between the winds

Yesterday morning was a quiet, peaceful short walk. Just a few hours later and I was very grateful we'd gotten it in before the insane winds blew through. With gusts up to 60 MPH, semi-trucks were getting blown off of the highway. The only casualty at our house was the big orange begonia bloom, looking quite tragic as we departed the house for today's walk. But even now, as I'm about the start the workday, I can hear the winds picking up again.


Surprisingly, this delicate little plant didn't lose a single bloom, which keep reminding me of dangling earrings. (Once they open, the interior is a brilliant purple.)


If you remember the picture a few weeks ago, you can see how much more green everything now is, even the maple, now in full summer mode.


We took off towards the foothills and went a little further down the trail towards all the big homes with horse barns.




If you sit down, you can almost lose civilization for a moment and take in the new fallen snow from the cold front that clashed with those violent southern winds yesterday. I need to learn to pick out which of the fourteeners I'm looking at. I'm thinking these might be Mt. Evans and Mt. Bierstadt.


So we practiced sitting for a while at the point where I realized following the trail all the way around would take most of the morning, and then we started back the way we came.


We have to practice sitting and staying because as soon as I get the dogs in position for a picture, Katy inevitably gets up and comes toward me.


But with a little patience, you can get both of them with their butts on the ground.


It is not, however, as easy to get a picture of yourself with the sitting dogs, so you end up looking like this.



My thoughts exactly. Okay, time to head back...


Although playing in the tall grass is a lot more fun than going to work...


You can make out Morrison in the distance if you squint.

There are those border collie radar ears!

I've also begun noticing that I need to swap hands with the leash more often. The dogs work those muscles much better than any resistance band because they are constantly pulling. I tend to use my right arm more and it's beginning to show. I don't mind the definition, but if I don't remember to even it out, I'm going to be weirdly lopsided.

This is the last day of school for the kids, so starting tomorrow, we can take off on our walks earlier and go farther, if I have the discipline to get out of bed when the alarm goes off for Bob. It's also occurred to me, since it gets light around 5:00 a.m. that I could conceivably get up earlier, load up, and drive over to Morrison and Red Rocks to do some early morning sunrise hikes. I'll keep you posted :)