June 23, 2019

June 23, 2019

            I have been in this house one year now.  June 15, the day we came back from Yellowstone, was the anniversary of closing on my house in our old neighborhood.  When does a place feel like home, or even begin to?  Sometimes it feels like I live my life around our trips; there is Yellowstone and waiting for Yellowstone. 

            Summer drifted in this week on a wave of heat and humidity.  For the most part, June has been up and down in temperature, tempered by frequent rain showers.  Some wildflowers are going to seed.  At the end of May, the Sierra Nevada trail that was flooded with coneflowers, Indian Blankets and lemon beebalm.  Now the blossoms have withered and faded, most of the meadow’s color gone.  But along the trail border, neighbors have planted lantana and succulents to decorate and add color to the path. 

            We have yet to see any fawns this year though the neighborhood email list talks about does leaving their fawns in backyards and on front doorsteps.  I keep my eye on the doe with last year’s fawns at the end of the street.  They enjoy lying in the woods on the corner and in one neighbor’s backyard, an ideal place for hiding fawns.  There is also large herd of does that inhabit the neighborhood southwest of here, near the greenbelt entrance, who may have fawns.

            The bucks stroll through the neighborhood nightly, stopping for water and bedding in our front yard.  Sometimes there are three; last night I counted seven.  This morning the group was grazing in the meadows off Q-Ranch Road, enjoying the coolness of the morning after last night’s rain. 

            I do not remember the last time I saw Scruffy, and my heart sinks when I realize it was before I noticed the deer carcass off Q-Ranch Road.  He did not look old to me; his coat was just a little ragged, but I didn’t attribute that to age.  He and the little doe were a pair, traveling together, which is unusual.  Perhaps the doe was keeping an eye on him?  Was he her father?  Her mate?  The pair has not been seen for months now, and it hurts me to think about it. 

            The colts and filly and the mares are now paddocked together in the back field.  Aubrey’s colt, Lucas, is the largest, but the filly is the feistiest, initiating play, jumping on the “boys,” running around.  She is the smallest, but it doesn’t hold her back. 

– Christine Baleshta