Subscribe to Blog via Email
Follow Me
Topics
animal communication birds books change of seasons color cooking and recipes driving fall gardening home horses humans and wildlife impatience indexing inside/outside learning night observation opinions poetry precipitation predators procrastination ravens reading rodents shopping snow spring summer time travel trees and plants Uncategorized walking and hiking weather weeds wildfire wildflowers wildlife encounters wind winter working from home writingBlog Archives
Category Archives: change of seasons
One Last Fire
Spring, as I’ve said before, is a slow unfolding up here in the mountains of central Colorado: the season isn’t to be rushed. But eventually the days lengthen and long-dormant plants emerge. Among the first of these are rough cinquefoil, … Continue reading
Posted in change of seasons, snow, spring, weather, winter
Tagged firewood, snow, spring in Colorado, woodburning fireplace
4 Comments
Mud
Griping about it seems peevish if not gallingly insensitive while a good portion of the nation’s midsection is suffering from the effects of widespread flooding, but I feel compelled to offer a few words on the topic of mud. The … Continue reading
Hope Springs: An Epilogue
I had been pinning my vague sense of unease and discouragement these past weeks on the weather: on the dry and the wind and the swinging of temperatures from too warm to too cold. But when I saw clusters of … Continue reading
Posted in change of seasons, spring, wildflowers
Tagged pasqueflower, pulsatilla patens, Rocky Mountain wildflowers, spring
2 Comments
Hope Springs
Every year it’s the same: as temperatures start creeping up, offering reassurance that winter is winding down, I start obsessing over color. This is a spring thing for many of us living in the world’s temperate zones, I suppose, but … Continue reading
Posted in change of seasons, color, gardening, spring
Tagged Colorado weather, drought, high fire danger, spring snow
6 Comments
Off Kilter
Talking to me about his business junket in late September, my husband described watching helplessly as one of his traveling companions, tripped up by someone’s luggage in an airport corridor, executed one of those multi-step forward stagger maneuvers. The fellow … Continue reading
Posted in change of seasons, fall, impatience, time, Uncategorized
Tagged autum in Colorado, taking time, time management
6 Comments
The Rocky Mountain
In the usual pattern of spring weather, the promontory on our northeastern horizon gleams white like an alpine stereotype. The broad hulk of Pikes Peak is fronted by layered foothills and crags, which cascade down toward a grassy pool called … Continue reading
Posted in change of seasons, precipitation, snow, spring, weather
Tagged April snow, Colorado Fourteeners, Pikes Peak, snowpack
4 Comments
On Sitting
I walked out of the house with no aim other than to go somewhere and sit: no destination, no errand, not even a camera to box in my attention. I’m not noodling a conundrum from a piece of writing left … Continue reading
Posted in change of seasons, fall, observation, writing
Tagged reflection, taking time, the writing life
2 Comments
The Long View
The iconography of changing colors garners plenty of attention this time of year. Deservedly so, I suppose; even here, where the most charismatic foliage species are pretty rare, there’s a good show. The mounded forms of currant and mountain mahogany … Continue reading
Posted in change of seasons, color, fall, observation, wildlife encounters
Tagged autumn in Colorado, bugling elk, fall foliage
Comments Off on The Long View
Winterspring
From a distance, not much has changed. Almost-mid-May from the house looks pretty much like just-past-mid-March. The difference, as it so often is, is in the details. The expanses of grass, passive and still eight weeks ago, are now host … Continue reading
Posted in birds, change of seasons, color, gardening, precipitation, rodents, snow, weather
Tagged April weather, Rocky Mountain springtime
Comments Off on Winterspring
A Monotony of Mild
The winter started out cold—fiercely so, in fact. Icy air preserved the scanty accumulation from small snowstorms for weeks, solidifying it to slick veneers anywhere it was packed down—on roads, on the pathway I follow to and from the barn. … Continue reading
Posted in change of seasons, color, snow, spring
Tagged Colorado Rockies, El Niño, mountain bluebirds, spring snow
Comments Off on A Monotony of Mild
