How can it be March?

Spidey has been helping raise the step count this week and there appears to be snowdrops everywhere this year.  It is five years since I was disbanding the stud yet I still get enquiries about Criollos most weeks, interestingly no one else has managed to make a go of selling them in the UK and the other papered stallion has been gelded.  Mark's name still pops up occasionally on forums and as my stomach flips I think it is true, no one is truly dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.

The false Spring

The weather has finally taken a turn for the better and Spider has gone from gloriously white and fluffy to happy bog monster in one easy move.  We had a walk up Traprain yesterday and a pat of more fluffy ponies.  This week the roadmap out of lockdown was released and I have best heard it described as a holding document, personally nothing will change for us before the end of April when they plan to start opening up shops, restaurants and (woop woop) hairdressers and returning us to the Scottish tier system.   That will be four months of full lockdown after Christmas, despite the vaccination roll out.

Chamfron Monte Carlo - on the beach

Snowy Snaps

A week of snow showers and cold temperatures.  It was a balmy minus fifteen at the stables on Thursday morning but with the most incredibly vibrant blue skies and the mist rising off the Tweed.  Spider has had an exhausting day making snow angels and having to dig for snacks.  In Covid 19 news - vaccines administered in Scotland have gone over the million mark this week, including both my parents.

The Monteath Douglas Mausoleum

Something else I've driven past for years!  The Mausoleum sits at Gersit Law just off the A68 and was pretty much derelict when a group of friends out walking in 2014 (you know, when you could walk with a group of friends!) saw it and made a plan to renovate it.  Land owners, the local authority and many other groups supported their efforts and by the Spring of 2019 it had been fully restored.  

Chamfron Bellini

Immy Tolley has been given the ride on Bellini while Nat concentrates on her cobs, it would be fair to say Immy is not a fair weather rider and also to say we've not seen blue skies like that this week!

Blue Skies