Step into a Canyon–Monday, September 8, 2014

We took a short ride.  Just over California Mesa, onto the Highway 50 heading toward Grand Junction, Colorado.

Close to Dead Man’s Curve we turned off, traveled onto a rutted dirt road.  We were taking a break from the ordinariness of every day.  A small hike within the desert landscape that is home to rare plants, Indian rock art and rugged rock formation is all we wanted.  Nothing more than an hour.  There was still necessary things to do back home and evening was descending.

Canyon-1Above us Highway 50 was filled with fast moving vehicles traveling 65 m.p.h.  I”m sure they never even looked into the rugged area alongside the highway.

That’s alright…works for me.

Way down the canyon road live fruit farmers …some of the riches and most delicious fruit comes from down in this canyon.

Canyon-2You can see the highway going from the point in the middle to the left side of the photo.  The blue mountain in the center is Grand Mesa, the right side shows a part of canyon hill.

We didn’t stay long.  Just a short hike.

Back home (after doing the last of evening chores) we sat on the patio watching the evening turn into black velvet skies, shimmering with stars and the early rising moon.

Sunday breaks are very necessary.

Your friend on a western Colorado farm,

Linda

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

A late summer storm crashed all around us last night around mid-night.  The lightening held all three kinds…sheet, cloud to cloud, and cloud to earth.  The cloud to earth ones are always, ALWAYS the dangerous ones.  The dogs don’t mind the lightening it’s the loud booming thunder that sends them under my bed.  Fuzzy has taught Boomer to be afraid, be VERY afraid of thunder.  Not a good thing.  Boomer didn’t ‘know’ he was supposed to act goofy when the thunder sounded until he figured it out from Fuzzy.

Corn-9

The field corn, aka: pick’n corn, feed corn, maize, is getting riper by the day.

Tops-of-Corn

I’m still feeding the bees, although I moved their plate away, away from the hummingbird feeders

Bees-1I like it much better.  As you can see the yellow jackets have also found the sugar water

Bees-4These tables we aren’t using anymore because the bees where to thick in the Russian Sage anyway.  A win-win for all of us involved!

The-west

Just for fun…here is the west side of our place looking toward the canyons and Highway 50 to Grand Junction.

Your western Colorado friend,

Linda

 

 

Sunday, August 4, 2013

And the rains just keep on coming…………

We are having so much rain that the ground is now saturated, which is good and bad.

Good because the rivers that usually dry up in the summer have water in them again.

Flood-2

Good because everything is green, even the desert.

Good because I don’t have wrinkles right now 🙂

Bad because the weeds are growing fast, faster, and fastest!

Bad because the ground is soaked and the puddles are growing moss.

Bad because we now are having flash floods.

Flood-3

Water in the hills, mountains, knolls, and the plateaus are now finding dry gulfs and washes causes flash floods.

Since the desert is so lush and green and full of water, there really isn’t any place for the thundering, spilling roaring water to go…a short time ago a huge flash flood roared it’s way across Highway 50 between Delta and Grand Junction…the effect was amazing.

Flood-4

Water and many splendid thing and also very dangerous!

My Mother grew up in Corona, New Mexico, where they (as children) would play by the many arroyos and dry washes close by.  She always cautioned us to never play in them as a flash flood could come any time.  She also said you can hear the water coming.  Then the towns people would come out to the edges and peer over the sides at the rocks and trees being carried along from the hills far away.

Flood-5

These photos can give you a small idea of what we just saw and what she used to talk about.

Have a good Sunday everyone!

Linda