along the new bike trail

Some river scenes down by the new bike trail addition. The trail is off to the left in the first picture. Love those blue sky reflections.

Winter scenes around town

One reason it's nice here is the weather. Oh yeah, sometimes it's really cold for a few days, but then it warms up again and the sun comes out and the sky is blue. Today for instance it's beautiful. Pics: Longs Peak towering over the city, Canada geese sunning on the ice.

Merry Christmas

Greetings to everyone - have a very good Christmas.

wrapping time

Presents are wrapped and sent. Chistmas cheer to everyone.

Tea Drinker

Spooky checking out my cup of green tea---
It was sitting there and he couldn't resist it I guess.  I had to underexpose this since he's black and the detail just disappears otherwise.

where most of the bird food goes

I still find squirrels amusing. I never get tired of them and their antics. The smaller one in front is one of this year's babies.

Keeping us warm

Throughout the nastier cold weather we've had lately this baby has been keeping us toasty indoors. Yay for wood stoves. Time to throw a few more logs in.

Amarylis

We have three of them from past Christmas gifts and it looks like they are all going to bloom in the next couple weeks. The first one, a red- flowering one, is getting close. They grow so fast. The stalk is twice as tall as it was three days ago. Looks like flowers for Christmas.

Parade of Holiday Lights

Saturday night was the parade of holiday lights here in town, a kickoff for the holiday season. It finally warmed up to a high of 45 on Saturday and was only down to freezing by evening, perfect parade watching weather after a terribly cold week when no one wanted to go outside. Over a thousand people showed up with kids in tow to see the lights, drink hot cider and watch the fireworks. I don't know what these blue things the people carried were supposed to be but I liked the color.

This swirly design is what the city has attached to all the  downtown light poles.

An inflatable snowman riding on a sleigh.

The grease monkey - - would Hanuman approve? He was huge and slightly creepy as he bobbed  back and forth grinning in the breeze.

A light be-decked float. Things have gotten quite mechanical in the parade world, at least here locally. There were decorated riding lawnmowers, forklift trucks, crane utility trucks, old fire engines, buses, vans, an electric wheelchair or two and of course many giant flatbed trailers towed by giant trucks, and all  were covered with brownies or cub scouts or church groups or 4-H clubbers. And all were disguised as Santa's sleigh or winter wonderlands. 

Compared to Arizona

Here are some scenes from a gray morning hike at Rabbit Mountain in November, before all the snow hit us. The rock here is red sandstone, which looks gray because of all the lichens growing on it. It is quarried nearby for stone walls and patios, but also coveted in its raw state for attractive landscaping rocks. In some places the lichen is orange and green, very attractive. The last picture is looking out from the foothills toward the eastern plains.

earliest sunset

The earliest sunset does not occur at the winter solstice here in Colorado- it happens on December 7th. It is different at different latitudes. After that date for us the morning sunrises keep on getting later but the sunsets start to get earlier again. The morning sunrises don't switch over till after Christmas. So the days do continue to get shorter anyway but I don't mind the later sunrises. I really dread the early sunsets in the winter ( dark at 5 PM for instance)  and am always cheered when the sun starts to go back again the other way.  Yay sun! Heading on back again toward those brighter sun-lit evenings...  ( not going to happen really soon I admit but I am looking forward to it)

More from the hike

Here are more pictures of that hike back in balmy Arizona. We couldn't find the trail we were looking for after hiking up that canyon, so we hiked back down the cliffs the way way we had come. Very scenic. Back at home here today the temperature finally made it back up to 32 - freezing. They say it will be warmer tomorrow.

cabin fever setting in

There are lots of nice blue snow shadows out there in the sunlight so I took a few pictures and couldn't resist fooling around with them on Photoshop. Temperature-wise it only went down to -5 last night and got up to 15 in the "heat" of the day today so things are improving.

Temperature

Arizona is becoming an even more distant memory as the temperature continues to fall, and our current cold spell lingers on. Minus 14 (F) this morning at its lowest, minus 12 when I took this picture out the window. It had started to "warm up". But it is sunny today so maybe it really will start to warm up.

 4:30  PM update:  got up to 5 or so. Really need a mighty good reason to want to go outside.

Hiking up an Arizona canyon.

This canyon has a series of rock  basins and cliffs progressing ever upward, getting taller and more challenging to climb as we went farther up. This stream would be quite spectacular to see after a summer thunderstorm.

The stream is dry now with occasional pools still filled with water, which makes it hikeable. Some pools have "wildlife" in them like this large biting insect my daughter found - very tricky to pick up - they are poisonous.

Chicken Ukeleles

A couple instruments from Xylocopa. To see more of the work they sell in their online shop see:
http://www.xylocopa.com/

The do great inlaid wood working and gift making.

Zero Again

It's down to zero again this morning and we awoke to fine snow falling. There is another inch or so. Hope we break out of this weather pattern soon. So far our snow fall amount is double that of a normal winter for this time of year.

Arizona Sycamore

Beautiful sycamores and maples can be found along the dry stream beds in the Chiricahua Mountains. In fall the white limbs and orange leaves of the sycamores are quite striking. The maples, a little more rare and farther up in altitude are a gorgeous shade of pink in the fall.

new snow and cold

Alas, Arizona is only a fleeting warm memory. It was only eight degrees here at 2 PM and it is snowing at the moment. It has been snowing since last evening.

Agave

Agaves or century plans are very common in this part of Arizona. I really like them. This first one is entertaining a small flock of birds, possibly bluebirds, but we couldn't get close enough to tell for sure. Some people harvest the flowering stalks, decorate them and use them for Christmas Trees. They grow for years, bloom once and then they die. Below: a young one just starting out and and old one fading away.

Hiking in Arizona

The Chiricahua Mountains in November are beautiful, as I am sure they are year-round. Hiking at sunset was especially nice. Not only is the weather very mild compared to home and the scenery spectacular, but it's common to see all kinds of wildlife while you are out wandering. We saw a group of coatis crossing the river.  I've got a picture of one but it's kind of blurry - they were moving fast. They travel in packs of females and juveniles and are related to racoons. They are common in Central America and their northern-most range is in Southern Arizona.We  also chased a pack of javalinas ( native wild pigs) out of the yard where we were staying. It was like chasing a herd of thundering miniature buffaloes. They like to eat people's ornamental prickly pear cactus. We also saw a gray fox crossing the road, caught some glimpses of a ring-tailed cat, ( also a raccoon relative) and saw numerous birds of many species, including hummingbirds. This area is a very popular place for birders.

To see a better picture of a coati see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coati.

To find out about javalinas see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peccary

And the especially cute ring-tailed cats:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring-tailed_Cat
Miners in the old days used to make pets out of these.

the Mexican food market

Some of the colorful fruits and vegetables we found while shopping in a market in Tucson. We made fried bananas with the big yellow plaintain bananas. With some spicy mexican soup for dinner it made a great dessert.