mistressofmuses

For the last couple years, I've shared my favorite pictures taken for the year. Here are my top fifteen for 2025!

As usual, it's pretty clear what my favorite subject matter is, haha.

January 07, at home:


Cy and Bella cuddling.

It was a little rare for them to cuddle together for long, and getting a picture of them doing so seemed to be even harder. I miss him so much, still.

Thirteen more pictures, chronological through the year:

June 03, at the Denver Botanic Gardens:


Rainwater in the center of a poppy.

We'd set up a plan to go to the Botanic Gardens for my mom's birthday, and when the day came, it was chilly and rained. Initially we were a bit disappointed, but it turned out to be absolutely perfect. The clouds made for perfect photo lighting, and it had been such a soft rain, the raindrops clinging to everything were beautiful. (There were a couple pictures of roses covered in beads of rain that I almost picked instead, but I just really liked this one.)

July 06, at Roxborough State Park:


A bumblebee on a bee balm flower.

These bumblebees were ENORMOUS.

July 08, at Hudson Gardens:


A bullfrog.

This bullfrog was huge and so very chill about us taking his picture.

July 14, at Lair o' the Bear Open Space Park:


It's Bella!

This is one of my favorite pictures that I've taken of Bella. She just has such soft eyes, ha.


A pygmy nuthatch.

From that same hike, a surprisingly cooperative little bird!

July 21, at Castlewood Canyon State Park:


A hummingbird nest.

I was so beyond charmed to see this tiny nest! The lichens and seed fluff and spiderwebs making up the construction is just so perfect.

July 29, at Centennial Cone Open Space Park:


A view from pretty way up.

This park is pretty way up in the mountains. We hadn't been before (and of course ended up going on the day that the *one* tiny thunderstorm that spawned over the mountains picked this exact spot, haha.)


A lizard!

I loved this guy's very vibrant markings! On a sunnier day, I'm sure they actually help him blend in extremely well with darker plant shadows.

August 26, Greenbelt:


Bumblebee!

Much, much smaller than the giant bumblebee from before. I do love their little orange belt.

September 02, Castlewood Canyon State Park:


A fawn!

I was delighted that this fawn still had some spots!

September 08, Alexx & Michael's Pond:


Pelicans!

Alex and I went up to this random neighborhood park to catch sight of an avian oddity: a wood stork! (Perfectly common in some places, but not in Colorado!) We did spot the stork, which was very cool, but the pelicans were also stars of the day, haha. There were SO MANY!

October 14, Greenbelt:


Fall colors.

We were graced with an extremely beautiful fall, and the colors were gorgeous! The gold against the intensely blue sky was especially striking.

November 04, Red Rocks:


It's Bella!

Bella loves rock climbing, and I was very pleased with this picture of her so dramatically backlit!

November 11, the north plains:


The Northern Lights!

We had another chance to go see auroras this year (having seen them for the first time last year.) They were spectacular! It was amazing to see them, and while they were not as intense to the naked eye as it was on camera, the color was visible. It was so, so cool to get to go up and see them, and I'm so glad we did.

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Obviously I take a lot of pictures of flowers and bees and birds and my dog, haha.

Continuing to take advantage of our unseasonably warm weather, we wanted to find somewhere to go on a hike or walk that wouldn't involve heading up into the mountains (where it was likely to be less warm.)

We settled on Bear Creek Lake Park. (It's a nice spot, though it's been many years since I've gone there. We always get a state park pass, so usually stick to those or to the free county parks. Bear Creek Lake is not a state or county park, and has a separate entry fee.)

We're most of the way past our fall colors, though there were still a few areas with gold leaves. We'll have to go back next year, to visit when it's nice and green. It was a very warm day for approaching mid-November, and I was very glad we went out.

We ended up walking two different trails, on the south end of the park, and one more toward the north end near the entrance.


Some very dramatic clouds!


Little helicopter seeds.

Two more from the first trail:

A creek!


Different dramatic clouds.

Then we headed up to another trail closer to the entrance of the park, which follows the creek.


The creek!


More creek! A little bit of fall color still hanging on.

Three more from the second trail:

Kind of a little spillover. Looks like this might have been a spot there used to be a bridge.


Nice wasp nest up in the tree.


And is it a hike if there isn't at least one weird bug?

Glad we were lucky enough to have another week where we could go out and do things!

I think the nice long fall is pretty much over now, but I'm glad we were able to enjoy it while it lasted.

On Tuesday night, the aurora borealis was visible through a huge amount of the country, including Colorado!

The first time I ever got to see them was last year, and while we've tried to see them a couple times since, the later attempts tended to capture a faint glow at best.

The ones on Tuesday were amazing.


The colors were most intense early.

(This is brighter than it appeared to the naked eye, but the color was visible even without a camera, both the reds and the greens. It was so cool!)

We went up north and east to try and get away from the city lights, which was very worthwhile, though it was visible even from within the city. I even caught an extremely weak pinkish glow from my apartment window. Taylor got a better picture of them from behind their house.


There was this little flare of brighter green that would appear and disappear from the lower right.

Seven more pictures of the auroras:

I did really like how many stars were also visible.


This was looking directly upwards at the stars. So many stars (milky way, again!), and even directly upwards was faintly pink.


Eventually the redder tones started to fade a bit, but then the green got a bit more vibrant, which was also very cool.

We were parked out on a little rural dirt road. It is a county road, but eventually someone came over to the car to "check if we were okay" since we were on "his" road. It's not a private road, but we don't want to freak anyone out, either. We told him we were just looking at the auroras, which he seemed surprised by. They were fading a bit by then, so we decided to head back home.

As we left the highway back in the metro area, we saw that the color was back in the sky! While we were back within the city, it was still very visible. We pulled over near a neighborhood park to take another look.


This is not with a long/"night mode" exposure; the night mode washed it out, while this is actually relatively close to (though a little brighter than) what it looked like even without my camera.

It was kind of nice that the peak visibility for the auroras hit really early. We had time to get out and see some really spectacular views of them, but also got to come home by about 10:30, ha.

And the forecast was that they were supposed to be even stronger on Wednesday night!

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While we were delighted that we'd gotten to see them on Tuesday, we made plans to head out and try to see them again on Wednesday, leaving right from my office when I got off of work.

...And it was cloudy.

So I'm extra glad we took full advantage on Tuesday, rather than waiting and betting on the "even stronger" forecast. There were some nice lights on Wednesday, if you could get away from the cloud cover, though I don't think they ever hit quite as strong as the ones from Tuesday.

We tried for several hours to get to a good spot, but just never quite managed it. We were stuck behind the clouds, even when we pushed about as far east as we could justify trying to go. Once the clouds did finally start to break up and it got nice and clear... the lights were about done. We got a very faint glow, but hardly worth writing home about, especially compared to the night before!

Though once it did clear up, there were some really nice stars:


So many stars! Cassiopeia in the upper left. (I am not good at very many constellations, but I recognize a handful.)


And Orion!

I'm not sorry that we tried on Wednesday, and we had a nice time anyway (got some snacks, waited and stargazed, read some book), I had emphatically not wanted it to be an hours-and-hours-long excursion... but as we kept pushing farther east, and then waiting for it to clear, and then of course having to get back home, it turned into a 6+ hour journey. We left straight from work after I got off at 6, and then didn't make it home until after midnight, sobcry.

Happy Halloween! :D

Our big Halloween season event was last weekend. We went to "Spirits and Spirits," an event at Four Mile House. (This is the same place that had the lantern festival we went to back in September.)

Spirits and Spirits was an adult-only event with some spirit tastings, drag shows, a fashion show, a vendor marketplace, tours of the historic farmhouse including Victorian-era mourning customs, and the chance to attend an optional seance. I did get us tickets for the seance.

It was a lot of fun!

We got there right around opening time, and wandered around for a few minutes. We went to get something to drink, and then wanted to go to the first timeslot for the drag show... but unfortunately they had to cancel the first time. But it meant we were right there for the first fashion show slot, so we did get to see that, which was quite cool!



The fashion show was put on by Bête Noire, a local designer who mostly does super fancy gothy stuff.

Always love models walking to some Sisters of Mercy.

Five more pictures:

Liked the candles and coffin decor.


I was particularly fond of the floating candles.

My phone was not terribly cooperative with taking pictures of anything moving, so my pictures from the fashion show mostly didn't turn out well, but here are a few more:






This model was the best. She was so energetic and fun to watch.

After that we had to head to our seance session, since those were timed entries. (They actually did not check our tickets, even though all the sessions were sold out, ha.)



The seance was held in the attic of the farmhouse.

It was led by a couple members of the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society.

They talked a bit about Victorian seances, and the spiritualism of the era. We had some tarot cards, runestones, as well as some objects (like an ax, and a creepy doll). There were a couple ouija boards, a pendulum, etc.


Trying to use a ouija board.

Just a couple more pics from the seance:

Another ouija board.

The ouija boards did not get much in the way of any response, or the ones they got weren't very clear.

The pendulum was about the same; the only 'response' we got was a "maybe," ha.

They had someone do a phone recording to check for an EVP, and that was somewhat interesting: There was noise in the background that sounded a bit like an argument, though nothing was clear enough to hear. While there was some background noise from the tours happening downstairs, it didn't sound at all like that. So that was at least a bit interesting!

But no conclusive ghosts, haha.

We hung out and chatted for a bit, bought a couple books.

Then we went downstairs and sort of took ourselves on a tour of the house. We didn't start at the beginning, but just sort of wandered at random. They did have interpreters in most of the rooms to talk about the house specifically or customs of the era in general.


The parlor, and talking about Victorian mourning customs in particular. (Mourning attire, mourning periods, memento mori, covering mirrors, etc.)

Six more pictures:

I liked this little couch.


Some stuff!


Cool old stove. (I genuinely don't know what the white streak is. Maybe the kitchen is haunted!)

Most of the wallpaper and such is reproduction, but they have a few sections of original wallpaper under protective covering. (Allegedly including some fine arsenic green!)




(Eek, it's me.) Or no, I should say: ~but there was no one there when I took the picture~ It's a ghost!


Last picture of fancy wallpaper.

We also went on the little "haunted hayride" around part of the property. It was quick, and went through a couple little setpieces with fake headstones or zombies and such, but it was fun! There was also a shooting star, which I think was the highlight for everyone, haha.

We wandered over to some of the animal pens, and the goats came out and started bleating at us.


So we petted some goats for a few minutes.

Sadly, we never ended up getting to see the drag show. There were three timeslots, but the first was cancelled, the second was during our seance timeslot, and the third was packed.

We did get apple cider churros, which were delicious.

This was a really fun evening. I wish I hadn't had to go back to work the next day, but it was still mostly the kick-off to my time off from work. If they do a similar event next year, I hope we get the chance to go again.

Last week, we were lucky enough to have a pretty nice day, so we definitely wanted to take advantage of it!

It was a very beautiful fall day. There were lovely colors, it was warm, and it was all around fairly perfect to be out.


Much gold! And the creek down in the corner.


Liked the view looking up. The sky was also just extremely blue.


Look, it's Bella!

Eleven more pictures:

This time we walked past the other two mosaics on the road bridg:






A boxelder bug nymph!


Ducks on the creek! And some nice fluffy milkweed seeds.


A late chicory flower.


More ducks and colors!


This goober.

(This was right after she took a wade in the very cold creek, immediately got the zoomies from being overstimulated by the cold, rocketed around for a bit, and slammed into my shin hard enough to make both of us yelp, lol.)


Flowers!

We went down to the little stone house for a bit.


It's Bella again!


Really nice colors!


I love the color of these geraniums, but it also seems like a fake color, haha.

On Tuesday, we decided that while we were out in the middle of nowhere on the eastern plains, we might as well do something else before we made the long drive back.

There was a historic cemetery that wasn't too far away, and the trip out that way would also take us past something we'd noticed on our way to the Sand Creek Massacre site:


A derailed section of train!



At the time, we were wondering if perhaps this was tornado or wind damage, since it looked more twisted than crushed.

Nope! Apparently it just... fell off?

It was carrying wheat!

(At least some of what looks like sand or dirt blown up against the cars is probably wheat.)

This article has even less info, but some cool aerial shots.

While a couple articles talk about the derailment, and mention the cause being under investigation, I did not see any followup. The derailment also apparently happened on August 20, so it had been sitting for a bit.

Five more pictures:

Many springs in the grass.

I was glad we got to stop and get a closer look, though at the time we didn't know any details about what had happened.

Mostly animals. Mostly mostly insects. Mostly mostly mostly grasshoppers.

I mentioned it briefly in my post about visiting The Sand Creek Massacre historical site, but one thing we noticed was just how many different grasshoppers there were! (Having some mostly undisturbed prairie will do that, I suppose.) There were a few other critters, too.

It felt like it was probably a bit more appropriate to contain my enthusiasm for various bugs to a post separate from talking about the horrific historical event the site marks.


A rainbow grasshopper! I'd only seen this kind one other time. They're so cool!


A little lizard!


A very cool spiky caterpillar. (Best guess is a salt marsh moth caterpillar.)

Eleven more pictures:

Not actually at the Sand Creek site, but at a rest stop earlier in the day. A great-tailed grackle.


A beetle over by the ranger station.


A pretty impressive caterpillar tent, up in a tree.


An extremely large shed grasshopper exoskeleton!


Green grasshopper. Fun shaped head.


A very healthy prickly pear. Lots of fruit.


Neat beetle!


Rainbow grasshoppers makin' more rainbow grasshoppers.


These guys were neat - they really were almost blue.


I also really liked these guys. Completely black grasshoppers! While I have seen black crickets, obviously, I don't recall ever seeing solid black grasshoppers before.


Back at our hotel in Eads, there were a ton of turkey vultures overhead. It was very windy, so they were just sort of drifting sideways.

It was neat to see so many different insect species, even over the pretty short period of time we were there.

I still have one post from the lantern festival, but I'm getting slightly out of order, because it's Indigenous Peoples' Day, and that feels like a fitting time to post about our visit to Sand Creek.

Then again, memorializing a horrific massacre isn't exactly celebratory, so.

A couple weeks ago, we decided to take my weekend and go out to the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. Alex has wanted to go out there for some time, but it's far enough that it would have to be an overnight trip, so we just hadn't had a good chance to. We had a weekend free, and could swing the hotel expense, so we decided to go.

It was a good trip. It's a somber, tragic place, but still good.


"Welcome to the Massacre" sets a bit of a weird tone, gotta say.

This sign does have the very brief explanation of the site and the massacre itself: November 29, 1864, the US Volunteer Cavalry attacked a peaceful camp of Arapaho and Cheyenne natives. They were camped in a place they had been told to go; they were actively engaging in peace talks with the territorial and federal governments; they had emblems that indicated they were part of these talks, they were flying an American flag, they flew a white flag of surrender; the camp itself was largely made up of women, children, and elders... And the Cavalry attacked and murdered them anyway, killing more than 200 of them, and mutilating many of the victims.


A 33 Star American flag. This is the flag that at the time would have been flown over the camp; the one that was ignored, even though it was supposed to keep them safe.

The site is pretty far away, and there weren't many people there, but we weren't the only ones, either.

We arrived pretty much just in time for one of the ranger-led talks about the history of the site. While I already knew a fair amount about it, it was still informative. The ranger who led it was very nice, and spent a lot of time talking with us. (It was Alex and me and then another couple who came to the talk.)

We were initially a little leery of the other two, as the guy fairly quickly brought up being a veteran. That shouldn't feel like a red flag, but. Turns out it was not; the guy had a lot to say about military violence, and how horrible anything like this was. When the ranger opened it up for questions, he asked about how he'd heard the current administration is threatening to shut sites like this down, or wants to ensure that things have to be portrayed positively, and wanted to know if those were concerns.

The ranger said that yes, those are very real concerns. He said they're under a lot of scrutiny, and well... "Massacre" is in the name of the site. It's hard to sugar-coat. He also said he has to inform us that if we feel he was being too negative about the nation's history, then we can report him and the site.

The other guy had some opinions about what bullshit that was, and how important history was, and accountability for history, and knowing what we've done wrong so we can do better now, etc. Appreciated it.


My thoughts on the mandatory signage. "Anything negative about past Americans..." Welp. They were murderous assholes, so.

There was discussion of a couple soldiers who did the right thing. Two in particular: Silas Soule, and Joseph Cramer. Both of them disobeyed orders and refused to fire. They also both later testified against Chivington.

I've visited Silas Soule's grave in Riverside Cemetery. He was murdered shortly after his testimony regarding the massacre; it is believed that is likely why he was murdered.

There are a few trails to different parts of the site. You can't go to the massacre site itself, though you can go up to an overlook. We didn't have time for one of the longer trails (the site's hours are limited, and they're closed on Tuesdays completely, so we had to do it on the Monday, after the long drive out, leaving us with limited time.)

One thing that we noticed on the walk up the trail we did take: so many grasshoppers! So many different kinds of grasshoppers. I'll put my squeeing over bugs into a separate post, though.


Looking out toward the actual camp site. Either a raven or a turkey vulture soaring over; I never got quite a good enough look at it to tell.


Toward the camp.

We met a couple older women up at the overlook. They also expressed that they were visiting because they'd heard about attempts to shut the site down by the federal government. They said that if the government tries, they and their friends will all come back and protest. Told them we'd see them there, ha.


One of the places I found most... emotional, I guess. There is a place for repatriation; remains are still being recovered. There were a lot of bodies and body parts, as well as belongings, taken as trophies. Some are still being found. The ranger mentioned that the most recent was earlier this year. I believe he said that the femur of a teenage girl had been found and returned.

Six pictures of signs from the site:

These are not all of the signs at the site; there were several I didn't get pictures of. But here are some with more information.




I appreciate that someone has scratched up Chivington's face.

The National Parks and Monuments have a "BARK Ranger" program. (Basically you bring your dog and promise to keep them on leash and pick up their poop.) But Bella got a BARK Ranger tag!)

I guess it was good timing that we went before the shutdown.

Back on September 18th, Alex and I decided to go do a fun splurgey thing. We went to the Four Mile Historic Park's "Bright Nights" lantern festival display. :)

Four Mile Historic Park is a historic farm in Denver (which was once a stagecoach stop, which is where the Four Mile name comes from, I believe.) They're typically closed on my days off, so we never end up going, but they had a booth at Pride, and we picked up a flyer for the upcoming lantern festival.

It was lovely!


The entrance. (Though I took this picture on the way out; it was still slightly light in the sky when we got there.)


Should have gone back over once it was fully dark, but I do love the peacocks. (The sign about this particular display talks about them representing love. They are, of course, both male, haha. And have a giant rainbow heart. Love my pride peacocks.)


I really loved this fae creature on their throne. <3

Twelve more pictures:

I was, of course, very taken with the jackalopes.


Fun fantasy deer... seaweed? creature.


Some charming little mushrooms.


It's probably zero real surprise, but the rainbow butterfly lights "room" was probably one of my favorite spots.


A kitsune!


Armadillo!


There were a bunch of interactive displays. This one has a crank at the front, and turning it moves the machinery to move the segments of the dragon's body up and down.


The dragon's face.


Some were like this, intended to be photo frames. Very pretty!


Birds and lotus flowers.


I really liked the bluebirds and bluejays in the tree.


And one final jackalope!

I'm splitting the pictures from the lantern festival into a few different posts, since otherwise it'll be very, very long.

On the evening of September 14th, we saw some reports that the northern lights might be visible in Colorado. We saw them last year (first time I ever saw them!) and it was very cool. We decided to head up to the plains to find some good dark areas and see if we could catch them again.

We saw some very cool pictures from other people... almost exactly where we'd been the previous night, driving home from the model show, haha.

Unfortunately, by the time we got up to some truly dark areas, the numbers had dropped pretty sharply. There wasn't much of anything visible, and even using a camera, there was just the faintest pinkish glow. (Not sure how visible it even is in the picture, unless you're in the dark, haha.)


The faintest glow along the horizon, ha.

However, the stars were spectacular! For the first time in a very long time, we saw the milky way. While that certainly didn't show up on my cell phone camera, I was honestly impressed that my cell phone does capture stars at all!


Look at all those stars!


So many stars!


The glow faded from the horizon, but the stars were nice. And the big dipper was right there!


Zoomed in a bit, the big dipper again!


There was also a very dramatic moonrise, which was cool.

As usual, especially with celestial stuff, I swear it was cooler in person, haha. But even though the northern lights wound up being a bust for the night, the stars were beautiful, and I was glad we went out and saw them.