Hurrah for weekends

It's a beautiful sunny day today. I appreciate that so much more since I expected clouds and rain - at least, that was the forecast. It is quite windy, however, and a touch cold.

I went out to the barn this morning. What a mess out there! There must be at least 3 inches of mud most places between the barn and the pasture. I was thankful that I did not come home covered in it from head to foot - it would have been very easy to slip while leading Lark in and out. And it was so windy from the pasture side that I took him all the way around to the front, rather than trying to leave the back doors open. Luckily, he still had his blanket on, so most of his body was clean - just his legs were totally muddy. However, it's supposed to be in the 60s most of the week, so I took the blanket off. I expect we will want to bathe him soon anyway.

I took him into the arena (and the door was blown out of my hand) and started to lunge him. Then I realized - I had the whole arena to myself. So I took off the lunge rope and free lunged him. It was so much fun! First he rolled. Then he took off running. He made S shapes, kind of - started off in one corner, raced around the end, across the middle to the other corner, then reversed. Then I finally got him to make circles. It was pretty easy when he was going clockwise, but going counter-clockwise he kept wanting to reverse. I finally convinced him I wouldn't allow that.

Right now, I'm washing his blanket. Then I need to take Bravo out. And this evening I plan to go to the Skating Show at BIG. I can't believe that is finally possible - most years I am not available the weekend they have it. Tomorrow there's the May Day parade. And I could go to World Agility Team Trials either today or tomorrow. But I don't think I will make that one - can't do it all!

Here's another picture from the Boulder trip. This was at an open-space park at the north end of Boulder. Click on it to see it bigger - otherwise it's hard to see the paragliders.

Here's a close-up of one of the paragliders.

May Day

It's May Day, so to me that means flower pictures are in order. Boulder's Pearl Street Mall had lots of flowers. Some daffodils, some pansies, probably others, but mostly, there were tulips. I was going to build up to this picture - the buds yesterday, then the daffodils, then finally the tulips. But besides being May Day, it's gotten cloudy and we expect rain, so I felt color was needed.

I took a lot of tulip pictures, but the one below is my favorite. So many colors, plus the little pansies peeking out at the bottom.


Jason, I have to tell you that I LOVE The Family Tree. I'm about 3/4 of the way through, and things just became much more clear. I'm sure you know what I mean. Anyone else, I highly recommend it - the author is Sheri S. Tepper.

Happy May!

A touch of spring

Spring was a little more advanced in Colorado. More flowers, more buds on the trees. This one was outside the bridge between the new and old parts of our hotel. I took it through the glass.


It was quite nice in Minnesota today. Low 40s for my walk, but 60s in the afternoon. A great day for a birthday, wasn't it J?

(Mostly) Sunny Colorado

Went to Colorado last week, hoping for warm weather and sunshine. It was sunny when we got in and we spent the day just wandering around, then had dinner with friends. Friday morning, we took a walk on the High Line canal path.


Then we had lunch with another friend and saw some terrific photos from her Africa trip. After lunch, we headed to Boulder. Our hotel was the Boulderado, which opened in 1909. It's been renovated often since, but still keeps the flavor of the original.

On Saturday, we had quite a variety of weather. It started out sunny, but chilly. Then the clouds rolled in. This is the Flatirons from our hotel window:

The clouds didn't last long, though. It snowed a bit in the early afternoon, but by then the clouds were almost gone. This view is the late afternoon light on the Flatirons, again from our hotel window.
So all in all, we did get the Colorado sun I really wanted. I took a lot of pictures, so there will probably be more over the next few days...

Why cross the road?

This morning when I took Bravo out, I saw a group of geese crossing a busy road. I've always wondered why they walk across, rather than fly. But walk they did, honking every step of the way. One wonders if the cars would have stopped for another noise, or if it was just a conditioned response to honking, but they did stop, and the group crossed safely. Once they were all across, the honking stopped.

Why did they cross the road? To get to the other pond.

Mallards

It's great to see the mallards swimming on open water again. No more ice. I heard that there were quite a few loons stopping over in the Twin Cities in the last week, but I didn't see any.

It was a lovely day. Blue sky, and warm enough that I wore shorts and a short sleeve shirt to walk Bravo to the lake this evening. I could get used to this.

Thunderstorms

It's thundering tonight. A long time ago, thunderstorms didn't bother me. Now, though, I find it hard to go to sleep during a storm. It's not even a bad storm, but here I am at my computer, when I probably should get some sleep. Russ was reminding me that Karis used to like to sit on the porch while he read to her during a rainstorm. But it just makes me edgy.