At my desk, a fluttering commotion outside the window. One of our several Roadrunners was trying to attack a metal silhouette of a crow on the window sill.
In the two feet between us, a screen door and window glass.
But a few of the many expressions of a Roadrunner…
…that I thought I’d share.
We’re managing to keep up with garden production. Robbin has made several batches of pickles, some delicious dill, but mostly bread and butter pickles utilizing our new striped Armenians as well as our standard Armenians that are quite crunchy and striking in the same jar.
She also adds some red onions to her pickles as we thin our new onion/raspberry bed.
We are evolving to more container gardening, utilizing our many Rubbermaid water troughs that used to be guaranteed for life, but after three years the company reneged realizing that the plastic material couldn’t withstand the expansion and contraction with our weather nor the pressure of the cattle at water. They all leak.
Our old protein supplement tubs for the cattle make good containers as well.
It’s all about controlling the weeds. With weed cloth deteriorating in the sun, Robbin has tried to salvage a little more life out of it with a covering of decorative bark.
And then the peppers that we barbecue with almost everything, but especially compliment a piece of beef.
Indeed it is a lot of work, very little of which can I take credit.
We’ve been watching a pair of Roadrunners building a nest in a nearby cottonwood, what appear to be last May’s juveniles. Though we knew we had at least two hatches each year, we assumed both were from adult birds.
There is nothing scientific about our observations, no tags or names and we are not inclined to build blinds, put cameras on tripods and wait in 100 plus degrees to prove a point. Fortunately this was not a quick exercise, allowing time to go into the house last evening to get the camera with my 400 mm lens to catch this pair still engaged.
Last evening, a small lightning strike just before, dark half-mile from the house, as monsoonal moisture sailed up the west side of the Sierras. Easily accessible, we count our blessings.
Neighbor Tony Rivas had the fire pretty-much corralled with his shovel by the time I arrived with the skid steer. Another neighbor, Chuck Fry, had the gates unlocked for the CDF insuring we didn’t have to fix fence when the fire was out. Still flashing in the mountains this morning, 0.09″ rain.
October 29, 2010
June 27, 2015
Built for more than the cattle needed,
I reflect upon my one extravagance
now dry and cracked around its edges
like discarded dreams, having shed all guilt
exchanged for emptiness and worry
when every trail leads to Railroad Spring.
A hundred and ten degrees
in an empty pen
where we watched him
stumble to his feet,
where we forget
twenty years of trying—
that a man was king
with all he needed
to get the job done.
Time swallows memory
like a snake
chokes a meal down
to the present tense—
outliving horses
before we fade
from this landscape.
We can ask too much,
plead for compassion
from invisible gods,
compensation for
the heroic hearts
we have held
within our fingers,
within our family.
for Red Hot Montana
Posted in Deck Poems, Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged horses, pensioners, Red, Red Hot Montana
March 12, 1990 — June 25, 2015
a.k.a. “Red”
Montana Doc x Easter Chex
Greasy Cove, Lake Kaweah
June 17, 2015
Capacity: 185,000 acre feet
Irrigation water stored June 23, 2015: 50,905 acre feet
Kaweah River Flow, June 24, 2015: 546 cfs (cubic feet/second)
Roughly speaking, 25% of normal.
Weather Journal/2010-11
June 27, 2011
Greasy Cove, Lake Kaweah, 6.27.11
Lake Kaweah, behind Terminus Dam, has only 4-5 more feet to go to get to the reservoir’s high-water mark. The river peaked at about 5,600 cfs for an hour on June 16th, but for 24 hours, cumulatively, June 22nd recorded the highest flow amid four 100º days. Currently about 2,200 cfs inflow to Lake Kaweah, 2,100 cfs outflow. Dry Creek has dropped to 14 cfs, but a lot of water yet for this time of year.
Late June, water scarce for cows
heavy with September’s calf
reclining like hippos in the shade
of thin-leafed oaks. On vacation,
gathered to catch a breeze, they
gossip silently, chew their cuds.
They don’t know, don’t worry,
watch us scurry from the distant
well to tank to empty trough—
listen to us talk with tools
as the morning’s entertainment.
Miles from asphalt, we make
our circles on dirt tracks
from pasture to pasture until
the rains might come November.
They learn early
to be a covey,
to stick together
and look out
for one another—
where Bobcat walks
and Hawk waits
on a bare branch,
where water is
before they die.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged San Joaquin Valley Quail, water, water trough
drycrikjournal 