Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Time gone by

I found an SD card in an old camera bag this week. That's the modern day equivalent of finding a time capsule, or a letter in a bottle, or an old diary written by a long lost self. It wasn't even so old, this SD card- from a few autumn days in 2011, only a few years ago... 
Three years. A thousand days. A lifetime. 

Look! There's Bill, being harassed by Fred on the right, and Charlie on the left. Today, Fred is lying on our doormat, deaf and frail and turning 15 in a couple of weeks. Charlie died in 2011, just a few days after this photo was taken. 

Charlie's bottom, very much missed, as is the rest of him (although perhaps not by Bill).

Torbay Trim, the sweet and perhaps more talented litter sister of our Tom. Victim of a grass seed. 
And Ziggy's teeth. Still going strong.

Muddy stretching out up the hill, back when he had a functional right shoulder joint.

The golden oldies, former polocrosse horses Gun and Quiz. In their twenties, a bit arthritic, spending their retirement cruising the paddocks. They both died this year. Quiz left us her son Blade and her granddaughter, Rosie. 

Jim, Fly's brother. Still around, just gone down the road to another home and job. Miss him though.

Farmboy, aged four. I love Farmboy, aged 7 and a half, more than life itself,and I will love Farmboy aged 8 just as much, but gee, I miss Farmboy, aged four. And in the background is Rex, born in the UK, travelled the world, died last year. Funny old bugger.

The gang, 2011. Charlie, Trim, RIP as well as Bonnie and Jake (pre-cruciate repair) and Moss, Alfie, JJ, all gone on to bigger and better things. 

Gone but not gone is the Ginger Biscuit in her 2011 form. She's certainly bigger now, but somehow I always see my baby, and I suspect I always will. That's the lot of the youngest child.
That tractor behind her, it's digging a hole. 
The ground beside our house used to be a tennis court, and now it's just a deep hard clay pad, too hard for a man with a shovel to dig a grave for his best mate.


That's Charlie.
 Pigheaded, argumentative, not one for fancy competitive demonstrations but surprisingly sensitive, talented and incredibly reliable and hardworking. A bit like R, actually. 
Charlie worked hard for eleven years without a single sick day (even when he came off the motorbike and rubbed his face along the bitumen at high speed). Then suddenly, he wasn't feeling well, and then he was dead from kidney failure.

It was always Fred and Charlie. For eleven years, R's right hand dogs. With him every day, for whatever job needed doing, mustering, yard work, catching fly struck sheep, he could rely on Fred and Charlie to get it done. For a while, it was just Fred and Charlie, and then there were other dogs too, but when something needed doing he'd always take Fred and Charlie. 

Then it was just Fred. 
And now Fred lies on our doormat, with a Weatherbeeta coat over his stiff old joints, watches R take other dogs to do the jobs that really need doing, and waits.


Sunday, December 16, 2012

Mayanup Christmas Bash… sorry, AGM

To avoid my recently habitual sin of plastering Facebook with my photos, I’m going to use my blog for its original intended purpose: on-line diary and photo repository. Yesterday was an enjoyable day of sheepdog political biffo discussion, followed by a few hours of messing around with young dogs, followed by the consumption of very tasty food and booze and exchange of gifts. It was a nice intermission to our final week of harvesting.

Photos of Dogs!

Yvonne Haynes’ Tarntarn w

Pete Doherty’s young dogdog sits 2 w
Pete demonstrating some tips from a Greg Prince school.pete 1 w

An unidentified kelpiedog fencew
An unidentified collie dog
Our Zen’s litter sister (Sadie?)sadiegus merle 1 w




Ken Atherton working a young kelpie ken 1 wken 2 wkelpie 1 wkelpie 2 wkelpie 4 ww
Kriszty Cumming’s Rosi
And Shimmer
Another unidentified kelpie dog 2 wdog 3 wdog 4dog 5 wdog 6 w

Photos of Kids!

The Littlest Sheepdog Trialler (Hayden and Shelby’s babe). I couldn’t hold him, he made my ovaries hurt so much I wanted to cry. baby ww
My beautiful boyfb ww My scruffy but also beautiful girlgb wwMy two beautiful children! kids 1 wwkids 2 ww
“Plaster THIS all over Facebook!”fb face 1 wkids car 1 wkids car 2 wkids car 3 w
Almost, sweetheart.gb face 1 w

Photos of Dogs who think they’re Kids!

Totally thrilled about coming to stay with us while their “parents” flit about overseas getting married and what-have-you:
Ink (“I had my bridesmaid’s dress all picked out!”)Rosi

Photos, Photos, Photos!

Oh, playing with cameras! Endless fun! One of the benefits of using only manual lenses is that it really makes me think about every single thing I’m doing, dredging up memories of those Year 9 Media classes (Oh, Mrs McMahon! Where are you when I need you?!) and requiring entirely new levels of concentration, short term memory and occasionally even creativity. The joy of digital photography is that my many, many total failures can be instantly deleted to make way for… well, more total failures.
Here’s a beer bottle on a fence. I took a lot of photos of this, trying to some sort of balanced exposure of the bright sky, the darkly shaded fence and the colour of the stubby holder, and maybe even to work out the whole white balance mystery. Not successful, but I liked this one. beer bottle 1 w
“You left the aperture wide open AGAIN?! Sheesh, Mum!”fb tractor ww


“Please tell me she’s not hoping to correct this with post-processing…”gb face2 ww

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Messing around with the gee gees

Evenings are getting longer and lighter.

canola edit

Rather than dodging darkness and downpours to dispense food and apply rugs, we can take our time to enjoy messing around with the gee gees.

Horse phobia is apparently not genetic.

fb fence edit

Jarrah is R’s horse.

jarrahfb jarrah

R thinks Blade also belongs to him.

blade

But according to the Ginger Biscuit, Ginger Blade (aka “The Racing Horse”) is her, ALL hers.

And so are all the carrots.

gb carrot

While Toffee has been sort of outgrown, and Dancer is convalescing, Dave is the Farmboy’s steed of choice.

dave edit

But Farmboy has his eye on the newest arrival, Rosie.

fb rosie

She’s Blade’s half-sister and Jarrah’s niece (or something similar- horse pedigrees are still largely beyond me).

Farmboy says she’s going to be his showjumping horse.

rosie 1 edit

I’m told that she’s at the “ugly duckling” stage, and she will grow out of it.

rosie edit

We can only hope.