I yanked on the old door stuck, stuck probably because of too much old layers of paint, opening I took in a gigantic
whiff of the sweet smell of azalias, my mom was a gardener.

There was a Robins nest and I knew then and there that the mom was mad and wanted to get to her eggs. Getting the door open was one thing, I had to get through without snagging my foot on the old piece of copper something. By this time there was a symphony of birds. With all my might I slammed the door shut, oh well, turned and carefully stepped off the old concrete slab and onto the fossil steps. Careful not to step in the muck under the pin oak tree, I made it to the grape arbor, past the bird bath , all the way to the Barn. Opened the folding barn doors. Zeke was there, a big buckskin horse with a white blaze on his forehead. His neck looked like the hump of a camel and his mane was short and stubby except for a bunch near the saddle to hold onto . He was big and after he chewed up his oats and hay I stood in the hay bin holding a sugar cube in the palm of my hand with the bit in it, the left one. With my right hand I held the top of the bridle. Once Zeke opened his mouth to get the sugar I shoved the
bit into his mouth while at the same jumped up, put the bridle over his ears…on! Wow, what an adventure this was going to be.

Zeke cost $300. He was a retired school horse. I paid $100 of the cost by digging up dandelions for my mom because she didn’t like the dandalions in the yard. I got a penny for each dandelion I dug out with the metal thing with a snakes fang on the end. so that was 10,000 dandelions. Now those dang things come in clumps so after awhile I started splitting up the clumps so I could get 6-8 dandelions out of each clump. I thought it was ok to do this. It was hot and muggy, I watched socko run around and into the woods to go down by the creek. I went with him because I was hot .