which_chick (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
which_chick) wrote2022-08-17 08:35 am
which_chick) wrote2022-08-17 08:35 am
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Elderberries are almost ripe
If I had a snowball bush, it would be in full white bloom edging into rose. *sigh* Anyway, the close of summer is drawing nigh. The close of summer is full of wondrous things... ripe tomatoes, like, really ripe tomatoes, abundant squash and cucumbers, and ripe peaches. Wildflowers of the close of summer include goldenrod and black-eyed susan. I don't mind the close of summer -- cooler nights, lower humidity, days suitable for playin' horse before 7 PM... and also
Ripe elderberries mean it's time for elderberry jelly, about the only palatable thing you can do with elderberries. Fortunately, canning supplies do seem to have recovered since Covid (since the onset of Covid? Apparently we are now just living in the time of Covid forever from now on) so that's good. I'll have to see about wrangling some elderberries and making the jelly this weekend, depending on volume of ripe fruit available. The bush looks to have had good fruit set, but I am "observing" it at drive-by speed so... a more detailed inspection is really indicated before I go stock up on sugar and pectin and lids and stuff.
I make this sound like it's an expedition of hunter-gathery strife. It's not. It's literally drive the car one minute, clippy clippy clippy, bucket full, return home to play elderberry jelly. I don't have to LOOK for elderberries. I know where they are. The most-productive bush we have is right by the road. It does not move from year to year (lol,it's no Baba Yaga even though we do live in a swamp). Gathering elderberries is idiot-simple because you clippy off the big berry head things and plop them in an empty drywall bucket and then take them home to sort the berries from the berry head things in the shady comfort of your living room.
Only a fool would stand in a swamp in full sun and pick off the berries one by one while being drained of blood by vicious mosquitoes when one could clippy clippy the berry head things, take them home, and leisurely remove the berries WHILE SEATED IN THE SHADE WITH TELEVISION ON. You need the television because sorting berries from berry head things is boring AF.
If you are not sure what I'm talking about what with the big berry head things, here is a good picture with some more info about elderberries. I had to wade through a lot of herbalist woo-woo bullshit to get you a relatively science-based website, so hopefully you will go look at it. The big-flower-head style of inflorescence that elderberries do is called a cyme, a munition of a word that I am 100% ready to deploy in WordFeud.
Anyway, so that's on the agenda for this week, depending on fruit ripeness and stuff.
I also had a good spin on Bird last night. We're working on flying change readiness, which is a long-term project. We'll be working on various aspects of this for probably a year and a half at the low end, so all ya'll in the studio audience might could benefit from some idea of what flying changes are and what they look like and stuff. It'll certainly make for more comprehension if that's a thing you like in your reading. Who knows?
What is a Flying Lead Change? Well... it looks like this if you do them every single stride of your victory lap after winning the gold medal. That's Reiner Klimke and his horse Ahlerich..
For us mere mortals, a flying change is when a horse is cantering along ("running") and changes from one lead to the other lead without any trot or walk steps in between leads. Done every single stride, it looks like skipping, kinda, which you can see in the Klimke video linked above. Horses can do flying lead changes on their own as wee baby horses, without any special training. They do not NORMALLY do like a hundred of them in a row or even like three of them in a row, but the basic movement is built into the horse from its earliest canters. Here is a video of a colt with a quiet, smooth lead change shortly after the video starts.
Still can't see it? Okay. So when a horse is "running" or cantering, there are three beats. The beats are (for a left lead), RIGHT HIND LEG, left-hind-and-right front (these two legs WORK TOGETHER) and then LEFT FRONT LEG. The front leg that "works alone" is the LEAD leg, how you tell what lead a horse is on. Typically, you want the front leg on the INSIDE of the turn to be the "lead" leg when you're cantering. So, if you are going clockwise, you want to be on the RIGHT lead. Counterclockwise, left lead.
More information on canter leads (with talky instructor person and clear, clean moving horse demonstrating) can be found here.
If you are running poles, there should be a lead change each time the horse changes direction during the 'weaving the poles' part of the run. You can see this on pole runs that don't go directly to shit in a pick-up-sticks failboat shitshow. Here is a nice one with two strides and a lead change right on through the pattern, very cleanly done.
So. That should have you on board with some idea of what the hell a lead is, what a flying lead change is, and the project at hand. The project at hand is to get Bird to do flying lead changes on command, on a straight line, with some degree of acceptability. Like, not 100% shitty ones. Because I want to, is why.
Last night's work was on tightening up our trot-canter-trot transitions (same lead, no changes) which (after some dedicated practice) have gone from rather a lot of trot steps to now reliably four (two posts worth of trot). Not once, but like, whole way around the large dressage sized push mower track in the hayfield. Bird does not get shitty or rushy or mad with these and actually improves after the first couple as "Oh, right, we are doing this now." It's a start.
I will eventually need to get to one-step-of-walk simple changes for FLC readiness, at least that is what the internet claims is necessary. But for now, this is where we are. I could probably do simple changes here -- he never misses a lead cue and has zero confusion on which lead I want -- but I don't think there's much gain on that over just trot-canter-trot-canter for the moment. Tightening up the transitions, building muscle for canter departures, assembling loftier canter more quickly -- those are the aspects I would like to buff for now. Once those things are shinier (from all the buffing), I'll see about adding in simple changes on the long sides but I truly do not expect an issue there.
Instructor (who hasn't so much 'taught' flying changes as 'owned a mare who did them as a form of protest') says that we need to firm up counter canter ("cantering on the wrong lead on purpose because it's a strength and balance move") BEFORE we run headlong into flying changes because if we don't, there will never be a counter canter. Dunno that I believe that but also Bird needs a better counter canter than he has so we are working on this starting with terrifying shallow serpentines. (On the long side, correct lead, bend in to quarterline by B or E as appropriate, then bend gently back out to rail by whatever letter is there in the appropriate corner... f, m, k, h probably. My fake lawnmower path in the hayfield has cones but no letters. Real dressage areas are defined by letters that make no sense at all and you just have to memorize them because #Europeans.)
Even these wimp-o-rama counter canter efforts are scary to me because as a 4H child years ago I was told to NEVER EVER CANTER ON THE WRONG LEAD, DANGER, HORSE COULD FALL OVER AND CRUSH YOUR LEGS TO SMITHEREENS. So... yeah, kind of a mental hurdle for me to intentionally canter on the wrong lead even for these little short counter-canter efforts on the shallow bending line. NOT A FAN, but also it's visibly hard for Bird (harder on his weaker right lead, hard for him to stay balanced, hard for him to maintain quality of canter, just hard) and therefore probably doing something useful for him in the strength department. Right now we're doing one long side at a time because I am working my Your horse is smart, kinda lazy, and 100% interested in a not-falling-over lifestyle. He will break to trot long before "falling over" is a danger. mantra in between efforts. Bird, for his part, is perfectly happy having a walk break while I work up the nerve for another attempt on our shitty right lead. However, I foresee a day in the not terribly distant future when we will be able to do sort of a gentle blob around and around the area, rounded ends on the short sides, shallow bend to quarterline and back on the long sides.
I also spent some time (after canter work for the day was over) on my sittingtrot jog. Ugh. Needs Work is about the kindest thing I can say for it. I've added it to the project list.
Ripe elderberries mean it's time for elderberry jelly, about the only palatable thing you can do with elderberries. Fortunately, canning supplies do seem to have recovered since Covid (since the onset of Covid? Apparently we are now just living in the time of Covid forever from now on) so that's good. I'll have to see about wrangling some elderberries and making the jelly this weekend, depending on volume of ripe fruit available. The bush looks to have had good fruit set, but I am "observing" it at drive-by speed so... a more detailed inspection is really indicated before I go stock up on sugar and pectin and lids and stuff.
I make this sound like it's an expedition of hunter-gathery strife. It's not. It's literally drive the car one minute, clippy clippy clippy, bucket full, return home to play elderberry jelly. I don't have to LOOK for elderberries. I know where they are. The most-productive bush we have is right by the road. It does not move from year to year (lol,it's no Baba Yaga even though we do live in a swamp). Gathering elderberries is idiot-simple because you clippy off the big berry head things and plop them in an empty drywall bucket and then take them home to sort the berries from the berry head things in the shady comfort of your living room.
Only a fool would stand in a swamp in full sun and pick off the berries one by one while being drained of blood by vicious mosquitoes when one could clippy clippy the berry head things, take them home, and leisurely remove the berries WHILE SEATED IN THE SHADE WITH TELEVISION ON. You need the television because sorting berries from berry head things is boring AF.
If you are not sure what I'm talking about what with the big berry head things, here is a good picture with some more info about elderberries. I had to wade through a lot of herbalist woo-woo bullshit to get you a relatively science-based website, so hopefully you will go look at it. The big-flower-head style of inflorescence that elderberries do is called a cyme, a munition of a word that I am 100% ready to deploy in WordFeud.
Anyway, so that's on the agenda for this week, depending on fruit ripeness and stuff.
I also had a good spin on Bird last night. We're working on flying change readiness, which is a long-term project. We'll be working on various aspects of this for probably a year and a half at the low end, so all ya'll in the studio audience might could benefit from some idea of what flying changes are and what they look like and stuff. It'll certainly make for more comprehension if that's a thing you like in your reading. Who knows?
What is a Flying Lead Change? Well... it looks like this if you do them every single stride of your victory lap after winning the gold medal. That's Reiner Klimke and his horse Ahlerich..
For us mere mortals, a flying change is when a horse is cantering along ("running") and changes from one lead to the other lead without any trot or walk steps in between leads. Done every single stride, it looks like skipping, kinda, which you can see in the Klimke video linked above. Horses can do flying lead changes on their own as wee baby horses, without any special training. They do not NORMALLY do like a hundred of them in a row or even like three of them in a row, but the basic movement is built into the horse from its earliest canters. Here is a video of a colt with a quiet, smooth lead change shortly after the video starts.
Still can't see it? Okay. So when a horse is "running" or cantering, there are three beats. The beats are (for a left lead), RIGHT HIND LEG, left-hind-and-right front (these two legs WORK TOGETHER) and then LEFT FRONT LEG. The front leg that "works alone" is the LEAD leg, how you tell what lead a horse is on. Typically, you want the front leg on the INSIDE of the turn to be the "lead" leg when you're cantering. So, if you are going clockwise, you want to be on the RIGHT lead. Counterclockwise, left lead.
More information on canter leads (with talky instructor person and clear, clean moving horse demonstrating) can be found here.
If you are running poles, there should be a lead change each time the horse changes direction during the 'weaving the poles' part of the run. You can see this on pole runs that don't go directly to shit in a pick-up-sticks failboat shitshow. Here is a nice one with two strides and a lead change right on through the pattern, very cleanly done.
So. That should have you on board with some idea of what the hell a lead is, what a flying lead change is, and the project at hand. The project at hand is to get Bird to do flying lead changes on command, on a straight line, with some degree of acceptability. Like, not 100% shitty ones. Because I want to, is why.
Last night's work was on tightening up our trot-canter-trot transitions (same lead, no changes) which (after some dedicated practice) have gone from rather a lot of trot steps to now reliably four (two posts worth of trot). Not once, but like, whole way around the large dressage sized push mower track in the hayfield. Bird does not get shitty or rushy or mad with these and actually improves after the first couple as "Oh, right, we are doing this now." It's a start.
I will eventually need to get to one-step-of-walk simple changes for FLC readiness, at least that is what the internet claims is necessary. But for now, this is where we are. I could probably do simple changes here -- he never misses a lead cue and has zero confusion on which lead I want -- but I don't think there's much gain on that over just trot-canter-trot-canter for the moment. Tightening up the transitions, building muscle for canter departures, assembling loftier canter more quickly -- those are the aspects I would like to buff for now. Once those things are shinier (from all the buffing), I'll see about adding in simple changes on the long sides but I truly do not expect an issue there.
Instructor (who hasn't so much 'taught' flying changes as 'owned a mare who did them as a form of protest') says that we need to firm up counter canter ("cantering on the wrong lead on purpose because it's a strength and balance move") BEFORE we run headlong into flying changes because if we don't, there will never be a counter canter. Dunno that I believe that but also Bird needs a better counter canter than he has so we are working on this starting with terrifying shallow serpentines. (On the long side, correct lead, bend in to quarterline by B or E as appropriate, then bend gently back out to rail by whatever letter is there in the appropriate corner... f, m, k, h probably. My fake lawnmower path in the hayfield has cones but no letters. Real dressage areas are defined by letters that make no sense at all and you just have to memorize them because #Europeans.)
Even these wimp-o-rama counter canter efforts are scary to me because as a 4H child years ago I was told to NEVER EVER CANTER ON THE WRONG LEAD, DANGER, HORSE COULD FALL OVER AND CRUSH YOUR LEGS TO SMITHEREENS. So... yeah, kind of a mental hurdle for me to intentionally canter on the wrong lead even for these little short counter-canter efforts on the shallow bending line. NOT A FAN, but also it's visibly hard for Bird (harder on his weaker right lead, hard for him to stay balanced, hard for him to maintain quality of canter, just hard) and therefore probably doing something useful for him in the strength department. Right now we're doing one long side at a time because I am working my Your horse is smart, kinda lazy, and 100% interested in a not-falling-over lifestyle. He will break to trot long before "falling over" is a danger. mantra in between efforts. Bird, for his part, is perfectly happy having a walk break while I work up the nerve for another attempt on our shitty right lead. However, I foresee a day in the not terribly distant future when we will be able to do sort of a gentle blob around and around the area, rounded ends on the short sides, shallow bend to quarterline and back on the long sides.
I also spent some time (after canter work for the day was over) on my sitting