Family day

This was a long weekend for many of those with regular work hours and gainful employment, having been designated "family day" and a provincial statutory holiday here in Saskatchewan. Then there are people like me who are "employed" in the sense that we keep busy and occupied with our work, but for whom "regular" and "gainful" don't really quite describe the situation. Be that as it may, a three day weekend is always a treat and generally lets everybody get in a few extracurricular chores that they might not otherwise have had time for. 

Since it was snowing a bit and not too terribly cold today, I hied myself off to my favorite herd in the early afternoon to get a few more shots for my "horses in snow" series. As it turned out, the owners of the herd were in attendance along with their farrier, all of whom, I think, were working on the "extracurricular chores" concept I mentioned above. I did my usual lurking about with the adolescent herd, then when I went to check out the mares I found the farrier operation in full swing. It was nice to get a chance to chat a bit with Linda and Jack, who are usually pretty busy in a more active fashion on the occasions when we are all out there at the same time.

Today's job for them consisted mostly in bringing in whichever mare needed to be done next, and standing and holding whoever was being worked on, so it was more conducive to visiting and talking horse. Nice to meet their capable young farrier as well,  since it was our first time to cross paths, although as it turned out we have quite a few contacts in common in the local horse world. That's not too surprising as many of the horse "circles" in this area do intersect at various points so that it's not too hard to find acquaintances and horse herds in common.

A side benefit of me being in amongst the buildings and staying in one spot for a while was that I got to see a lot more barn cats than I realized were on the property. Generally I only see the very sociable striped brown one featured in last week's blog. He's about the only one I *didn't* see today, but I suspect that as usual when Jack and Linda are there he was in the truck keeping Linda's elderly mother company and enjoying the toasty warmth of the truck interior. Getting to photograph cats outdoors is a relative rarity for me as there is a bylaw against cats being outdoors in the city, so I don't get to see a lot of cats outside in my day to day life. Luckily I do get to enough farms and ranches to be able to keep my cat photo folder topped up reasonably well. 

Today's shots are a bit of a mixture. My husband Jim has a fairly extensive collection of orchids of various sorts, which do quite well for him. He built a rudimentary little greenhouse area in the basement with the appropriate lights, and they live down there in the winter (and outside on the sheltered deck in the summer) until they come into bloom, at which time they get to come upstairs where we can enjoy them. Once you get an orchid to bloom, the flowers will often last for weeks or even months, depending on the type of orchid. So shot number one today is one of the orchids currently spending time in the dining room. I'm not knowledgeable enough about the orchids to know the name of this one.

Shot number two ties into the "family" theme of the weekend. This is one of the family members that we don't get to see as often as we would like, the older of my two daughters, who lives in British Columbia and a darn long two-day drive from here. She was back visiting last November when I got this shot of her with my horse Alpac. It was fitting to have the two of them together as she is the one that "found" Alpac for me, for which I will be forever grateful. He belonged to her accountant when they lived in Cranbrook, and indeed she rode him out there for a few years before I bought him. I was playing with these shots earlier in the week, and decided to go with the dark sepia tones as one of the variations I was working with. 

Shot three is one I took on Sunday on my way home from the barn. It was a beautiful day with the blue sky and sparkling frost on the trees, so I ventured down a different road and found this nice scene waiting to be photographed.

The final two shots are both barn cats from today's session. The big fluffy cat was thirsty and was licking up the bits of melted snow from the top of this barrel. Accessing water in the cold of winter is a challenge at the best of times, and on this particular property there are no automatic waterers or troughs for the horses, as all the water must be hauled in daily, so drinking water for all species is a precious commodity. 

I was facing this little windowed building and chatting with Linda when suddenly the bottom of the window started opening and an orange cat emerged and skillfully maneuvered down the ladder.  It's a pretty convenient system for the cats to get access to shelter. I don't know if they can get in by themselves that way or not. A different cat went up the ladder a little later on and was giving the bottom of the window a good poke, but then Linda held it open for him to get in. I'll have to inquire whether they can manage it without help.  

I have a lot of my art photos now loaded onto my new website, with more being added as time goes by. Link to the website is www.judywoodartphotography.com