Cheshire Farm: Everyday Stuff

I started off my day today wiping out the dried up V8 Strawberry Banana juice that someone...cough, Gigi, cough...spilled all over Zoe's Lego's the other day.

It's a testament to my anal retentive nature and the fact that I would forever

imagine ants finding their way into our house to slurp up the deliciousness.

So, a'cleaning I went.

Zoe is playing softball this year. She's played t-ball for the past three years and we are super excited that she still wants to play. It's all girls (hence, softball) and there's no one whining that they have to go to the bathroom or that they don't want to bat because they are only 3 and their parents have forced them to try the sport. These are all girls who WANT to play and Zoe's pretty good, if I say so myself. And I do. She's good. She is wearing a special shirt under her uniform and practice shirts. Her port is located under her skin directly in the middle of her chest and it sticks out quite a bit...we say it looks like a peach pit that got stuck on the way down. During her first practice last week, she got hit in her port by the ball and started to cry. All my fault really. I forgot to have her wear her padded shirt. Dang it! But, I quickly helped her subdue the tears because she wants to be like everyone else and we don't want to draw attention from the others. She had actually held the tears in until I had stopped talking to the mom beside me about organic vs. traditional fruit snacks and glanced up at her. She got her sobby face and I went to the fence and that's when she started to cry. She's a tough cookie.

The tree hugger has been taken down from Central Park.

Team Zoe won $50 in the category of fan favorite and we have donated

the winnings to CureSearch and to our walk in September.

We have decided to put the tree up at our house and it's visible from the road.

Wave at it as you go by.

That thing is going to stay up until it rots away.

Here are some of the wild strawberries that Gigi eats.

They look good, but aren't.

She must have eaten some because she was following me around outside as a dog.

She even picked up a dog toy that's outside with her mouth.

She immediately spit it out when I mentioned that the dogs like to eat horse poo

and then play with that toy, so it's a horse poo dog toy that she had in her mouth.

The turkey vultures are hanging around today.

Scouting out the area for dead things to chew on.

Eww.

When we moved to the farm we made a "secret passageway" on the

south side of the yard between the barn and the play area.

It had gotten a bit overgrown so Chad and I cleaned it up a bit these last few days.

It's petite and out of the way. Perfect for little ones to to hide in.

I love it.

The horse has been declared fat by the vet, the farrier, and the horse trainer.

I have no idea how to gauge fatness unless your pants look too tight.

Since horses don't wear pants, I just didn't see it.

So, we are keeping her off the pasture a bit.

She doesn't like this one bit, as you can see from her face when I closed

the gate on her this afternoon.

Maybe I'll stitch up some horse culottes and test the fat pants idea out on her.

The raspberries that fervently grow EVERYWHERE at our farm are started to plump up.

Soon they will turn red and then dark, dark purple and then we will pop them in our mouths on the way to get the mail, on the way to the barn, on the way to the pool.

Hopefully some will get inside to put into a pie or a galette.