March Lion and April Lion no lambs allowed

March turned out to be a toughish month: summer heat alternating with below-freezing temperatures and foot deep slush-snow (or deeper!). Along comes April, with more temperature see-saws. I cannot recall that the weather was so erratic 25 years ago, but you know that us old-timers tend to embroider our memories. I do know that we had a good deal more snow, since Boulder built a set of cross-country ski trails. These seemed like a lot of wishful thinking in the late 90's to about 2004, but now we do get enough snow to occasionally motivate the City Parks people to crunch a few trails out in the open park spaces. I haven't looked at the founded trails to see if they have even been maintained. Right now, one of the nicest ones is being demolished by alternate park construction, with all the wild plums and chokecherries being ripped out from along the irrigation ditches, a lot of the cottonwoods being chopped down (there go the hawk and owl nests!) and terraforming for X-bikers trails being performed. I suppose that there might be some consolation in having ditches covered so toddlers won't drown when their parents forget them in a fit of socializing. But losing all that shrubbery is sad...

Another day, another snow fall!

Big wet plops of snow like dog licks on your face are falling with distressing density. The hoophouse requires multiple brushings to keep it on its feet. And someone told me it might snow over 16 inches! Oh noes!

But this is blessed moisture for spring. Providing we don't have a disastrously hot heat wave with a short drought as we had a few years ago, we should have a blossoming of plants we don't always see. Last year the plains got enough moisture that they were covered near the Pawnee Buttes area with evening primroses. The local news talked to some loquacious rancher who assured them the flowers were prairie roses. I was washing dishes at the time and didn't see the video, and was all agog to see these prairie roses that only bloom every few years! And then the next day I saw the video and saw that they were Oenothera caespitosa, which is the most common Evening Primrose around here. Sigh.

What a long winter

Now that spring is officially here, I can say unequivocally that this winter was definitely not great. No, it did not snow too much. But somehow I forgot to plant my vegetables early enough so all I overwintered was a bunch of wondrous two-leaved seedlings. The weather was OK and winterish, but it seemed uncommonly cold, the ice patches never melted and I skated on a lot of the dog walks.

But this is now really the official spring! Each snowfall, no matter how cold it gets (and I still have to cover the plants in the hoophouse) is WONDERFUL. It is moisture for the little tough green leaves peeking out of the ground. I go searching for the nascent cranes-bills (not there yet!) and spot a timid mustard showing off a bit of pale yellow. Those are really flowers! and soon the purple crucifers will spread over the ground, grass will spring up, the violas will bloom...Hurray!

February

I think it means dreary...bored with winter. We are now working on getting out and rambling somewhere at least once a week, instead of suffering cabin fever, but the weather is not cooperating. Indeed, it snows on weekends. If we hustle, we can make a quick run up to Chatauqua, but the drawback here is that most of the trails are actually in the shade and hence solid ice. Me and ice do not get along.

Found some petrified chokecherries along the Bluebell trail. Also saw some CU wildlife gathering at the Bluebell shelter for a night of roystering.

Falling into winter

Already we have had more precipitation in the last two storms than in the last two months...and the snow is wet. The trees branches are cracking under the weight. The red and withered crab apples peek out from under a pile of snow covering them. A little kestrel kept a close eye on me when I was waking the dog. I believe it was scouting the wide open fields around the buildings here. Although covered with about 6 inches of snow, the weeds have enough bare ground around them that mice and voles are probably visible to the little predator's beady eyes.

A few shots of this lovely little bird: from a local biologist
and from one of my favorite wildlife photographers on the East Coast

Fall in the Foothills

Went for a hike on the Legion Park trailet. It was really crispy. Not too much blooming there.

Went for a hike on the Chatauqua trails. Crispy again. The little and big bluestems were fried, no blooms this year. Although their leaves were a lovely fall russet.

Drove up to the Brainard area. At least, the plants were still thriving up there. I ate the only two blueberries I found, and they were OK. I have had much better in the Poudre Canyon. I tried the gooseberry currants. Bland.

If I was depending on these for dessert, I would lose a lot of weight!

Ripe wild plums

Walking the dog, I noticed that now there are the tall coyote scats full of plum pits. For some reason or other, the dog thinks these are great. He totally ignores the regular scat with rabbit hair and other bits, but plum poop!

At any rate, even though the plums are a little sad in the whole, there are still large patches of lovely sweet ones. I ate a few, and offered one to the canine companion. He turned his nose up at the nice raw plum, full of sweet juice and filling the air with its lovely rose-like scent.

But the composted ones! How interesting.

I am glad I am not a dog.

And in other weather related news....

We have more moisture and more cool weather. My evening primroses are putting on a new show! My roses have mildew! I either overwater (it is raining!) or underwater (sudden hot spell). Sigh.

The wild plums look pretty sad this year, with galls, insect bites, and sun-burn. However, chokecherries are abundant. I should go out and gather a basket full to make pancake syrup with. The last time I tried to make jelly, we ended up with syrup. So maybe if the goal is syrup, it will work out well.

We also need to go into the Boulder Canyon and see if the grapes look good. If so, maybe some grape jelly is in order.

On a side note, I went to Hotchkiss this weekend, and stopped on the way at the Grizzly Creek rest stop in Glenwood Canyon. There, everything looked nice and green. The dogwood was blooming and in fruit at the same time. I don't know that I have seen that before.

The Colorado had a nice water flow going, and lots of people were out rafting and canoeing.

July! July!

and the living is easy...Went hiking up by Blue Lake and Mitchell Lake this weekend, and had the pleasure of being pelted with rain, snow and hail. Since we were a little ways below the tree line, we did have some trees to take cover under (I know, I know, lightning strikes trees! but what was our choice?) sort of...if we wanted to scrunch down under the not so tall spruce and fir. But then the sun came out...and all was well until the next stormling.

The flowers were beyond wonderful. I did not take that may photos, due to the distraction of the DOG. He tends to want to sniff things as we go along, and I may practice my best Cesar Millan dog whispering, but that DOG is so obstinate! So he will yank on me at the worst moment.

Meanwhile my spousal unit is off taking landscape photos, and trying to catch a shot of flying birds.

Just as an aside, there were tons of flowers (well, lots of flowers) on the mountain blueberries. Bodes well for this fall. It has been a long time since I have them covered with blooms like that. The bog laurel was magnificent too. Violets were everywhere. Parry's primroses lined all the streams. Virginia bluebells joined them, along with marsh marigolds. It was enough to make one forget about the steepness of the hills, the angularity of the rocks on the path and the streams to cross.

Dang that rain anyhow

So we are now getting what we used to have in this part of the country, the regular evening showers after a nice moisty day. The good part is that the plants are mostly happy. The bad part is that my beautiful xeriscape flower garden is now a beautiful leaf garden with flowers peaking out from the leaves. The evening primroses look very coy, but not spectacular as they have in the past. The roses are hidden behind large plumes of grass. The Russian sage is looking pretty intimidated, but it will have its day I hope, later this summer.

It is interesting to hear people gripe about the unusual weather. Of course the weather reporters on TV (one cannot call them meteorologists with a straight face) babble about how unusual this all is, but looking at them you realize they haven't lived in the area that long, especially since they all look about 25 or so.

And summer is soon upon us. What this will bring we shall see.

End of drought for a while, I guess

Haven't written for a while. This year has been a little traumatic, we had a couple of layoffs at work, and the last was the worst. I don't know if that situation will improve, but the weather on the Front Range has! Real spring monsoons! Real thunderstorms! The weeds (let us call non-native and invasives, weeds, the others, ruderals) are leaping up for joy. My garden looks like a jungle. My vegetable garden needs some upkeep, but I have started the tomatoes, the peppers, and other spring/summer stuff. No earwigs this year, but! Elm tree bug nymphs!

OK. The wild flowers are also in great shape this spring. If you look at my Flickr account, you will see some of my photos. I missed some this go round, but that leaves more for me to catch next year.

Strangely, the wild plums seem to be attacked by some (blight? gall?) disease that made a lot of them hollow shells of themselves. They turned yellow and disgusting looking.

Chuck and I have been out learning our new cameras. It has been both fun and frustating. Chuck is learning the joys of bird photography (it isn't as easy as one would like). Flowers cooperate much more, although this morning I sat next to a prickly pear and it threw its glochids at me. Got more in my hand this afternoon rescuing the dog from a patch of cactus. Not fun.

So much for now.

Blue jay territory

Some research shows that the blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata ) does cover this part of Colorado up to the foothills. I simply have never seen them in this area at all. Stellar jays, scrub jays and gray jays yes, blue jays no. This is a mediocre shot of a jay trying to avoid my camera. About 15 shots with blurs, blobs, branches and finally!

Rain rain rain

So, I go on vacation for a couple of weeks, with brown Colorado in my rearview mirror, and I come back...and everything is green! It rained. Asters (white and purple), gayfeather, big bluestem, little bluestem, blue grama, all are blooming and perking along as if there never was a problem. Grass is green. However, the trees haven't really recovered.

On a more somber note, I understand that the fungal blight on theaspens may reduce our display this year. We shall see.

Earwig damage to corn

Very icky. In the top one you can see that the anthers have been completely chewed off the top (no pollen no corn!). The other photo shows how the leaves get chewed at one end and sort of wrap into a cocoon that is full of squirming earwigs.

I never really loathed them before, seeing them as harmless detritivores.

Another walk after the droughty park

Since it is now pouring here (!) I will reminisce about the hike up the Boulder Creek Canyon, briefly.

The air was hot and dry (at 7 AM!) on August 2nd, when Chuck and I (and the damn dog Buddy) worked our way up from Eben Fine park to the end of the trail. However, the beneficial proximity of the creek was obvious. If you peered up the hillside on the north of the trail you could see a lot of dried out plants withering away, but along the trail things were flourishing (albeit a tad sedately). I got some shots of living Eriogonum and actually some prickly poppies that had not been chewed up by bugs. Prickly poppies don't often seem to be as chewed on as I have seen them this year, maybe because they have that awful icky sap. Not being a bug, i can't tell if the flavor slows them down or not!

Anyhow, we came back pretty tired from the heat (another scorcher in the 90s!). I look forward to some more temperate weather.

Drought

We took a long walk this morning on the trails above Chatauqua Park. Early in the morning (7:30 AM) it was already hot outside. It was a pretty depressing walk, because everything was pretty crispy crunchy from the drought and heat. Oregon grapes were thin on the plants. Sulfur flower blooms were crisp to the touch. The grass was sere. The prickly pear plants were shriveled with tiny or skinny fruit. Very sad.

As we were walking back down Mesa Trail, we crossed one of the small creeks, which today was pretty much just puddles. There was a loud buzzing in the air, and I thought: "Oh, there are bees!) But as we walked past, I saw that there were thousands of wasps, hovering over the small pools of water in the rocks, and flying all about. Needless to say, we hastened on down the trail.

Tomorrow we walk up Boulder Creek. Hopefully it won't be so sad.

Blooming Asteraceae

While you are wandering around in the fields of flowers, take a look at how composites bloom. Some have blooms that open up, as you expect, and others have their blooms just sort of grow out from the stem. Echinacea, Mexican Hat, Indian Blanket do the growing on the end of the stem bit, Scotch thistle does the bud to bloom thing...Interesting

Vegetable garden and those earwigs

We started a vegetable garden and had severe earwig issues. I will take a photo of what these lovely critters do to corn, so you can understand our frustration. I think this year we will have corn about 3 feet high at best...but it is setting ears, finally.

You don't really expect to have to battle so strenuously when you do home gardening. It is even more difficult when you are trying to do it all without petroleum based pesticides, and organically.

It is really hard sometimes to be PC

Fireblight--Boulder CO

The last three years I have seen a lot of fireblight on the wild plums and chokecherries, although it doesn't seem to affect my (very wormy) ancient apple trees. It did kill a pear tree we had in the back yard about 5 years ago.

Intrusion of the blue jays in Boulder, CO

Much to my surprise this past week, there have been several blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata) hanging around our home. I haven't seen them in Colorado before, although I understand that they sometimes stray this far. I think they have set up nests in our nearby trees, and will be watching to see what happens.