What a difference a little rain makes. Not all that is green is grass; a good bit of the really-green is Russian thistle – aka tumbleweed. But the horses will eat it when it’s green, and green is good. Our grasses ARE growing, and that’s also excellent.
In the very far distance, see the white dots? That’s how you look for mustangs in Spring Creek Basin. 🙂
We’re still getting afternoon showers … VERY widely scattered. And sometimes, we get a dose of after-storm sunlight, modeled here so well by our heart-boy, Corazon. 🙂
Lovely lady Kestrel, at rest before the rain came.
Soon after this visit, clouds from the east and southeast were over the entire basin, and later, more rain.
This summer, it finally seems safe to say that we ARE getting monsoon rains. We’re up to about 1.20 inches of rain total during the last week and a half-ish. The moisture that hit the ground mostly is soaking in – and gathering in arroyos that run to creeks that run to rivers – but the moisture is huge for the vegetation, and we’re still hopeful that some ponds might fill!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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!
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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.
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 