We have triplet fawns! 𐂂

Happy Saturday friends!

It's an odds and ends kind of week, random stories from the farm :-)

The story of the video above: I was just going to take a little nap and as I was falling asleep I heard my Mom, "Julia! Get up!" At first I thought something was wrong but I felt I was supposed to go outside so out I went and those deer were the first thing I saw! I guess she wanted to share some beauty :-) She was the queen of looking for the small stuff, so much beauty in the world in the tiny moments. I've never seen triplet fawns before!

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I was sitting in my office when I saw the flash of a tiny bird coming toward the front of the house, at the last minute, before it hit the glass of the dining room windows, it shot straight up and disappeared. But then there was a huge crash! What the heck? A 12 inch tall hawk, stood in the bed below the windows and then recovered enough to hop into the Japanese Maple. It was going so fast that I never even saw it! I checked the windows but no cracks thank goodness. All I could wonder about was how that little bird might have known about the windows, possibly from a collision with them and knew right where to go, right where to angle up at the exact moment to save itself.

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The cortisone shot did work and I'm back to drawing, sketching, painting every day and am soooo happy! I just wanted to fool around, wasn't planning on anything in particular, wanted to throw some paint around so I made these. Just a little exercise using a scrap piece of watercolor paper. Fun to loosely scribble (and it takes away the blank white paper anxiety)—it took a bit before I saw those first graphite lines accidentally looked a little like birds:

I only recently learned that there was a kind of graphite that was water soluble! Hey, there's a bird!:

Found a bluebird and painted a quick and scruffy version of him:

And see the tiny flying bird in the upper left of the bottom left card? 

What will I do with them? Nothing probably, but a great way to play, be loose, and a way to remind myself to not be so serious in what I'm creating. It's allowed to be useless and pretty :-) 

In related news, while I still have my personal facebook account, I'm rarely there anymore. I made a conscious decision to stay away, reclaim my time and creativity. I love this:

When I started doing this in January, it was HARD. So many times a day I would reach for my phone to see what was happening on facebook. I wasn't seeing many friends, instead a bunch of sponsored content that was designed to keep me scrolling mindlessly: funny animal videos mostly! Fun to watch but damn, the amount of time I was on there was disturbing. Today I heard this sentence and, yes! Exactly this! "EnRagement to drive engagement." 

And can't you just feel that? I listen to ManChild's stuff sometimes when he feels like sharing and everyone is arguing, everyone has a SUPER STRONG OPINION ABOUT EVERY SINGLE THING. 

My gawd. Calm. The. Eff. Down.

Without facebook I am calmer. Slower. I pay more attention to the tiny things that make all the difference (to me anyway.) I create more. I sleep better. 

And I joined Substack for the art and the writing. Don't ask me why it doesn't hold me like facebook used to, I have no idea. Maybe because starting over on a new social site made me pay close attention to what I was consuming and how often, and I made an effort to scroll past the yelling and division and clicked on art. That was how I started a visual journal actually. I never thought I could. But then I saw all these people who were, and their art was all over the map, from near scribbles to ready-to-hang-on-a-wall and everything between. I learned that it all counts:

This lady paints fun stuff every day, they make me smile:

And I love this, "You don't have to be good at creativity for creativity to be good for you."

What if you just draw a bird in whatever way you want? 👇🏽

See how below there's not a lot of detail but it still gives the feeling of the space?

This one almost always paints the colors of flowers she picks:

I can feel it and that means more than most anything:

I particularly like art with words:

My point? Drawing something from your day is worthwhile, even if it's chicken scratch :-) If you give it a try this week, send me a pic! [email protected]

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I finally mowed the upper pasture, just before the rains started:

Good thing too, the yellow weeds (so pretty!) haven't gone to seed yet but they were close. I'm hoping it wasn't too late!:

Found a pretty Queen Anne's Lace out there too:

The naughty Blue Heron interloper is back:

The community garden (which will have to be finished in the fall for a next spring restart) is growing pumpkin babies from the seeds of all the pumpkins people brought to my house for the goats after Halloween:

Close up of teeny tiny mushrooms in the pasture:

Very round ponies and donkeys. I've been limiting their grass intake to every few days (and in case you don't know, they get hay twice a day :-):

She loves ManChild:

B-Rad got these SEXY waders so he could cut down the edge of the pond and the Sweet Gum trees that have grown on the edges:

On Wednesday we had a ton of rain, 6.5 inches here in Apex. It was loud around the coaching barn, so loud that this mama deer must not have been able to hear me doing chores and just hung out munching:

All that rain we had came with flooding! This is Richardson Rd in Apex:

We got a couple more inches on Thursday too! Crazy weather. 

THE MEMES:

We have spent the first week of August in the 70s and 80s and I am so excited about it! Usually this time of year it's this:

This cracked me up! I was shocked when I found out that there are people out there that don't feel like this:

Yikes. Time to run for the hills:

And this...lol, no...it's pretty much the Millennials who are heading in or in perimenopause. Most of us Gen Xers are in actual menopause:

This one took longer than it should have! Just say it out loud:

THINGS TO DO AT THE RANCH THIS SUMMER:

August/September Women's Circle is 6 weeks: Aug 20 and 27, Sept 3, 10, 17, 24, $210 is the total. Call, email, or text me if you'd like to join! I HAD A DROP OUT SO TWO SPOTS LEFT IN THIS SESSION, call me!

Art Classes! Give me a text/call, I’d love to help you plan something fun! I'm envisioning this as a fun thing to do with your coffee group, friend/family group, female work friends, book club, bible study, etc. I can take a group of 9 women. Fun and easy watercolor that I walk you through step by step, and we can snuggle the mini ponies, mini donkeys, and goats, or even take the ponies or donkeys for a walk in the woods if the group is interested :-) Call, email, or text me, and I'll cater it to your group!

Equine Gestalt Coaching Sessions (these are private emotional wellness sessions for YOU not your horse ;-))

NeurOptimal Neurofeedback (keeping your mental and physical self healthy without having to dig deep like in a coaching session—as a matter of fact, you can read, write, or even nap during the session!)

If you'd like to talk about some of these, please email, text, or call me! 

OR! You can book online by clicking here!

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This is an AI free newsletter! While I love to use AI to help me figure out a piece of software I don't understand, my intention is to use it to help me with the drudgery, never with writing, art, creation. All em dashes are intentional and mine, I was using them way before ChatGPT was a twinkle in Sam Altman's eye :-)

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The Mother Ranch on YouTube.

The Mother Ranch art on Substack.

Thank you for reading :-)

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