Friends’ chat

30 04 2023

Skywalker and his pal, Sancho, have a chat over – what else? – a girl. She wasn’t nearly as interested in them (helped along by her stallion) as they were in her.





Family man

29 04 2023

Love. Even when hearts break, they are there to knit those tissues back together. Without them, there is nothing. With them, everything.





Let ‘er fly

28 04 2023

Somebody (Winona) was in a hurry to get to Spring Creek to drink because, yes, dear readers, there’s water trickling through stretches of the Spring Creek arroyo in Spring Creek Basin.

Some stretches, you ask? Some stretches are damp, some are downright dry, and some have water trickling through runnels through the middle of the bed of the arroyo. It’s wild how the water runs *under* the bed of the arroyo … because otherwise, where does it come from *downstream* of those dry stretches?

Even with ponds offering walk-in-able water, it’s interesting how the horses drink from all their available water sources.

Mustangs. 🙂 They know how to drink!





Hair season

27 04 2023

The ponies still have some fuzz, but that’s starting to change.

Juniper: Mother Nature’s shedding tool. Looks like somebody had a nice bit of a rub.





April breezes

26 04 2023

This photo of Tenaz does a better job of illustrating the windy conditions than it does convincing viewers that the greyer-than-usual haze in the background is SNOW and not just our usual Mancos shale ridge slopes. …

But it is.

Snow, that is.

Happy late April, almost May?! 🙂 Welcome to Colorado!





Early blooms

25 04 2023

Some examples of some of our early bloomers may be seen below.

This is one of our earliest bloomers: phlox (don’t ask me what specific kind!). Most of our little bunches (and they are extremely low-growing and tightly clustered) are white. But some are:

Palest pink.

These Indian paintbrush (again, there are multiple specific types) also were very little bitty.

And then there are these beauties:

These little flowers are at least as numerous as phlox, and there are a few different things that look a lot like it … but not exactly like it. If you can give a positive ID on this little plant/wildflower, I’d be most appreciative!

With the infusion of a little rain last night – hopefully widespread? – hopefully we’ll see some more of these tenacious little wildflowers this spring!





‘God rays’

24 04 2023

We know we’re blessed. 🙂





A moment

23 04 2023

The weather has been unsettled the last few days, which bodes well for our getting some much-needed moisture in a day or two. It seems wild that after a good winter, we should need that moisture, but those spring winds dry things out, and we haven’t gotten much new moisture in the form of rain (or snow) lately.

Those fast-moving clouds and changing light conditions can make for some dramatic lighting, and Sundance was happy (!) to pose! Ha – that’s not true; he was busy chasing green bits! In the pic above, I happened to catch him as he was looking across a little drainage at his band. Chew, chew … and back to grazing. 🙂 What a guy!





Rain for dust

22 04 2023

As spring continues to lag and spring and lag and backslide slightly (temps below freezing and ice on water!) and green is slowly greening, the predictable spring winds are keeping dust and haze in the air. We’re looking for a renewal of moisture. Maybe that’ll be on our dusty horizon by Monday and/or Tuesday.

P.S. As Kat Wilder reminded me this morning: Happy Earth Day! Celebrate something – or many things! – wild today!





Speckled

21 04 2023

Maia still has some shading to her grey, but she’s not nearly as grey as she seems to be in the above pic. … That’s mostly MUD, and to see it is an indication that she’s finding wet places to roll. We DO have ponds with water coming out of the winter into the spring, and that’s always a cause for celebration!