Green ‘n grey

31 07 2021

Temple grazes below her namesake Temple Butte as rain moves in from the southeast.

Rain! It was accompanied by lightning inside the boundaries of the basin. At this point, I hightailed it outta there!





I’m a’comin!

30 07 2021

Sorry about the delay in posting. I got home late last night from the Wild to Mild event at the Montrose County Fairgrounds, which featured a lot of Colorado adopters and mustangs they received (from other states) back in April, and I forgot that I hadn’t scheduled a post for today!

Above is Mr. Skywalker – of course – hustling as much as he ever does to follow the band(s) he follows on the way to Spring Creek in the canyon.

Big news courtesy of Kat Wilder yesterday: Spring Creek was flowing! Their world – our world – is getting much-needed moisture!





Not out

29 07 2021

There’s been a bit of a shakeup in bands recently, and Killian has lost his band. He had an injury to one of his legs, but he’s recovering well. Don’t count him out; he’s a studly stallion, and I imagine he’ll have a band again.





Peace of an evening

28 07 2021

Just to share space with the wild ones, any time, is a wonderful gift. When the sky looks like that, even in the distance, when rain has fallen and is predicted to fall again, that’s like birthday and Christmas. The very best gifts.





Not much use against flies

27 07 2021

As promised, a pic of Kwana with his roached mane and stumpy tail!

The biting flies are out, and his poor little tail is going a mile a minute, without much effect. But I think we’ll all take the moisture and wait out the flies!





Water catchment: phase 4.9

26 07 2021

Do you suppose we’ll get to phase 5 soon!? … I think so. 🙂 Close. We’re SO close!

Those wily BLM’ers – Mike Jensen and new dad Daniel Chavez – hustled out to the basin without alert or fanfare last week and finished attaching the rest of the propanel sheets to the roof structure.

The last time I’d seen it, when Garth Nelson and Jim Cisco were out to attach the gutter and install three of four pipes, the roof covered half the structure. Because of rain in our forecast, they wanted to get the gutter installed so we could start catching SOME water.

Sure is shady under there! And think of that whole span of rain-catching marvelousness!

Just the end tank has to be piped, then the trough installed (the pipe to its destination is already in the ground) and the structure fenced to keep curious ponies from rubbing on tanks and posts and pawing at lids.

And what the heck is this, you ask?! It might be the strangest, most mind-bending pic I’ve ever posted on this blog. That’s a reflection – in WATER – of me gripping tightly my cellphone at the open lid on TOP of one of the water tanks. See it now? Even standing on the valve cover, I couldn’t quite see into the dark depths. Although I turned on the “flashlight” of my phone, I’m not sure it worked very well; you can see what you *can* see only by virtue of a little Photoshope lightening of shadows. But when I looked at my phone, I knew by the “white dot” – the reflection – that there was water TO reflect my phone and the lid and the metal roof above: I knew there was WATER. 🙂

Wow, wowza and zowie Marie. 🙂 That itself was worth a little dance (and it’s a good thing no ponies or humans were around to witness!).

And YES! We got our biggest rain to date later that evening. Perfect timing, guys. Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!





Puff’d and wisp’d

25 07 2021

Flirty Mister Storm rocks his partial mohawk. It’s a mystery I’ve never solved, and he’s not the only one who has shown up with a roached mane (and sometimes, some horses show up with crazy-short tails). In any case, he’s one cool dude. 🙂

P.S. We’ve gotten some rain! It’s FABULOUS.





Out’ th’ way!

24 07 2021

The mares may be the true leaders of a band, but when stallion says move, mares move!





Sandstone sculpture

23 07 2021

A couple of friends talk about the sculptural rocks they would take home to their gardens when they visit the basin. For the most part, the rock geology isn’t as exciting as that in other parts of the Southwest (Utah, for example, which, by simple human border, isn’t too far away), but sometimes, I find very cool rocks that have been sculpted by the march of time, the wind’s persistent fingers and the rain’s action (and freezing and thawing of moisture in winter).

This chunk of sandstone, for a variety of reasons, seems very sculptural to me. From the top, there’s a crack or fissure that makes it seem as if the rock was molded from the bottom up, and the ends overlapped at the top to form the window in the middle.

It’s a little unfinished looking, right? A little *raw*. But Nature’s masterpieces are always in a state of *being sculpted*, eh?

Cool, huh? The bottom two pix were taken with my cell phone.

This sculpted sandstone boulder is perfectly placed in Spring Creek Basin’s garden. … But someone please let Ma Nature know that there’s a leak somewhere in the sprinkler system, and we’re just not getting the showers we really need to keep the greenery green.





Sunset struttin’

22 07 2021

Tenaz and a bachelor from another band had a little dustup recently while establishing territory between their bands.

I like the very tip of Tenaz’s flipped forelock highlighted by the low sun. But though the dust adds some photographic “drama,” I sure would rather have rain and moisture in the ground with less dust.