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.

-

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

We've now been to a couple of events at the Four Mile House. So named as it was the four mile stop on the old stagecoach line. (The "four miles" is apparently determined by how far it was from the Colfax and Broadway intersection.) There were several other houses at points along the line, but there's only one more that still exists: The 17 Mile House.

The 17 Mile House has not been turned into a house/farm museum the way the Four Mile House has been, but is instead set on a chunk of county open space land, where you can at least walk around the exteriors. So, on one of the surprisingly nice days we luckily had on my week off, we drove down to take a walk.


The house, the barn, a windmill!

There was a cop who had pulled someone over, blocking off the entrance to the "park", ha. Fortunately there's a connecting trail probably less than a half mile down the road, so we just went and parked there instead. It turned out to be good that we did that, because we got to see a bonus old house, and a deeply WTF sign.


The bonus house!

This was the "Hood House," according to the helpfully informative sign. It was apparently saved from demolition back in 2008 and moved from its original location to this spot along one of the open space trails.

A couple more house pictures, plus the WTF sign:

Around the back of the house. I mostly liked it because I feel like the upper left window would definitely be one that you'd spot a ghost standing in.


A bit hard to see, but the house has really cool old doorknobs. These are, I believe, ceramic, but they're multiple colors swirled together, and I think they're really neat.

And then, a few yards down the trail, we get another informative sign, which we of course stopped to read.



And then we said "What the fuck?"
There's the usual 'this unsettled, empty land' with a mention of it "only" being inhabited by "local Indian tribes." Yikes. Really, no cognitive dissonance with that statement?
Fairly quickly, it does become clear that there's a particular emphasis, talking about Brigham Young, and specifically Mormon men who volunteered in the Mexican/American war.
The part that really made me WTF was not one, but TWO separate mentions of "THE FIRST CAUCASIAN CHILD BORN IN X". One for the territory pre-statehood, and one for the county once it had been established. That managed to give me a serious ick.

I had foolishly not actually looked at the "logo" at the top of the sign until after reading it. "Daughters of Utah Pioneers." Ah, checks out. Thanks, Mormons. This isn't Utah.

After that was a big curve in the pathway, going around a bit of a hill, so the other house wouldn't have been visible from the 17 Mile House itself. So I'm actually glad that the more direct lot was blocked off and made us take the tiny detour.


I did think the windmills were cool.


A bit silly, but a boxelder bug on the side of the silo. I love the dramatic shadow, haha.

Seven more pictures of the 17 Mile House and surroundings:

Heading down the sidewalk, a millipede!


Cool old silo.


A second windmill.


Silo and milking barn.


Chunk of wasp nest.

On our way in, we'd spotted across the field...


Bee hives!


With a pretty threatening sign, ha.

This was a really nice day to be outside, and I'm very glad we went out to do something. It was a nice walk, and cool to check out.

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.

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.

Tuesday the 12th we decided to go back to Castlewood Canyon... again. This time we decided to go in at the east entrance to the park, since previously we'd only done trails that start on the west side. There was hope that we could make it to the damn dam this time!


The park looks very different from this side. It's a lot of flat, desert-y grassland, with rocks and scrubby pines. Still very pretty, but very different from the other side of the park, where you get into the forested canyon area fairly immediately.


There's a big stretch of farmland off to the side of the trail, which looks a bit dramatic in comparison to the side of the canyon where the trail is.

Eleven more pictures:

A chickadee in a piñon.


Little Bella Hotdog.


Wasp and some soldier beetles on wildflowers.


Dramatic rocks.


Predatory wasp and her caterpillar victim.


Distant, so not a great picture, but down in one of the fields this deer was boinging along very enthusiastically, haha.

Eventually, the trail takes a turn more toward the canyon itself, and starts to parallel the creek. There was a nice little trail that led down near the water (if you're willing to scramble over some rocks to get across.)

This was good timing, since it let us take a nice break. Bella got to wade a little (if reluctantly) and take a little rest.


I liked this little rock pool, cut off juuuuuust barely from the rest of the creek, unless the levels rise again.


There was a really pretty, peaceful spot to sit on the rocks.


Looking upstream from the spot we were sitting.


In the sand by the creek, another blue butterfly. ("Blue" is the family of butterflies, not just a color descriptor!) I thiiiiiink, looking at pictures of different species, that this one is a "Boisduval's Blue", judging by the spotting pattern, but... they are all very similar to each other.

The butterfly fluttered around for quite a long while... much to Bella's consternation.


She kept spinning around to follow the butterfly. It was very funny to watch. I was delighted to get this picture where you can see her expression and where the butterfly's wings are open, so you can see how blue it is! (Also how small it is.)

The nice spot by the creek was at roughly the halfway point of a loop formed by a pair of trails. However, there's also an additional trail that meets up around the same point and heads toward the dam from that side. It adds about a mile (going there and back) to the total, but we hadn't made it to the dam yet, so that's the way we headed after we had taken our break.

This was a day with lots of pictures, so splitting it into two posts.

Been a while since a ~pet picture roundup,~ so why not.


Bella wants boba. Bella wants the boba that I have so bad.

Just one more of Bella, because I'm always posting pictures of Bella

Curled up as small as she can.

Berry Mad, mighty hunter!

One more of Berry Mad:

Alex sent me this picture, lol. Toad Butt!

One more of Guava Splash climbing their plant!

(Most of the Guava Splash pictures were in the last post, ha.)


A picture of Greenbean 2, eating her green beans! (Took this one to try and do a good size comparison.)

I had initially said that maybe Greenbean 2 was maybe a male, because the back end didn't look as prominent as the previous female katydid we had last year. However, in the last couple weeks, the ovipositor has gotten a bit more obvious. Greenbean 2 is definitely a female. :)

She has also remained very quiet; she hasn't made a single click. She is very calm in general; not terribly reactive even when we do reach into her cage to give her her beans or change out the climbing branches.

And now there are three katydids! Just a couple days after finding Greenbean 2, Alex found another katydid on the sidewalk outside. This one is clearly a male, but he is very fussy, lol. He seems to think that literally every single sound is another katydid moving in on his territory, so he sets off with a flurry of clicks. (Pouring cereal, clinking dishes, and crinkling packaging are all very exciting sounds for him.) Due to that constant clicking, Alex named him Clickbait.

Then just last night, Alex came in with yet a third katydid. This one is another male, and I named him Three. He's much less aggressive about posturing, haha. He's temporarily in the old spider terrarium until we get another of the mesh cages, but he settled right in to clicking and eating his green beans.

Clickbait and Three are providing excellent clicks in stereo.

More pictures of Greenbean 2, Clickbait, and Three:

One more of Greenbean 2. :)


This one is clickbait!


Clickbait again, with his partially-eaten green beans.


And here's Three. :) (Mediocre picture from after getting him set up last night.)

Jaspurr! With his one little toof that sticks out.

A couple more pictures of Jaspurr playing

Attack!


Slightly more dignified.

And then...

While I was spending time over at my mom and Taylor's house, they also ended up with a brand new pet.

Their neighbors rescued a garter snake from the window well of their church and brought it home. The neighbor said she thinks this might be a female, though it's hard to tell.

We had a garter snake for about twelve years or so, but he died several years back, and they still had the terrarium setup from before... Mom went back and forth on it for a while, but ultimately decided that she would like to have a snake again.


She's so cute!

More of the snake (as yet unnamed, as far as I know):

Exploring!


She does like the water.


So cute.


Still exploring!


Jaspurr finds her very interesting to watch, ha.

So there's the critter collection! :)

Last night, as we were watching a really atrociously bad movie, I heard it! The first katydid of the season!

(It was very loud... while I couldn't see it, it must have been on the side of the building somewhere.)

Alex did hear one back in June while I was out of town, but neither of us heard another one since.

Jokingly I told him, as he took Bella out a couple hours later, to "let me know if you see any katydids!"

He came rushing back in about ten minutes later with something closed in his hand, saying "Come quick!"

I'm impressed that on the very first night we heard a katydid, he also found one, haha. He said he nearly stepped on the poor thing, which was sitting on the sidewalk.

So we got one of the katydid habitats set back up real quick. We even had some frozen green beans in the freezer, so heated those up and stuck those on a stick for him, ha.


Greenbean 2!

I believe this is another male, though we haven't heard him click yet. He did chow down on some green beans, though!

None of our katydid eggs from last year ever hatched. It's quite possible that they weren't fertile, as we didn't have the male and female housed together for very long (unless she'd had some relations before we caught her.) I don't know enough about their lifecycle to know if perhaps the eggs require a cold period over the winter, in which case the steady room temperature of the apartment may not have worked for them. Alas.

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.