Lola

 Hello Darlings and Happy Thanksgiving to all you humans out there! Of course, if you knew what I knew about turkeys, perhaps you would try something I had today – Carrot Casserole!  So Tasty and none of those  nasty feathers to worry about!  Oh well, to each his own, n’est pas?

Anyhoo, darlings, I promised I would introduce you to other horses here in our lovely gated community and I NEVER go back on my word unless I can’t possibly help it, so here is one of the REAL HORSEWIVES of HOLLYWOOD.

Her name is Lola and boy does it suit her!  She is very very very blonde, from her size 10 hoofs to her mane.  Not that I am jealous – I most certainly am NOT!  I adore being a black beauty and  after all, I am lead mare here in Pastureville – but enough about me – for now!  Back to Lola!

First of all, she came from an auction!  Can you believe that?  Yes, my dears!  She actually had to stand and have humans bid on her!!!  I would have died if it were me!     I came from a lovely EXCLUSIVE residence called  Equine Advocates!  They have a lovely place up in Northern NY State.  I don’t think Lola even has papers!  Qu’elle domage!  

So now she is here in Pastureville and who does she think she is?  She thinks she is so hot!  We’ll of course we are all hot here in the summer – after all, it is Hollywood – but she thinks she is hot all year round!  You should see how she prances around - especially when Shiloh is around!  Tail up… well, I can’t really go into it further, but YOU KNOW!    She is so very very very blonde.   Yesterday we were waiting for the caterers to come and she said she wasn’t sure if she wanted hay that night.  Darlings, I am SURE you know this, but we dine on hay.  Hay in the morning, hay in the evening, hay at suppertime.    So I asked her what else she would like and she said… that Dried Grass.   

Could you just die???

Well, that’s all for right now Darlings!  I have to get my Beauty sleep!  Ha!  Love you – mean it!  - Beauty

Hard frost last night, which started about 4pm. Thawed this morning about 10 am, cold & miserable all day. Lumps of ice turned out of hens’ basins were still frozen in the evening. Made bonfire, added some of the hay which had rotted to the compost-heap. This uses up the Adco, which will not have made the 7 cwt. of manure as specified, but perhaps I used it too liberally.

7 eggs. Sold 20 @ 4/4. Total this week: 49. + 12 laid out = 60.

The case is deserted against a man accused of setting fire to a hay barn on a farm in south west Scotland…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: farm. The blog is also related to: farm.

I’m very lucky to have excuses to get out and see the countryside fairly frequently.  It’s almost addicting when it’s harvest or planting time…. or on any really nice day there is a crop in the field!  This week the drive back to Memphis from St. Louis found me stopping on the road and grabbing my camera bag.  It just had to be done!  I thought some of you may want to see a few of the sights too.  I really love the nighttime shots of soybean harvest… took a bit of concentration to get those!

- Za rodzinę to my o tak (przecina szyje palcem symulując międzynarodowy znak śmierci), życie byśmy oddali. Rodzina nie jest dla mnie tradycją, ona jest we mnie… – Zorika spotkałem na drodze. Jest policjantem, ma 24 lata, w ów czas wracał z pracy razem z przyjacielem Rudikiem, 30 lat. Zabrali mnie z ulicy, w kierunku Gyumri. Na wstępie określiliśmy się jako przyjaciele; po 5 minutach znajomości. Zaprosili mnie na kolacje. W domu Zorika w Spitak poznaje jego babcie, która przyrządziła wieczerze. Rodziców nie ma. Umarli nie po prostu… nie wnikałem.

O poranku w Kazbegi, w domu gospodarzy, w przedpokoju spotykam matkę. Prowadzi mnie do salonu. Na ścianie wielki portret młodzieńca, w czarno-białych kolorytach. Domyślam się, choć nie pytam. Inna drogą dochodzę, ze odszedł Tam. Na jej twarzy widniało mistyczne przejecie, gdy tak mówiła, kto gdzie jest, a gdzie kogo nie ma…

Kuchnia z widokiem na wielkiego zielonego Kamaza. Rozwieszając pranie nad podwórzem, dostrzegam pana krzątającego się wokół ciężarówki. Poleruje silnik, czyści kola, głaszcze. Piękniejszego maszynowego olbrzyma nie widziałem. Krzyczę zatem ormiańskim “dzień dobry”, aby dać sobie szanse na poznanie dlaczego wielki kamion nigdy się nie rusza, i dlaczego jest taki… czysty. Starszy pan wola mnie na dol. Schodzę do niego. Wielki samochód z rocznika 1988 jest częścią jego życia, pomaga mu jednocześnie zapomnieć, jak i przypomnieć lepsze czerwone czasy. Zony nie ma. Umarła nie po prostu. Syn daleko, w Rosji. Zaprasza mnie na koniak wieczorem. Przychodzę z butelka. Zastaje pana przy elektrycznym kaloryferze przed telewizorem, w mieszkaniu, które ze spokojem pomieściło by wielopokoleniowa rodzinę. Na ścianie wielki portret pięknej kobiety… przed wypiciem czyni znak krzyża.

Wiele tutejszych historii-spotkań uczy mnie bycia członkiem własnej rodziny. Świadomości, ze zostałem zrodzony gdzieś, aby później pójść sobie Tam.

At dusk in Kazbegi, at hosts’ house in the hall I meet a mother. She leads me to the living room. On the wall there is a large portrait of a young man, in black and white colours. I guess but not ask. In another way I realize that he is There. A mystic fervor covers her face while talking about where somebody is, and where somebody is not…

A kitchen has a view on a large green Kamaz. While hanging out the washing, I notice a man busied with his truck. He is polishing the car engine, cleaning wheels, and stroking it. I have never seen such a beautiful machine giant. So, I shout an Armenian “good morning”, to give myself a chance to learn why that big car never runs, and why it is so…clean. The elder man asks me to go down. So, I do. The large car from 1988 is a part of his life. Simultaneously, it helps him to forget, as well as to remember those better red times. He doesn’t have a wife. She simply died. His son is far away in Russia. He invites me for a cognac in the evening. I come with a bottle and find the elder man sitting by the electric stove and watching television. It’s an apartment which could easily accommodate a multigenerational family. A large portrait of an attractive woman hangs on the wall. Before drinking he makes the sign of the cross.

A great number of local “story – making – meetings” teaches me how to be a part of my own family. I am becoming conscious that I was born somewhere so as to go There.

NICE!!!!  Thank you KATIE for the link.

From CROOKEDBRAINS

Uno de los mejores grupos españoles, pongo aquí el video de sus dos canciones más conocidas para todo aquel que no los conozca. No me gusta Fito en solitario (mejor dicho, Fito y Fitipaldis), ya que me parece algo monótono, todas las canciones son iguales. Loq ue no pasa con Platero y tú, una unión de músicos sorprendente. Al conocido Fito Cabrales, se le une Iñaki Antón, “Uoho”, uno de los mejores guitarras que haya tenido la música española. Juantxu Olano, Mongol , bajista y Jesús García, Maguila, batería, completaban el grupo. Su discografía son todo discos verdaderamente notables, destacando el Hay Poco Rock N’ Roll (1994) y Muy Deficiente (1992) para mi gusto los dos mejores.

Click HERE for more PHOTOS: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dreier_knabach-reierd/sets/72157622824363222/show/

I’ve been having a little trouble dreaming up content for a new blog post over the past week or so. I’ve been a little under the weather, but for a very long time indeed I’ve been meaning to put together a bit of a combination blog post about some of my memories of growing up around hay. I know it might seem a little strange, but there are a lot of very strange memories I have all bundled up with hay.

I should probably explain before I start into this properly, there’s a big field behind my house. The grass out there grows to waist height over the course of a year, cut only towards the end of summer. The field was out to the West of the house so, during the month of August, the sun would set behind the trees, throwing lazy shafts of dull red-orange light across the too-long grass, like honey.

Once a year, they’d cut the grass to make hay-bales, which, as children, we had always assumed were used to feed animals over the wintertime, though we were always far too distant from these animals to see or hear of them.

It was the done thing when we were children to wait until it was just getting dark, I imagine a bit late for children really to be out in our modern age of terror for the safety of children, and, as the sun broke beneath the canopy of the trees, we would play hide and seek in the long grass. Those games remain among my most vivid early memories.

I remember clearly lying, curled into a tiny, foetal ball among the grass, shoulder high on my seven-year-old self, breath held in a desperate attempt not to be found. There’s a certain chest-wrenching excitement that you don’t ever get outside childhood and there’s no excitement purer than that moment where you see the sunlight shiver through the dew forming along the edge of a blade of grass towering above you, clench your eyes shut while you feel a harvest man crawl across your neck or watch the moths gather around where you’re hidden (I don’t know why they do that, but it seems they really do).

In those memories, hay doesn’t smell like hay, just a thick smell of earth and wetness, maybe moss, smells don’t stick too well in my mind. They’re just kind of catalogued for future comparison.

It’s something to miss, I think.

That fun only lasted until the end of summer when, just as we were organising ourselves to get everything together to get back to school, the hay would be baled up. That meant that for the last week of our summer holidays we would do as any group of children with access to bales of hay would do… we’d build structures far taller than ourselves and then we’d play on them until one of us injured ourselves so badly that we weren’t able to conceal it from a parent and we’d be informed, as a group, that hay isn’t for playing on.

After that, all of our hay-bale shenanigans would have to be covert, though I doubt the level of secrecy we ever really managed… I think that perhaps our parents understood the effort policing us might really have taken, and relied on the fact that someone had been injured to keep us in check.

It never really did.

The last one is, I suppose, the reason I started writing this blog in the first place. I’ve said before in this blog that I don’t have very much memory of my mother from before she vamoosed, so to speak.

Just as we were heading into evening one summer night (I must have been around four, having no memory yet of school) myself, the mother and my brother went to pick blackberries in the bushes along the edge of the field. The only berries worth actually picking grow far out of the reach of a five-year-old, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t try, while, a year-younger, my brother toddled through the too-tall grass.

It’ll seem strange, but the whole thing has the feel of the segments of Gladiator when Russell Crowe is close to death, imagining himself to be in Elysium, fingers held out to brush the sepia-toned wheat. The biggest difference is that Russel Crowe hears the sound of some spirit or other singing, like a sad cross between Enya and a ghost.

Somewhere near my house there were, once upon a time, steel bollards. I say steel, though when I eventually did find them they turned out to be rusting more than a little beneath their flaking green paint, so I imagine they were probably more iron than steel. Those aging bollards, erected in the days before the quarries nearby had been filled in, thrust from the grass at strange angles, strung together with lengths of chain.

The chains would swing in the wind until their links slipped from one bollard to the next, ringing long and clear, a bell-like tone that carried on the breeze around the houses. That sounds, stippled as it was coming across the thin woods around the houses and the adjacent field is very much the sound I associate with all of my fondest childhood memories.

I think to me it’s just the sound of sentimentality… I’m not sure if it’s sad or pleasant that there’s a sound I associate with reminiscing, but I suppose that’s just life.

Anyway, time to wrap this up, before I get really dreadful.

Because we grow our own, we KNOW it's good!

After a few dry years, we had enough rain for a good crop of hay. Here’s the first trailer load, brought in before a storm that was forecast but didn’t eventuate.

We love growing our own hay, because we know there’s only goodness in our soil, water and sunshine. And of course we compost everything.

We like to know exactly what’s going into our beautiful Morgan horses. We want them to grow strong, healthy and even tempered.

We let all our fields lie fallow on alternate years. This lets them recover naturally.

Sitting  on a bale of fresh hay at the end of a hot working day is one of life’s great pleasures.

Just wait till you read about our home-made lemon cordial!

Our beloved farm doggie, Bounce.

Bounce is another vital member of our team. As well as an endless source of company and cuddles, she’s a vigilant guard dog, an expert ratter and an effective snake repellant.

Far from being afraid, our horses can’t get enough of Bounce and are forever trying to smell and nuzzle her.

When we take the 4WD to the top paddock, Bounce often tears along beside us – a white streak glimpsed through the tall grass.

When Bounce wants to ride, she can leap six times her height to make it through an open door. You’ll often see her on the back seat; front paws on the arm rest, face out the window, checking that the herd is safe.

After posing for this photo, Bounce leapt off the big hay roll as if it were no higher than a doormat. She ain’t called Bounce for nothing!

Et mer unikt og morsomt sittemøbel skal du lete lenge etter! Dog når det kommer til komfort er jeg ikke overbevist. Men hvem har vel tid til å sitte på baken hele dagen uansett? Kan kjøpes på Hays konseptbutikk i Hegdehaugsveien eller på Illums bolighus.

Foto: Hay

The legend of womanising cowboy Cotton Eyed Joe apparently goes way back yonder in the annals of American folk music, with countless versions spreading through the West in the early 20th century faster even than debauched ol’ Joe himself could sow his seed. Who knew? I just assumed it was a wacky one hit wonder from the early 90s, destined to live and then die on the disco dancefloors of my primary school days. I even bopped out my own rendition of it on karaoke when I was 9 years old, whilst in Menorca, and no doubt wowed all my new package-holiday buddies in the process. I haven’t heard any of the old-timer versions but I sure as heck-fire enjoyed this one by, believe it or not, a Swedish band called Rednex. The video is hilarious by the way, full of simple cowfolk having a rootin’ tootin’ time romping about in the hay. The song is infectiously fun too, with its racing violins, twiddlings banjos and hey hey heys (whether this is in celebration of the hay itself is unclear), which goes some way to explaining why I loved it so much despite not having the foggiest idea what any of the lyrics were about. It was probably best, at that stage of my life, that I remained ignorant!

“This is The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done in My Life”

November 8th, 2009

At the heart of every solid episode of The Amazing Race is a narrative of fall and redemption. It is morbidly entertaining to see a team fall apart in the face of pressure, watching as an individual turns into a blubbering mess right in front of us, and when they eventually triumph over adversity (or, at the very least, come to terms with their predicament) it’s even more engaging. There’s something about the Race that brings this out in people, which is why this week’s trip to Sweden is particularly intelligently designed: it is all about creating a scenario where teams will fall apart, and as such given an opportunity to redeem themselves.

It’s also a chance, through the use of the new Amazing Race “Switchback,” for the show to right one of the wrongs in its past by revisiting a particularly infamous challenge. By returning to the scene of the most gruelling roadblock in the show’s history, the show gets to demonstrate how it should have done things last time, in the process creating a good combination of pathos and tension that justify the way in which the task makes the rest of the leg largely irrelevant.

The infamous Hay Bale Unrolling roadblock was physically gruelling, no doubt, but its greatest challenge is emotional. The teams in the front of the pack got onto an earlier flight, raced through the detour without getting lost, and yet was in some ways disadvantaged by having the lowest odds for finding a flag on their first rolls. For the three front-running teams, they needed to overcome both the physical challenge of the task and the emotional challenge of seeing the team who arrived third leave first. On that field, every emotion that had been stored over the past number of legs came bursting to the surface, as Meghan’s frustration over Cheyne’s poor listening skills and Dan’s yelling at Sam turned into a test of their team dynamic in the midst of a challenge where you don’t want to be testing your team dynamic.

Usually these types of challenges that devalue your speed in running the race and which rely entirely on luck or producer contrivance are something I frown upon, but I think this was a worthwhile exercise. There is a legitimate tension when just about anyone could find a flag at any moment, and more importantly the task was so draining that when they did find the flags they were guaranteed a moment of redemption. Meghan, although she tripped in her effort to pull off the ruse, played with Cheyne’s nerves by pretending to quit (which would have fit her general attitude to the task) before displaying the flag, and by the time Sam completed the task to finish fourth Dan had gone from obnoxious douchebag to bawling apologist. Cheyne’s indecision about the Roadblock could have been a sad narrative, with Meghan suffering and furthering their divide as a team, but instead their success brought them closer together. And Dan was emotionally out of control both during (with the yelling) and after (with the crying) to the point where this was a transformative emotional moment for the brothers’ relationship. Instead of the hay bales convincing them that they’re absolute failures in life, it brought both teams closer together, which is what a task like this should do if it’s going to take the skill out of the race.

In doing this “Switchback,” you could tell the producers knew how to improve upon the task. By making the pit stop at the task itself, you avoid an awkward car ride, and the gratification of completing the task and staying alive is instant and thus more emotionally powerful. And, as I had kind of predicted going into the task, the switch over to non-elimination during the task is an important change because it means that no one gets a narrative of failure from the task. Gary and Matt had a rough leg, ending up on the later flight and then doomed by an elevator ride at the Train Station which put them in last place heading into the hay bale challenge. Ultimately, being two stand up guys who appear to care about each other, the team went into the challenge with their heads held high, and Gary neither gave up nor lost Matt’s support in the process. They could have been eliminated with a positive narrative, but the non-elimination guarantees them a reprieve in a way that warms the cockles of the heart. Considering how much they highlighted Lena and Kristy’s departure in the dark field last time, they wanted to be able to rewrite that piece of Amazing Race history, which was done in a successful if contrived fashion.

As for the rest of the leg, it was interesting to see the Globetrotters really emerge as front-runners without necessarily having a great leg – they’re front-runners by nature of their physical prowess and not because they’re overly great at any particular task. Sam and Dan smoked them at the Detour by thinking more quickly about the task, and the Roadblock was just luck. These two are not going to be immune to mistakes down the road, which means that they will need help to win the race outright (and there won’t be tasks like this along the way). Meanwhile, Brian and Ericka rebounded well from last week’s disaster and were downright upbeat during the leg. Ericka could be grating if she decided to be, you can tell part of her wants to, but she willingly gets her nails dirty and she keeps her emotion focused on the positive (as everyone but Dan did well, really) to get them through the roadblock. Without the plane trouble, they’d have gotten through this leg smoothly, so they’re still a threat moving forward.

Overall, a reminder of Amazing Races past reminds us again that these five teams are all pretty likeable even when they lose some of their likeability in the midst of the hay field.

Cultural Observations

• The editing was a bit too obvious at some points (Flight Time talking about how he’d like to get a 1st Place finish for his birthday), but I loved that they never corrected Sam’s presumption that Flight Time and Big Easy were their biggest competition because they were the other all male team – Gary and Matt say hello.
• I’ve probably made mention of this before, but my brother and I are similar in age and demeanour to Sam and Dan, and I don’t care what he says – if I had been the one rolling the bales of hay, he would have been the one yelling on the sidelines.
• Perhaps the show didn’t bother explaining it any further because we didn’t get to see anyone do it, but I found the Viking Alphabet Detour option to be way too abstract to really consider. Of course, I might have just heard “Dynamite” and blanked out on the rest of it as a result.
• I thought teams pronouncing Nobel as “noble” was silly enough, but then I saw the preview for next week – yeesh. I guess this IS the group who didn’t know who Jackie Kennedy was.

We were blessed with the October rainfall…this will be our fourth cutting this year…

So to HDR or not to HDR, that is a question, I don’t know if THE question but it is a question for sure.

I’m not a big fan of HDR, not good at it and don’t plan on getting good at it. I think it’s over used, over done and just another way to show art but not my style.

On the other hand just like every way to take a photo it is always an option, and this time I decided I would give it a try.

I think it does a good job showing this photo because their was no way I would have been able to show the wonderful color in the sky and keep the hay bale exposed. If you don’t know what HDR is I’m not going to explain it but you can google it I’m sure you will find out quick.

This photo reminds me why I love not only photography but also why I love living in the country.

I’ve lived in the country for ever, I’m from Southwest Missouri, I’m from Cassville, Ya I’m sure you’ve never heard of it.

It is a nice little town, and I had many found memorys from their, but I always loved the time when it came to cut hay and take it to the barn.

Theirs something about the smell of fresh hay that makes me happy, It’s a special smell and it is a trap of emotion for me.

I love the country, and hope and pray everyday that I can stay in it forever. Theirs not much demand for a photographer in the country, but I’m going to make it happen.

Stay Classy everybody,

Mitch

Bloggeren i fra Lahell, skrev et inspirerende innlegg “Grønt er skjønt” og la samtidig ut en liten utfordring til resten av “blogglandia”. Den lyder som følger:

Urban Retro- Rød * Hokusfiliokus-Blå * Kardemomme- Lilla

Jeg har prøvd meg på “Hokusfiliokus-Blå”, hvilken tar du?

Skåler og boller er fra Ikea, eggholderen er fra Alessi, kjøkkenhåndkle fra Åhlens, bordet fra Hay og lampen fra Kartell.

They are not talking (not even small talk) so much. Maybe silence is gold. / Ellos no hablan tanto (ni la charla). Quizá silencio es de oro. / Ils ne parlant pas autant (même pas le papotage) Peut-être le silence est d’or.

You can meet them in Suomussalmi (Finland) when driving to the North. / Usted puede encontrarlos en Suomussalmi (Finlandia) al manejar vuestro carro al Norte. / Vous pouvez les rencontrer dans Suomussalmi (Finlande) en conduisant au Nord.

Silent people

Silent people

Silent people

Silent people

Silent people

Silent people

Silent people

Silent people

Silent people

Silent people

Silent people

Silent people

Silent people

Three years ago I did senior pictures for one of Lucas’ older sisters, Karli. We had a fun time and mom mentioned her son and more senior pictures in a few years. Well, that day happened last Saturday. After days with rain lucked out with a nice dry day.

We started out with Elroy the dog. The house is surrounded with farmland and even some farm buildings. Needless to say, it was not hard to find fun places for pictures. With finished down on the highway and had a fun time. What a sweet family!

Here are some of my favorites. Enjoy!

This past year I have clocked more miles on my BMX bike than I have in the years. I’m not too sure why that is but it feels amazing. I have met so many new friends, met up with old friends, and thoroughly enjoyed bikes again. In March of this year,  I purchased a camera and that has undoubtedly helped with the initiative to ride more. But I think more than anything I just enjoy riding again. A lot of things have changed, no more 44t ‘dinner plate’ chainrings, no more Alex Triple Wall wheels, 36 as opposed to 48. But somethings have remained the same. Egos, bike throwers, and genuinely chill people who just love to ride bikes. I would like to think I fall into the last category. Between the bike thefts this year, riding with some of the most talented riders in the world, and witnessing the kindness and outpouring of support for those who have lost their valued possessions. I eagerly await what my future in BMX holds. I have learned a lot, and I hope I’ve created some positive and memorable moments this year. So as winter hits in this damned state. I look back and smile, not something enough people in BMX do anymore. So to all the haters, the frowning faces, the egoistical bastards, the people that never clap for you, they think you’re whacker than them ’cause they’re the masters and I bet disaster is caused in their mind when you flow and plaster their jaws shut with a dope line. (Thanks E&A)… I’m calling you out,  smile… it’s just BMX.

BMX!

David, Trying to knock walls Down.

Kyle Smith, Gap... (Mop Bucket?)

Las Vegas, Bars to Disaster

In Colorado you Abubaca Hay

John Doing his Best RAD Impression

John Able Punching Walls

New Ride

HI!

]]> http://lisadiamond.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/back-yard/ Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:42:48 +0000 Lisa Diamond http://lisadiamond.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/back-yard/

My husband and I took a walk in our back yard the other day.  It was so beautiful.  Here is what it looked like.  That’s me in the photo.

Og det er jammen en liten stund siden også… Har nemlig hatt litt problemer på kamerafronten, men med ny lader har det blitt sus i serken.

Her er noen bilder av min DLM, altså aqua grønne Don’t leave me fra Hay. På den står skålen Leaf fra Georg Jensen, fylt med clementiner. Ved siden av godteskålen fra Alessi, fylt med “søppeldynga”!

Foto: Hip Spaces