Busy times!

These are busy times, indeed. There are a lot of things going on that are fun, worth being involved in, but ones that stretch these old folks to the limit!

Sandy heard there were fields of blooming sunflowers in the Dove Creek area, where they've recently opened a new biofuels plant. So, off to Dove Creek ... where we found, at most, three or four wild sunflowers blooming in a ditch. But, it was a wonderful trip, with storm clouds gathered over the La Platas to the east and bright, late afternoon sunshine on the vastness of the Hovenweep Dome.

Saturday morning was our ritual trip to the Cortez Farmers Market, which is growing! We got two of Bessie White's pies (the blueberry is gone already!) and enjoyed seeing friends from all over the county. (That's Mesa Verde in the background, looking south.)

Saturday started out warm and then got hot (for us). So, in the afternoon we took Scooby Doo and went for a drive in the mountains up above Echo Basin. It was 86 degrees when we left home, easily 10 degrees cooler by the time we got up to 8500 feet and 68 degrees as we were coming down at sunset.

What a year for flowers! Lupines and asters and 17 kinds of yeller blooms and little white ones and the most magnificent columbines I have ever seen! We stopped, stunned, at two of the purple columbines that were tall, vigorous plants with gorgeous blossoms. The ones I've shown were a little further up and they're the only ones I can remember ever having seen that have purple centers; usually the centers of the purple columbines are creamy.

One of my favorite high-altitude plants is the elephant head, a purple spike of tiny individual blooms that each look like an elephant's head. We found a high marsh with a number of them catching the afternoon sun.

And, of course, there are the vistas ... a high mountain meadow with peaks and clouds beyond, and our journey was capped off with a late afternoon burst of sunlight that lit up a meadow of wild sunflowers, with Mesa Verde and the Sleeping Ute in the distance!

Busy week ahead, but these drives around our beautiful area make me feel ready for 81328, Artisans, a museum association meeting, Mancos on the Move, an ARAMARK tour and RELATIVES (Sandy's sister, nephew and grand-niece arrive Thursday). TV