The kind that makes me catch and hold all the horses until the danger has passed.
Which can take all night, which is why we've made the barn our second home.
And which is why we've been going through pallets after pallets of shavings, shoveling tons of manure and refilling 5 gallon water buckets like it's some sort of new workout craze.
Is it worth it? You tell me. An old acquaintance from the Montgomery area lost her only horse last week to lightning. That brings my total known horses (as in once had my hands on them) killed by lightning to 9.
Is this face worth some sleepless nights?
You betcha.
Now if we could only set up some sort of a neighborhood lightning rod to catch all this unwanted action. The storm on Thursday night did not take out a septic pump and all associated wiring, my main breaker box, too numerous of electronic devices to even enumerate, coffee makers, washing machine CPU's or the most onerous of recent offenses: frying irrigation controls, forcing hours of digging to find the damage. Nope, only took out two gorgeous oak trees. One cleaved in two directly in the horses' daytime pasture. When it fell, it narrowly missed the fence. Mother Nature is in serious need of Prozac.
Saturday was no exception. We had the usual torrid 100'F weather until the sky opened up and tried to drown us at 2 o'clock. Until then though, I was in heaven. Our landscaper was here digging to China to find all the damaged irrigation and pruning the forest of azaleas I didn't get to this Spring, so I took it upon myself to steal some of his workers to clear trails. Due to all the storms knocking down limbs, I'm woefully behind on bush hogging. Each time we've cleared a section, it's stormed again, burying everything in limbs I can't bush hog over without damaging the equipment.
Not knowing how long I could keep them (there was a second crew on another wagon too), we hoofed it! 500 acres of trails cleared. I shot one cottonmouth that was coming towards us while the guys were using the chainsaw too close to a swampy area. That's when these three guys decided they really liked me. Yup, Farm Mom has your back. Plus she can cook Mexican fare too.
My favorite cake: pastel con tres leches. Having observed in the past the junk food the crew brings with them, I decided that a proper meal was in order. These guys work insanely hard and I believe that machines can't run full throttle on stale gas. You want performance, you put jet fuel in their bellies. Fed homemade beef tacos with homemade salsas, we ran like the well oiled machines we are. (Except this machine is much older and felt like she'd been hit by a Mack truck after working with them!)
After they left and after all my chores completed, I ate a heaping bowl of leftovers and this machine creaked into bed before 8.
What a glorious day! I was able to speak Spanish all day, completely immerse myself into the work with the Mexican brethren... reminded me of my old crew.
Man I miss these guys. When we weren't doing landscaping jobs, taking care of our 24 hour industrial cleaning contracts, we were building my house.
To Geovani, Baltran, Angelo, Javier, Luis, Martin, Ismael, Domingo, Marcario and all my other fellow immigrants, thank you for the lifetime of good memories and for teaching me so many trades.
