mistressofmuses

Last Tuesday, we also went on a hike!

It was a pretty warm day, but a nice one for a walk. Alex wanted to go to Red Rocks, but there was a show that night, so the park was closed early. Instead we went to Matthews/Winters, which is a county park that borders Red Rocks. We've been there several times before. It's a bittersweet place for me, because we went there with Cy a lot, and it's the first hike we went on after he passed away.


The landscape.


It's Bella!

Twelve more pictures:

The water was definitely very low in the creek, but it was flowing.


Bella laying on the bridge over the creek.

There's a short little path that follows the creek upstream, so we went up that way first.


Looking back downstream.


There's a little "fort" of sorts set up, so of course had Bella sit in it.


We joke it's not a hike if there's not a picture of Bella sticking her tongue out.


A dandelion.


Chokecherries.

Back over the bridge and up the main path, the start is an uphill section... that basically always kicks my ass. It's not that steep, but man, I feel like I'm dying by the time I get to the top.

The short walk I'm trying to do a couple times a day at work does have an uphill section, which I certainly still feel when I do it, but I'm hoping that's going to help my ability to handle even relatively gentle inclines. (I can walk basically forever on a flat or downhill path, but the instant I'm moving uphill? I'm dying.)

I think it was a little easier for me to do this time? I was still struggling a little, but not quite as badly as I remember? So maybe the walks are helping my endurance, haha.


Tiny ant on an aster.

Up at the top of the loop is the Mount Vernon cemetery. I of course take pictures of it every time we go, even though I have pictures from every other time we've been.





The two stones are the only marked burials, though there are supposedly others in the cemetery. The cemetery is the only thing left of the town of Mount Vernon.


A cactus with a hole through it!

Then poor Bella had a no good very bad day. She drank water a little too fast, and immediately threw up. She was doing okay after that, until we got about 2/3 of the way through the loop. Then she stepped on a red ant, which bit her. She spent the whole rest of the walk kicking and biting at her foot, because I know it had to still be stinging. Ant bites suck! When we got back to the start she stood in the cold water of the creek, and that seemed to help soothe it.


A late blooming apple tree.

(I was busy trying to take a picture of the flowers, and missed getting to see a tiny snake that Alex spotted. Happy for first snake of the year, bummed I didn't see it!)

Then back at the car, Alex noticed I had a hitchhiker!


The tiniest inchworm! I let her go back in the grass.

After that, we went to get ice cream, as a local ice cream parlor was doing a fundraiser for my old high school. I got a "kid's" size of vanilla ice cream for Bella... They packed so much in there, lol. So suddenly it was back to being the best day ever, and the ant bite seemed entirely forgotten.

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.

What a lovely summer we're having this spring...


We set an all time record for a high temperature in March yesterday. The previous high temp record for the month was set... last Saturday. That broke the previous all-time record that was set... last Thursday. So yeah, we broke that all time high temp record three times in seven days! This is normal and fine!


Callery pears, my beloathed. But look how happy the bees are!

Seven pictures of mainly flowers and pets:

Went to Petco to get crickets, but they had their Halloween stuff on clearance. So Bella got a planchette costume, with "ouija board" blanket, haha. (The orange fish was also on clearance. It has proven to be quite a hit!)

A few pictures from last week:


A little bird nest, presumably from last year.


I was trying to get a picture of a bee here, too, but instead just caught it flying away, ha.

From last weekend, at my mom and Taylor's house:


Someone left a Thanksgiving turkey on the floor. (Poor Jaspurr, it's not his fault he looks like a turkey.)


Sometimes he doesn't look like a turkey! Look how comfy he is!


My mom's lemon tree is blooming. It smelled lovely!


Daffodils in my mom's front garden!

And then a couple pictures from today:


Redbud blooming!


The very sudden emergence of an early lilac flower!

(This makes me think of spikedluv. I miss you.)

With everything that's been going on this year so far, we haven't had many chances to get out and do much.

One of the things that we'd wanted to do was visit one of the temporary exhibits at the Denver Botanic Gardens: their orchid showcase. Then my appendix tried to kill me, and we both pretty much entirely forgot about it. At some point in the second week of February Alex remembered and suggested we try to go sometime, so I looked it up to check how long the exhibit was running... to discover it was only going through Monday the 16th. That narrowed down our options a bit, but luckily we were both feeling well enough to go, and the decidedly un-winter-like weather continued to cooperate with us.

And it was lovely! The orchids were mostly in the "orangery," a stretch of semi-indoor/semi-open space that looks in on the greenhouses and has some citrus trees and such year-round. We spent most of our time there and in the big conservatory, though we did take a walk around the rest of the gardens as well.

The pictures in this post are primarily not of the orchids, and the orchids will get their own post.


We did get to see the koi, which are always a favorite!


The view when you walk in to the main building.

Here you obviously can see a lot of orchids on display around the water feature. (I'm fond of the ones in the tentacle-y hanging pots.)

Nineteen more pictures from the gardens:

There was also some decoration for Lunar New Year.

We went into the conservatory, which I always love walking around. Give me all the indoor rainforest.


So many pods on the cocoa tree!


A cute hidden spray of flowers.


I am very charmed by these leaves that all but vacuum seal themselves to the tree they're growing on. They look like little scales.


Dart frog!


These little flowers were pretty and cute, and on closer inspection, each little flower had a teeny tiny ant on it! The image does not really convey how TINY these little ants were. Smaller than typical little black sugar ants. TINY. Getting little nectar drinks.


I think insects are cute, so this ant taking a step from one flower to another was extremely adorable, imo.


An interesting flower.

After this, it was down to the orangery.

The Denver Botanic Gardens has a very extensive bonsai collection, which is very cool. Most of them are off-display for the season (and will be outside for the summer.)


This one is on display inside, so it can be seen blooming. A bougainvillea! (Been in training as a bonsai for over 25 years, now!)


Carnivorous plant terrariums, my beloved. A Venus flytrap.


A random non-orchid. Look at this furry cactus flower!

The main feature of the orangery was the orchids, so most of those will be in the next post. After this, we headed outside to do a quick wander around the rest of the gardens.


It felt a little too soon for the hyacinths to be pushing their way up. Usually we don't see those until March...

The fish weren't too sad about the warm weather!


One of my favorite koi in the pond: this white-gold one with the extra fancy fins.


The fancy yellow-gold one is Alex's favorite. But so many cool and pretty koi!


This one makes me laugh. The yellow one was so excited at the potential for food that it lifted that little orange one out of the water on its head entirely!


They're so pretty.

I really like the extra-fancy finned fish, though there are fairly few of them in the pond. It's often just been the silvery white one and the bright yellow one. This year, we were excited to see a few younger ones with the same extra-long fins:


This one is very cute already, and will be lovely when it grows up more.


Snowdrops!


Too early for peonies to be trying to get in on anything!

It was a really beautiful day to be out! I'm glad we had the chance to go before the exhibit shut down. The orchids themselves were gorgeous, and pics of them will be in a different post!

We've been lucky enough this year to have a quite pleasant long fall. Last week we wanted to enjoy the nice day, and so we went over to Hudson Gardens. It's an easy walk, and always pretty.


Some very nice fall colors!

In Colorado, most of our fall color is shades of gold (which I do love!) but it's a little novel to have things more in the orange and red tones.


I was delighted that there were still a lot of roses blooming. And I'm always happy with bees.


More of the gold colors. Lovely!


There were some neat crayfish. The one that's on the right was HUGE. Freshwater lobster. (And I was pleased with the reflection of the leaves.)

Thirteen more pictures (flowers, frogs...):

Frog! :D (I was hoping there would still be a few frogs out, and was happy that there were.)

Surprisingly, the roses were still extremely happy! We've had a couple frosts by now, so I'd expected the roses would be gone. They were actually looking better now than they were earlier in the summer. They weathered the season change better than the Japanese beetles, ha.


Always love the candy-stripe flowers.


Bee!


Very perfect red rose.


Bee on the approach.


A blanket flower.


Moth! :D


More fall color!


I do really like the orange.

We stopped at the cafe for a snack. I got a smoothie instead of coffee, and it was so good. Pear, peach, apricot. Delicious.


This is once again "Magic of the Jack o' Lanterns" season, where they have a bunch of displays of carved (foam) pumpkins. They're neat, but they are identical to last year. (Plus there was a windstorm the day before, and a bunch had fallen and hadn't yet been picked back up...)


Squirrel!

While we saw quite a few crayfish, there were relatively few (not none, but few) frogs throughout most of the gardens, so we went back to the first pond to visit the first batch of frogs again, haha.


:D


Three frogs! (One in the upper right, one in the lower left, and one above that.)

Another lovely day that I'm glad we got to enjoy.

On Tuesday there wasn't much we had time to do while out on the plains, since it was a very long drive back. Our target for a quick wander (which conveniently took us past the derailed train we'd wanted a better look at) was the France-Harker Cemetery, listed on the Kiowa County Library site as one of Kiowa county's "lost cemeteries" that they were trying to preserve.

Their directions were... not great.

They were mostly correct, and did take us down the correct zigzag of unpaved county roads, but faltered at the last step. The directions say 3/4 of a mile... it was actually closer to two miles? Two miles isn't that far, but it's significantly farther than 3/4 of a mile, and we u-turned a couple times thinking we must have missed it, trying to track exactly how far we were going. Finally we just shrugged and decided to keep going, and yup. Just a lot farther than advertised.


It's not a large cemetery.

The informative blurb on the library site says it has 21 grave sites, with 10 preserved headstones. The earliest known grave is for Frank Chilson, who died in 1895, and the latest known is Charlie V. France, who died in 1942.


One of the prettiest headstones. "Mattie V., wife of James D. Gordon."

Twelve more pictures:

Blanket flowers, on the way in.


Another pretty headstone, matching the one above, though they have different flowers carved at the top. "James W. Gordon, son of Mattie V and Jas D Gordon."

Paints a sad picture together. Mattie, the woman whose headstone I have above the cut, died just a couple weeks after her son James was born. He lived to just shy of six months.


Another child's grave. "Emma Elizabeth, daughter of D.W. and Mary C. France."

And her parents:


"D.W. France."


"Mary C. France."


"Charlie V. France." This is the last known burial in the cemetery. Though it appears that Lydia (presumably his wife) was intended to be buried here, but wasn't. That always makes me wonder what happened.


There are several of these metal crosses, I assume marking the 11 grave sites that there are not surviving headstones for.


Look at those prickly pear spikes!


Some very impressive spiderwebs in a prickly pear. Quite a protected spot to be!


"Suda, wife of E.J. Henery."


"Chester J., son of E.J. and Suda Henery." (This is the same stone as Suda's, just a different side of the marker.) (Sorry I didn't get my shadow out of the shot.)


"Joseph Kesler."


The oldest known burial in the cemetery. "Frank B. Chilson."

On both our way in and the way back out... COWS.

So many cows on the road! Bella was not sure about this, though she calmed down pretty quick from "deeply concerned" to "simply interested."

Three more pictures of cows:

I like the one with grass hanging out of her mouth, ha.


Several calves, a few cows that looked very pregnant.


Cute white face.

It was nice that we had a chance to at least do something else before heading home, since it's certainly not an area we travel through very often. It was a good weekend in general. We don't often have the chance to go do overnight trips anywhere, but this definitely needed to be; way too far to head out and back in the same day. I'm glad we finally got to go to Sand Creek, tragedy though it is.

A couple weeks ago, we wanted to get out and do something, but also got a late start on the day. We headed to the local greenbelt, since it's reasonably close and we haven't been there in a while.


A very cute bumblebee.


My other favorite insect from the day: a really big moth hanging out on a tree. :)

Eleven more pictures, including more insects and spiders:

One of the road bridges over the greenbelt path has some pretty mosaics.


Another of the mosaics.

(There are two more mosaics on the other side of the bridge, but someone was sitting there, haha.)


Crossing the creek.


There were many big, impressive spider webs along the path! With big, impressive spiders in them! I didn't realize until after looking at the picture that this one had a snack. :)


Not a spider, but a daddy longlegs! This one was almost orangey in color, which was neat.


These beetles were just face-first, going to town in the flowers. It was very funny. I believe these are "bumble flower beetles."


Some huge carpenter ants!


Some lovely little sweet peas in the overgrown/abandoned garden area behind some of the apartments.


Hollyhocks have definitely been having A Year! I saw them all over Santa Fe, and in a ton of gardens this year, and even a bunch of landscaping. This one is also in the abandoned garden.


A very charming little duck swam over just as it started raining.


I'm really not a fan of the influx of Japanese beetles that we've started having each year. They're terribly destructive. However, this one was very interesting - almost pink on the front segment instead of the usual green color!

It was also a two snake day, which was delightful! I didn't get good pictures of either of them, but Alex spotted one pretty large garter snake, which I got to see as it headed into the underbrush. Then I was leaning down to look at a little spider that scuttled across the sidewalk... and wound up pointing directly at a tiny baby garter snake that had been just at the edge of the path. Very tiny and cute!

It was a lovely day out. We got caught in a tiny drizzle, but not bad. It was pretty humid (especially for here!) so we were all a bit sticky by the end.

We stopped by a neighborhood park after work one day to let Bella take a short walk.

There were bugs!


Ambush bugs!


A lovely little green praying mantis.

This one was fairly small. Very cute!


And another mantis!

I don't recall ever seeing one quite this color before. I've seen brown ones, and years ago I remember seeing little greyish mantis nymphs down in New Mexico. The ones I've seen in the park here have all been the bright green.

Just three more pictures of the same insects:

More ambush bugs, camping out on a daisy. (And a couple more making more.)


Another picture of the green mantis. I like how you can see how sharp the claws are!


And one more of the neat grey mantis (which my camera did not like focusing on.)

I am always happy to see a fun variety of insects in the neighborhood. :)

Last Tuesday we decided to go to Roxborough again, to do one of the other trails. We typically take the trail that goes down toward the old house, but there's another trail that goes the other direction that we've only taken once or twice.

After the more-tiring-than-intended hike on Monday, we also wanted a fairly mellow hike, which this one is. It's also a no-dogs park, which was fine, because Bella had a very tiring day on Monday too, haha.

We got a slightly later start than usual, because we had some errands to run. I discovered on the Monday hike (after I fell) that my shoes were way more worn than I had realized. They never had great tread, but the soles right at the balls of my feet were so thin they were in danger of wearing through pretty imminently. Like... could see light through them. So I needed new shoes, and we wanted to get a backpack for Alex, since the over-the-shoulder bag was what was pressing on his neck and causing problems. But success! I got better shoes, he got a backpack, and we were off!


Nice view looking back at the rocks and the valley.


A lizard on the pathway up to the visitor center. It looks like he lost his tail at one point, and has a new one growing back.


A honeybee on asters!

Ten more pictures:

I love little insect houses. <3 A mud dauber wasp nest.


Lizard on the rock!

The visitor center has a log book where you can record any wildlife sightings you have in the park. We always like to stop and check for anything interesting. This entry was in there the last time we came to the park and it made me smile, so this time I took a picture:


Wildlife: boreal toad; Location: on trail; Field notes: Cute!

(Typically "location" is asking for where in the park. A+ field note, too.)

So then we headed down the Willow Creek trail.

Of course, the start of the Willow Creek trail basically provides two things. Hemlock, and...


Just... so much poison ivy. So much.

(I have never gotten poison ivy, though I've tried hard to avoid it. Years ago in Maryland I made the foolish decision to try and climb up the side of a mountain to check out a weird building foundation we could see from a trail. It was... not really worth the trip, and I'm pretty sure that everything I grabbed on the way down to avoid plummeting down the steep hill was actually poison ivy. If so, I've simply been lucky enough not to have reached my lifetime limit on poison ivy... but who knows how long that luck will last, haha.)


So much forbidden candy! Lots of oak galls.


Some nice rock formations.


A dramatic spiderweb.


More rocks!


The asters were blooming really nicely here, too. With a cute beetle!


Yucca and rocks!

This was a relatively short hike, but it was nice. I still generally prefer the other trail, but I'm glad we did this one again. Alex had a slightly better time on this one than the previous day, and the backpack definitely seemed to help. Still had to stop a few times to rest, but an improvement for sure, and the more frequent rest breaks are probably a good idea anyway.

Tuesday was my last day off from work. We decided to go to Hudson Gardens. We went there a bit earlier in the year, but knew there'd be different stuff blooming, and we hoped for frogs, haha. Success on both counts!

As always, too many pictures, so splitting it into two posts. This one will be for flowers (and insects), and the other one will be for various critters.


Adorable bee-fly!


Bumblebee, quite coordinated with its flower.


Ladybug!

Twenty more pictures of flowers and bugs:

Lovely water lilies.


More!

We were there a little after the peak for the roses, but some were still blooming:


Nice bright yellow.


The candy-stripe ones are always one of my favorites.


They're all so unique, even on the same bush.


More, with a bee butt!


I love this orange one.


The white ones look so soft.


A very flashy candy-stripe one.

Unfortunately a lot of the remaining roses looked like...


...this. The Japanese beetles unfortunately went to town on everything.


More bees!


Obligatory picture through the kaleidoscope.


Another picture of the bee-fly. They're so fluffy looking.


Honeybee!


The beehives.


More really vibrant water lilies.


A bee-mimic fly (not to be confused with the bee-fly, lol.)


More waterlilies.


A different ladybug, and a little mystery bug.


This waterlily was so perfect it looked fake.

It was a really nice day. We did our usual stop at the café for coffee and a snack, and otherwise just had a really nice day walking around.

Second post will be the various critters, which is always the part I'm excited for, haha.