Horses, Wildflowers and Sleeping Dogs

I scared more animals today on my new 5-mile route.

After I run the mile uphill from my house, I turn right onto a country road. Maybe I'm noisier than the average runner or maybe these horses are more skittish than most but I had just started to near the field in which they were grazing when the herd of them--maybe 12 or so horses including several foals--took off and ran quickly to the other side of the field. I'm not really a horse person but these were beautiful animals and it was nice to see the babies prancing about with their mothers. Sorry the feeling wasn't mutual, horses.

Seeing the horses this morning reminded me how my vocabulary to describe scenes like this, and many of the other things I see while running, is really inadequate. As I ran by the horses, I was thinking how I would write about the encounter in my blog. But then I realized that I didn't know what kind of horses they were or what their different patterns and markings were called. Some were all brown, some were brown with white patches on their foreheads, some were dappled brown and white. Some of the foals had matching patterns to what I assume were their mothers. Which made me wonder if this is usual for horses or not.

And then there were all the wildflowers I saw on this route. Red clover (Trifolium pratense) seemed to be most common on the horse road, although there were lots of other kinds blooming there, too. While I'm happy to be able to latch onto a few flowers that I can identify, I've got to admit that seeing so many other flowers that I don't know the names of is starting to get to me. I'd love to be able to extoll the beauty of this dainty yellow flower and that star-shaped white flower and that delicate purple flower but I don't know their names and don't really have the right words to describe them. Plus I can't quite remember what they look like when I get home and I don't usually take a camera with me when I go out.
Who knew marathon training was going to lead to this? There is a lot to learn in this world.

And you will, I hope, be glad to know that I was not menaced by any dogs this morning. I crossed to the other side of the street when I ran by the houses where I've been harassed by these dogs before and would have held my breath except I needed it for running. Running in shorts with calves exposed makes you feel very vulnerable when you think a dog may be lurking nearby ready to take a chunk out of you. But all was well.

The run was fine. I finished the five miles in 54:35 and felt good. It helped that it was 64 degress and a little breezy when I started out at 5:30am. although I passed three farms on this route, I didn't see any farmers. Maybe I will next week when I run this route again.