Tag Archives: rain

Between Rains

Posted on April 2, 2014 by | 5 comments

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Clear and crisp yesterday afternoon, I took a short walk down the driveway with the big lens towards the Prickly Pear cactus where the Roadrunners are nesting, wanting also to show you how the Filaree has come back in a week’s time after 1.38″ of rain. Growing again, it’s amazing feed! (Click to enlarge the thumbnails below.)

March 25, 2014

March 25, 2014

April 1, 2014

April 1, 2014

The Roadrunners share their Prickly Pear home with about a dozen Cottontail rabbits who delight in waiting until the last moment before moving to avoid a vehicle coming or leaving the house. They’re fairly tame, but it’s a rare Bobcat or Coyote that can catch one.

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Back at the house, the pair of Roadrunners were hunting snails in Robbin’s Irises.

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A beautiful day for fools, we never left home with plenty to see and do between rains.

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AFTER RAIN

Posted on March 27, 2014 by | 5 comments

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With native grass
we cling like clouds of steam
to hillsides after a rain.

 

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014

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WIND UNDER MY SKIN

Posted on March 26, 2014 by | 2 comments

I stumble on Bukowski early in the dark
morning, pleased to hear him voice
basic town stuff from the other side

of the page, but glad he’s not been
riding shotgun through this drought,
cussing everyone including God.

We hung a little hope on the gray
rolling in, gathering on the ridges—
on gusts stirring up, then down canyon

and grinned like foolish children
who still believed in weathermen
and Santa Claus. We dreamed

of how much rain it would take
to fill all the new cracks in clay
where the thin grass fades—

of an errant thunderstorm
that could fill the dirt tanks
and let the creek run

enough to meander and pool
under canopies of sycamores and oaks
for the Wood Ducks, cattle and us.

Through the black screen door,
wind under my skin,
I hear it begin to rain.

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Posted in Poems 2014

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Mosaic – Ranch Update 3

Posted on March 25, 2014 by | 2 comments

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Ever-hopeful and in anticipation of tomorrow’s rain, I took a few photos of today’s feed conditions, intending to concentrate on the filaree, having turned red a week or so ago in places, then purple and brown. A miraculous and extremely strong non-native cattle feed, it is the predominant species in dry years. With good moisture, it can come back to life and turn green again. With less than 4” of rain and only about 30 days left in our rainy season that averages about 16” annually, the grasses never really germinated completely, resulting in a mosaic pattern almost everywhere today.

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Just through the fence that separates our driveway from the pasture, I wanted a good shot of where the filaree had turned a purplish brown, only to draw one of the Roadrunners nesting in some nearby Prickly Pear cactus, closer.

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OUR WINDOW

Posted on March 1, 2014 by | 13 comments

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Have I become so hardened by this prolonged drought that I am reluctant to express much joy with our recent rains, ever vulnerable, afraid to let my guard down? A drop in the proverbial bucket when considering the bigger picture, am I afraid we may be spurned again with only two months left of our grass season—too long in a dry rut?

But none of this obstructs our evening conversations, finding lines of poetry in the space between us. I pen my name—and you hear rain like applause on the roof.

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O BLESSED RAIN

Posted on February 20, 2014 by | 2 comments

                                        We hear way off approaching sounds
                                        Of rain on leaves and on the river:
                                        O blessed rain, bring up the grass
                                        To the tongues of the hungry cattle.
                                                  – Wendell Berry (“Sabbaths 2000, VIII”)

Perhaps the old trees grounded in granite
feel it flutter first, out of the southwest—
or the windmill that never lied, spinning

pointing, pumping water. We await
the screaming crescendo of wind rising
on the corner of cedar log ends to be sure—

the Siren’s song that can draw dry souls
from the flesh to fly with the first drops
sounding on the roof, the leaves, the earth.

No finer miracle than that moist moment
of redemption, inhaled and absorbed at once,
bringing grass to the tongues of hungry cattle.

 

 

____________________________________________________
A ‘promising chance’ is bantered about among local news and weather commentators for next Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

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Posted in Poems 2014

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Gathering Rain

Posted on January 31, 2014 by | 5 comments

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We have been blessed in the past 24 hours with a little rain, a shade less than a half-inch, enough to start our grass. Thunder and lightening roused Robbin and I at 2:30 this morning to make coffee and celebrate. The photo of the flatbed feed truck works for us—perfect irony for a gray day.

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Lemon Cove in the Rain

Posted on January 9, 2011 by | Leave a comment

April 3, 2006

These 2006 photographs caught my eye while looking for some color here, for something other than poetry, and even these gray shots of Lemon Cove lift my spirits. The fog, clinging to these saturated hills since the New Year, drizzles today, weighs heavy on the eyes and mind. We haven’t seen our cattle for a month, haven’t got a calf branded, ground too wet to get a pickup to them.

Clarence drove his Kawasaki Mule to the Paregien Ranch in the fog yesterday, choosing the cold and wet over pacing the house, to find the rain gauge full, roads sloughed and so wet, we’ll probably have to ride from Dry Creek to gather and brand them after a week or so of sunshine and no rain.

I haven’t been across the creek since our Corb Lund replay of ‘The Truck Got Stuck’ New Year’s morning with the birders, my son and the neighbors, since another inch and three-quarters rain. The work is stacking-up as we begin to think about Elko, wondering how we’re going to get it all done.

Lemon Cove Women's Club - April 3, 2006

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Blue Sky

Posted on January 3, 2011 by | Leave a comment

How good to see that the sky is still blue! We’ve logged another 1.76″ rain since New Year’s Day, extending our gray days to nearly three weeks straight.

Not one to be caught complaining about rain, we spent New Year’s morning reenacting Corb Lund’s The Truck Got Stuck when I went to winch the local Audubon, on their Christmas Bird Count, out of our ‘dobe Flat – getting stuck myself, and then my son’s truck come to rescue me, breaking a chain and a cable before we were able to send them on their way as it began to pour. Bob and I, still embedded in the clay, had to enlist the good nature of our neighbors, pickups winching, leapfrogging backwards, one after another out of the bog to terra firma.

Always humorous once you’re out of the mud, I emailed an audio clip of Corb’s song to Rob Hansen, group leader, who has since rewritten Corb’s lyrics to more accurately fit our landscape and circumstance. All’s well that ends well – no feeling more helpless than being stuck in the mud a long ways from the road home in the rain.

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Faggioli Crossing

Posted on December 19, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Midway through this storm event, it’ll be awhile before we can cross Dry Creek. Oak and manzanita stacked in the dry, coffee on – just hunker down around the woodstove until it’s done. 2.05″ this morning at daylight. No cabin fever yet, but three more days to go.

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