Under the Weather
The horses have been sick - which means I’ve been sick (with worry).
It started last Wednesday, with Cirrus coughing. I called the vet and we assumed that he had choked on some of his morning supplements and just had a bit of a sore throat. But did he have a fever? No. Was he eating? Yes. So the best course of action was to let it sit.
He sort of coughed his way through that day and the next, too. But on Friday, I saw Paloma cough. And then my stomach sank and I started to think we weren’t dealing with choke. So I called the vet again - out of range for the day. I called another vet I knew - closed for the holiday weekend. THEN, in a bit of a panic I called over to the vet hospital at Colorado State and talked to a very calm and wonderful woman who told me it was probably some sort of viral bug, maybe blown in from a neighboring property. The questions were much the same. Do they have fevers? No. Were they eating? Yes. So more waiting.
Then Sunday - 4th of July. I went out first thing in the morning and Cirrus had huge, swollen spots on his chest. Now normally I would have thought, from the get-go that they were the result of bug bites (because he has had severe reactions to insects in past summers) - but because the cough was still there, my first thought was PIGEON FEVER (which is bad) and I once again called the vet.
After one more long chat (including the same questions as always - fever? No. Eating? Yes.) we once again concluded it was just a mild viral infection and bug bites.
Thankfully, as of today, I haven’t heard a single cough and the jiggly, fluid-filled swellings on Cirrus’s chest are almost gone (too gross a description? Just be glad I’m not sharing a photo). It figures that the first time I have a sick horse is just after I bring them to my own place. And then, of course, it’s not just one horse but two. I had better start checking my head for grey hairs.
My days currently begin with the following question : “what’s the next thing I’ve got to tackle to make everything else easier?” And over the weekend, when not freaking out about the horses, it was putting drip irrigation into the greenhouse veggie garden.
I know I’ve already said this, but I REALLY shouldn’t have tried to grow a garden this year. Especially not one three times the size of any other garden I’ve ever had. But because I put plants in the ground, I couldn’t just let them die (as much as I may have wanted to over the past month). That being said, it was taking me more than an hour every day to water and pull enough weeds to keep the place from becoming completely overrun - which was ultimately draining me of the little bit of plant joy I had left.
But now…oh my goodness. I turn on the hose, let it run for a half hour, turn it off. And in the meantime? I can pick more weeds or do some of the FUN jobs, like learning how to trellis tomatoes from the rafters or pollinating squash or hunting for the first peppers. It’s been two days and already I love gardening again.
We even had our first harvest of the season - cucumbers - and there are zucchini and tomatoes hot on their heels. So even though I SHOULDN’T have grown anything this summer, now I’m sort of glad I did.
The other big thing on the agenda right now is preparing to put new windows in our house. Which also means having all of the siding removed so we can add extra insulation and, someday when steel is less expensive, a new, rusty shell of corten. And after all that? Eric is going to get his dream kitchen (which is probably his equivalent to my having the horses outside the back door). Everything’s been building and stacking and prepping for this and the start is imminent.
It does mean, though, that we’ll be going underground. Literally. We are going to move our lives, as best we can, into the weird and slightly terrifying space that is the basement of this house - and we’ll be down there for at least a few weeks. On the bright side, it will be much cooler during the day. On the not-so-bright side, we’re going to have a lot more eight-legged roommates than I’m really comfortable with. When the windows came in, the guy at the shop told my dad that they were the prettiest windows he’d ever seen - and I think that’s saying something because I’m sure he sees a LOT of windows. For beauty of that magnitude, I can be a basement dweller for as long as it takes!
Upstairs, we’ll be pushing everything up against interior walls to leave space for my dad’s crew to work. And my studio is upstairs. So…jewelry work is getting a pause for a minute. I’ve got two fully fabricated pieces to finish up tonight (everything else is still bits and pieces) and then I’ll be putting together the miniest restock ever - just five pieces - for this weekend.
Every summer I say I need to take a rest from jewelry making - being as it’s my least creative season by far and hot weather doesn’t mix well with fire-play - but I can never make myself do it. This year, though, I don’t have much of a choice. So even though a long awaited box of silver just arrived (and it is wildly precious - have you seen the price of silver lately??) I’m laying down my saw for a little while and picking up…well, I’ll have no shortage of things to keep me busy, I’m sure.
