A feather and a compliment

Let me begin by saying that I've been up for hours. Hours, I tellya and I still haven't gotten a lick of housecleaning done. Saturday mornings, for me anyway, are for housekeeping chores. And I actually rather like turning something messy into something shining and fresh. But I do tend to put it off. Um, like today. So far I've accomplished drinking 3 cups of coffee, with half and half. I love half and half. No flavored stuff for me, thank you. And never. Ever. Ever. Skim milk. I'd rather drink my coffee black. But here I go digressing.

I've also accomplished packing up 6 weeks of plastic, glass and paper stuff from the garage and taking it to the recycling center up the road. And then driving down my favorite road to a store to get the aforementioned half and half.

After that, it was time to take George on the Big Saturday Walk. I usually make this an hour and a half so he gets plenty tired and will nap while I clean. It's really difficult to tire out a border collie, however. Anyway, there we were on our walk, and we were heading towards home, down the canopy road. I've mentioned this road before here; it runs along part of the perimeter on this property, is shaded by huge trees and is wide enough for a couple of extra wide pick-ups trucks to pass each other, if need be.

What I haven't mentioned before is that exercise riders also use this road. Every Saturday, I run into at least one or two of them, riding racehorses. Sometimes they're galloping, and sometimes they're so quiet when they come up on me that I don't know they're there until they say something or one of the horses snorts loudly. And then I turn around and am surprised to see four riders right there next to me. But this morning, George was happily sniffing under bushes about 50 yards ahead of me when I noticed a solitary rider turn the corner ahead of him. I can tell the mount is skittish because the guy was patting him and began to approach very slowly.

I whistled to George, who turned towards me and then I told him to sit. Then lie. He does both as I continued walking towards him, telling him he is a Good Dog.

The exercise rider gets closer. He's riding a young horse, probably one that will race at Delaware Park tomorrow. There's a big farm nearby and I don't know if they're racehorses, or if they're steeplechase mounts. But this horse looked like it could bolt. I was at George's side now as he continued to stay down. The rider spoke gently to his horse and then said to me "what a beautiful day, isn't it?" I agreed with him. Then he said, "That's a really well-trained dog you have there." To which I replied, "thank you." He then told me that his mount was a little afraid of dogs, and he wanted to thank me for keeping him still while they passed. I told him "you're welcome", and to have a great day and then I let George off the command.

As we walked, I thought that hey, I do have a good dog. What a nice compliment. Then I looked down and saw this feather. I picked it up and saw that it was a bit dirty, but nonetheless would make a good subject for my macro lens. (Hey, this is about as thrilling as it gets around here, ya know. Newcomers need to realize this.)

So here's my feather. I took it home and popped it into a section of fence to keep it still for my picture. I usually always have my gorillapod on my camera and I wrapped a piece of it around the fence to hold it still, and voila! (Sometimes it doesn't work to click on the pictures and I don't know why. If anyone knows, help is needed.)

And shortly afterwards, my husband drove by in the gator as I was crouching down to take another mushroom picture and shook his head. Ah, well.

Have a great Saturday, everyone! It's beautiful here in Pennsylvania ~~~~

Until tomorrow, my friends.