XXX June
Kites
June 1: I haven't seen kites that often in the Ponyville skies, but today there were two of them taking advantage of a stiff breeze that Cloudsdale had sent us. I couldn't see who was flying the kites, some trees blocked the view, but the kites were close together. I've read about competitions were the kite strings are equipped with blades and the kite flyers try to cut the strings on the other kites. That could be exciting to watch.
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Sea Of Green
June 2: The grass in Ponyville's hay fields is starting to get high. A few more spring showers and we'll be ready for that first cut, so that should be in a week or so. Cloudsdale sent us one of those showers this morning and I almost go a drenching myself. I had my nose buried in a book and I hadn't noticed that the clouds had thickened. The book is fine, I kept it dry as I galloped home. My hay larder is running low on first cut hay and some fresh hay will be nice.
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Peace and Quiet
June 3: This day just flew by.
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Kites Of Passage
June 4: I saw two ponies out in the western pasture flying kites. They were pretty far away so I couldn't see who they were, but the kites were flying close together so I thought maybe they were battling kites, like I had read about! I swung my telescope around to get a closer look and to my surprise, the ponies flying the kites were Starlight Glimmer and Maud Pie. I hadn't known either of them were interested in kite flying. Maybe this is how they became friends?
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Hobby Horse
June 5: I didn't tell Starlight Glimmer that I'd seen her and Maud Pie flying kites yesterday. She hasn't mentioned it to me either. I think maybe she feels self-conscious about engaging in a frivolous activity like kite flying.
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La Haute Grasstronomy
June 6: There's this stall in the market that sells these amazing little bundles of spiced spring grass. It's fresh picked, tender bunches of grass, artfully tied and spiced. Some bunches are spiced with peppermint, others with cinnamon, or vanilla, chocolate, salt and pepper, licorice, lemon, alfalfa, dandelions... dozens of flavors and variations. They're so delicious, I could eat them all day... except they're very expensive. I only bought a few.
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Working Hard
June 7: Rainbow Dash is off Wonderbolting, Rarity is either up to her eyeballs in designs or trotting the fashion districts of Manehatten and Canterlot, Fluttershy is very busy with her spring orphans, Pinkie always has shop duty or a party on the go, and Sweet Apple Acres keeps Applejack busy. I went down to Sweet Apple Acres to see Applejack in action this morning. I found her out in the corn field, weeding. I helped her lug a few baskets full of weeds over to the compost heap and we stopped for a mid morning snack in the kitchen. First cut harvest is to happen very soon and she's looking forward to getting those fresh bales to market.
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De Grass Is High
June 8: I thought I might grab a few books and a few dandelion and bedstraw sandwiches and spend the afternoon on a blanket in the western pasture. But the grass has grown so high that I felt like I was caught in a well every time I settled down. It's almost time for the first cut, so the stems are tall and thick. Good for hay, good for ponies, not so good for having a view during a picnic. So I went back to my balcony. The balcony is closer to my library and to my kitchen and we have oat peppermint swirl ice cream in the ice box.
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Mare Gone Wild
June 9: Earlier today Cloudsdale sent us a sprinkle. After that cleared I went out to stretch my legs and get in a little grazing. Of course the belly-deep grass was wet and I got soaked everywhere except along my back, but I don't care, I wanted to feel wild, free and rebellious. Nopony was watching so I got away with it! Now I've brewed a pot of Zecora's chocolate peppermint spice tea and I'm going to read a few articles in the latest issue of the Journal of Cultural Hippology and Magic, before Starlight borrows it. Then I'm going out to watch the Crystal Heart lights drift overhead until the wee hours. The Crystal Ponies, they get me.
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Graze Anatomy
June 10: I attended the Ponyville Hayboard meeting today and the conclusion we came to was that demand for our hay has dropped off and we may have to reduce production or risk creating a hay glut. When the yaks of Yakyakistan started buying from us it artificially inflated demand for our hay. Everypony wanted some of what was suddenly perceived as a rare commodity, which in turn made our hay sell so fast that it did become a rare commodity. Now we hear that our buyers have more hay than they can eat, and that's going to drive prices down. Thus, the big question was, do we let some of the new fields lay fallow this year, or do we harvest the grass and use it to build hay lofts? In the end, we chose to leave most of the new pastures unharvested. This pleased our wildlife representative, Amethyst Star. A fallow field is different from a harvested field in which critters flourish there. Ergo, an old field ecosystem will boost Ponyville's biodiversity.
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Unusual Map Quest
June 11: The map table activated this afternoon, shortly after Spike got back from the Crystal Empire. He was passing by the throne room on his way to get a late lunch and he saw the table transform into a topographic map of Equestria. He ran to get me and I got there just after Starlight Glimmer. It was her cutie mark that was circling a spot on the map, and that spot was Canterlot. I can still hardly believe it, The map called a pony who doesn't have a throne in the castle and sent them to Canterlot. What's even more unnerving is that the Friendship Problem is probably between the two royal princesses. That's like the worse case scenario. While the three of us were staring at the map I tried to believe it was something else, two cooks disagreeing on a recipe, or the royal hairdressers arguing over combs, but now Starlight has told me she thinks there is something eating at the friendship between the two princesses. She went to see them when she got to Canterlot this evening, seeing that she was on a Friendship task and sent there by the map itself, all of which is very unusual and worth telling the princesses. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna claimed that everything was fine in the royal household but Starlight Glimmer thinks they may be in denial. I found out all this because I cast a spell that I'd learned not long ago in Transformations and Transportations, The Magic Of Being Two Places At Once. It allows you to appear as a wind-up music box figure halfway across Equestria where you can talk to anypony in the room. It's like Moondancer's Haycartes spell variant, only better. The Princesses have provided a room for Starlight while she's in Canterlot. Starlight has decided she's going start tomorrow morning by accompanying the princesses during their routines, she wants to see if there is any merit to her gut feeling that something is not right in the royal sisters' friendship.
I'm nearly walleyed with worry. What if she's right? What if Princess Luna has a new nervous breakdown, so soon after returning from one thousand years of exile? That could be disastrous! The Tree sent Starlight Glimmer to solve this?! Maybe the table has still not recovered from the time Starlight Glimmer used it as a catalyst for a modified Star Swirl time travel spell. What's next, the Map summons the Cutie Mark Crusaders? Or Zecora? Or even Trixie? I'd ask Starlight Glimmer more questions but she's gone to sleep. How can anypony sleep in a time like this?
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Breathe
June 12: I spoke to Starlight Glimmer again this evening after she had spent time with the princesses and had looked around just in case this wasn't the conflict she had been sent to resolve. Unfortunately, Starlight still thinks that there is some kind of resentment between the Royal Pony Sisters. She thought that she could see the tension during breakfast, which is one of the few times a day that Princess Luna and Princess Celestia cross paths. So, Starlight made arrangements to join Princess Luna for a while on her night shift to gather more data. What she found makes her think that she's on the right track. She thinks that each princess is feeling unappreciated by the other and that that is fostering resentment in both of them. So, what to do about it? Starlight plans on confronting both princesses with her view in the morning! I can tell you I'm shocked. Meanwhile, I'm still stabled here in this rock tree-castle and I can only champ at the bit and wait. I've been doing a lot of breathing exercises. I'd go visit Zecora or something but I've been casting the music box spell all day in hopes that Starlight will walk in and give me some good news.
So, ha ha, read any good books lately?
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Playing With Fire
June 13: Starlight Glimmer switched the cutie marks on the Royal Pony Sisters!! I can't believe she would do such a thing, on our monarchs! Responsible for all of Equestria, day and night! She's nuts! The Map is nuts! I'm going nuts! I've been casting and recasting the music box spell but she's been moving all day and I couldn't get a fix until nightfall. Now she's back in her room but she's fast asleep and I don't know what's happening! I have a stack of back issues of Poplar Mechanics, Equine and Saddlebagger magazines to leaf through to distract me, but I think I've left bite marks on a lot of them.
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Hail Maree Strategy
June 14: I was having trouble sleeping last night so I checked in a few times to see if Starlight Glimmer was up too. OK, maybe more than a few times, but all I could see was that Starlight was thrashing about a bit and muttering in her sleep. I couldn't make out what she was saying. I must have nodded off because suddenly it was sunrise and by the time I cast the music box spell again I had just missed her. She was no longer in bed but I caught a glimpse of her walking out onto the balcony and I could hear her talking with Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. The Friendship problem had been solved! Her "gut feeling" plan to make the princesses experience each others duties for a day had worked! I grabbed a toothbrush and teleported straight over so Starlight Glimmer could tell me all about it in person.
She told me that Princess Luna had had a rough day in Princess Celestia's hoofboots and that it had been very tiring following her all day. Starlight said that she had become so exhausted that she wasn't able to accompany Princess Celestia like she had planned, so Princess Celestia went alone as she assumed Princess Luna's role of Princess Of The Night. But the stress of hoping that her strategy would work gave Starlight one tartarus tier of a nightmare, a nightmare that involved both princesses and their evil counterparts fighting it out until Princess Celestia succeeded in vaporizing both evil alicorns. And then she woke up to find the Royal Sisters reconciled.
We celebrated by having breakfast at Joe's Doughnut Shop and browsing in a few bookshops before catching the train back to Ponyville. Starlight Glimmer also bought some lavender blooms for her room. She said Princess Luna recommends them for lending ponies a restful sleep, and after that nightmare she had had, a lavender bouquet sounded like a good idea.
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Hay Harvest Feast
June 15: The timothy grass swaying gently in the breeze all around Ponyville is tall and ready to be harvested. Naturally, Pinkie invited us all to her annual 'Surprise Hay Harvest Make Way For The New Harvest Feast And Party Party' at Sugarcube Corner. Starlight Glimmer was there with the six of us, Spike and way too much to eat. By now the temporary role switch between Princess Celestia and Princess Luna was all over the local papers, including the Foal Free Press, and since Starlight Glimmer had been there in the thick of it, all my friends plied her with questions. Starlight was still tired from all the stress of solving the royal Friendship problem and I admit that I was nodding off as well. I haven't had much sleep lately and stuffing myself silly with all the dishes Pinkie and the Cakes cooked up didn't help. We had to leave early, and Applejack too. She's going to be up early harvesting the first cut tomorrow.
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Patterns
June 16: As soon as the dew was off the grass this morning, ponies have been pulling their clattering sickle bar mowers through the timothy fields all around Ponyville, carving out steadily diminishing rectangles in the sea of green and enveloping the castle in the aroma of fresh cut grass. From the commanding view of my balcony, the slow crawl of the harvesters is hypnotic. The heady, delicious smell that wafts up in the warm air has had me salivating all day. I can't wait for the hay to cure and get baled. Further away, I can see a field dotted with rolls of hay fermenting in starch polymer bags. It's pretty, but it doesn't have the allure of drying hay.
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Market Horses
June 17: The fields are dotted with hay alicorns left by ponies under the cover of the night. Probably young ponies, some things never change, a little harmless midnight mischief builds friendships for ponies young and old. I can see a few hay forts on some of the higher hills and a few hay race tracks. I'm probably going to find reports in tomorrow's paper about grumbling farmers grinding their teeth over having to spend extra time tedding those forts and hay clumps so the hay can dry properly.
It was not a good day to go to the market to buy fresh dandelions and oat sprouts. With every able hoofed farm pony out in the pastures mowing and tedding, there were precious few stalls open with fresh food to sell. Naturally, everypony in Ponyville felt the urge to stock up and panic buying was stripping the market of everything. I took one look at the throngs, turned heel and went home. My larder is not bare and I should be finishing off last year's hay instead of pining for what's curing in the sun in the fields.
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A Feast For Pony Eyes
June 18: The swaths are drying nicely. The fields that were the first to get mowed are now the first fields to be raked and baled. By evening the field below my balcony had been transformed into an abstract tableau of subtle parallel lines punctuated with rectangular dots. As the sun set, the bales cast long shadows. It was very pretty.
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Checked Check List, Check!
June 19: Ponyville's Summer Sun Celebration event is just days away and Pinkie has dozens of ponies hard at work making fresh paper lanterns and poles to replace a few that were lost or broken last year. I'm helping Pinkie keep on top of organizing all her helping hooves. Rarity has been at Town Hall all day putting up the decorations. She also had a look at the Summer Sun streamers she'd made and she said that the streamers are still looking good. So she just went and refreshed the spells that make the cloth float in the breeze. She added more glitter too, so the streamers will sparkle like fireflies gone mad when the morning sun hits them. Fluttershy has been having rehearsals with her dawn chorus birds. She's also going to recruit her fleet of fireflies for the event, but not until tomorrow night. Insects have short memories. Meanwhile, Mayor Mare can't wait for the party to start. I think the Summer Sun Celebration party and lantern procession has become her favorite event of the year. She even went and checked my check list on the preparations!
The ponies working the pastures have finished mowing. Some have already started to put the baled hay into their lofts. In two days, all the first cut hay will either be baled or in silage. They've already cleared the Western Pasture, just in time for everypony to enjoy the party.
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Farewell to Spring
June 20: The all night Summer Sun Celebration party is in full swing at Town Hall. I'm taking a breather from all the ponies line-stomping to the loud music. A few yaks have decided to join us this year and they seem to like Pinkie's balloon avalanche and stomping in time to the music. I'll go back soon for some more of Pinkie's punch and then the pre-dawn lantern procession, it's the highlight of the Summer Sun Celebration now here in Ponyville. Maybe there are some of those crispy peppermint hay cookies left. On my way home I stopped for a while to watch Fluttershy coax a whole bunch of fireflies to follow her from the pastures to Town Hall for the procession. It's amazing how she connects with so many critters.
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Post Party Peace and Tranquility
June 21: The party lasted until well past dawn. The field ponies were the first to break away from the galloping herd and trot home for a few hours of rest before heading back out to loft some more of Ponyville's finest bales. After breakfast at Town Hall, I helped clear the tables. Everypony is pretty tired, so we'll do a proper clean up tomorrow. The market and the entire town was very quiet all day, most of the shops were closed. The clouds that had been sculpted into giant effigies of the Royal Princess Sisters are still there in the sky over the Western Pasture. From my vantage point of my high balcony, they seem to be gazing down upon the churned up ground and the few dropped streamers and lanterns left where the town's ponies had frolicked and stamped in approval of the lowering moon and rising sun. I brought my lantern home and I've hung it in the library near last year's lantern. They're bookending the doorway. Maybe I could ask Rarity to make me a Summer Sun Celebration tapestry to hang in the entrance hall. I think that would be appropriate for a Friendship Castle.
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Fields of Sparkles
June 22: Ponies have been hard at work all day carting bales of hay out of the pastures and either sending them to the lofts or straight to market. The ground is getting dry and Cloudsdale should be dowsing us with showers tomorrow. Meanwhile the pastures are still. The stiff stems of the trimmed timothy grass have yellowed and the ground is crisscrossed here and there where the hay wagons have passed, and trampled where the Summer Sun Celebrants pronked and paraded. After Celestia had lowered the sun to rest and the long summer's day gave way to a warm summer's night, the fireflies awoke and filled the fields with lights.
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A Rock For Hard Times
June 23: Cloudsdale sent sheets of rain to Ponyville today, a downpour to make up for the dry spell we'd had for the harvest. Now that the clouds have cleared, everything looks so clean and fresh. I hadn't noticed the dust before the rain washed it away, but the dry soil had started to blow around and the short grass in the pastures wasn't holding it back. I gathered my books near the door to the balcony where I could hear the waves of rain wash across the stones and smell the mist and spray. Starlight Glimmer retired to the silence and isolation of the library.
Starlight Glimmer told me something odd today. She told me that Maud had mentioned that with the right rock you could rule all of Equestria. Maud may have been jesting, it's hard to say with her, but then she may have been serious. I've seen a few magic-channeling rocks here in Equestria, such as the one that used to be in the heart of the Changeling Hive, so "the right rock", for the right kind of magic, is not far fetched. What dangers would such a rock entail? If I got that desperate, would I dare look for this rock? Could it be tuned to the Magic of Friendship? If Maud knows this, there could already be ponies out looking for such a stone.
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Ponyville's Highest Hay Loft
June 24: Spike is off on Fireworks Duty in the Crystal Empire overnight. I've been out watching the play of light streaming down from the Crystal Empire. The crystal ponies are content and so am I. I've made arrangements with Applejack to cart my first cut hay to the castle in a few days and I will have Starlight Glimmer's help to hoist it. When Spike gets back, we'll give the hay pantry one last cleaning, just in time to store the fresh hay there. It's already pretty clean, Spike has been diligent and I tend to stack the unused hay racks in a corner when I go there.
One of my journal quillpals had me debating the merits of a magic-channeling rock powerful enough to grant one pony absolute rein over all of Equestria and if that would be a corrupting influence. It's true that time and again we did use the Elements of Harmony to impose our collective will on an entity bent on ruling Equestria. We wielded immense power and used it to restore the Royal Pony Sisters to the throne, but that does not mean that we are motivated to be rulers ourselves. We have a castle here in Ponyville that is an extension of the Tree of Harmony and in it, six thrones made for us. But we rarely sit there and we have no desire to proclaim ourselves the sovereigns over Ponyville or of Equestria. Friendship is not about ruling, it is about mutual support. By extension, Friendship Castle offers support to Equestria, not laws or litigation. Yes, with the right spell the map table may well be the rock by which to rule Equestria. Starlight Glimmer already used it to change the past and she thereby revealed that peace in Equestria is a fragile thing. But we have a regime in place that has given us a thousand years of peace and stability. I am a fan of systems that work and as far as I can tell, being ruled by Princess Celestia and Princess Luna is a system that works. I would not trade that in to become the pony who has to have her nose in everypony else's business. I may love to organize things so that everything fits together as an efficient whole, but I do not like to wrangle ponies into doing something they don't want to do. Dealing with ponies in that way would drive me crazy.
I guess I've been a bit of a boring pony lately. My friends have their demanding careers that take them out of town or which generally keep them busy. I'm just holding down the stable here and reading my books. It could be worse, I could be ruling Equestria. Then when would I find time to read?
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Haggard Hero Of The Crystal Empire
June 25: Spike was looking pretty haggard when he got back from the train station this afternoon. The fireworks had a late start and he probably pushed himself a little too hard to keep going for the entire event. He disappeared into his room and I only saw him again for a brief period this evening. We'll tidy up the hay pantry first thing tomorrow morning. I have the brooms, mops and dust bins all lined up and we'll use the same initial bale stacking plan I used last year. It will be a breeze!
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The Fruits Of Summer
June 26: Spike and I had the hay pantry sparkling clean in plenty of time before Big McIntosh and Applejack arrived with my order of first cut hay. Starlight Glimmer lifted the bales, one at a time, up to the hay-room balcony and I moved them into an array that allowed a pony or baby dragon to easily walk through the room and for good air flow as well. Once all the bales were in, Starlight Glimmer teleported up and the two of us graded all the bales by size, weight and colour. We placed the greenest bales near the door so that we'd eat those first. Then Spike and I went to the market to get something special to have with our lunch. We found that strawberries are in season. We brought home a few baskets full of those. They didn't last long.
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The Haycartes Ffjordian Book Club
June 27: I read an article today in the Journal of Cultural Hippology and Magic about a new book club called the Panequestrian Haycartes Society. It's not at all what I thought it was. This book club doesn't discuss books, they get books to interact! Somepony has found a way to expand Moondancer's Haycartes variant to include not only other editions of the same book, but other unrelated books simultaneously. Initially it was supposed to be an academic tool to aid in cross referencing books for research purposes, but a group of students seized on this as a way to create a Ffjordian bookverse and apparently this new book network has become quite popular. The article appends a thorough description of the spell and how to cast it. I'm a bit leery of variants on Haycartes after that time I got trapped in a corrupted enchanted book but this sounds tempting. I'm going to give it a try tomorrow.
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Reaching Out
June 28: I was still hesitant about trying this new cross referencing Haycartes spell, I still have flashes of what it was like to be trapped in a book for days, but around midmorning I put one hoof on my nose and took the plunge. I chose an old favorite, Thornhoof's Brief History of Canterlot and I tried to connect it to the books activated by the Panequestrian Haycartes Society.
I had no success this morning. Either nopony was connecting books at that hour in Canterlot or my timid first attempt wasn't strong enough to bridge the distance from Ponyville to Canterlot. I decided to connect to a book in my own library instead; I chose Samule Lawnson's Whinnypiafficon of the Equestrian Language. It was not a happy marriage. Samule tore into Thornhoof, criticizing and trying to change every little bit of the latter's upstart New Equestrian spelling and sentence structure. Thornhoof was getting a little indignant at being interrupted every time he opened his mouth. Between the flattened ears and Samule winding up his hindquarters to buck his way through Thornhoof's Canterlot, I could see where this was going. I dropped the link. OK, lesson learned: no dictionaries. Not a great start.
This afternoon I tried again to link to the Panequestrian ponies through my Thornhoof. Success! I managed to establish a link, somepony was cross referencing a Hardy Bays book with what was probably a Shadow Spade novel. They seemed to be getting along better than my earlier attempt with the dictionary. I didn't meet whoever it was who was casting the spell in Canterlot, but the historical figures in my book wandered out into the expanded landscape and vice versa for the fictional characters activated by the pony or ponies in Canterlot. The historical characters were more interested in telling anypony who would listen all about themselves than they were in having a real conversation with the fictional characters walking through the streets of old Canterlot. It probably didn't help that none of the characters looked to be all there, and then they vanished. I think maybe the pony or ponies activating the Canterlot books was/were having trouble holding the Haycartes spell stable. I tried again to link up but most of the links broke the instant I reached out to them. It could have been from the added strain that I caused by casting all the way from Ponyville. Suffice to say, it wasn't much of a Ffjordian book-world experience for me.
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Jam Session
June 29: I haven't talked to Moondancer in ages. I wonder what she could tell me about this new cross referencing Haycartes spell? I'd bet she'd know all about it. I tried to see if I could find her through her Treatise On Ponies book but I think her copy was closed, so I sent her a letter instead.
We had fresh strawberry jam on oat bread hot out of the oven for lunch, along with fresh, still green first cut hay. To top it all off, strawberry ice cream. Summertime, and the living is easy.
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Surprise Picnic
June 30: This morning we received a singing picnic invitation from Pinkie, right at our breakfast table. How Pinkie knew when exactly we'd all be having breakfast I'll never know, it's rarely at the same time from one day to the next and most days we're not all three there at the same time. But Pinkie burst in in a spray of confetti (I splashed tea everywhere, I think Starlight Glimmer choked on hers) and started singing. At least she gave us plenty of time to plan on what to take. After she left we had a look through our pantry and decided on alfalfa cream soup, hay crackers, oat bread and strawberry jam. I made a big jug of iced mint tea too, that was my contribution to the actual preparation. I usually don't ruin tea. Starlight Glimmer and I left the real cooking to Spike.
I think Pinkie chose today because everypony was in town. Rainbow Dash has some time off Wonderbolt duty, Rarity is in between orders, Fluttershy's orphans are grown enough that she can get away for a few hours and Applejack's farm chores have settled down to something manageable. So there were eight of us out on our usual hill in the Western Pasture, surrounded by the gold and green stems of regrowing timothy grass and with a great view of both Ponyville and Canterlot. We could have gone to Saddle Lake, but we'll save that for another picnic when Fluttershy's protégés are a bit more independent.
Applejack and Rainbow Dash arrived first. They were already playing horseshoes by the time we crested the hill. We put down our picnic blankets next to theirs and unpacked our contribution to the feast. Rarity and Fluttershy were the last to arrive and as soon as they'd unpacked, Applejack and Rainbow Dash put down their horseshoes and we had lunch. We ate a lot. We had to take breaks, there was so much to eat, but Starlight and I came prepared with books, Rarity and Fluttershy soaked up the sun, and Spike and Pinkie teamed up against Applejack and Dash at horseshoes. It was a nice way to spend a summer afternoon.
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Did you grow it from seed, or buy it from a store? If you bought it from a store or nursery, then it was almost certainly grafted. Check for a small "bump" or knob of wood alittle less than a foot up the base of the trunk, usually accompanied by a small change in the direction the trunk is growing. If you don't find one, it might mean the tree was cut at some point below the graft. Fruit trees that are cut below the graft will come back eventually, but won't ever flower or produce fruit.
If it was grown from seed, then it will take years before it matures enough to bloom for the first time.
11341820
I grew it from seed. It might be a kumquat plant. There's a second citrus plant in the same pot, but that plant is a lot smaller. Both are at least five years old. I look forward to the flowers, I hear that they smell sweet. Grafting, eh? So I might end up with craboranges. Or weird lemons.
Nom-nom!
As always, I love the entries that stand as relaxing slice-of-life entries. It's just so...relaxing, visualizing it.
Possibly your shortest entry yet!
Hehe
Never thought I'd hear Twilight say "they get me"!
They never did explain why the toothbrush looked like Spike. Is the Crystal Empire selling Spike-themed hygiene products now? Are there merchandising contracts that Twilight is unaware of?
It sure is.
Shhhh! Twilight, that's called a Murphy! Don't provoke Murphy!
....Too late.
Soooo, the entries end here. Are you planning on doing any more?
11458322
Yes, Derpy has one definition of walleyed and then there's the blue-eyed definition, but I was thinking in terms of an abnormal amount of white showing due to stress or agitation. When I think of a walleyed horse, I think of the Zebra Dun:
Awesome.
Obviously Spike needs to have his own blog. Or journal or Collected Correspondence of The Dragon esq.
Yes there will be a few more months. I have made a game plan. First I need to refresh my memory by carefully watching all of season 7 and probably season 8. And I have to find out where I stashed that chapter book I want to crib from! The lost town of books one.
11474702
Thanks for turning me on to Zebra Dun. There's a lyric in there:
About the Spanish war and fighting on the seas
With guns as big as steers and ramrods big as trees,--
This closely resembles one of lyrics about the sinking of the German Battleship Bismarck, whose guns as big as steers and shells as big as trees:
The Germans had the biggest ship, they had the biggest guns
The Bismarck was the fastest ship that ever sailed the sea
On her deck were guns as big as steers and shells as big as trees
My nephews love this song, so now I'm wondering if one song copied the other?
...Please tell me that's your next big project after this one? Pretty please? With Pinkie cupcakes on top?
11474839
The Zebra Dun song has several variants and might be derived from an 1875 song by "a horse wrangler named Curran" called Bow-Legged Ike. The version on my National Geographic album of Cowboy Songs is a lot shorter (no breakfast, no talking about kings and queens), but the stanza I quoted is a close match to the lyrics on the album sleeve. I can't find an upload of the Nat Geo recording. The other lyric that grabbed me was:
"He didn't say how come some trouble with the boss,
He asked if he could borrow a nice fat saddle hoss."
So, because of that, "nice fat saddle hoss" became my yardstick in deciding if a horse is too thin.
Long story short, those Bismarck lyrics are too much of a coincidence. I think you are right, one is borrowing lyrics from the other, and I think the Zebra Dun variant I used as a quick reference is the borrower. Note that the Bismark was launched in 1939.
I was thinking you'd take the hint and run with it! I am not up to the task! Oh the snark! And the awful Ode to Three Diamonds on a White Flank. Mustache!