Horses at Dawn

    Well it wasn't exactly dawn but it was early - and chilly.  This has been a cool summer - mostly in the old sense of the word.  I joined a couple of friends for a ride in the hills near Ellicottville.   As we went out the fog was lifting over the cornfields.

We meandered past reed-filled ponds and clumps of pink-flowered Joe Pye's weed, picked little apples from the trees for the horses to chomp on and chatted about this and that. In places the corn had grown higher than us. Now is prime eating season, though it's always a bit of a gamble. Will it be crisp and sweet, soggy and sweet - or just plain soggy. As the old rule goes, first put the water on to boil, then pick your corn....Though for us it's a case of picking the right roadside stall. Will it actually be home grown, or smuggled down from Eden Valley, to the north?

And when we got back, the mist was still there, retreating very slowly, fighting against the warmth of the sun.

And the horses - in the front, three generations of skewbalds, (paints, they call them here) grandma, granddaughter and mum - had a break for brunch.

(For horselovers, a reminder of another idyllic WNY ride here. Ellie May is the skewbald half-hidden, with her fly mask on.)