thankful

there's a blog i read that celebrates abundance. which got me thinking about how amazing i find the profusion of wildflowers this time of year. we have less annual precipitation than denver. that amazes me (remembering many water shortages, restrictions, etc from growing up there).

i was really aware this morning of how lucky i am to have this resource and to be able to start my day on the trails. thinking about how perfectly adapted to a pretty harsh environment these plants are. but they wouldn't thrive in a climate with really rich soil & lots of rain. (neither would i!)

anyway-

it was a beautiful morning. i saw my first oriole of the year, and lots of avian activity.

5 with dogs, 3 without. and a story to be told later.

monday may 11

must have been a busy weekend on the lower trails. this is the third pile of poop i found in the middle of the trail, flattened. really annoying! i picked up 4 or 5 piles of opp without ever venturing off trail.

wildflowers- turns out this is not an onion, but it is a member of the lily family, which onions also are. it's a brodiaea.also called wild hyacinth, edible roots eaten extensively by indians & early settlers.

fiddleneck, i think. weedy plants that thrive in disturbed areas.

it was a gorgeous morning. the birds in fine form- singing, flying around. meadowlark, red winged blackbirds, chickadee & sparrows.

4 with dogs. 3 following the rules, on woman with a pug off leash by the ponds. after i saw her let it run up to the leashed dog in front of me i called out "we don't want to meet your dog". "oh dear!" as pug starts up the trail to us. she did get the dog back, tho.

i don't understand small dog owners who think nothing of letting their little guys run up to 90 lb dogs. even if the dogs are friendly, they could play rough & there's the chance of injury. you'd think they'd at least ask.

anyway- and 6 without, one of those on bike.

have a great monday!

corrals- sunday may 10- moo!

it was pretty clear walking up from the parking lot that we were going to see cattle at some point on the trail......

just past the first gate, right after the left turn to hard guy, the mamas & calves were pretty much on the trail. i had leashed up farther back just to be on the safe side.

decided not to try to walk through them, but we did sit and inhale cow-ness calmly for a while. gave me an opportunity to correct halle when she thought she should go say hi, and to praise both dogs for being good sit and stay dogs once she settled down.

we met 2 runners, sans canine companions, and 3 groups of mt bikers, also sin perros. everyone was incredibly nice, thanked me for either sitting or heeling the dogs.

it was funny- we stopped for a bike going up hill. then 3 bikes came & the lead rider said "uphill bike has right of way" (my husband reminded me that it is actually pedestrian who has right of way- i always forget that!), and then the 3 of them proceeded to ride just barely off the trail to pass the uphill rider.....the right spirit (excepting the ped part, but i had stopped for uphill rider too, b/c it seems wrong to make someone stop in the middle of all of that work), but not quite the right execution.

i think that this is death camas, but would love to have that either confirmed or corrected if anyone knows.

the lupine are just starting to bloom. should be quite a show by next weekend.

all in all, another beautiful morning!

and now for yardwork- have a great day!

friday may 8

i've pretty much been busy since i took these on friday morning, so i didn't have time to post them. but it was a beautiful morning & i got some photos i liked, so i thought i'd put them up here.

starting to see bikes out in the mornings again. each one we met was very polite & thankful for me calling the dogs.

love the light glowing through the petals-

2 groups of bikes, 5 folks with dogs, 3 runners w/o dogs. everyone polite, well behaved & following the rules.

may 7 09

another great start to the day-

the onion are almost there...

one of the arguments against having chickadee off leash is visibility. but really, if you pay attention, it's not bad. echo always tells me when someone is coming. he looks at me, because he knows i will want him with me.

i think that on busy trails you need to be sure your dog is in sight. if you can't see around the corner, even if it's 1 ft away, your dog shouldn't be around the corner. the mt bike riders on our user group committee say that they just know that they need to ride slow & look out when on the busy lower trails. it's basically defensive trail use (like defensive driving). if people work that way there aren't problems with visibility.

it's about paying attention.

for the first time in a long time, more withouts than withs- 8 w/o, 5 with.

happy trails....

may 6

two days worth of photos here- the beautiful dramatic skies yesterday & today's grayer look. but the arrowleaf balsamroot & bitterbrush brighten things considerably!

i really don't remember there being as many albr blooming in the red fox/chickadee area last year. i am amazed by the abundance.

both days all dogs & people were following the rules & polite.

7 with, 5 w/o yesterday.

one with was a woman with a border collie. we both leashed up & had a conversation about it's better to do that b/c she wasn't always sure how her dog would react to other dogs. sort of like echo. probably partially a herding dog territory thing. what frustrates me is that we can be doing the right thing by leashing our dogs to control their behavior, but if someone else lets their loose dog run up, or does the all the way at the end of the leash let them say hi thing and our dogs react we (and our dogs) are the bad guys. i really am having that happen less & less in the mornings, but it does still happen.

anyway- today 4 with and 2 without.

have a great day!

coyote alert

from Sue-

Took my Lab for on my normal Sunday group run up Hull, to Crestline, Kestrel. Right after the turn for Sidewinder, we encountered TWO HUGE coyotes about 30 feet uphill above the trail. My Lab was off leash at the time, and I heard a few muffled huffs and barks which caught his attention. Before he could get too far, I screamed at him to come back, which thankfully he did immediately, and I put him on the leash.

The coyotes were by far the largest ones I've ever seen (must be eating well with all the sheep around!). One of the guys with me thought it was a wolf, this thing was so big. It looked as big as my 80 Lab. So a warning to the other dog owners.

Frankly, I am sort of surprised at all the coyote activity in the past 3 years. I've run the trails for over 20 years, and never have encountered them until the past 2 years. Last summer, one came right up to us on Owls Roost, in broad daylight, following us and barking its head off for 10 minutes.

Clearly, they have lost their fear of humans and dogs. I know several people's dogs have been bitten.

Be careful with your pets out there gang.

editorial remark- another good reason to have a solid recall, keep your dog in sight and have a leash handy. dogs do get killed by coyotes, and they're out there all over the foothills. snakes will probably start showing up soon too.