A little thunderstorm this afternoon.
Squirrel running on powerlines in a thunderstorm.
Gardens like rain better than sprinklers.
My front porch sittin' chair filled with rain water. Yay!
Not a lot of rain, but three-sixteenths of an inch -- 0.1875 inches -- is nice to get when it's been so hot and dry. It'll perk up the warm season grasses a bit. We'll be taking the cattle to the south unit (home to the swimmin' tanks) soon where the grass is already abundant and this latest rain will make it even more better.
Just a brief word on soil moisture. In my post on Sunday I described digging a post hole. I found surprisingly good soil moisture down to four feet. So while it's been dry and hot and we want more rain, we're not end-of-the-world hurting.
It's been a bit of a goofy day. I woke up at 0430 when the wind shifted to the south, which made the curtains in the bedroom suck into the open window. It was hot yesterday, but the overnight prediction was a low of 63 lasting until at least sunrise. The wind changed all that, and as warm air blew up from Texas the OAT shot up from 62 to 74 almost instantly. Really?
The way I (and most old folks) do air conditioning here is to open up the house at night when it's cool. I have a house exhaust fan to suck the day's built up heat out, and I usually put box fans in the windows to help suck the cool air in. About the time the temperature begins to rise I shut off the fans and close the windows, which keeps it cool inside through most of the day.
Anyway, with the air temp shooting up at 4:30 I had to get up, secure the house for the day, and, then, start working. So I was a little bit grumpy, but I talked myself down pretty quickly.
I managed to get some good work done before it became blazing hot, and I finished in time to joust with tech support regarding my Mom's new hearing aid, or more precisely, the transmitter which is supposed to stream the television audio to her hearing aid.
That tale is gonna have to be a story for another day.
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But in the meantime, under pressure. I've plugged this into previous posts, IIRC. I really dig this edition of the Foo Fighters cover. Sucks that Hawkins had to mort himself with drugs. Good lesson about livin' though.
So why under pressure? Believe it or not, it's all been a set-up for this blast from the past regarding working with cattle.
It's been a long day, but that's okay. Tomorrow will be a long one too, and long days are good days.
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Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.
Had occasion to cross the South Platte near Crook today. A healthy person could jump it. I can't remember seeing so low.
ReplyDeleteI recall the great midwest drought of the mid-1980's, IIRC 1985. It was the end of the world according to the media; the Mississippi was "almost dry" and farmers from all over the country were trucking emergency hay into the afflicted area. The next year the Mississippi was flooding, washing out all the fields planted in "newly reclaimed" land along the river. Similarly, newly built houses planted in the same areas washed down into the Gulf of Mexico. It ebbs and it flows.
DeleteThanks for stopping by and commenting Frank!
Another day getting on.
ReplyDeleteI skip the rock videos and music, but learned a lot from the cow handling rerun. Makes sense, if you stop to think about it, but never having need to move cows around, or even a single cow, I never thought of any of that. Not at all like the cowboy movies, but movies are often filled with stereotypes rather than reality.
It reminded my of Baxter Black, who I enjoyed immensely back in the day when I listened to NPR radio driving to work. I had heard he was in poor heath, and googled and discovered he died on June 10th. He and his stories and one of the world's greatest mustaches ever will be greatly missed. He made me appreciate the world of the rancher, real Americans.
(If you ever need an easy filler post- you could run his obituary...)
John Blackshoe
Thanks John. Baxter was an awesome poet and by all accounts a heck of a cow doctor. He lives on in the words he left behind.
DeleteCattle handling can certainly be and look exactly like the movies, including the stampedes! If you do it right there's a lot of joy to be had in working with the animals rather than trying to dominate them and bend their behavior to your will. I've tried it both ways. The low stress method is by far the best.
Those music videos pop up in my brain when I'm thinking I'm turning a clever phrase. One of my shortcomings as a writer is thinking that everyone shares my sense of humor and much of my perspective.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
That open windows at night thing, with box fans running, sure brings back memories :)
ReplyDeleteDon't know how many of your readers are familiar with the safe way to be around feral cattle?
Frank
Thanks Frank. High Plains air conditioning!
DeleteI don't know about the readers, but my tiny experience with feral cattle taught me to pay attention to their body language and believe what they were telling me. Which reminds me of a story I'll have to share.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting!