I have a new horse on my farm.  What a great time for him to arrive, when we’re having the most ideal spring ever.  It’s warm and clear and the bugs have yet to join us.

The pastures are turning green, but the horses are so happy to have a new friend that they’ve forgotten their routine of staring longingly at the grass from inside the sacrifice paddock.  I don’t let them out until I think the grass is high enough that they can tear off what they want to eat without weakening the roots.

Whenever there’s a new horse on the property, I like to keep watch to make sure that everyone’s settling in well, and that makes for long days and nights. Call me obsessive.  I don’t care.  I freely admit to being obsessive about things I care about.  Primary among those things are horses.

The other day was my birthday and my Yankee-Irish horse whispering boyfriend left me up on the hill with the horses and went down to the house to make dinner.  I sat on a mounting block watching the horses doze and stroll and doze and stroll. Everything was quiet except for the occasional snort of relaxation from the horses, and the surprisingly loud calls of the frogs from the vernal pond where they breed each spring.  Could there be a more perfect place to be on your birthday?  Not for me.

And then I saw the light of a headlamp coming up the hill.  My boyfriend handed me a pot of chicken-apple sausages on steamed spinach, set out bowls for each of us, and then brought out two flakes of soft grass hay from the storage shed.  He laid them on the stack of 2 x 8s he’s going to use to convert a couple of run-in sheds to permanent stalls and we sat down together for my birthday dinner under the stars, with the horses nearby, sharing our view of the sky.

That’s my idea of romance.