mistressofmuses

This morning.

It was 80° in February. :/

(Yes, yes, ~we need the moisture~, but I'd be perfectly happy never seeing another snowflake, and this winter where we had barely any snow at all was the happiest winter I've ever had. Could it not have had the decency to fall as RAIN? The number of broken branches in the surrounding neighborhoods makes me so sad.)


Bella would like to know who allowed such a thing.

(To be fair, if I must be: the moisture in the mountains was extremely needed (31 inches in Estes, allegedly!), the roads never got bad down here, by the later afternoon the roads were basically dry, and while we're supposed to have a hard freeze overnight, we're supposed to be back to 70° tomorrow.)

Speaking of Bella wondering who allows things, she had her annual vet visit yesterday! (We'd had to reschedule from a couple weeks ago, after a construction mishap on the building led to flooding.) We saw a different vet than usual, the daughter of our long-term family vet. I remain relieved that she's likely going to take over the practice once Dr. Kim retires completely.
(There are so few options for non-chain vets around here. :/ VCA/Sploot/Chewy have devoured most of them.)

Everything looks good! She got her lepto shot, we got six months of heartworm prevention, she got her physical, the vet looked at her eye freckle and agrees that it does not look concerning. She's good for another year! <3


Bella, just blending in with the plushies.

A couple more pictures of Bella:

Sometimes she knocks a plushie out of the basket, but then she just snuggles it, ha.


Bendy Bella and her bendy s-curve spine. (But I thought the little heart on the mushroom plush next to her was cute.)

And then some random pictures:


On one of my walks at work, late last month, a really cool hawk! (There were actually two of them, and I got to watch them for a little while. It was a very windy day, so they were just coasting pretty close by. For a short time they were even right at eye-level, since the path hugs the top of a hill, and they were below the drop-off. Unfortunately I wasn't quite fast enough with the camera to catch them there!)

Two more pictures:

This is just a weird camera glitch, but it ended up looking cool! ~Spooky ghost hawks~ (And a background Red Rocks.)


A ladybug!

And one totally random image from grocery shopping:

Ah yes, the devil's meat.

Have a handful of pictures from the last couple weeks!

Most of these are from my walks that I'm trying to take, though there are some random other ones mixed in.


Lilacs!


Bella, looking like a little croissant snuggling her blanket.

Nine more pictures:

More lilacs!


Interesting tree flowers.


Bee on a dandelion!


Moth disguised as bird poop on a dandelion! With bonus tiny ant that I didn't notice until later.


It made me smile that it looked like the magpie came up to get his order at the window.




I was very taken with just how intensely blue the sky was.


Purple flowers!


Little green stink bug.

I've been trying to take my medically prescribed walks. We've been luckily aided by our weather, which has been so bizarrely warm this season. (It's low-key terrifying, how little snow we've had.)

I didn't end up doing anything this most recent "weekend," as Alex was super sick and didn't want to go anywhere, but on the last bit of time before I returned to work we did at least a few good walks.


Bella got to meet a horse!

Bella loves horses. I tease her that she's a weird horse girl. (I was a weird horse girl.) But she's very enthusiastic every time we drive past horses. She's gotten to see them on trails before, and is always very excited. (I loved one day on a trail where we pulled her to the side to let some horses pass, where we were talking to Bella saying "Oh, do you see the horses?" and as the riders passed, one of them was saying "Oh, do you see the puppy?" Lol.) But while Cy got to be around horses pretty often, back when Alex was riding, Bella hasn't ever gotten to directly meet one.

Until now!

We saw this horse coming up the trail, and then horse and rider went through the Starbucks drive through, haha. Then they came back around and passed us on the trail. The rider said hi to us and to Bella, and Alex said hi and that Bella loves horses. The rider pulled his horse back around and asked if she wanted to say hi.

Bella was utterly starstruck, haha.


And a pair of bald eagles!

We first spotted one out on the ice of the pond, then heard a huge murder of crows throwing an absolute fit over in the trees at the far side. As we continued around, we realized there was a second eagle already in the trees over where the crows were upset.

Eventually the one on the ice flew back up to join the one in the tree, though then made another trip out onto the ice.

By the time we got back around to the tree they'd been in, that one came back, and they both sat there for quite a while! It was very cool.

I am still delighted every time we see an eagle, and especially to see two! But it also makes me happy that it no longer feels like a "once in a lifetime" sighting. While I don't think I'll ever be blase about seeing them (I mean, I get excited every time I see a chickadee, so) but I am glad that it's something that happens multiple times a year, now.

Nine more pictures:

Friday, January 30, a quick walk in a city park:


There were SO MANY geese on the pond, ha. But I liked the ones toward the front there, who were nibbling at the sort of soft, delicate ice at the edge of the pond. It was a very funny noise to hear them nibbling at it. Bella was very interested.

Sunday, February 01, a longer walk at Belmar Lake:


A pair of mallards waddling across the ice. I love the male's bright green head, but am also always amused by their bright orange feet.


This little bird's nest was very cute.


Also a big fallen wasp nest.


Excuse me! What do you think you're doing?? It is February 1st, it is too early for you, little green leaf!


More ducks! Some mallards in front on shore, and northern shovelers in the water.

Thursday, February 05, at Pelican Pond:

The two above-cut pictures are from this day as well, but a few more.


Denver in the distance, but also a sort of fun phenomenon: the angle of the sun meant that the contrail over on the right actually cast a shadow across the sky, which is pretty cool looking.


Eagle! :D


Again with the greenery! It's too soon!

It's harder to take my walks while working, but I've tried to take at least two quick walks each day. It does seem to have helped the bloating a bit. Still not all the way there, but it's improved!

In less good news, I do seem to be getting sick, probably with what Alex has. Terrible! He's been so sick for days! But I had a very slight sore throat this morning, and then around lunch time it started ramping up. Runny nose, lots of that lovely post-nasal drip that is making my throat want to die.
If it follows the same trajectory as Alex's, then I can look forward to hideously awful coughing, moderate fever, and sinus and chest congestion in my near future. (And because I had originally requested this weekend off, but my time off request was denied, I absolutely can't call out; there's no one to cover, and calling out on the same day as a denied leave request is an automatic HR write-up.) Hopefully I end up with a milder version!

It snowed!

This year has been bizarrely light on snow for our area. The weather stayed warm well into November, and our first snow only came last Saturday, as barely a dusting. I'm not complaining - I've joked that I find snow acceptable between Thanksgiving and New Year's only - but as usual ~we need the moisture~. I don't think I ever expected our snow to *actually* hold off until after Thanksgiving, and it's true that I also don't want things to be on fire all next year. (That can and does coexist with the fact that I would be happy to literally never see another snowflake.)

But at least if it is going to snow, this particular storm was very aesthetic!

---

Yesterday, Alex and I went over to my mom's house for a while to help her sort through some old stuff of hers. A while back, she expressed to me the desire to try and sell off a lot of the "stuff" she has accumulated. I think a combination of her mom passing away, and then trying to help her sister with her hoarded house in preparation for moving, and her own 70th birthday, made her really want to make sure that she doesn't wind up with a lot of junk. A lot of what she has isn't really junk: she has antique tools of her grandfather's, some china, some other genuinely antique things. But she'd rather get rid of it now - and maybe get some money for it - rather than leave it to be dealt with after she's gone.

We did look at a lot of the tools, so many of which are really cool! It's amazing how well some of them were made. Nicely carved hardwood handles, a few with carved decoration, things like that. A few it makes me sad to think of getting rid of, because they are such an example of "they don't make 'em like they used to!" but I also understand my mom's desire to part with things that she doesn't actually use.

---

Bella and Jaspurr had an accidental face-to-face meeting. I went to the bathroom, and came back to Jaspurr hiding under a chair, and Bella sniffing him. Alex and my mom thought he was upstairs and that Bella was just sniffing around more generally, or they would have intervened. While Jaspurr wasn't loving it, the meeting actually went really well! He didn't hiss or swipe at her, and she was just happily interested. She was easy to call away (though then wanted to go back) and was just mildly excited. He did growl at her the second time she returned, and she left him alone. They later also had a quick meeting in my mom's room, while he was up on a table and Bella was on the floor.

Jaspurr didn't love Bella being there, and ended up spending the whole night in my mom's room after, but it really did go about as well as I could have hoped! We've never gotten to truly test Bella around cats (beyond seeing them at more of a distance), and Jaspurr hasn't gotten to interact with other animals since being with my mom and Taylor. I'm actually quite pleased.

---

I had a dentist appointment this morning, and since my dentist is only about five minutes from my mom's house, in light of the forecast snow overnight, I spent the night at my mom's.


The birds were happy to have the feeders today in the snow. A towhee and several house finches!

These couple pictures are a little blurry, but of my favorite random bird at my mom's:


This little girl on the right does not have snow on her head - she has a white patch on the top of her head! She's also not a white-crowned sparrow or anything like that, she's just a house finch with a leucistic patch.


You can see more of the patch here, though it blends in a bit with the snow. She's been coming to my mom's feeders for about three years now, she thinks. I'm always happy to see her. :)

---

My dentist appointment went well! I'd been dreading it a little bit, because I had to have *such* extensive dental work done back around 2020-2021. A decade+ of no dental care, and many years of really precarious living situations, plus probably some general mental health garbage really took their toll.

I missed my last cleaning over the summer because of my grandmother's memorial, and so it'd been closer to a year than six months, and while I hadn't noticed any issues, I was very afraid it'd be worse than expected.

It wasn't! No cavities, which always feels like a big win, haha.

The weird hole in my jaw (where I had an extra baby tooth removed when I was young) has not gotten any worse. It's always exciting when every dentist and hygienist that sees my x-rays has an instinctive, horrified gasp. They assumed this was a crisis that would require bone and tissue grafts... and somehow, it's all very stable. The teeth around the gap aren't unstable or in pain, the jaw itself is not deteriorating. This was my five-year x-ray appointment, and my hygienist was delighted when she said that it looks the same as it did five years ago. "Science would disagree with me, but it really does look like it's just... not causing problems." I love that science can't explain my jaw.

---

Jaspurr, having returned to the main floor this morning, ha. So regal.

We were still in recovery mode from the show on Saturday, and then a late night going out to look for the northern lights on Sunday night, so we wanted something fairly easy, but still taking advantage of the nice weather.

So we headed over to Belmar park, for a fairly short walk down to the turtles, ha.


We did make it down over to the turtle pond area, but the star of the spot was an egret! I love the ridiculously yellow enormous feet. (And a lot of swirly algae, ha.)


Will a day come that I don't take closeups of honeybees? Perhaps, but the day was not this day.

Ten more pictures of insects, spiders, birds, etc.:

Nice dramatic spider web.


Alas, blurry! But a nice bright red dragonfly.

Around here we also managed to actually spot one of the huge, loud cicadas up in one of the trees. Couldn't get a picture where it was visible, but it was nice to see one, ha.


Boxelder bug on some milkweed seeds.


Pretty good-sized spider in a web on the milkweeds.


A couple very big turtles up on their branch.


The egret over by the turtles and the muskrat lodge, hopping from one branch to another.


I really like the reflection. :)


As we turned around to head back, there was a flock of the tragically-named bushtits.


They're such cute little things.


A beefly! I love them. We saw several, but they were frustratingly hard to get clear pictures of.

It was a nice day and a nice walk. :)

I am so far behind... T_T

Waaaaay back at the beginning of the month, we went back to Castlewood Canyon, wanting to see the rest of the "Cave" trail, which had been closed earlier in the season for nesting turkey vultures. The turkey vulture nesting was definitely a success, judging by how many of them we saw!


As always... Bella!


And we got to see a couple deer! I know that we have just... so many deer, but I'm still always happy to see them. This one was obviously young, still with little fawn spots, though it was most of the way grown.

Sixteen more pictures:

Wandering up the short stretch of road between the parking lot and the trailhead, there were some milkweed that were absolutely COVERED in aphids. But they also had lots of happy ladybugs having a massive buffet, haha.


Looking up from lower on the trail.


The rock wall that was roughly where the trail was closed off last time. I like being able to see the space behind the front "section" of the rock.

We were able to continue on, now that the nesting closures have been lifted.

It wasn't... quite as impressive as hoped. Still didn't find the alleged caves, haha. The cliffs are really pretty, though.


Unfortunately the sun was at just the worst angle for all of these pictures looking up at the cliff, haha. But I liked the dramatic dead tree and the tall bit of the rock.


Again with the sun making it look like a dream sequence.




Turkey vulture!


Something was drilling into this fallen log, ha.

As we were heading back, Alex looked over to the side, and...


The little deer! Mostly grown, just a little small, but still with white fawn spots! So cute. (Yes, this is almost the same picture as above the cut.)


And a second deer, nearby the first.

Bella was very excited to see the deer. (I think I've mentioned before, but she does enjoy "watching" TV sometimes, especially animal programs. There was a wildlife rehab show we used to watch sometimes, and her favorites to watch were seals and deer, haha.) She doesn't seem to want to chase them or anything, just wants to go see them, ha.


That second deer, staring back at Bella. It didn't seem overly concerned.


Speaking of successful turkey vulture nesting... Not sure how easy it is to see, but aaaaall those little black specks in the sky are vultures. SO MANY.


A fairly nice chunk of a shed snake skin. Probably a bull snake... but not nearly as impressive as the one my mom found last weekend!


Another ladybug on milkweed.


A very impressively active wasp nest over the bathrooms, ha.


Bumblebee on a sunflower!

Still more trails to explore, but glad we got to do the rest of the sort of "horseshoe" of this trail, and glad we had a chance to get out for the day.

We went on just a short walk last Tuesday. We were going to go to a movie, so wanted just something easy and quick to get out for a little bit. So, Pelican Pond it was. No pelicans, though.


Over on the left, a couple ducks, then a couple large turtles, and so many cormorants! Especially love the one with wings spread.


We did see the first monarch we've seen this year!

Just four more pictures:

Another shot of the monarch!


The cormorants when we first walked by.


When we came back after turning around, there were suddenly more!


And next to the cormorant branch, a nice big turtle, and a duck showing off the very nice purple in her wing.

We also saw a little snake and a bunch of other birds. It was nice to get out for a bit, even if we didn't want to do very much.

Still catching up on posts!

A couple of weeks ago jesus how has it been a couple of weeks we decided to try another new-to-us park. This one borders Lair o' the Bear, but is actually a Denver park, rather than a county park. (Denver has a few mountain parks that they own and maintain, even though the mountains are well outside the city.) It's a bit farther up the road, but we drove past it on our detour the day we were coming back from Centennial Cone.

Taking a look at the info page on it, it looked like there was a decent 3-4 mile total out-and-back trail up to a spot called "Panorama Point," so hopefully there'd be a nice view. So we headed up!

...And it was "up." The trail is moderate difficulty, but it does pretty immediately head up, haha.

I've been disappointed this year that we really haven't seen any snakes. We finally saw one on this hike!


A really nice big, healthy looking garter snake! So cute.

The whole area was very pretty, a nice forest trail. The trail mostly paralleled a narrow little creek.


I was very taken by all the moss around the creek.

Fourteen more pictures:

Bella! I thought she looked cute next to the flowers.


The narrow creek. It was wider at some points, narrower or even entirely dry at others.


Detour around some big rocks.


Beebalm!


A little pond skater in a calm part of the creek.


Another shot of the snake. :) With his head in the sunbeam, haha. The snake was quite long, probably 18 inches or so? I was happy to see one that's clearly doing so well!


We also saw a bunch of woodpeckers! A hairy woodpecker.


A second one. There were at least three we saw at the same time.


A dramatic hollow stump. Very picturesque.

Alex was having some neck issues, and Bella was getting a bit warm, so we took a break for a couple minutes.


Bella set herself up on the trail. Toll road: must pet to pass. (Kidding. She was very good about coming off the trail when someone did come pass us. Even a couple of dogs.)


Not a great picture, but laying down on one of the branches, a black squirrel! (You can see his little ear against the tree trunk.) We rarely get black squirrels here (I've seen them elsewhere, but not much here! We get red squirrels, and sometimes grey ones, but black ones are a rarity.)


I liked all the little baby trees growing in this meadow.


A little bird! I think it's a junco, which are a winter-only bird down in the city, but sometimes stick around year-round at higher elevations.


We also saw so many of these little chipmunks. So cute!

Bella was still a little warm (it really wasn't too terribly hot, but it was humid, and it was all uphill). Wanting to let her cool down, we cut through one of the meadows along the trail to get back to the creek, which we could hear, but not see.

Where we found my favorite of the day...


*_* Tiny chorus frog froglet.

And well... I did have an unused habitat, from before we moved Berry Mad into the bigger one... And boreal chorus frogs are one of the native species it is legal to keep...


It's so small.

After this we turned around and headed back, since we were carrying precious (tiny) cargo.

We'll have to go back another day to see if we can make it all the way up to the promised "panorama point."

Last Tuesday, we went to Castlewood Canyon. It's a state park that really isn't that far, yet that I always somehow forget is there, ha.

There are two different ways into the park, and we opted for the western entrance. The hope was to maybe poke at a couple of the short little trails, and then take the creek trail over to the ruins of an old dam in the middle of the park.

We didn't quite make it that far, but what we did was fun!

Right inside the park entrance is the Homestead Trail. It starts near the "Lucas Homestead," a house from 1894, and the trail goes around some of the other outbuildings and other features from their land.


The remains of the homestead.


A nice grasshopper.

Ten more from the "homestead" trail:

Another shot of the homestead.


A little baby grasshopper.


Old cattle chute from the homestead.


One (1) small lizard.


The Fancy Wall, as the signage calls it.


A flycatcher (probably.)


The remains of the old springhouse.


Which still has a spring!


Also raspberries! (Yes we ate some. Yes they were delicious.)


Daddy longlegs! :D

Then we drove up to the next parking lot, where we took the "Cave Trail" up. It's listed as being strenuous, but very short, so we figured we'd brave it.


Bella was extra brave!

She actually really seems to enjoy climbing! More so than just "regular" hiking. If she sees a big rock, she'd really like to be on top of it.

Seven more pictures from the "cave trail:"

Looking up from the base.

The hike up was definitely strenuous, though still very doable. A lot of it is stairs. My knee was screaming at my by the time we got up there, though.

Somewhat unfortunately, the trail is closed part way up, for nesting raptors. Specifically turkey vultures, later signage told us. My bad for not checking on that! The closures are only through August 1st, so we'll have to give it another try sometime next month, maybe.

The part of the trail that was accessible still led to a neat little area:


It's not quite as obvious in the picture, but the space behind the cliff face here is hollow, and you can see through into the space behind. I bet that seasonally it's a really cool waterfall.


And there were, in fact, turkey vultures!


Bella in the little "tunnel" the trail goes through. (I like this picture.)


More Bella rock climbing!


A little woolly lamb's ear, bravely growing in the rocks. I just thought it was cute.

The hike all the way up and then back down the stairs was quite a lot.


The instant we got back to the car, Bella wanted to take a nap about it.

The original plan had been to hike to the dam, but Bella was tired enough that we weren't sure we'd make it all the way there and back. There was a shorter section of the longer trail that led to what was just labeled the "falls area," so we figured we'd go look at that. We headed down to the third of the parking lots on this side.


Look, a waterfall!

Just three more pictures:

From there, a different view of the cliffs, and so many turkey vultures. They posed very nicely in the dead tree! I'm guessing the nesting is working out for them.


One more adventure shot of Bella.

While it was a bummer not to make it all the way out to where we'd intended, we were all pretty tired by that point, so we did just head back after taking a look at the waterfall.


And a deer on our way back out!

It was a very fun day, and there are definitely a bunch more trails (both on this side and from the other entrance) to check out.

I took too many pictures while we were at Hudson Gardens last week, so had to split up the post a bit.

Here is Part 2: The Critters!

Mostly, I'd been hoping we would see frogs, because there were loads of tadpoles when we were there in the spring, but we were too early for frogs.


We were not too early for frogs this time! This was my favorite bullfrog of the day, who was surprisingly chill about me taking pictures.


Found along the lake shore, a fairly recent shed snake skin! Almost certainly a garter snake.

Seventeen pictures of various critters, lots of frogs and crayfish, plus others:

Over past the beehives, the little holding pond is full of water and plants again! We heard one tell-tale "eep! plop" of a bullfrog, but upon looking closely at the pond, discovered there were also quite a few of the tiniest possible froglets.


What is that between the plants?

Let's look a bit closer...


Hmm...

Eeeeeven closer...


The tiniest frog!!


Another tiny!frog. (Just below the stem of the lily pad in the middle, the one with the curled leaf.)


Two more tiny frogs!

The tiny frogs are far too small to be bullfrogs. I feel like they're even a bit too small to be leopard frogs, based on what I remember of the one I raised from a tadpole when I was a kid. They could be toads like Berry Mad, since I think they do start out very small, or possibly chorus frogs.

The other thing there were a ton of...


Baby crayfish! So many baby crayfish! More baby crayfish than I have ever seen!


Still some big bullfrog tadpoles, too.


Another fun aquatic baby: a damselfly nymph!


A kingfisher!

Then up to the lily pond...


A nice big bullfrog under the lily pads! And such stripey legs.


A much smaller bullfrog.


Another shot of the very big, very chill bullfrog from above the cut.


A nice big crayfish, marching along the water line.


Not as intense as the claws I found up at Pine Valley Ranch, but you can see the blue claws!


Another bullfrog, sitting on the waterfall between levels of the pond.


On a fence post, a cicada husk.


One last big bullfrog, on the muddy bank.

One last bonus picture,

of a black widow at my mom's house:

This is "Esmeralda" or "Esme" for short. She lives in the window well outside of my mom's basement. My mom sent me this picture the same day we went to the gardens: Esme had three big egg sacs! (According to mom, she has since laid a fourth.) She is an attentive mother, rotating the egg sacs and moving them around the web over the course of each day. My mom has been enjoying watching her.

My mom said that her research on black widows and their egg-laying said that they only live about a year once they're fully mature, which makes me feel slightly better about how short a time I had Ophelia... perhaps it really was just her time.