DH and I drove out to horsey northwest Marion County for another load of composted horse manure. It is a truly beautiful, scenic trip over rolling hills with fenced pastures to the right and to the left past farm after farm along Highway 27. After last night’s dip into the 20’s most of the pastures were not as lovely as on the last trip, now tan instead of emerald green. I took my camera with me, so you could watch the compost acquisition.
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| That's steam coming off the manure compost! Never saw that before. |
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| Brown gold is on its way. |
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| The nice fellow driving the tractor has very good aim. |
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| One of the perks of rose gardening... watching heavy equipment. |
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| Anticipation... |
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| Dump-a-roony! |
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| More steam. Very cool. |
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| Three heaping buckets all tied up. The tarp makes it easier to remove the compost from the truck. His bucket is the size of a long bed whereas ours is a short bed, so we leave him a mess to clean up. Like I said, he's very nice about it and glad to have someone take it off his hands. Probably will need a fifth load. |
Since I had my camera, I thought I'd take some pics of the beautiful horses that are usually on the farm, but they must have been inside having dinner.
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| Down the road a piece I spotted a couple in a pasture close enough to the fence so as not to embarrass my lens. He's a nice one. |
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| He/she decided to mosey over to see who was looking at him. |
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| And then his young friend came over, too. |
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| I like horses... in movies and books, but in person they are very foreign to me, very big animals known to have teeth. Teeth in animals bother me. |
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| But this fellow had such a sweet face. |
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| His look made me wish I could read horse-minds, but probably I don't need to be Freud to figure out he was looking for a snack. Sorry, buddy. I really wanted to stroke his face, but the coward in me prevailed. I left without letting him know my true feelings for him. Do you think he can read human-minds? I get the feeling that he reads hearts though. |
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| Frozen azaleas are not pretty, and they are very sad. I guess it would take a miracle for the rest of the buds to open now... rather than rot. Ahhh, the fragrance of the rotting Florida landscape after a freeze. Not nice. |
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| No sad endings here (did everyone watch 'Downton Abbey' last night? OMG, how could they?) so I'll end with the lovely Reve d'Or from a few days ago. Amazingly, she looked pristine today after the freezing night. Maybe, she'll be fine... in my dreams. |
Stay warm… wherever you are.
2/19/13 Postscript: Dare I say it? Great minds think alike. Yesterday my blog was on compost, and today
Martha Stewart's blog is on compost. She doesn't mention horse manure, but she's got plenty of heavy equipment. So dare I say that I may have inspired the inspiring Martha? Uhhh... probably not.
