Mid-Summer

This juvenile Great Blue Heron posed for me at Deer Lake, below the cabin

Life at the cabin just keeps rolling along in the most pleasant of ways.  With the major essential projects behind us we are settling into what I’m thinking passes for normal up here -- days filled with reading, nature watching, hiking, cooking and eating, cabin and forest maintenance, gardening, visiting with neighbors, and stargazing.  We know the world will keep spinning on its axis without our following the debt-ceiling crisis and the early throes of the next election cycle, and we’re happier for shrugging that off for now.

Deer's breakfast just off the front deck

Instead we wake up to deer munching baby aspens in our front yard, and are often still sipping coffee at 10 AM while reading the novel of the moment until our tummies insist on breakfast.  The next order of business is often a hike before it gets too warm (low 80’s) or the afternoon thunderstorms start up.  We had over three inches of much needed rain in July (on top of about an inch in June), one inch of it in about 20 minutes, complete with BB-sized hail!  Usually it falls much slower, soaking into the forest floor instead of washing out our driveway.

Our hikes are filled with change and new discoveries each and every time.  As the seasons roll on some wildflowers finish while others are just reaching maturity.  It seems to be the start of the harvest season for the critters -- the raspberries are ripening (and make a refreshing snack along the trail), some flowers going to seed while others are brim full with nectar.  Most of our hikes are along creeks and our dog Bump does her best to take advantage of them to keep cool and hydrated.

HUGE bumblebee having its way with a thistle

We put in a border garden on the entry side of the cabin.  I bought a few perennials grown here in Colorado, blue penstemons, cone flowers, and hyssop.  But mostly I’ve collected wildflowers from the forest (careful to harvest them only where they exist in great numbers) -- scarlet gillia, wild rose, mountain laurel, wild geranium, black-eyed Susans, pussy toes, harebells, and lavender asters to name a few.  

Installing a perennial border garden 

We'll keep collecting specimens of wildflowers

Tonya Sharp, Colorado Division of Wildlife Officer,
educating us on how to re-educate the bears

We keep fine-tuning the way we live up here, from wildlife management to where to get our hair cut.  We haven’t seen evidence of any more bear visits, but we have made some changes in our behavior that probably has helped.  We invited Tonya Sharp, our local wildlife officer (Bob stopped referring to her as the Bear Lady after seeing the huge gun strapped to her hip), to come by and give us some advice.  We no longer seed feed, though we do continue to feed the hummingbirds.  Seed feeding is messy with the birds sorting through the mixed seeds, tossing the ones they don’t like over the side -- not this, not this, not this...THIS! -- so even if you bring in the feeder at night there’s still a mess on the ground, despite the best intentions of the ground squirrels.  And I’d seen enough of the regulars at the seed feeder -- Cassin’s finches, brown-headed cow birds, and pine siskins -- to last me a while.  If you sit for a few minutes and pay attention there are lots of interesting birds in the trees -- nuthatches, Stellar’s jays, juncos, woodpeckers, flickers, and sapsuckers, and even the occasional red-tailed hawk stops by a snag out front to scream at us before flying off.  We have the hummingbird feeder about twelve feet up a tree hooked to a pulley system and we fill it once in the morning and bring it in empty by mid to late-afternoon.  Sometimes I take a “rest” on the front steps with the full feeder and I’m never alone for long.  Good trick for a warm day as those little hummers’ wings whip up quite the breeze, and it’s wonderful to see them so close you can see the varying colors of their individual feathers.  And it’s too precious when they perch on your fingers.

Up close and personal with hungry lady hummers

Along with missing our Tucson friends, we’re missing our volunteer work and are thinking of what would work for us up here.  Bob is volunteering some chainsaw time to help folks clean-up their lots and will help with the semi-annual ranch clean-up when they bring in a HUGE chipper and feed in what’s been cleared, blowing the chips back into the forest.  He’s also volunteered to teach a little science to some neighboring kids who are home schooled...leeches will be the first segment.  I’ve filled out my application with the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s Bear Aware program and will come up next spring for training so that I can go out and coach folks on how to live in bear country.

Make a big wish on this tennis ball-sized salsify seed head...and BLOW

We’ve reached the halfway mark in our first summer at the cabin, and loving it more all the time.  It’ll be odd to start counting down to our departure in early October, though we have much to go back to in Tucson.  I wouldn’t be surprised to be back up here during the holiday season for a couple of weeks.  May will just be too far away.  Pack up the car, Honey -- I’m needing a cabin fix!  So very nice to have options, and the time to exercise them.  

Squirrel psych-out -- it fooled our dog the first time she saw it!