Country life at 7,000 feet
The hummingbirds are very active these days, preparing for their migration south.
They beat their wings in a figure eight, which allows them to hover.
Th hummingbird is a New World bird, absent from Europe and Africa. There are many Native American legends about the hummer.
My favorite is the Aztec legend that tells of the time when the god of music and poetry took the form of a hummingbird. He descended into the underworld to make love with a goddess, who then gave birth to the first flower.
Three fat mule deer in velvet were eating apples on someone’s lawn, so I stopped to take some photographs.
See that lump of fat on their chest? They’ve got a long winter to prepare for, and they’re just getting started.
By the time rutting season arrives, their mono-boob will be massive. (That’s not a technical term.)
This thin male saw everyone else eating apples, and came over to join them.
The trouble was, I was standing in the driveway on the other side of this fence, so as soon as he jumped it he was standing too close to me.
I thanked him for letting us see his velvet, and asked him to leave.
And he did. In fact, they all did, and the dog chased me out of the yard.
I’ll tell you about the velvet tomorrow, but for today I was amused to be moved along by a big dog trained to chase everything but deer.
Six of us went to the top of Perrin’s Peak, a wilderness area that is open for a short time during the summer.
I’m the only one under 50, so we’re no longer Babes on the Mountaintop.
There were turkey vultures that I didn’t get a shot of, but here are my friends and their good dog Luna; my dog was too old to come.
And here you have a classic coyote scat, with clearly visible hair and pointy ends to the individual turds. ( Sorry if you weren’t in a scat kind of mood. )
Dante’s seven deadly vices are a familiar list of sins:
Examples of virtues include:
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So few ways to be naughty; so many to be nice.
(Thanks to Wikipedia).
This is the La Plata River. It was diverted last week.
There are more water rights owed on this river than there was flowing in its banks, and all that is left of the La Plata is an empty riverbed.
The smell of rotting fish lays over the entire watercourse, because this was flowing until last week. This is what passes for water management in this part of Colorado: when too many people own water, the river is drained entirely.
It’s not that there isn’t any water; it’s that the water is owed downstream to irrigators. The irrigators are growing hay for Texan horses. You’d think this was illegal, but it’s not… and the only fish left alive in this river are minnows
swimming in the small, unconnected ponds that remain where the river once flowed.
These refugia are too small and too warm to support big fish.
Where do the great blue herons go when the river runs dry?
I got very close to a hummingbird.
It was perched on an iris stalk,
and kept making flights and coming back to its little roost. You wouldn’t think it’d be possible to catch a hummingbird in song
or in flight, but here you have it.
I didn’t ever post this because I don’t think the resulting shade is very attractive. But here I am Sunday night without a thing to say, and it suddenly doesn’t look so bad.
Balloon shades are Roman shades with pleats in the center and along the sides. They can be nearly tailored, or very pouffy. This shade will be somewhere in between.
To start, take the length of the window and add 12 inches; cut two lengths of fabric and sew them together so you have double the width. Ditto for the lining. Put the lining and shade fabric together, seam to seam staggering the seams, and then fold up a balloon shade.
The outer fabric and the lining are folded to have pleats on the left side and the right side, and one in the middle.
These are the only tools you need: an iron, a bunch of pins and a six inch measuring device. You’ll note that (like the site dog) the six-inch measure is in every picture.
This is the backside of the balloon shade after the fabric has been folded, ironed and pinned.
Here the shade is turned over, and
I’ve flipped back the pleats.
The next step is to sew down all of the pleats and both ends of the shade.
Be careful to make sure the fabric is relaxed when the pleats are sewn into place!
Here we’ve cut the velcro strip, and are planning to sew the soft side of the velcro tape to the fabric.
I used double-sided Scotch tape to stick the velcro to the fabric so I can easily sew the velcro into place.
The bottom side of the velcro tape is sewn onto the top of the shade, and I’m cutting the fabric close so we can sew the other side of the velcro to the shade lining.
This is the finished top of the shade.
Thus endeth Part I, where we set the shade’s width; in Part II we’ll dealeth with its length.
Dragonlies have been breeding in the pond this year, and every now and then I’ll see a discarded nymph skin. A few days ago I was surprised to see a dragonfly had died in the process of being born: it split its last skin and was unfolding its new wings when it drowned.
Dragonfly wings are very beautifully constructed. They get tattered when they’re old, and they don’t heal. But a young dragonfly wing is as beautiful as we all were in the first blush of youth. Funny life, my Dad would say. It’s a funny life.
I left my car in the overflow parking lot
of the Cortez Airport.
It’s a very small airport.
My sister, brother and I did the food for four at-homes during the weekend, and it was really nice. This is my mother talking to a childhood friend.
I visited the 80-yr-old bachelor farmer who was our neighbor for ten years. He’s still managing a flock of sheep and a herd of cows–always did–and last week he was telling the dog to do something, not paying attention, and the bull knocked him down and broke eight ribs. He’s 80. I wasn’t able to see him because eight days later when I came by, he was off haying/ the summer has been so wet that this was the first cut, and he had to get it in. He plans to sell the cows, I heard, and was keeping the sheep.
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