A few weekends ago I was at a local park which is popular for outdoor weddings. The male attendants all wore orange sneakers. The female attendants wore orange heels (with gray dresses.) A few of the women looked a little worried going down a sandy hill in three inch heels and clung to their escorts with all their might.
We use this barn cart as a rain gauge. Although adjacent areas were officially reporting close to four inches from the series of storms yesterday, I didn’t think we had received that much. However, this is the most I have ever seen in our yard card after a storm.
We also have a significant amount of debris on the road near our house:
Early on in the fire, there were rumors that most of the buildings at the intersection of Shoup and Black Forest Roads had been lost. This little cross-roads community is where the the Festival was held on Saturday. I took this photo of part of the burn area from the edge of the Festival grounds. If you were to stand in the middle of the intersection and turn 360 degrees, you could see burned areas in every direction. It was amazing that the firefighters were able to save the buildings, though as my friend points out, the owners of the buildings had done a good job of fire mitigation between clearing out undergrowth and surrounding the areas with open space and parking lots.
I saw this Aussie at the Black Forest Festival on Saturday. He was working very hard to keep himself entertained while his people watched the parade.
The phlox are very vibrant this year.
Here is photographic evidence that I gave Rion his new toy, as instructed. He played with it for a while, then took it into his crate to use it as a pillow. Rion is the first dog we’ve had that both plays with his toys, and doesn’t destroy them within fifteen minutes of acquisition.
And yes, the sky really is that blue.
I took this photo several mornings ago while I was walking the dogs. To the right, you can see the burn scars left by the Beaver Creek Fire two years ago. I suppose the fire didn’t get hot enough to sterilize the ground since it has obviously grown nicely green since then. It was still fairly early in the morning so one can see the shadow on the hills of a hill to the east.