FIRST HUMMINGBIRD!

And I had a witness when it landed on my feeder!  April 30, 2008 pretty early and snow tonight, poor little birds!  They will be hoovering under my porch with their feathers all fluffed up in an effort not to freeze during the snow.  I made strong syrup for them.  They'll burn a lot of calories in the cold!

The Picture is Changing

You've seen this picture before in my posts here at different times of the year.  You can see the change in snow depth and the fact the water is opening up but there are so many things a picture can't show.  It can't show the feeling of spring's gentle breezes on your skin.  It can't show the scent of melting snow, wet wood and new growth.  It can't show many of the tiny flashes of green I see now when hiking.  They are still tiny flecks and spots, teasing the eye.  Slowly this whole picture will change with time.  The willows will leaf out, the grass will grow up over the dead brown left-overs from the winter.  The flickering shadows that indicate fish aren't showing yet but they will as the water gets higher.  Flowers will appear and the day lily, wild snapdragon and columbines will make this a lovely place to walk.  

I have a cold today, high fever and the resulting weirdness that diabetics get when dealing with an infection and medication.  There's a halo of dark blue, red and neon blue that outlines everything I look at.  This walk will be short but I find the fever vision makes it a memorable one.  Each flower, each bird, each bud on the trees represents a victory over harsh winter.  Every walk up here in the time of spring is a celebration of life.  

May Flowers

We call them Mayflowers, crocus, and Pasque flowers.  They are the first things to bloom here in the spring.  If you look carefully you'll notice other touches of green in this pictures.  This is spring here, flashes of green and tiny pieces of color tempt the eyes!  It's all clouded up this morning and I'm taking my time getting ready for Roland's walk.  The coffee tastes unusually good and I am savoring each sip.  Music is on, my house is semi-clean and all is right with my world.  Do you ever have mornings like that, when everything just seems calm, easy and nice?  I'm so glad this one is on one of my day's off work.  I can stretch out the goodness of it for the whole day if I'm lucky and careful!  I'm going up to Plume today to hike above town.  I'll take a camera and spend some time looking at the beautiful place I live.  I find that just having the camera with me makes me look at things differently, more intently.  You realize that everything you look at is with it's own beauty and drama.

I'm also doing laundry this morning.  That doesn't sound interesting at all but it is.  It's spring cleaning time.  I may not be able to go through a room a day anymore but by the end of the next three weeks my house will smell good, all the bedding and curtains will be fresh and winter's layer of smoke and dust will make way to summer's layers of dust!  I love the before and after of spring cleaning, the way the window's sparkle in the sun and the woods in my house take the lemon scent of the oils on them.  I use a lot of herbs in my cleaning and the scents of rosemary, lemon and lavendar are everywhere in my house right now.

I guess it's time to stop writing and start moving.  Those May flowers aren't going to wait forever.  The dog, me and my camera are out of here!

STOCKPILE

I just read an article about stockpiling food in Yahoo.  They think it's a good idea and so do I.  I am, however, afraid there may be a sudden spike in shopping in that manner.  America, welcome to your first food shortages in a long time!  But not for the last time by a long shot.  We are being prepared for the new world and it won't be pretty folks!

Some of us already are living like that, pastas, bean, flour, sugar, etc stored for the long haul as prices keep skyrocketing.  Each week at the store I try to buy something I can store for six months or more, something that is the basis of a meal, not just a can of soup.  The idea that everyone of the people who don't read newspapers but do read their puters getting the idea all at once is jolting.  I guess some of this is just plain fear of the future for us all.  Our government has taken any feelings of security from us.  Being attacked on 9/11 didn't scare me as much as our attacking a country that hadn't attacked us.  We lost any pretense right then of being Noble or fair or right in the world.  

We now know that our government is working for no one but themselves, raping us and lining their pockets as fast as possible before the next election.  From the looks of things they don't have to worry.  Their war candidate will probably get in and be able to complete the destruction of America in the next four years since there has been such a great start in the last eight.

WHY I LIVE HERE

  There are two Rocky Mountain Big Horn Rams in this shot.  They were butting heads with each other as it is Spring!  See my car mirror?  They were only ten feet away from me.  They played around for twenty minutes during which time the larger of the two walked over and stuck his head in the window.  I got no picture of that as my hands were full of old cinnamon bun, the treat that lured him over!  Right down the hill from this is some of the best fly fishing in this area.  I love living up here.  I really do!

I saw these two on my way home from a job interview.  I have been offered a position managing a small ranch near this shot.  I think I'm going to do it.  The fishing there is great also!  I keep my camera with me always now as there are always animals coming out this time of year.  The new flowers, the fresh grass so short it looks mowed, the bears, the elk, everything looks so clean, so vivid even under the layer of black and melting snow, mud and muck.  April's one interesting month in the high country.  We've gone from heavy snow to fire danger in two weeks, next the flooding.

DAFFODIL

I have a daffodil!  Its a beautiful thing to see that glowing yellow flower.  It means that spring is here.  It's possible some time in the next two weeks that I will be laying on the chaise lounge with a glass of Iced Tea, a swim suit and a ton of sun block.  On the other hand, I may equally as well have a good chance at laying on the couch with a fire built up staring at three feet of snow and drinking hot tea!  Who knows?  But I am so elated to see something growing I spent close to an hour standing on my porch last night soaking in the beauty of that one daffodil.  

It is a sparse beauty up here.  So much granite, so little green.  I think it is more stunning to see one beautiful thing in the midst of the rocks then to see fifty.  You appreciate things more the rarer they are.  And that one little flower is the rarest thing in my garden right now!

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Maybe it's because it's spring, maybe I hit my head one too many times, whatever the reason I seem to be having random thoughts lately.  None of them seem to offer any conclusions, solutions or enlightenment.  What do you think?

The few, the proud, the convicted, the Marines!  What's with allowing felons in a position that will someday allow them to be armed?  On the other hand, this may well be the most successful rehabilitation program our penal system has ever come up with.  What should I think about a government trying to pursue an illegal, immoral and unpopular war with a volunteer army?  Does that seem stupid?  Uninformed?  Some kind of red herring to keep us from seeing the real plan?

Petroleum companies making obscene profits from gas prices with no real reason but greed.  The side effect does seem to be forcing experimentation to advance on other energy sources.  Does that make up for the people starving now that food prices are pushed so high?  What part of the ill thought out rush to use corn based fuel in cars is rooted in greed by agracorps?  Is the "green" life something the new devotees are going to continue to live after a new fad comes along?  I've been recycling for forty years now as well as many others.  Why weren't these new comers aware that this needed done long before Katrina?  

Why wasn't I born a "perky, bubbly, up" person?  Who hands out the "happy" and "sad" personalities?  Some of us do have to consciously struggle through most of our days trying to swim out of the disconnect and flat affects in order to have some connection with the rest of you?  

Just a few things floating around in my brain today.

Changes

So this is a picture of me last week.  I weigh 65 pounds less than I did in Sept. of 2007.  I can walk, sleep without pain pills, bend over without1 screaming and occasionally burst out laughing.  The red line you see on my neck is a scar from the surgery that allowed me to do all this

My whole life has changed and my whole attitude towards life has also changed.  I am trying hard to be more understanding of people.  I am trying hard to be more gentle to people.  I am trying hard to stop every day for a few minutes and think of all the things I am grateful for.  I am trying to enjoy and understand all these changes.  The hardest one seems to be understanding aging.

I don't really feel all that different, less energy, more work.  Fewer hormonal reactions to men, more hormonal reactions to everyone else.  More wisdom on one side, less patience on the other.  I wonder what's going to happen next.  I'm at a place where I know major decisions will be coming soon.  I am trying to look over all my possibilities and to decide what my next steps in life will be.  I think we are all at the point during every part of our lives, sometimes we just aren't aware of it.  Maybe the wisdom involved in getting older is that you are more aware of things.  Life isn't just happening to many of us anymore.  We are making choices and decisions with some knowledge behind them, some experience.

It's the thing I'm thinking about this lovely day.  It's what I will dwell on, if you will, mull, muse, turn over, and examine from every view point.  It's the next big thing coming and I'm going to put some thought into this next stage of my life!

From Snow to Fire Danger

Yes, we're already into fire season.  We've had deaths already and evacuations.  The winds that are picking up as our temperatures rise aren't going to be helpful at all.  That's what I understand will be one of the bad bad parts of global warming for my part of the world.  It's kind of hard to believe that we're having 60 and 60 deg. F. temps down in Denver while it's all of 24 deg. F. here.  It's amazing the difference in climate those few miles encompass.

Spring is progressing at the usual astonishing pace it has to take in this short growing season.  As snow banks recede plants are inches high.  Our trees are covered with buds and the pussy willows by the streams are adding their soft white to the scenery.  Mud season is on it's way.  My car floor is in dire need of vacuuming as is my house.  The dishes are piled high and the dusting needs done badly but it's going to have to wait.  I get off this afternoon at 3:30 and no matter how tired I am, Roland and I are going walking!  

I can't stay inside this time of the year.  I'm going to spend one day off working in my garden cleaning up beds and aerating the soil, relocating the wood pile and hauling ashes and garbage.  It will be a busy day, just not one spent doing housework.  I've got spring fever bad and my garden will be ready if I have to shovel snow off it!

Tonight I'll spend washing and sterilizing flower boxes and pots, filling them with outside soil and planting some of the herbs I've gotten for this season.  I'm all about the sun right now, housework will have to wait!

Greenemia

It's the time of year that people hate up here.  Winter, which started before Thanksgiving is holding on forever.  It's April and Yesterday it was four degrees F.  That would be four lousy paltry little degrees.  What about you?  Are there flowers blooming where you live?  Better not say yes or my insane envy might lead me to attack you.  People snarl at each other regularly, divorces and break--ups happen right and left.  The lucky ones leave and stay gone through mud season.  

Mud season is a particularly nasty few weeks that may actually be the fabled "Spring" or as much of it as we get.  Most people I know in Colorado try to hit Vegas, Mexico or New Orleans around now.  They are trying to get some sunlight to make up for the Vitamin D deficiency.   When I got off work yesterday afternoon it was starting to cloud up again.  I got my dog and we took off on a hike.  I didn't think it would last very long as it was nasty cold and the wind was picking up.  I ended up on top of a hill in the beginning of a snow storm, hard little pellets of frozen snow hitting me in the face and eyes.  I thought that because the hill was blown bare of snow there might be some plant life and there was!  It wasn't much, no flowers and nothing over a couple of inches tall, but it was green, damn it!  It was beautiful!  

After tearing up, partly from the wind and partly from the sentiment arising from the thought the temperature might break freezing some day in the future, I headed home.  My fingers were numb on the ends and I thought it might be possible I was getting frostbite on my left cheek.  When I opened the car door Roland ran for it instead of playing deaf and ellusive.  He jumped in and arranged a blanket.  It looked very inviting although hairy and I hurried home.  While I was climbing over the snow bank in front of my place that won't leave until May I looked in the upper reaches of my garden.  There, in that mystical area that first gets sunlight every spring were a half dozen daffodils plants at least four inches tall.  There aren't any blooms showing yet but the snow was a foot deep there only a few days ago.  

I sniveled some more, this time with joy and headed in to build a big fire, pile on the quilts and celebrate spring!

HEADING HOME

So here I sit in Mccarran Airport, waiting for my plane and trying to process all that has happened in the last three days.  It's been thrill packed from the first minute when I saw the limo driver with a sign bearing my name waiting for me.  I can't remember the last time doors were held open for me and luggage carried.  Even those small things were exciting.  The limo was loaded with drinks, ice and goodies, the driver was charming and I didn't have to drive through Vegas traffic thank God!

We ate and talked and drank and made the assistants laugh hysterically when we told stories of the "good old days" when Rosie was poor and so was I.  I'm still poor but things changed for her twenty five years ago!  Poor, not so much!  I hadn't planned on staying at the house but that's how it ended up and I'm so glad.  There wouldn't have been much chance to visit if I hadn't.

I got to see her new show and laughed until tears tolled down my face.  We went out afterwards to places I'd seen on E and read about in the gossip papers.  We shopped and talked and swam and cooked and packed every second full.  This morning when I left we both made plans for me to come back soon and for her to come and visit me.  

It's hard when schedules and money and miles keep old friends apart, especially when they need to connect sometimes to get back to their bases.  I hope I can see her in my home soon, take her hiking and give the kind of things I have to offer the friendship.  

Now I'm full of the melencholy that seems to come whenever I head home from anywhere.  The things that have happened to me in the last 60 hours seem unreal.  I look at pictures and it seems mere seconds since they were taken.  Time is out of whack for me.  Jet drag is more like jet leap.  It's time to load on the plane and go back home to my reality, a much different one than where I've been.

It's Time to Get A Move On!

Morning has shattered all over me once again.  I need to get packing, ironing, dish washing, cleaning the house and organizing the dog and cat stuff.  What do I think I'm doing?  I'll be packing the laptop with me for my trip to sin city.  Although I hope to spend time outside who care where I go as long as it's not here?

Spring is traditionally time for the "Big Road Trip, Man" in Clear Creek County.  For decades this time of year has made Coloradians feel the lust to travel and travel they have by the thousands to Mexico and New Orleans, to Hawaii for the rich and to Costa Rica for the prudent.  We gotta get out of here is our theme song.  Just a few days someplace where piles of dirty snow and howling wind are mere distant memories, and not fond ones either is all most of us ask from life about now.  The cure to cabin fever seems to be "LEAVING"  for however long your particular pocketbook can withstand.

I hope some of you are hitting the road here soon.  No matter what method of travel I use there is something about it that makes me feel youthful and adventuresome!  Who know who I will meet and what jail I might have to be bailed out of?  Wish me well, get my pay pal addy so I can pay bail (do they do that?) and wait with bated breath for those cheesy souvenirs your can only find in Vegas!

WTF? This is "Spring"?

There's more snow as usual this morning.  April 1st was zero degrees here at 7:00 am.  It's getting old.  You don't hear many people saying it's beautiful when it snows any more.  The only advantage is that the new snow overs up the dog shit I haven't gotten hauled away yet.  Just when you think you've got it all, another layer of snow melts and viola!  new shit appears!  It's depressing as I thought I had kept up with Roland this winter.  The fat black dog is truly a shitting machine!

There are three funerals or memorials this week.  We have lost a lot of people again this winter.  Maybe it's just because I'm old but the new people moving in don't have the qualities of education, intelligence, and adventure that the old ones did.  A lot of depression hoovers around my area and a lot of cabin fever.

If it isn't grim enough today, I read we have plague in Boulder.  Plague!  In better times that wouldn't have worried me so much.  I would have counted on local governments to deal with what shouldn't be a big problem.  With the amount of idiocy and corruption in the present government, it becomes something to really worry about.

The two inches of top onions and herbs that showed yesterday are covered with snow.  The sky is filled with lenticular clouds that indicate high winds blowing in another storm tonight.  Shit!  

Where is that glowing yellow ball in the sky that came last year?