Housework and Horse"work"

I have been struggling with creativity on my post titles lately; I keep trying to use "tails" and "tales" in some clever way for a post title, which in itself should tell you just how impaired my creativity is at the moment. Fortunately said impairment is thus far limited to typing, as we've been quite creative on the home front lately. This past week we installed a new hardwood floor in the kitchen:

We also*finally* cleaned out and redid the long planter box running along the side of the porch that has mostly been a weeds/large dog hangout station since we bought the place. It is now currently full of lovely rich dirt and will soon play host to whatever shade-loving plants we decide upon. We are also in mid-repair on the corner of the lawn next to the planter bed where a single small plastic pond liner had been sitting, now turned into 3 small ponds with a waterfall effect, soon to have a retaining wall and and some landscaping in to complete it:

Working on the home base is always a good thing, but so is riding horses! Yesterday morning Desire and I headed to the lake to meet N and Willow. 

My dignified mare..

 Where we live in the foothills, only about 20 minutes haul from the lake, we often have different weather than down in the valley. I had heard about fires burning a few hours north but up at our house there was no visible sign of the fires. At the trail head the sky was mostly blue, but looking out through the tress over the lake: Smoke!

 N said the smoke was pretty bad where she lived; it's scary that it's barely May and it's already so dry, with fires, heat, and wind already making headlines. I'll freely admit I'm not adjusting all that well to getting stuff done in the near 90 degree temps. The forecast calls for a 20 degree drop and a chance of showers in the next few days though, just enough to really confuse everyone's systems!

Yay, Willow is arriving!

 Peeking Willow and N's awesome new tights

 Out on the trail the sky started out blue but smoke was obscuring the foothills looking out over the lake. Not good! Still the trails were beautiful as always..

 The spillway is really flowing! 

 Desire was *starving* this whole ride and could barely be bothered to walk or trot for the trying to eat

 Yes I am bribing her with a carrot to get anything besides listening-to-spillway-roar-behind-us ears--semi successfully, I might add

 Neither of the mares drank until we climbed back up to the visitor center but was only about 11 miles in 3 hours, so not an unreasonable span. Still there was a lot of sweaty, foamy, stinky grey mare to go around!

Desire is still shedding out the very last of her winter goat disguise and the combination of shedding hair, sweat, sunscreen, fly spray, dirt, etc we were both covered in...well. Most of the time I am okay with being grungy especially when dressed and prepped for the occasion but there are still moments that it's all a bit much. Also, the flies are particularly bad all of a sudden and Desire has already started getting little sores on her back and belly from the bug bites. Apparently it's time to up everything to full summer heat and bug protocol! But wait it's going to rain in 3 days..

Ah, Northern California :)

 Moving the hay net in the trailer manger uncovered this contribution from our chickens. Omelette anyone?