A little bit of smoke haze has continued to infiltrate our skies at various times. That said, this view, from the basin’s northern hills, is one of my favorite in Spring Creek Basin. A landscape painter (or photographer) couldn’t have a much better background for a magical subject. 🙂
The wind. It exhausts us.
It hasn’t been too terrible lately (the gnats can attest), but it’s also *not* bringing the rain we so desperately need.
Pretty girls Mariah and Winona, just trying to survive the wind.
This may have been the healthiest horny toad I’ve ever seen. S/he’s a big granddaddy/mama; I think his/her body would almost have filled the palm of my hand.
Look at that belly! And that tongue!
This is a wonderful Navajo legend about the relationship between the Diné and horned lizards.
This link talks about the symbolism of horned lizards. According to the site, “Na’ashǫ́’ii dich’ízhii (horned toad) is called Cheii (Grandfather) by the Diné (Navajo). Grandfather Horned Toad possesses great spiritual power that enabled him to triumph in a contest with lightning, an incredibly powerful force. The Diné use his songs and prayer for protection from the dangers of the world and the evil intentions of other people.”
And we can all use songs and prayers for protection from the dangers of the world and the evil intentions of other people, eh? 🙂 I didn’t have even a sprinkle of corn pollen or any other offering, but I did endeavor to protect the critter from stout hooves as s/he scuttled between sagebrush.
Who couldn’t love that face!?
Are words necessary?
I don’t think so, either. 🙂
Wind and smoke and haze, back.
But we also got rain. 🙂 Not much. Enough to dampen the dust … until the wind picked up the next day … this day, pictured.
We’ll take whatever we can get.
Storm, for 2.7 seconds after he realized *someone* was nearby. When he realized I was that someone, he went back to grazing. 🙂
Sweet Seneca has that *look*. The look of mares with wisdom to pass on to the next generation. She wears it well.
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And for goodness sake, happy Father’s Day to all fathers and father figures out there!
With all the busy-ness lately, I’ve pre-scheduled blog posts and simply lost track of advance dates, when I was behind (!). It wasn’t long after I called my dad this morning (and left a message; he and my mom are even busier than I am) that I remembered that I’d forgotten to hail dads today on the blog.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. 🙂 Thank you for all you’ve done and all you continue to do – especially getting little kids up in the saddle!
As I was leaving the water-catchment work site the other day, I admired the spectacular bloom of *color* alongside the road and smiled to myself, thinking, WOW, that’s some nice color in our otherwise very brown world right now. … Then I hit the brakes, shifted into reverse and went back to take some pix. Because brightness deserves to be shared. 🙂
Odd note maybe only of interest to photographers: The blooms were in reality more purplish-red than the reddish-red depicted in the photo (I took multiple images to be sure I had stamens and bees and petals and pollen sharp, at least in places). But they’re still very bright and beautiful!
Yesterday was toasty. I never did see triple digits, but on my way out of the basin, the temp was a solid 99 degrees. We felt the heat, but until I *saw* it, I wasn’t quite feeling it the way I did after my poor brain recognized the numbers. The gnats were, well, the same: bad.
We got right to work finishing up the plumbing bits. Above, Mike is shoveling dirt around the vertical culvert we put in over the valve at the trough. The brown pipes are steel pieces like we used for the roof structure last year; they’re meant to protect the culvert (which will have a lid) from the horses messing with it. Daniel is on the mini excavator, filling the trench that holds the “flexible line” from the tanks.
Meanwhile, Garth was up at the end tank, measuring and cutting out the “mouse holes” in the bottom of the last culvert to accommodate the valve and pipe. We cut and placed the other culverts over the other tank valves the day before.
This is what it looked like before filling (we had shoveled dirt into the hole around each of the culverts to hold them in place before Daniel started filling with the machine). Look at the line-up! Like we had run a plumb line to make them straight. … We didn’t. There was some measuring and a lotta eye-balling. … Mike, Garth and Daniel have the know-how for this kind of thing, for sure. 🙂
Let the filling commence!
While Daniel was filling and Mike was shoveling, Garth installed a nifty little critter ladder in the trough down the hill. How cool is it! The metal tabs are bent over the edge of the trough, then screwed into the lip to hold it in place. Then he sawed off the ends so they don’t pose sharp-edge hazards. At the end of the day, we also installed one of these in last year’s catchment trough – very handy now that we have water in that one!
More filling of the hole around the tanks. …
Looking good, right?
Admiring their job well done!
This phase of our new water-catchment project went pretty quickly, which I’m sure is a relief to us all, given the heat and gnatty hordes (!). This fall, we’ll get to work on the roof structure, complete with gutter, and start catching some rain. … Speaking of rain, we’re on day 55 (today) *without* rain.
That’s the dry news; the good news is that the forecast is looking promising, starting with possible storms later today. … Lightning, we can do WITHOUT. Rain … BRING IT ON!!!!!
Thanks hugely to our awesome BLM team: Mike, Garth and Daniel!
