Sweet, golden hour of sunset

What is the first thing you do when you wake up {a strange question considering the title of this post; perhaps implying that I arise at sunset - not true.}? The very first thing you do after you face the cold, bitter facts that it really is morning and you really do have to get up.
 I myself check the weather. I do this by viewing the position of the horses {my wards} and the chickens {Little brother's dominion} from my window through which they gaze, willing me too wake and hurry up with their breakfast. From this I can glean a much more accurate idea of the weather than the meteorologist on tv to which my parents subscribe in the morning, therefore better preparing me for the imminent moment when I must bundle up and join the afore mentioned creatures {the horses, you understand -- not my groggy coffee guzzling parents who are far too cheerful to face at this unholy hour} in the dawn's early light.
 This morning the horses were standing about in an almost frozen state, exposing as much of their bodies to the sun's rays as possible at one time. The chickens were doing roughly the same thing -- basking. This tells me two fundamental things: 1. It is cold. 2. There is no wind.
 How can I tell?
 If it were not cold the animals wouldn't be standing about like taxidermy, soaking up any feeble warmth the winter sun has to offer.
 If it were windy their mains, tails, and feathers would be waving in said wind.
 If it were both cold and windy all animals would have retreated to shelter to bask out of the wind.
Pretty deep stuff, right? Somehow my mind blunders through this every morning in order to tell my limbs how to dress sufficiently.

 Now, since we've suffered through that unreasonably long mental demonstration on how I begin each day, lets move on to the actual subject of this post, which, if you haven't guessed, has to do with my animals and their eating habits, therefore making the paragraph above you just read almost completely irrelevant! *face collides with keyboard* You know what, just leave me here to die.

I took my camera out this day because 1. the sunset cast a beautiful golden glow over everything, and 2. I felt especially good-natured that day and wished to convey a sense of the pleasure one feels when serving fellow Creations.

After that soppy introduction this photo makes me laugh out loud. Perhaps it was not the best one to start with. However, I believe I captured the essence of Wilber in this photograph: Large and slightly intimidating, with a vacant expression that hints at the theory {which I believe, but other members of the household call preposterous} that he was dropped at birth. From a great height.

Double Stuff has taken to squirming through fences in order to escape the tyranny of Shyanne in the other pen. For some reason she has taken a sudden and enormous dislike to him, driving him to live with Roanie {who doesn't mind him one bit} and Wilber {who occasionally plays cat-and-mouse with him}.

I just had to snap one of the Symbol of Farmers Everywhere: the lowly, but extremely helpful pitchfork.

Inevitably there will be one skeptical pony who comes up to wondering why the heck you just took a picture of a pitchfork.

Bane of my existence! I hate ice. With a passion. Because there is nothing that sinks the soul down to your boots quite like chipping away at ice in -1,000* weather,  snow blowing in your numb face, with a modified metal pipe {read: smashed flat at one end and ground to a point} searching for water only to discover the bottom of the tank. It then dawns on you that you have spent the last 20 to 30 minutes of your life chipping at a solid block. of. ice.

.... a picture of ice.

I will not bore you with the details of hauling water some hundred snowy yards from the spigot to the tank in five gallon buckets. I will tell you that it is at those times when you appreciate having an able-bodied Da and brothers around.

 It seems I will never be able to write a proper closure for a post, for heavens above it is that Sweet, Gold Hour already and the creatures call me. However, I flat-out refuse to leave as abruptly as I did last time {"so, i'm doing this. good-bye." what a disgrace!!}

 So I'll leave you instead to try and comprehend what this post was about, and a watercolor I did for a friend's baby-shower card. I like it.

Dia,

-Gwyn