Sunday, while my mother was at Mass, I took a walk along Cottonwood Creek. This shot points to where I imagine Pikes Peak would be if it weren’t for the clouds.
Category: Photos
Good morning
Zinnia
Most of the zinnias that I planted didn’t survive, but the hardiest ones were over-achievers, with huge blooms that practically assault the eye.
Evening skies
Sunrise
I was out before dawn on an errand earlier this week, and was stopped at the bluffs by a passing train as I returned home. Fortunately, I had my camera.
Rio Grande Nature Center
Sunday morning I drove to the Rio Grande Nature Center. Even there, it is hard to forget that you are in the middle of a desert.
While I took this photo, some Canada geese flew in and out making a tremendous racket. Later, I saw a roadrunner. One of the watchers, a birder, lent me her field glasses so I could get a better look. I find them entrancing, probably due to an overexposure of Saturday morning cartoons as a child. Back then, I rooted for the bird, though now I have a sneaking sympathy for poor old Wile E. Coyote.
La Placita
Saturday, Jack and I had lunch at La Placita restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Have you ever wondered at the odd spelling? Evidently, the “r” which should go after “albu” got lost in the 19th century.
Stored sunshine for a gray day
Today was unseasonably cold and wet: a good day for helping my friend set up the new PC which will replace her ancient Pentium Pro. I am almost as happy as if I had received a new computer myself. I am her main computer support person, and I would flinch everytime I had to do something to help her out. I was practically purring as I set up her Internet access and tested the smart card reader installed in one of the bays.
Chicken update
In the past week, the chickens have moved into their permanent home: a large room at the end of my friend’s lower horse barn now known as the Chicken Palace. Martha, Cassie and Sunny now have a nesting box, multiple perches made of branches and an old wooden latter, and a heat lamp for winter nights. There is a large run off the Chicken Palace for daytime activities, though we still take them for walks and watch them hunt grasshoppers. Although they look quite large in this photo, they are still extremely light weight so we keep an eye on the cats when they are outside. I would never have believed I would some day pick up a chicken, but these hens are so clean and gentle that I enjoy petting them.
More about the storm
I was right that the storms happened late enough on Tuesday evening that they didn’t make it into the local paper. This morning’s paper reported funnel clouds, hail, and wind storms all over the area, but there doesn’t seem to have been any injuries or major property damage. As I learned in this comment thread, my photo yesterday was of clouds known as “mammatus.” In my explorations of the topic, I found Kitty’s Tornado Terminology, a good glossary of terms related to violent storms.