Our friend Peggy..

I just do not want to forget the stories about our friend Peggy, she has been gone a while now. She was such special lady to have known.

Peggy was truly a 'grand' lady. She is our older lady friend I had mentioned in the previous blog. She was from Virginia. When we got to be close friends with her, she had lived on a beautiful 5 acre farm near to where we lived at the time, before we bought our farm.

Keep in mind this was in my old "stomping ground" home area
where as a teenager when I had my horse, my friends and I would ride by her house often, and I was always attracted to her beautiful farm. At that time I knew her, but really did not know her...if you know what I mean.

Much later, when Ken and I got our horses, we kept them at Peggy's. This is when we became very close to her.

Her beloved Joe had passed on previously.. and I will share some great stories about him later, we have one really funny one!

Joe and Peggy had settled on this absolutely beautiful farm after he retired from the Navy. Joe got a job as the timekeeper at Longacres Race Track near Seattle, and they raised some wonderful thoroughbreds...she never had children so the horses and dogs were her kids.

Peggy told me that when her mares were ready to foal, she had bedded them in straw up to their knees, and when the babies came, they were loved like you would want your kids to be loved. She said the hardest part was when they left in that trailer to become a racehorse..which is a very sad life for a horse, they are a commodity. She said she could no longer do this....it was to painful to know the life she was sending them to, and she stopped raising the babies she loved so much.

Peggy's farm had beautiful well maintained white four rail fences. Her home was like an English Cottage, and truly looked like it came out of a storybook. She had a beautiful
English flower garden in the "circle" area which you drove around as you came up and around her driveway. She had one of those cute jockey statues to tie your horse to, as you came down the other side of the driveway, near the beautiful old red barn.

Speaking of that red barn, she had a tiny (and I mean really tiny) "apartment/room" in the front of that barn that she would rent periodically. My daughter Tamis rented that little room when she was getting out on her own.. and we laugh, because she had her "sisters" (mom's horses !) greeting her when she came home at night.. she had to walk through the barn isle to get to her little apartment. You know what is funny, she is allergic to horses!

Peggy had shared stories with us about when she was growing up, her family had lived in an antebellum, you know.. one of those wonderful southern mansions. She said Thomas Jefferson had stayed there once, of course long before her days. She had told me the name of it.. I wish I could remember it now..(lesson for your younger ones, write it down while you remember!).

She talked of riding their elegant saddle horses throughout the countryside when she was a young girl, I can just envision her as a young girl out on those horses! As I recall she said that with the depression, her family had to sell off the property, or at least a large part of it.

Peggy would invite her dearest friends for the most unbelievable corned beef dinner for St Patrick's day. She would cook it on the stove first, and than it went into the oven..and came out glazed and delicious, oh it was amazing. She would special order the corned beef from her butcher, not some grocery store corned beef for her dinner!

In the summer we would plan barbecues at her house, as she loved to have friends over to just visit and laugh, talk and enjoy her farm. Ken reminded me than when 9-11 happened, and all plane traffic stopped, we had gone over to Peggy's to have an outdoor dinner ... and she said she had never heard it so quiet overhead. She was close to Lake Washington, and where the planes came in and left SeaTac...

And this women loved her dogs, her last dog was Millie, a wonderful Australian shepherd that absolutely was her pride and joy. Can you imagine what it cost for Peggy to run Invisible fence around 5 acres? She did it for her Millie. Our Milli is lovingly named after Peggy's Millie.

I believe it was when Millie died, that Peggy also died. It was not long afterwords that cancer took her from us.. I believe she was 79..or there bouts. This was about 8 years ago.. I think.

So.. if you stayed with me this long..thanks.. I know I can ramble.. this is as much for me as for you!