Category Archives: Photographs

Owl’s Clover

Posted on March 27, 2016 by John | 3 comments

Purple Owl’s Clover Castilleja exserta

White Owl’s Clover (Valley Tassels) Castilleja attenuata

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged photography, wildflowers

Spring Garden

Posted on March 26, 2016 by John | 8 comments

It’s been a busy week with perfect weather. Robbin, Terri and I have worked the garden up and planted several varieties of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash and eggplants amid the volunteer Golden Poppies,

while Joe Hertz, stonemason and fiddle player for Cowboy Celtic,
has been enclosing Robbin’s pool with river rock. Half-day today,
then barbecue and play music.

8 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged garden, Joe Hertz, pool

FEED, WEEDS & WATER

Posted on March 25, 2016 by John | 4 comments

In the dry and dusty years,
we did not ask much
from our night dreams

of brittle details to get by
day by day—no pastoral
pipe dreams, no comedy.

But we indulge the gods
because we must endure
their sense of humor.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged feed, gods, humor, photography, poetry, water

Full Worm Moon

Posted on March 24, 2016 by John | 5 comments

The castings of worms
upon damp earth come alive
with old flesh and bones.

5 Comments

Posted in Haiku 2016, Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged full moon, photography, poetry

SPRING 2016

Posted on March 23, 2016 by John | 4 comments

A plodding drawn through hot
and dry, through the seasons
to graze this moment,

this cacophony of light—
of life exploding
beneath our feet.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged photography, poetry, wildflowers

IN BLOOM

Posted on March 22, 2016 by John | 5 comments

More than gold and jewels,
hillsides dressed with hair
reaching for the sky.

More than the wealth of green
slopes, tall feed cured dry
and banked. We are rich

with rain, clear into September—
blinded by this moment spilt
upon the ground in bloom.

5 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged photography, poetry, wildflowers

Wild Bouquets

Posted on March 21, 2016 by John | 8 comments

California Golden Poppies, Sulphur Ridge

Fiesta Flower, Scorpion Weed, Wild Hyacinth, Miner’s Lettuce, Fiddleneck, Lacepod,

Goldfields

Blue Lupine, Chia, Headed Gilia, Fiddleneck

Agoseris, Filaree

Tomcat Clover, Goldfields

Purple Chinese Houses, Lacepod, Miner’s Lettuce, Fiddleneck, Goldfields

I made the circle of Greasy yesterday with a Kubota-load of salt, slipped away to check the cattle with my camera. Warm enough for the snakes to be out, I wasn’t in the mood to wade and lie down in the tall feed for macro shots, and thought instead of broader perspectives that may be more helpful identifying our common wildflowers.

I tend to think of these patches and clusters as families, however not in the botanical sense, and allow myself to personify them, imagining the dispersal of seed, often years worth, just waiting for the right conditions and circumstances to germinate. Every spring is a little different. Some show up where I’ve never seen them before, and some like the Purple Chinese Houses, Agoseris, Chia and Headed Gilia are at the same location every year, sometimes thick and sometimes thin.