SkyWatch Friday: An Apollo Picnic Under Mercurial Skies :-)

I find it nearly impossible to believe that we're on the brink of October's final weekend! Not only because of the month's speedy passage, but also because of its unseasonably balmy weather, more summery than autumnal.

Last Saturday's softly serene sunrise was both lovely and illustrative of our mild and gentle weather lately...

Knowing all too well that despite its delayed arrival wintery weather is inevitable, BW and I have been taking advantage of the beautiful days with bike rides and lots of outings with the dogs, while my friend Pam and I have been logging many miles on long walks, laughingly referring to ourselves as "Lewis and Clark" because of our explorations and adventures (and occasional need for a guide, given our shared lack of any sense of direction!) :-) The three of us even threw together a fun picnic on Tuesday. That morning, Pam and I walked the three miles to Sheridan's quilt shop, then hoofed it another 3/4 mile or so to the library to take another gander at this year's annual Fiber Arts Show entries (yep, post coming) and meet up with BW, who arrived in our car with the picnic supplies. 

It won't surprise those of you who know me well when I tell you that our picnic venue was the cemetery. :-) Not the main municipal cemetery, but the adjacent Bellevue Cemetery, home to a rather mysterious collection of columns from the 1930s. They used to support a wooden pergola which has long since succumbed to the elements that are also taking their toll on the columns. A local historic pamphlet that Pam bought at the library identified the structure-that's-no-longer-a-structure as the romantically pagan "Sun Temple." Despite the fact that our sunny day was morphing into an overcast one, it still made a great spot for a picnic lunch.

But before eating, Pam and BW decided to burn a few extra calories by helping to prop up this lone little puffer cloud… 

Pam gave it a gentle push with her finger so BW could hold it like a serving tray! 

We set up our picnic in the center of the "temple," so were encircled by the columns as we dined on our yummy feast of tempeh salad sandwiches, hummus, carrots, apples, bananas and hibiscus tea. All we were missing were a lyre, our togas, and Apollo...

Oh, wait! Look who showed up! And ate most of the hummus! 

(okay, maybe that was me. LOL)...

After lunch we headed next door to the large municipal cemetery and visited several of the more scenic and interesting sections and historic graves there. At one point, Pam looked up and saw this dragon in the tree above us!...

Though it remained a balmy 77ºF, the weather grew increasingly cloudy and blustery, until the skies to our north looked like this at 6pm...

Though teasing us with the promise of some much-needed rain, it turned out the clouds were just for show (and cemetery ambience). The night remained dry, and the next day was another sunny one. In fact, the lack of clouds has made for fairly boring sunrises this week, at least until yesterday when more nocturnal clouds made for an appropriately pumpkin-colored and picturesque dawn before clearing out later that morning...

For more picturesque skies by day & by night, beneath sunshine & clouds, 

and both autumnal & vernal from both sides of the equator, please visit...

SkyWatch Friday: "O Hushed October Morning Mild…"

I fear that between last month's premature killing freeze and some very wicked winds, we've been robbed of most of our fall foliage here. 

But we've been enjoying - and taking full advantage of - a long stretch of glorious Indian Summer weather to make up for it, and on a recent lovely evening spent at the local cemetery fulfilling photo requests for Find A Grave, I spied this stately cottonwood. Despite its golden leaves being more muted this year, it's still a standout against the blue sky and its evergreen companions...

Though the local leaves aren't providing much fall color this year, the local skies certainly have been! Here's a sampling of our harlequin sunrise on Wednesday, taken during a five-minute span (from 7:07 - 7:12am):

Autumn mornings: sunshine and crisp air, 

birds and calmness, year’s end and day’s beginnings. 

~Terri Guillemets

It was October again... a glorious October, all red and gold, with mellow mornings… 

~L.M. Montgomery, "Anne of Green Gables"

In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October, when the trees are bare to the mild heavens...
 and you can feel the breath of winter morning and evening.
~Alexander Smith, "An Essay on an Old Subject"

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow,

Make the day seem to us less brief…

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst…

~Robert Frost

Autumn bowed to place a beautiful crown on the Queen of Morning, 

and her velvet robes sway merrily in the chilly breeze. 

~Terri Guillemets

There is a harmony 

In autumn, and a luster in its sky…

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

Enjoy more October skies ~ lustrous & mellow, glorious & crisp ~ from around the world...

SkyWatch Friday: "Harvest Moonday" Hike, Early Snow

It's been a week of many seasons - Monday and Tuesday were definitely summer, with highs of 90ºF. Most nights and early mornings recently have had the chill of Autumn to them, and Wednesday was a chilly, rainy, Fallish day. Wednesday night and Thursday we were under a Winter Storm Warning and it snowed several inches (14" in our neighboring, higher elevation town of Story and up to 18" in parts of the Big Horns). Though we didn't get nearly that much (about 4" at our house), by early this morning our temp had dropped to 19ºF.

But let's begin with the summery weather and Harvest Moon of Monday, before the flowers, trees and shrubs were dealt such a cruel blow that also likely annihilated our chances for fall foliage.

Monday morning, before it got too hot, we loaded up the dogs and took them walking on a new extension of the wonderful Sheridan Pathways system (on the attached map, it's the red and black path near the bottom right, running between the yellow and purple signal light symbols). This part of the path leaves very busy Brundage Avenue and as it heads toward Sheridan College it takes you into a different world… one of trees and marshes and birdsong and tranquility. And shade - which was our chief objective on such a warm, sunny morning!

Here are BW, Willow and Josie crossing one of two handsome footbridges that cross the marshy stream meandering through this area...

Once over the footbridge (you can just see it in the bottom right of this next photo) and out of the trees and into the meadows, you get to enjoy this beautiful view of the soon-to-be-snowcapped Big Horn Mountains (if you know where to look, you can even see the road that led to our old house on its way over the mountains!)…

Look at that clear blue cloudless sky!

Oops, I spoke too soon. Startin' to cloud up. :-)

And you thought I was joking about it clouding up, didn't you? ;-)

Here's Willow enjoying a rest in the shade back at the trailhead after our walk. Notice her leg draped elegantly over my foot, her way of keeping me from wandering off! :-) …

She was intently watching BW deploy our wonderful PetLoader, which Tess demonstrates...

That night, of course, unveiled the full Harvest Moon, seen here rising over the dry hills to our east...

Rarely satisfied with how my moon closeups turn out, I decided to have some fun and make this one a little funkadelic….

And now for a too-soon taste of things to come, the wintery scene from our patio yesterday…

We covered our front flowerbed Wednesday night, but could do nothing for our large rose bush except pluck this last beautiful, fragrant bloom and bring it inside to enjoy for a while. The bergamot on the right had already broken off when I went out at 5:30am to knock the snow off the trees and shrubs, so I brought it in, too. I think the rose looks sad, and doubt the reassurance that our temps will return to the 80's early next week offers much consolation…

Wishing you a week of lovely skies! 

We'll be spending it in Big Sky Country (Montana) with our dogs and camper! 

Birthday Boy, Blooming Blossoms, Big News!

I may not have been blogging lately, but I have been gathering blog fodder! And now I finally have an opportunity to start sharing from my stack o'goodies!

The first bit of news (not the Big News of this post's title, that's coming up in a bit) and main reason for my absence lately is that BW had arthroscopic shoulder surgery on May 15. He had a large, hook-shaped bone spur in the shoulder joint that had badly damaged the bursa and was fraying the rotator cuff - though fortunately the tendon had not yet torn. They removed the spur along with most of his bursa (which will regenerate). 

Other than having wisdom teeth pulled, this was BW's first surgery and he was NOT impressed. The anesthesia really did a number on him and it took him a couple of days to recover from it. He had to be at the hospital at 6:30am and we thought he'd be home by lunch, but they weren't able to release him until 4:30 - and even then, he was still a pretty sick and stoned puppy. He was also unable to do anything with his right hand (and of course he's right-handed) for a couple of weeks, which made me one busy woman! I think BW missed being able to cook most of all, while I seriously missed his ability to mow! :-) He goes to PT three times a week and does an hour of strengthening and mobility exercises at home on the other days, and though he's still limited in what he can do and still experiences pain (especially after a session with the "physical terrorists"), his recovery is going well and he's able to do a lot more now. Hence my ability to finally blog a bit! :-) Because of the physically strenuous duties of his job as a UPS man, he won't be released to return to work until at least July 7th - and he starts 2 weeks of vacation the next day! So I'm getting to enjoy the daily pleasure of his company, and staying up late watching Netflix is making us feel like kids on summer vacation! :-) In fact, the surgery and time off for recovery gave him time to reflect on the wear and tear his job of 23+ years has on his body, our financial situation, and our priorities - and he decided to retire on July 31st! So at most he has nine working days left. He can hardly wait to start using this clock! :-)

It will really hit home when Christmas rolls around. I was not terribly surprised by his decision - last Christmas at UPS was an especially grueling one, and we were both pretty sure he didn't have another one left in him. Since he worked as a part time driver at Christmas for two years before going full-time, this will be the first year of our marriage that he won't be a UPS man at Christmas (except for one year when he was in USAF Reserve training in Texas and didn't make it home to Wyoming till Christmas Eve!) So I anticipate finally getting to experience a very different sort of Santa than the one I've gotten used to…

As if all that weren't enough, yesterday was BW's 55th birthday. Although we'd had more exciting plans for it, the day was rainy and windy, he had a PT appointment that was particularly painful, and I was down and out with a headache. So it was a subdued celebration (we'll make it up this weekend), that wouldn't have amounted to much of anything were it not for our neighbor Carol bringing him chocolate zucchini muffins (which she made with pumpkin instead of zucchini, because only Carol would be brave enough to make a recipe in spite of lacking the main ingredient! lol) with the frosting from this recipe, and a festive cupcake balloon!...

The eternally boyish BW!

Like I said. :-) He's almost always this happy, too - when it's not Christmas! lol

Loved the adorable silicone cupcake cups Carol used! 

Despite having feet the cupcakes couldn't outrun us and were a memory by 1pm. :-)

And in non-BW news, it's been an incredible spring for flowers! We never got a typical big spring snow that so often wrecks the tender buds, and maybe because of that the flowering trees and bushes have been the most prolific, perfumed and pretty we've ever seen! We also got lucky - we may not have had a big snow, but we did have a very destructive storm in late May that clocked wind speeds of 75mph, but it arrived just after the peak of the flowering crabapples (less than a week after I took the photos below) and just before our roses bloomed! Here's how our beautiful rosebush looks this year, with more than half its blooms still yet to open when I took this...

Here's a neighbor's amazing crabapple tree, looking dressed for a wedding...

Another neighbor's crabapple, so pretty in pink (how I wish these were scratch-n-sniff, the beautiful fragrance all up and down our streets was heady stuff!)...

And the pinkest crabapple of all, this one (of several) in front of Sheridan Physical Therapy where BW has his sessions...

There are several more blog-worthy goodies left in my stack to share, so I hope to get more blogging done this week between planting more flowers, mowing more lawn, running more errands, and several more appointments! I will definitely post at least a SkyWatch Friday post if nothing else… so stay tuned, and have a great weekend!

Happy Arbor Day News & Happy SkyWatch Skies! :-)

I've wanted to share this news for the past week, but what better day than Arbor Day to share the happy status update about Al and Jackie's critically wounded maple tree?

Many of you may remember my post about "Atlas," the devastating snowstorm that hit us in early October. It wreaked destructive havoc on the still-leafy trees with 10 inches of heavy, wet snow and high winds. In my second post about the storm, I shared a photo of the fatal-looking damage it had done to the beautiful maple tree beside the patio of our friends Al and Jackie.

Well, Jackie didn't spend a long career as a nurse for nothing, and despite some teasing and possibly some evil snickering from cynical naysayers, she convinced Al to perform emergency triage on the tree with rebar, twine and duct tape. A lot of you shared your hopes that it would work, and I promised to give you an update in the spring.

The trees here started budding recently, so I emailed Jackie last week (with some trepidation) to ask her if the maple had shown any signs of life. But here is the photo she took with her iPad to share with me the happy news!

She said that she and Al are concerned about the branch on the right, which started to bud and then seemed to stop, but that even if that branch doesn't make it they're optimistic that the tree will. So three cheers for Al and Jackie's ingenuity and hopefulness, and for their brave maple tree's tenacity! :-)

And since today is also SkyWatch Friday, I can't pass up the chance to share a photo of today's lovely sunrise. As soon as I saw it through our kitchen windows I snatched BW's iPad off the counter to capture it, knowing that by the time I fetched my camera, changed out the lens, and returned to the back patio, the colors would have faded - which they did. So I give you a little less photo quality in exchange for a lot more color!...

Have a wonderful weekend!

SkyWatch Friday: The Mysterious Skies of Halloween

I know, I'm a week late with these. I've been working on quilt show posts instead of SkyWatch posts (those of you waiting for the quilt show finale, despair not - it'll be next, promise!)

Anyway, we had lovely weather the weekend before Halloween, and took advantage of it by taking the dogs on some wonderful walks around a new park area north of town, even enjoying a picnic lunch by the creek. Here are a few sky photos from our adventures…

Though admittedly not much of a sky photo, 

I wanted to share our pretty picnic spot by the sparkling creek 

(the picnic table is to the right out of the frame) :-)

What is Halloween without a leafless tree? 

The moon in the upper left helps set the mood as well. :-)

This piece of modern art is part of this inexplicable, mysterious "gate to nothingness"...

Someone went to a lot of trouble and expense to put up this front entrance!

Guess they must have depleted their funds and had nothing left for the house.

Appropriately, our lovely weather ended on Halloween, when rain, cold temps, and very gusty winds arrived along with the goblins and ghosties… and this rainbow! It barely lasted long enough for me to grab the camera and had already faded a lot by the time I snapped this, but since we never get rainbows at this time of year I was grateful to have captured the mysterious moment at all…

Though another Halloween is past, may you continue to enjoy hauntingly beautiful and bewitching skies! (And those of you in the Philippines, please stay safe!)