Hot Date

I went on a hot date last week. When the thermometer still reads the mid-90s at 8 o'clock, doesn't that qualify as a hot date?

My date invited me to tag along to put a new battery on an electric fence at the Rattlesnake Pasture. Sounds romantic, doesn't it? But really: Who needs a cloth tablecloth at a restaurant when you can get the beauty of the setting sun through a canopy of century-old cottonwood trees?

My date didn't even roll his eyes when I asked him to stop so I could take a photo. (He just might be used to it. But it's also because he's such a nice guy.)

As we drove over the cattle guard and into the pasture that's been part of his family heritage for more than 100 years, I asked him to watch for pretty wildflowers.

Kind of like a date to the pasture, the beauty was a little more subtle than that. We may not have seen splashes of colorful flowers dotting the pasture, but there was beauty in craggy, old hedge fence posts, which seemed to stretch endlessly toward the blue horizon. (The romance may be challenged by the reality of pesky cheat grass, with its prickly bits determined to attack my socks.)

My date got his feet wet to check the fence across the Rattlesnake to put an electric fence insulator back in place.

July 8, 2013

Water on a hot summer day has its own beauty. But it's even more so after two years of drought, when walking on the creek bed looked more like traversing the craters and bumps of the moon.

August 2012 and the dry creek bed

No matter which direction we looked - whether to the east ...

... or to the west and the setting sun, the water provides the lifeblood for this pasture.

It was a good date, even though I had to pick my own flowers. Maybe those are the best kind.

Sunset - July 8, 2013