Gentlewood Farms

April 17, 2008

Hi everybody.  It’s Me-Java again. I am going to school with Momma-Palida every day.  My school is a big playground called the Middle Pasture.  It has up-going hills and down-going hills and big piles of brush and blackberry bushes.  There are lots of trees for some shade.  There is a little pond and a water trough.  And it is full of birds and rabbits and squirrels and bugs.  Sometimes we see the Ravine Trash Kiyotees, but mostly we ignore them because Momma-Palida says they are “up to no good” ever.  I am up to 42-inches-tall, and I am fat and sassy.  I do not know what sassy is, but Miss Pat says is just-the-right-thing for a happy foal to be.   

Momma-Palida is a good teacher.  She knows that I do not have a very long pay attention time, so she makes my lessons be short so that I can learn them easily.  She shows me lots of things that she says are interesting, but sometimes I think that they are not too very interesing for me, and I go away from where she is to play by myself.  Then she follows me to where I am doing something and shows me how to do it the right way.  

Miss Pat keeps my bucket full of Pretend-Milk all the time, but she told me that she was going to start putting less milk out for me because I am not making a happy bucket.  She says it is wasteful when I do not drink all my Pretend Milk.  I tried to tell Miss Pat that I am not full of waste, but that I am leaving milk in my bucket because I have Momma-Palida’s Real-Deal milk now so I don’t need a whole bucket of Pretend-Milk all the time.  Besides, I am too busy learning about my world to think about making a happy bucket all the time.

There are very many good tasting things in this world, and I am learning about all of them.  I am learning that grass is good to taste for baby horses, but dirt is not good to taste.  I am learning that I like to taste hay sometimes, and I even share part of Momma-Palida’s bucket now too.  I tried to eat a bug, but I spitted it out before I chewed it two times.  It tasted very nasty, worse than a weed even.     

Today, Momma-Palida showed me about the Salt-Lollipop.  She says it takes away the itchy ticks and it is good for me to taste it.  So I tried it and it was SOUR, and I shook my head and spitted it out.  But then when I went away from it, I wanted to lick it again, so in another minute I went back and tasted it some more.  It was still sour, but it did not surprise me so much how it tasted so I tasted some more of it.  And now I like it like Miss Pat’s pocket peppermints!   

Another day, when we were outside, a bumblestorm appeared from the sky!  I have never been outside in a bumblestorm, but Momma-Palida showed me where to go and how to turn my behind side so that the wind blew into my bottom instead of my ears.  It felt funny to have the water drops falling on me from the sky.  I did not like it, but Momma-Palida went right on grazing like it didn’t matter, so I pretended it did not matter either.  The bumblestorm did not last very long, but it was loud!  When it was over, Momma-Palida showed me how to find the dusty pile and roll around in it to make the dirt stick on our hair.  It is so much fun going to school outside with Momma-Palida every day!