Saturday, Penultimate Day at Flag is Up Farms

Tomorrow I have to leave this wonderful place and stay overnight in L.A. in order to check in for my flight in time, which is going to be a bit of a culture shock in itself, never mind the wrench of leaving. When I went to Las Vegas 2 years ago, even though we stayed only for 4 nights, I had horrible Jet lag that seemed to go on for weeks and weeks and brought on quite a bad bout of depression. So I'm a bit worried about how it's going to go this time having been away for even longer.

Very frustratingly my new Macbook Pro made it all the way to Santa Maria, only 38 miles from here, arriving at 9.30am, but Fedex don't deliver on a Saturday so I tried calling the Apple Store to see if they could do something about it. It's especially annoying because I paid the extra $18 for expedited shipping. Once I got through the automated gate keeper and spoke to a human they were sympathetic and tried to help, getting in touch with the Santa Maria Fedex branch who agreed to try and find the package so that I could go and collect it in person. I really had my hopes up and Monty had arranged me a lift but in the end they couldn't find it and I had to let go of being able to have it in time to take it home.

Cactus Flower with bee

Between that and the idea of having to leave, along with some of the things I'm going to have to face when I get home, I plunged momentarily into a bit of a despondency and went to lie down in my room for a few hours. Soon I realised that was just stupid and wasteful of my last few hours here so I took myself out with the camera. The first think I found was a huge flower sitting on the side of a cactus and the sight of that cheered me up a bit. After taking pictures of that I went off to see the horses in the paddocks. Horses are such big animals but so gentle it's hard not to feel better in their presence.

Cactus Flower

After taking some pictures for Anna Lena who was learning the figure 8 with Monty I had a ride in the arena with Celebrity. We had the whole arena to ourselves so there was plenty of room to practise the side passing down the length of the arena. 'Wiling Partners' is really a good description for these horses, bearing in mind that he is only 3 and being ridden in a halter by a still very rusty rider.

Celebrity has learnt to follow the scooter

Horses in dappled shade

Back up at the house Monty was calling in the deer so I took the chance to get some more pictures and a few minutes of video. When Debbie sent me the picture of Monty and the deer before I came out I really thought they were statues and I think other people might assume the same so the video is to prove that they are very much real. (it will probably take me a few days to process it).

Deer feeding on front lawn

I've just packed up everything I don't need for traveling into the giant oversized suitcase which is looking decidedly empty now that the canvases aren't in it and set the computer to double backup all the photos I've taken in both RAW and Jpeg formats. There's over 1,700 of them, so it'll probably take all night. so it's time to try and sleep so that I can make the most of my last day.