Every day someone goes and checks the horses and ponies who live 2 miles down the road at Leradale.

The croft consists of an enormous field split into two.

There is a large hill field – perfect for fat little Shetland ponies to winter in.

And a smaller “in-by” field that surrounds the derelict old croft house.  This field has thick green grass and is where the pregnant Icelandic mares and a two year old filly live.

Despite their constant yearnings for more food, the Shetland ponies, aka The Minions, are fat. They all did exceedingly well this summer and the winter weather is what these fat layers are for.

Today, I walked down to the Minion field armed with a bag of vegetable and fruit scraps.  Lyra accompanied me and said she didn’t know what apple pieces were and could she please have the broccoli stalks.  I duly obliged.

I threw the rest of the veg/fruit out for the Shetlands.  It was funny watching them argue over banana peel which they hate but were not going to let anyone else have.  Banana peel is an acquired taste.

I checked everyone was fat and happy, had a quick hug and then climbed back up the hill, through the Icelandic horse field, back to the car.

Obviously I was followed.

I am always followed.

Like mother, like daughter.  Hetja is a veg-bag-half-full kinda girl while Brá was having a hissy fit over the plastic bag that rustled in an alarming way.

As I go through the photos on my camera this evening, I found some beautiful skies.  These I took on my daily walks.

Sunset the day before yesterday’s storm.

and sunrise today.  The weather is winding down again now, thankfully.

Tomorrow I am off early to hospital for steroid anaesthetic injections into my spine.  I am not promising anything but I hope they work.  They must. I am finding life difficult.