our backyard is between mesa verde nat’l park and the la plata mountains in the four corners area of SW colorado, we homesteaded this place, and planted lots of trees and bushes that provide safe haven for lots of critters. once our last cat died, we started feeding birds, and oh, my, do avian visitors come from the south! of course, one needs to put out special treats for some, especially oranges, nectar and grapes.
but if you click this link, it’ll take you to one of my albums on flickr.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/96748688@N02/albums/72157637476789245
in the white space in the right-hand corner below the blue ‘sign up’ box is a rectangular screen icon with an arrow in it. if you hover your cursor over it, it says ‘toggle slideshow’, and it begins. when you want to end it, click ‘escape’.
please feel free to download any of the photos for your personal use. i think you’d have to ‘escape’ and download any from the crazy quilt of them (2 pages); there’s a white outline of an arrow with a line under it that signifies ‘download’. the tall narrow ones are for half-fold cards. twice during their ‘upgrades. flickr lost most of my pictures; some i actually searched for in other flickr content, and found. the narrow ones i’d had to get from an old XP laptop that i use for printing cards, as that program is ‘no longer supported with updates’, as the saying goes. iirc, you can choose the size you’d like as well.
hope you like ’em.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
Critters, critters, ever’where
Pi’ture lookin’ in my underwear
Somethin’ somethin’, jus’ don’ care
Scroll’d ‘n’ click’t, cain’ fin’ no bear
Amazing avian and p’rty doe, though, wde!
ah, a haunting comment in a man in his undies, lol. no bear pic good enough to load onto flickr, but you may remember the honey-colored long-haired she-bear whose bear butt i’d clicked off….as she galloped down the driveway after…a close encounter. dunno who scared who the most, actually.
i lie: she scared me witless as she came toward me standin’ on the porch. thus, the crap pix of her skedaddling off.
but mmm, i’m makin’ a batch of mango/raisin/red onion chutney to perk up a too large a batch of red lentil and veg dal i’d made yesterday.
I wudn’t really in my underwear. Creative license.
ah, i know. i was just goofin’ so i could play w/ undies, a bear, and a bear’s bum. i did look for her photo in the café media gallery and couldn’t spot her. but i know i used her for one open menu art.
glad ya liked em, though’ so do i, herr Kreative License.
at least this diary at c99% got a few comments, lol, but no returns after my answers.
yesterday it was 60 degrees and sunny here; today it snowed. when the clouds lifted a bit, the mountain over the east mancos river was lit with show, as were a series of white granite monoliths we call ‘the white rocks’. they’re another reason i wish i might have afforded an SLR camera and saved for some longer lenses in the future.
we used to go tramp around up there w/ the chirren in the fall when the quakie leaves were falling, in hopes of seeing a bear, as we’d seen sign of them often there (scat, over-turned rocks, claw marks on the quakies). this is one of two places in the whole valley where the white rocks are visible, and of course from this distance, my 12x zoom is pretty useless.
but this week mr. wd trimmed one pinon pine tree back that had grown tall enough to obscure my vision of them, bless his heart. and early this evening they were glowing like heaven having come alive. and some asshole is shooting off fireworks just west of here, while the drought monitor says we’re in ‘extreme drought’ conditions, next highest being ‘exceptional’, i’d say might instead be ‘existential’. but never mind. time dreams will help us…john trudell’s last song before he crossed over, may he rest in power and keep kickin’ ass in the afterlife.
the birds are still chirping so it’s not all bad news.
I’ve never felt so much earnestness & sincerity in one small coffee shop in my life. cuz I don’t normally do group things w/lefticles or libertards planning the revolution, like reading groups. “we have got to make a truly democrat co-op that is communitarian with other like-minded co-ops so we can compete with capitalism.” “FSA is not ISIS…White Helmets…Assad bombing his own people and not fighting ISIS at all. the commie Kurds Rojava are where it’s at & that’s why Turkey is bombing them.” “pronouns. the pronouns are revolting. that’s where it starts, the fire that rises. from pronouns. freedom begins from being able to use the pronouns *you* want to refer to yourself. and others doing likewise” (j/k on the last one. a bit.) this one kid was a treacherous minefield of disaster capitalism & radical egalitarian plumbing & pocket mulching for mother earth & methane monitors at the anus for the methane swaps & trading & quotas that are coming. eco-terra-forming was my fav. all anti-gmo & gluten free but a little confused about how neo-nazis are running Ukraine after the spontaneous uprising of the masses. when I said that during the last Syrian election (2014?), 95% of the ex-pats in the world voted for Assad, this overdeveloped brain said, “elections can be faked.” indeed. nobody laughed one time, not even at fake elections occurring simultaneously in Sweden, Russia, Israel, S Africa, Indonesia, Chili et al. except me. when no one laughs at all in your reading group ever, time to disband.
I should have asked that kid (everyone under 30 is now a kid all of a sudden) if Assad had “gassed his own people.” no one was gauche enough to endorse R2P but no mention of the millions of dead & displaced in Syria, either. Assad is bad news. that’s all that matters. all dictators must die, even when ruling over a functional society.
anyway,
briefly, cuz RL got pretty fraught today: yep, putin stole crimea, exporting democracy for some is a thing, assad must be replace cuz he gassed his own people. dunno how eco-terra-forming fits in: on mars? the moon? but i’ll read again in the mornin’ w/ fresh eyes. but kaffe klatch sounds like a real algonquin round table.
but i’m glad the birds are still chirpin’ in oly, j.
Elections can be faked? Really? Did no one grok that in 1876?
Most of the mammals are our critters but not the elks. Too many squirrels and raccoons of late; the trapper has been at several nextdoors for a couple of weeks. Development-trashed habitat sent them into our 20-acre wood.
We have only one hummingbird species; I see you have several species.
See you have a bunch of house (mexican) finches, a non-native in our area.
Our neighborhood Backyard Bird Count this year counted 120 different individuals and a wide array of species. Like your neighborhood birds.
Currently in our woods are a pair of Cooper’s hawks and a lame turkey vulture.
they’re mule deer, but different enough in antler configurations than your (iirc) white-tailed deer that i can see your confusion. i hadn’t known that the cassein’s finch, purple finch were under the house finch rubric as well. many of the most colorful birds are visitors from central america, and only hang out cuz we feed them, really. after the first sightings of bullock’s orioles, tanagers and other friends, i’d hang up oranges and grapes for them.
hummies who come: black-chinned, rufous, and broad-tailed. i call the rufous dudes ‘the praetorian guard’. yes, you have far more year-round birds than we do… cooper’s hawks, cool. nesting? and the poor lame turkey vulture…funny no one’s et him/her yet, eh?
Love ya, WD.
Thought about you when I saw a rainbow sundog today…
Taking this for something like an open thread amidst your incessant digging at the infernality of the modern neoliberal world…
Just what ya need to make ya Feeeeellllllllllllllll……
well look who the southeast wind blew in at last! love ya, too, lemoyne, and how many times have i meant to write you and ask you how you are, whatcher doin’, and wonderin’ when you’ll ever write a diary here? grrrrreat to see you, and i love the video. might hafta look up the lyrics soon. the padded room and the self-hugging…suit coat, lo-bleeping-l!
but hey, it’s a cover by the ravens, so that fits just fine. ooof, i looked up rainbow sundogs. what a treat they must be to see. a blessing as well for me/us today, as it caused you to pop in here. ;-) j is homeless in oly (deecee environs >>> olympia) thru no fault of his own save ‘capitalism’, really, so he may have just been ranting a bit even if he hadn’t watched the slideshow; his connectivity is very limited. but oy, is he gettin’ an education on homelessness (there but for the grace of the gods for so many others in the richest nation in the world.)
xox,
wd