We get days like that when there are a lot of high clouds, and the sun beating on them works just like an evaporative cooler.  It’s kind of depressing, and there have been very few people out to brave the grey cool weather.  It’s not that cold; but it seems to chill the soul.  I was planning to get out and drive again, but spent the day knitting and reading instead.

Not a  bad alternative, actually!

They’re pretty cute . . . and obviously not identical.

They’re very tiny; they can’t weigh more than two or three pounds each.  But they seem healthy and active.

They’re also young enough that they seem a little unsure about who Mother is.

But they’ll figure it out.  In other news, Kody and I — with Marion’s aid and support — took our first solo drive in the new cart.  It couldn’t have gone better; that cart does ride like a Cadillac.  Springs are a wonderful invention.

Of course, there are drawbacks.  I think I’ll wait a day or two before using my pretty new cart again.  The puddles won’t do it any good, and the mud is slippery.

Yesterday WordPress seemed to be having problems, and I could only get one picture in the sequence I took yesterday posted.  Let’s see if it’s better now . . .

There’s one . . . here you see that even the pinkelponkers were washed clean.

I hiked out and looked upriver.  The cloud reflections were breathtaking.

As I said yesterday, all of the trees glittered like jewels.  I tried to capture the moment . . . this was as close as I could come.

Today was cloudy for most of the day; no jeweled trees, lots of mud.  But it was a good day for sitting by the fire.  I got out for a walk, though, and was a little startled to see Channel 23 news driving in.  Then I remembered — there had been a police sweep that morning, moving out the homeless and their dogs.  The reporter was looking for someone homeless to interview.

We’re in two minds about moving them out.  Many of the dogs are a problem.  They’ve come in and attacked Andrew’s sheep several times, and then run right back to the camps.  They aggressively defend those camps — against horseback riders going by.  The people themselves aren’t usually a problem, though there is some petty theft.  The trash is a problem; there was some heavy equipment in today, scraping it up.  The last time they did that, though, they just pushed it all onto our property.  That’s not helpful.

One problem for many of these transients – shelters don’t accept dogs.  Not all of their dogs are large or aggressive, and they may be the only friends they have.  A local church set up a camp in their parking lot, but the neighbors weren’t thrilled, and they had to shut down.  Where do these people go?

These days, almost anyone could find themselves homeless.  It’s a big problem, and I don’t know of anyone with a solution.

After this morning’s first burst, the skies cleared and the sun came out.  All of the dull gray trees and bushes were washed clean, and glittering like a million diamonds in the sunshine.  I wandered around trying to catch the effect, but it’s not easy.  Still, the clouds were there to be captured .  . . and there’s a lot more, but WordPress won’t post my pictures.  Maybe later.

So Billy’s nephew Randy, who’s kind of a Mr. Fixit, took it in hand.  The seat was easy.  The shafts took a little more fiddling with — well, quite a bit more.  But here’s how they look now.

The left shaft — the one on the right in this shot — has just a little more bend in it than the right one, but it’s not critical.  They look pretty even, otherwise.

It’ll be a day or two before I get to use it again, depending on the weather, but it’s all ready to go.

Tonight I’m going with Marion to hear an Irish harper playing a metal-strung harp.  I listened to some of his music online, and it was beautiful.  I guess his is brass-strung; but some have been strung with silver or gold.

In any case — I wonder if playing one is as painful as it sounds?

We got a few hundredths of an inch of rain overnight, and when the sun came up, things looked promising.

But then the north wind came up.  It’s been roaring all day, sending tumbleweeds sailing south, blowing smoke down the chimney, and generally being the Bad Boy of wind.  The worst thing it’s done, though, is blow away all of the clouds.

Every time I looked out today, there were skittish horses kiting around their pens.  A couple of people decided to ride, but for the most part, everyone has stayed in their nice warm houses.  Well, there’s supposed to be a second storm coming — maybe we’ll have better luck with that one.

It was still in pieces, just not as many pieces.

It didn’t take long to get it put together, though, and before long Kody and I were trotting around as Trish made adjustments to the cart and harness.  I didn’t think of pictures then; but when Trish was trying it out, I finally thought to take some.

It’s pretty cute.

Even though it’s bigger and heavier than my old cart, it rolls so much easier that Kody seemed perfectly happy pulling it.

It’s a very handsome cart (even if it’s not bright blue) and it ought to be a lot of fun. 

You can see in these pictures that it got darker as the day went on, and we’re supposed to get rain tonight.  It’s been over two months since we’ve had measurable precipitation, so we’re hoping for the best.  I could have left my new cart out; that would have encouraged Mother Nature to rain all over it.

But I didn’t.

Later that morning, Billy asked a man and woman hunting around by the river what they were looking for.  It seemed he had parked down by the river while drunk, took out his cell phone and put it down under a tree, and then forgotten it.  Now they were trying to figure out which tree.  Good luck with that.

This afternoon, I happened to look out the window and see a large dog trotting casually by.  When I looked again, though, it wasn’t a dog but a bobcat.  He was a beauty, too; but by the time I bolted for my camera, he had gone about his business.

Marion had a visitor, too.  Hers was a raccoon that her dog had found in their pine tree.  She sent me a picture.

I think I’d rather have the last two visitors than the first two.

But no; she heard me coming and hopped right up in case I had a carrot.  She looked pretty funny halfway up, though, which is where I caught her.

All the horses are extra peppy in this chilly weather.  When I harnessed up this afternoon, Kody and I rattled around the ranch at a spanking trot.  (Why spanking, do you suppose?  You don’t usually spank them.) 

Their little minds are more active, too.  Scott just came in to inform us that one horse had decided it would be fun to try to haul his water tank around his pen.  It’s a big one, and he managed to break the underground line playing with it — and it supplies the mobile homes as well as the water to the horses.  The crew is mobilizing to fix it before dark.

Never a dull moment!