses in their stalls, and the donkeys and goats in the very small goat pen for that long, the first thing we needed to do was create a larger paddock for everyone. Because of the way our barn, backyard and pasture are laid out, the quickest easiest thing to do was to build a fence between the corner of our backyard and the corner of the barn closing off the corner of the pasture that was the least flooded. In order to get it done in one day, we knew we would need help. I called our trusty hay guy and Foxfire called his sister, Auddie. Our hay guy couldn't come himself, but he sent one of his assistants JT to help us. And Auddie showed up as well.

Since this was the third time in four years that our pasture had flooded and part of our fence went down, we decided that having a permanent paddock in the least likely to flood area was a good idea. It would also make it easier to keep the equines and goats that weren't being worked with out of the way when we were using the rest of the pasture to ride and/or train in. So while Foxfire and JT salvaged some of the least damaged panels and t-posts from the wreckage, Auddie and I ran to a local feed store and bought a 12' gate to put in the new fence. With all of us helping we managed to get the fence up and working by about 1pm. It wasn't truly finished. The gate wasn't properly mounted, just wired into place between two t-posts. But it functioned well enough to safely contain all our critters while we rebuilt the rest of the pasture fence.

The quick and dirty fence closing off the paddock area by the barn. The silver post on the far left is the corner post for our backyard area.

A muddy horse and donkeys walking the new fence line.

Ziggy looking over the new gate, wondering why we won't let him get to the round bale.

Shadowfax looking over the new fence at the remains of the flood.

With the critters taken care of, I ran around taking pictures of the damage the flooding caused. As I mentioned before most of our fences were either knocked flat or completely washed away.

The remains of the fence on the East side of our property.

The complete absence of a fence on the West side of our property.

From where our gate used to be looking North.

From where our gate used to be looking South.

Our gate ended up buried under a bunch of fence panels and t-posts about 2/3 of the way down the Southern side of our property.

The fence panels that we use are made of thick stiff wire about the diameter of a pencil. They are not designed to bend, much less to wrap around a tree.

T-posts are even less bendable.

I also took some pictures of the high water marks on and in our pump house.

You can see a piece of broken t-post as well as the high water mark on the wall.

If the water had gotten much higher it would have flooded our pump house breaker box and we would have been without water until we could get it fixed.

I'll continue describing the aftermath of the flood in my next post. Meanwhile if you want to see more pictures, check out my photobucket album "Flood Sept 2010".