Irrigating with Emma

It’s been a brutally hot summer. Starting in early June the forecast stubbornly reported a string of mid 90’s stretching into the distance. Then it was super dry on top of that. Mark and I cuss and discuss how much grass we need to get through until winter and what hay prices might be. The drought covers the whole of the western U.S. so we have lots of company, which means more competition for feedstuffs across the industry.

The nights are sweet relief from the heat, but, oh, what a prime time for worrying! Mark and I just smile at each other over coffee in the morning, knowing what we've shared over night, and get ready to face it together another day.  

A welcome bright spot this summer has been the frequent company of our first grandchild. She lives just down the road. I had her for a couple of hours (as long as she’ll last without mom) and took her with me to change water for the first time. All I had to do was put a tin in a headgate, wouldn’t even need a shovel, so knew I could carry her. Plus it was overcast and cool for a change. At only 4 months old, she was content to bob along in my arms through the vegetation. Well, she cried when I laid her in the grass to open a wire gate, but quickly got over that.

Next summer she'll be walking along with me. I’ll still have to carry her where the grass gets deep. We’ll watch for blossoms and bees and listen for the whistling flutter of mourning doves as they flush ahead of our approach. We might see an owl glide quietly out of the olives.

We’ll hunt for monarch butterflies and yellow and black caterpillars in the milkweed patches. She may know what to look for only because she’s seen a picture of one in a book. That makes me sad. 

Soon she’ll be learning the names of plants and be able to tell the difference between yellow bee plant and mustard, between rabbitbrush and sagebrush. Later still we’ll learn how to identify bunch grasses by their seedheads in July and why perennial grasses are preferable to annual grasses. I joked with her Mom and Dad that I would be sounding out poll-in-a-tor to her before long. 

My hope is that she grows up loving the wildness of it all. That she is comfortable wading ditches and pulling weeds and petting a horse. That wherever she goes in life, she watches for the moon waxing to full, and appreciates the richness of the natural world around her.

But that’s a long time from now. For today I must remember to tell Mark we left that gate open. 

our first selfie