Having fresh snowfall is a bit like getting a local newspaper delivery: I learn about things going on in the neighborhood I wouldn’t otherwise know. Tracks on the fresh sheet of snow spread across the arena last month were like a headline, albeit one in a script I couldn’t read. But given that the track…
I thought about writing about these fall days: the glossy blue skies, the serene air, the landscape golden and splashed with umber and gilt. The temperature hovers in that curious cool-mild zone, so you go out wearing a jacket but you’re soon too warm and have to strip to shirtsleeves. You need keep the jacket…
I promised myself last spring it wouldn’t happen again: the summer, this year, would not spiral out of control. I would manage my time, balance my obligations, ride herd on my expectations. But the summer got away from me. Again. I can never figure out how this happens, can never reconstruct where, exactly, the days…
In the normal scheme of things, I wouldn’t consider it a weed. Western sticktight (aka Lappula occidentalis, (or ledowskii), flatspine stickseed, flat-spine sheepburr…all variations on the theme) is a native plant, and as a general rule I have a bias in favor of natives. And at first the plant seems innocuous, if not sweet. Pompoms…
The fear that a bad fire season would be in the offing come summer lurked in the background for months. The prickle of anxiety persisted through the windy days of March and April. It lingered while I planted the garden, and stayed in the back of my mind as the weeds popped up and I…
I knew these days would come. In late spring for the last several years, I have nagged myself to remember—and be grateful for—the luxury of going into summer with moisture in the ground. How pleasant those days were. I didn’t have to witness the slow crisping of tender young leaves, didn’t have to stand by…
Thirty-five years ago, in June, 1983, I traveled to England as part of a 4-H exchange. I no longer remember exactly how I came to sign up for the program, but what’s clear in retrospect is how much that summer shaped my life. Even without the international component, the trip would have been monumental for…
“…Rural development encroaches on the traditional habitat of coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, prairie dogs, bears, mosquitoes and other animals that can be dangerous and you need to know how to deal with them.” from “Code of the West,” created by John Clarke, former Larimer County (Colorado) Commissioner Moving to the country from the city…
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 pasqueflowers this afternoon, I thought, Oh, at last. That’s what I needed to see. Pasqueflowers…
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 I can’t help but feel there’s something slightly dysfunctional about my preoccupation. Don’t get me…