I had big plans for the day, which really were no plans, perhaps do some fishing, get my sailboat out, chase a golf ball, float in the pool. Instead, as the heat index reached 100 (that’s about 38 degrees for my Celsius friends), I found myself shoveling dirt in a horse stall.

With our farrier making his monthly, bimonthly, six-weekly, visit tomorrow, I found myself under the gun to get the main run-in stall back in decent enough repair that I could hold reins and not be terribly embarrassed by the condition of the barn.

You see, the flies this time of year bother my boys terribly. Hell, wouldn’t you be? The damn flies bother me terribly too, but I least I can scoot into blessed air conditioning when the going gets too tough. No such luck for the horses, so what they do is paw up dust to keep the bugs away. Paw enough when you’re big enough and soon enough there’s a mighty fine hole in the ground and a mighty fine weekend of plans of doing nothing much goes bye-bye.

Bear with me, just a few more comments.  The whole job would have been easier with a backhoe, instead of the front-end loader, but I am too cheap to buy one, and have no place to store it if I did own one. It is amazing how tight a barn stall can get, especially when you’re on top of a tractor. Things might have been easier if I had taken off the mower deck, too lazy, too hot, too bothered…