Outdoors

The lake is calm and peaceful this morning. Some 37 Canada geese are resting on the sandbar. Among them, a few double-crested cormorants jostle for room. A light breeze is rippling the surface of the lake, and the path of Bear Creek can be seen by the dark streak running across the ripples like a smooth black ribbon.

July has been a great month. Most of the days have been blue and sunny, with cool mornings and warm afternoons with scattered showers. The summers of 1965 and 1969 were much like this, and I had very little need to water to have a bountiful garden. It seemed like we had moved to Camelot.

If you have not taken a drive to see the wildflowers this year, now is the time to do it, for they will soon fade. Shrine Pass is always a delightful trip for wildflowers, and many can be seen without a great deal of walking. Arapaho Pass (west of Boulder) is also excellent but takes a bit longer and involves a bit more hiking. The unusual amount of moisture this year has made the wildflowers exceptional. Just last week friends of mine drove me to Bailey for dinner one evening, and the flowers along U.S. 285 were prolific, and the back roads were spectacular.

The wildflowers have been spectacular this year. I can’t quite get used to the peak bloom being in June, for I am accustomed to the peak of spring bloom being in May, for that is when the broad-leafed deciduous forests of western New York are carpeted in bloom. I had forgotten that the peak of bloom is in June in Colorado. What a glorious month it has been. Not only is it green from all the rain we now have had, but now all that verdant green is splattered with the color of various wildflowers.