Back home
Otty Lake reflections
There is a wonderful feeling coming back to somewhere you once called home. All the familiar faces, stores and back country roads. The small town feel is a lovely one after the anonymity of large cities and the vast expanses of places you know you would visit, but never live.
That is the luxury living full time on the road gives you, to visit, but if you really don’t find any spot to your liking to move on.
But here, well, are so many of your friends-both the two and four footed variety. Dusty and Maya had made the trek back here last December, to their forever home, with grass and pasture, a stall and a blanket on cold nights and their old barn friends as well.
It took it’s toll on Dusty, lot’s of acting out and stallion like behavior, breaking through fences, rounding up the mares and just being, well, a dick. No one likes a fence breaker, trust me. Over the many years we ran our equestrian center we had our share of them. They were not popular. Jennifer is smart and knows her horses well, she coached me for many many years, helping to start Maya and transition Dusty from the hunters to dressage so she knows them very well. Maya and Dusty now have their turn out, with the donkeys and ponies, and Celeste, Boots and Phoenix enjoy their’s until we get an electric fence in place to separate the two groups. All is ordered and on it’s way so next week will be a fencing one! ah, never thought we’d be doing this but it is what it is and we need to keep them all safe! These are geriatric horses, the youngest is Maya at 17 and they range up to Boots at 29…quite the group I might add!
Dusty has been settling slowly Jennifer has noticed. Perhaps with us being back and a few trail rides under his belt he has started to realize there will be no more moving about or stuffing him full of carrots either he thinks we are getting ready to eat him or this is at last his home!;)
It’s not just a horse barn either, there are the delightful felines as well as the lovely Welsh ponies and the glorious donkeys. there is always a friendly face or muzzle here to greet you! Did I mention Jennifer, and Joanne, hacking with friends! Priceless!
And scenery, not only beautiful white ponies trotting about but waterfalls, creeks and fields. The spring fed creek has been roaring with all the rain, Plum Hollow Creek it is called Jennifer thought, just a small wonderful bit of water that runs through her farm. It slows to a trickle in the late summer. The previous owner, Charlie, had dug out one end for a swimming hole, what a paradise in summer for kids that would have been!
When we arrived there was not a leaf in sight, day by day that is changing. The trees are blooming, the forest floor has gone from bare to carpeted with wild flowers and the rain, well, I guess that is part of Spring here but we’ve been told it truly has been overly gray and soggy, even for the locals! Our hack last week was in a forest with just a few clumps of small wildflowers showing their heads, yesterday, the forest floor was carpeted with these amazing yellow blooms, what a sunny warm day and more rain can do!
In the maple forests the trees are just starting to bloom. I thought they were leaves at first but upon close inspection discovered it was trees covered in blooms! Achooooo!!
So we will sit and wait for the sun, and perhaps word we have found some house sitters to cover part of the summer at the ranch for us, otherwise our only experience will be gray and rainy days with a few hours of sunshine between and we’ll be headed back to Baja by the beginning of June. At times ownership of property seems like an albatross around our necks, so much invested there, it really is time to move on. Fingers crossed a buyer will soon come. At least we are high and dry here at the lake…in town today and well, the only RV Park in Perth is submerged, by the Tay River…I think one might need a submarine, not an RV here. I understand why they do not open until mid May, well, perhaps June this year!
Did I just see a picnic table float downstream?;)
In the meantime, we have such a wonderful group of friends and if we only have another month to cherish them and our amazing four footed kids, bring it on! Life unfurls before us now as it does and we will go with the flow, always easier than fighting it….when the water recedes we’ll see what is there!
Stay tuned amigos for a trip through a house and yard with everything, really everything…Saludos!