Desert Dispatches and Hay
Hello friends,
Welcome to new Desert Dispatches members and I thank you for signing up and cruising through my website!
This summer was particularly rough for number of reasons, heat playing a huge part. But, with this wonderful weather - not too hot, not too cold - it’s been quite enjoyable to it on the screen porch to read, write, take a meal, or, just sit.
Another reason last summer seemed extraordinarily long was that last April a huge well digging project set up about 150 yards from my house. The drill apparatus was tall enough to require a strobe at the top to warn aircraft and there were two giant generators running the equipment. My quiet setting in the desert seemed as if I was living next to a giant disco car wash. At night, the strobe light flashed in my windows. All hours the ground trembled, windows rattled, a guitar hanging on the wall in the living room hummed constantly; dust rolled and the noise of the generators was regularly overwhelmed by concussive bangs as heavy equipment dropped pipe and freight car sized metal containers on the ground.
Three days ago, they packed up, and the sudden silence was breathtaking. It wakes me in the night now, and I say, “Oh, thank You, Lord!”
But, the long, hot summer did devastate my yard. It became a dust bowl and will take a season or two to return. In the meantime, to ease both Mackie and my need for green for our eyes and sense of smell, I went to the local hay barn and bought eight bales of fresh Bermuda. Alfalfa would have been the ticket, but they were sold out, so I got what we could haul and my daughter, Cory, and I spread the fragrant stems and leaves over my back yard. As we went along we recalled how we missed throwing hay to livestock. Sometimes, because it was so tall, we used a ladder to then sit back to back on top of an 88 bale squeeze, using our feet to push the bales off, then moving them to the hay shed.
Maybe we spread this hay a little too thick - eight bales only covered about 1/4 of the yard - but, as we run and play we are scattering it more, helping it work into the ground where, hopefully, it will send some nutrients down into the hungry earth. It’s a wonderful scene, looking and smelling like a fresh cut field. Its fragrance is there every time we step outside the door. Mackie loves to romp in the hay, pretending to lose her ball in it and diving in like a kid in a snow drift. Sometimes just a little thing can change perspective, lift a weight off shoulders, lift a spirit. It’s quiet again and the air smells of fresh hay. Life is good.