Category Archives: Gardening

Spring has finally sprung here at Four Lease Ranch. It’s been raining so long that the weeds, especially the darned Star Thistle, are as tall as me. Let the weedeating begin!

When I went down this weekend to trim horse hooves, I found one definite benefit to all the rain. Their hooves were still nice and soft which made it possible to use the nippers, an action that will be impossible later in the summer. This was wonderful because I was a weee bit behind in the trimming and Dancer’s hooves were overly long. (Bad horsey mom!) You can see in the picture below how much I had to trim off one of his fronts. The long wet weather combined with moderate temperatures have brought on the flies with a vengeance! Whenever I am down with the horses I feel like I am being dive bombed by hundreds of miniature aircraft. I have put out fly traps galore but this is still what I come down to in the morning. Poor sweetie.
Luckily for Dancer, they make these. He looks a bit like a alien with it on but always comes right up to me in the morning and lowers his head for me.
Along with the (finally) warming sunshine comes the annual planting of the garden. This year we have planted tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, yellow crookneck squash, butternut squash, cantaloupe, corn, strawberries, cilantro, basil, parsley, and chives. We have some rather voracious gophers in the garden right now so I have my fingers crossed that everything survives. If anyone knows of any good ways to get ride of gophers that doesn’t include poison let me know. Please!
The sage plant from last year is doing well. It’s leaves opening and embracing the spring.
Three plots for basil, cilantro and chives. Note the darned weeds that I have already pulled/weedeated twice. Grrrrr!
Tomatoes. I planted a number of them in underground cages so hopefully they can survive the gophers.