I’m going to begin this blog by talking about the elephant in the living room. It seems like only yesterday that it was August and I was sending in another week of stories. But the blog got bogged! Here it is November! Oops! Since ranching is a life of leaving the urgent to do the immediate, we left off writing to begin riding! Hurricane Harvey was roaring in off the gulf as we hunted and rounded up cattle and horses to move them to high ground. Then, twenty inches of rain and howling winds brought 100-year-old post oak trees down, and flooded creeks and bottom lands. Next, we had to leave off sawing up tree limbs across our lane, to head for a Virginia, to help out with the Eastern Region Andalusian horse show. We arrived just in time to fly into the tail, if not the teeth, of yet another hurricane, Maria! Fortunately the Blue Ridge Mountains are far enough from the East Coast that all we got was some rain and cool weather (yay!) Returning to the heat and humidity of Central Texas,  we loaded the horse trailer and trekked into the now drying out Houston, with Cyrus, our Azteca gelding, to attend the Andalusian Nationals. After winning a national championship and a musical freestyle jackpot, we returned home to “retool” and head the other way, towards Fort Worth and the Peruvian Horse National show. We plowed through Interstate 35 traffic to carry a Peruvian gelding named Alejandro and two Corriente steers to the Will Rogers complex to do a cow working demonstration with a Peruvian horse. More on that twisted fairy tale to come. Now, with only mulching pastures, planting oats, fall round up, Hallowe’en and several birthdays we are slowing down to the steady pace of Fall!