It’s summer time, officially! The rains are probably gone now for the next several months.
Late evening sunset on the longest day of the year.
Things are still so green everywhere around us. Soon it will be browned by the hot summer sun.
Wildflowers are hidden by the tall grass, makes a good treasure hunt to go look for them.
The solar panels produce an amazing amount of power early in the day on the clear summer days. It makes the fact the generator is acting up once again not as urgent a problem as sometimes. We still need to sort it out, but it’s hard to get too excited about the problem.
By 11 am in the morning, the batteries are full and the rest of the day the panels are producing enough power for us to do whatever we want with electricity.
It seems odd to us that more emphasis isn’t given to installing solar panels all over the place with the intention of selling excess power back to the grid. My cynical nature tells me that this isn’t of interest to the (pardon the expression), powers-that-be because there are no moving parts to wear out and thereby no ongoing source of income from installing new parts. Planned obsolescence needs to become a thing of the past in this country but in this, the best of all possible worlds, that isn’t likely to happen.
All snows have melted from the ski resort, and they are no doubt counting the days until it returns.
We’ve been hearing this noise at night out in the woods, and Dan figured out what is doing it. We have Ruffed Grouse here, and they drum in the spring, but it is a deep sound that starts slow, builds speed and then tapers off, sounding almost like a generator motor starting and then failing to engage. This other sound was different, a rapid short burst of thumps.
It’s bunny hops, also known as Snowshoe Hare! This is how they let each other know they are in the vicinity.
He loves the clover in the short grass in front of house, and sometimes we see him jump straight up in the air and kick his white feet out, joyously.
Pretty soon the babies will be running races all over the place. There is always quite the population explosion for these little guys.
Our friend Brandon was just here visiting over the weekend. It was so nice to see her again. We took her two different directions from our house, up into the mountains for a woods and rocks experience, and then we went over to a ghost town to visit a museum. The weather was just perfect, not hot at all and very few mosquitos. We could get spoiled by this so very easily, in fact I think it has already happened so I can start whining about too hot weather any second now!
Monday morning before she left, we went for a ride on our Ranger, up the private road to a hillside a half mile from our house.
Dan and Brandon heading up the road to a gate we had installed between our two parcels of land. The green gate is off to the side of the private road.
The grass is high and green. No danger of fire from the hot exhaust pipe on the vehicle.
There is a road under here somewhere....
There is a canyon that starts a few hundred yards from our house, but the terrain is so rough and there are so many fallen trees that we’ve never tried scrambling around to find it. So we drove up the road a bit until we could walk across the grasslands and overlook the canyon.
Out of the trees and into wide open grasslands just a short distance from our house.
The Ranger seems small parked out there down the hill where we were walking.
Fun to get to use this machine for play instead of pushing snow.
There are several thousands of unfenced acres up there to wander around on. The ground is rough, though, and the grass is very high which obscures where we plant our feet. It makes for slow going.
Attempting to recreate the scene from "Sound of Music" by running down or up the hill would result in a broken ankle.
Regardless of how fast or slow we can walk, it’s extremely peaceful and quiet up here on the hillsides.
Around the crest of the hill is the pond at the head of the canyon.
There are supposedly some beautiful huge old trees down there, and someday we will have to persevere and find our way down to the bottom.
A very steep canyon wall for people who like climbing. I'm not one of those people.
Brandon in the middle of nowhere.
Birds are a lot more visible this time of year, all excited about the summertime. This female Dusky Grouse (formerly Blue Grouse but some bird-brains decided to split the species into Dusky and Sooty), was very curious about the Ranger driving past her.
She was standing tall, trying to decide if we were something to run from, or not.
We could see her deciding to look at us from the other eye, in case we might look better or at least different, from another prespective.
We thought she might have a nest nearby since she wasn’t leaving quickly.
Redtail Hawks patrol the hillsides.
When the hawks decide to descend to the bottom of the hills, they fold their wings back and zoom very fast. Our parrots always complain even if the predator is leaving at high speed.
During our walk up the hill, I added to the collection of wildflower pictures from in and around our property.
The daisy family is well represented. This is a Shaggy Daisy.
This is a Showy Daisy.
Brown-eyed Susan.
This is a Clarkia. When we first moved here, these flowers were so thick the hillsides looked pink. The rainfall appears to play a huge part in how abundant this flower is from year to year.
Thread-leafed Phacelia, this flower always reminds me of a geranium, which also grow wild up here. It confuses me every year.
These Harebells are sometimes misnamed bluebells. We have those as well, but these are larger flowers and showier, and a paler blue.
Harebell picture taking with a bunny-cam, showing how they look from a hare's perspective.
I haven't been able to figure out what this one is in my wildflower books.
There are more wildflowers blooming around here, but this post was already getting a bit too long. Stay tuned!
A lengthy and beautiful posting indeed!! Much appreciated. On your third photo from the top, is that a hawk or a UFO? Since I don’t know, it must be a UFO!! Now that is cool!