Both Pete and I are usually pretty tired by the end of the day.. We keep thinking that we’ll get caught up on things, but it hasn’t happened yet. Today, in addition to taking the truck in to the muffler shop, Pete built shelves for the Black Hole, videotaped Raudi and Hrimmi and I doing agility, and went for a horseback ride with me. I worked on my Bones for Life lesson (I am being evaluated on Monday), wrote up an article for the Icelandic Horse Quarterly, studied my Vet Tech chapter, and got Tyra, Raudi, and Tinni out for rides.

After dinner (stir fry, Pete made this), I went outside and cleaned the pen. I cleaned it first, early this morning, then

Pete cleaned it at midday, and I cleaned it this evening. Pete will do a final clean up around 10:30 p.m. tonight.

It’s spring. The fact that we have a lot of snow, everywhere, does not detract from this fact. It’s now starting to melt. The sun is now setting well after 9 p.m. and there is heat in that sun. I can now take off my gloves for limited amounts of time although I prefer not to – it’s also icy out, and I am still falling down on an average of once a day. Tonight I spent some time scratching the horses’ backs and sides with the rake. All, including Tinni (who is stick phobic) like this. You can tell because their lower lip quivers.

Tonight, I was sitting on the stairwell and looking out the window. I then saw the full moon, bright orange, hanging low in the sky. A few years back I took a photography class. The teacher, a curmudgeonly fellow, said he did not want to us to be taking photos of birch trees, our pets, moose, or the moon. All, he said, were too common. I begged to differ and was ignored. But I do like this photo that I took of the moon even, though the moon is not as big as it appeared to my eye, or as orange. This is just a differing perspective. Nothing is as we see it to be with our naked eyes.

Spring brings the lost bounce back to the step. Going into winter isn’t that bad because then there is the prospect of holing up for days on end and reading lots of books. But three-quarters of the way through, it gets old. This year, three quarters of the way through and winter was ancient. We got most of our snow after mid-February. Go figure. And we can’t complain – Fairbanks, as always, of late, got twice as much snow as we did.

I of course feel for the moose, which usually have a hard time this time of year and this year are having an even harder time. They are having a hard time getting to the forage because the snow is so deep. And around here, they have to climb over tall berms alongside of the road. I see them, and I move slow, so as to refrain from contributing to their energy depletion. And I wish each and every one of them the best. They don’t have easy lives.

Next: 90.3/31/18: A Whole Lot about Very Little