Thursday, December 11, 2014

henny penny

I'm Henny Penny, and the sky is falling!
Yes, it is supposed to, it's rain, and wind.
But the storm, oh my, the worst in five years.
Five years? Really? Worse than the five inches of rain in ONE HOUR we got last week?
Ummm, maybe.
Gee Henny Penny, what should we do?
Run for the hills! Worry, be scared!
Is this a horrible blizzard?
No.
Earthquake?
No.
A tsunami?
No. You're not playing along!
How about I make sure the horses are ok, that the property will drain, and stay away from localized street and stream flooding?
Um, ok, but that sounds…reasonable.
Yes, I know.

I am SO tired of the weathermen and news this week. I rarely watch the news, but did turn it on to see when the main rain would hit. There was a national live broadcast from a storm-whipped hilltop in San Francisco, with the poor reporter getting pelted with the rain. Yes, it's raining. Drive carefully, have flashlights and whatever you need. We need the rain, though this will not come even close to saving us from the drought (you need a few YEARS of average rainfall to do that). I think we've forgotten that we live in Northern California. It rains. ok, rant over.


We did manage to fit in a ride last weekend, out to the slowly-rising lake. Quite a few of the sandy trails are pretty rutted, and we stayed off the dirt trails to not mess them up. Usually we give it 24 hours after rain, as everything here drains pretty nicely (decomposed granite is great footing). 
 
yes, the lake is higher, though there's a long way to go.

In between storms and darkness there hasn't been much time to ride, so Major gets visited every day and we go walking about if it's not too wet. I like it, and so does he (green grass everywhere!).


He works on tormenting the other horses over the fence, perfecting his grass-snatching skills, and of course, being muddy.

Hi Bandit, what cha' doin?

OK OK! you're crabby, I've leave you alone!

There is still 10 days till the Solstice. But break out the muck boots, stiff curry brushes and welcome to winter.




3 comments:

  1. Henny Penny! I laughed at the reference: I remember that book!

    Reporters used to do the same thing back in PR during hurricanes: they'd be reporting from out in the open in the worst spot possible. One guy got blown away one time. You could hear the wind whipping around your house: no need to endanger lives just to prove how bad the storm is!

    Bandit has some REALLY cool markings.

    10 days till Solstice! Hip hip hooray!

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    1. At least that was a hurricane! But blown away: that is awful/awesome at the same time. We do have quite a bit of flooding from this storm, mostly because the drains can't keep up. And idiot people try to drive through it and get stuck. For once I'm glad I'm just stuck in my office...

      Bandit is very lovely, though he is a bit of a crab, and gives his mother lots of attitude!

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  2. Okay so I was pretty fired up for this storm because we got *7"* of rain and high winds in the last storm, complete with trees falling over..and they hadn't really said much about that storm! SO with the big warnings I hunkered everyone in the barn and expected more and as ever when I commit to full stabling, the storm hasn't been THAT bad..we did have some high winds and we've gotten probably 4-5" of rain since yesterday afternoon but at least here or yet,it's not that crazy, not like "epic, worst in years!" crazy..though I guess with a few mild winters, it's been "years.". I've seen I5 and some highways are totally flooded and some fairly large power outages so it's certainly not a whisper..but still

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