You Made Me Love You!

One of my goals for the summer was to write more frequent posts to my blog. I make a "to do" list every day, but somehow blogging always seems to get left in the dust. Every day seems to be filled with activity; spinning, weaving, knitting, visiting friends and family. The time seems to fly by. This entry will have to cover everything that has happened in the last 18 days.

On Sunday, just two days after my official last day of teaching seventh grade, Pressley came out to put Mango and Leezza through their paces, practicing for the fair. She brought her cousin, Gavin, another student of mine. Gavin is a city boy and not exactly an old hand with animals like Pressley. We put him to work anyway, walking Leezza, who was sometimes less than cooperative!

 

Both Leezza and Mango did well on their first obstacle course.

 

 

My good friend, Nancy, took me to lunch on my first Monday of retirement. She has been retired for a "few" years and is one of the busiest retirees that I know. She has set the bar pretty high for me. I only hope I can keep my energy level up as high as she has.

I also taught the fourth annual basket making class for my group of six close girlfriends, including Nancy. We call ourselves the WINOS (Women In Need Of Spirits!) We make a day of it and do a potluck lunch. Lots of laughing and camaraderie and love.

This past weekend my daughter and son-in-law and two of my beautiful grand kids took me to see the musical, Wicked in Columbus. I loved it and had a wonderful evening. My son-in-law, Steve, made his famous fettuccine Alfredo for supper before the play. Yum!  A lovely retirement celebration.

My lovely granddaughter, Olivia, came home with me on Sunday. We gave grandpa Rich his father's day gift and went to a family cook out down the road at my brother-in-law's. After that Olivia and I made strawberry jam with the berries we picked from our patch.

This has become an annual event that I look forward to very much. I am so thrilled that a high school sophomore still wants to help her grandma make jam! Last year we even created our own jam making "company" called the Strawberry Lamb Jam Company. So named because of a poem she wrote and published when she was in third grade.

And finally, two weeks ago we had Took and Firenze ultra sounded to be sure that they were still pregnant. Firenze seemed too thin to be pregnant and in fact, she wasn't. Took's ultrasound also produced inconclusive results. So today we took them back to Amy J's Homestead where we purchased them. Joseph, the farm manager, is going to put them with a male for the "spit off" test and depending upon the result of that will do a blood test. Firenze will definitely be re bred. We will miss our big girls, but they will return in a few weeks.

While we were there we went out to one of the pastures to visit the  young males. We had been tossing around the possibility of purchasing a male for the fiber and the guardian potential. Mostly we thought we might buy a gelded male and not bother with breeding.

While we were looking this little guy, Nikko, came up to check us out. He is a handsome young macho with a beautiful top-knot. Very eye-catching. Nikko was as curious about us as we were about him and his fellow pasture-mates. While we were talking to Joseph and asking general questions about alpaca care, little Nikko kept sniffing around us, and at one point coming right up and inserting his head between my camera and my face. Just curious, nothing threatening. He just wanted to know more about these strangers visiting his pasture.

He was curious about the cat...

 

Rich's shorts...

 

 

and my camera!

 

He was determined to be noticed by us and how could we not notice him? When an alpaca you've only just met pokes his nose into yours, it's a difficult thing to ignore. It seems that a "mutual admiration society" (to quote a very old song) quickly developed between Nikko, Rich and I. As Rich and I pulled out of the driveway to head for home another old song kept running through my mind..."You made me love you. I didn't wanna do it. I didn't wanna do it."