Our Alex has reached the grand old age of 10! Go Alex! I was going to take him in the yard for a photo shoot today but it’s drizzly and gray.

As you can see he pretty much gets to do what he wants to. He got to go for a ride in the truck today and we stopped at McDonald’s for some chicken nuggets (which he loves). Tonight he’s having steak. He deserves it.

We love you, Alex!

Early morning shadows.

As in not sure what I am going to blog about. I feel like I should post something. But I can’t seem to drag myself out of my malaise.

Is it because Sam is really sick and not going to get any better and I’ve been playing caregiver to him?

Is it because this is normally the time of year we head off to the cabin? We went in late May/early June this year and yet it seems like we didn’t go at all. Like we are missing out.

Or is it just because. I honestly don’t know. So I have a feeling this will be a random dumping of things going around in my head this morning.

I mowed the yards yesterday and in doing so picked up a lot of leaves that have fallen. It was a beautiful afternoon so it wasn’t really a chore riding Johnny around and around. I am hoping the grass is just about done with its growth cycle. Then it will be leaves, and oh boy, do we have a ton of leaves!

Last night it got down to 46 degrees F. BRRRRR! The pool is not going to like that. We did manage to swim on Saturday for ten lengths of the pool but little five-minute rain showers kept drifting by that weren’t helping anything. We thought we had broken a record by having the latest swim ever, but in my archives the other day a post popped up about the Ren Faire from September 10, 2007 and I talked about how we had gotten so hot while at the Faire we came home and jumped in the extremely cold pool to cool off. So, we didn’t break a record after all. Almost. The pool is scheduled for closing next week.

Good thing too. Every morning when I go out to put chlorine in there is a little frog on the solar cover. I can’t catch him, so obviously there is not enough chlorine in the water! The fallen acorns were covering the pool deck the other day and we swept them off. A few days later you can’t tell we did anything. Even sitting in the house you can hear them hit the pool cover with a resounding thwack! nearly as loud a gun shot. After not bearing any nuts at all last year our oaks are making up for it. I have a plan for the little acorn hats. If it works out I’ll show you.

We walked the dogs after dinner last night. The days are getting so short that dusk fell pretty quickly from the time we set out to the time we were walking back up our road. Good thing the dogs were leashed because there at the edge of the woods stood a deer frozen to the spot. The dogs all saw it and it saw them. We were getting closer and closer and still the deer just stood there, so finally I yelled SHOO! and it took off. Next thing we knew another deer broke cover from the opposite side of the road and crossed in front of us. The dogs were going crazy but stayed under control, thank god. I’ve had enough dog-related injuries to last a lifetime. But that’s a subject for a different blog post.

My sister and her husband arrive tomorrow afternoon for a brief overnight stay on their way to vacation in New York City. Rick has a seminar in the city, so he’ll be departing to NYC as they arrive here! Since Rick will be traveling by train and my sister is coming via the train, I should be busy shuttling to and from the train station tomorrow. Maybe I can take Rick around the same time as my sister arrives. Otherwise, Skylands is in the middle between the house and the train station so I just might amuse myself there!

So, see? Random thoughts!

hi everyone! it’s me, bella! i just wanted to share the day i had the other day with you.

i wented wading in the beaver pond. it’s my most favorite thing to do up here. the pond has lots more water in it than the last time i was here.



i don’t swim but i get really wet.

somehow i got a gash above my eye. i guess a branch got me when i was running through the woods. mommy said it wasn’t bad, just a surface scratch but i don’t have any hair there now. it does not bother me at all.

there is a great mud puddle on the walk and before mom and dad could stop me i laided down in it. such fun! here is what i looked like after the mud puddle.


then i wented and played on the little bit of snow that is still around and that helped get me un-muddied.




after dinner we wented for a ride. here are alex and hailey enjoying it but you won’t see me with my head out the window cuz i don’t like it.




daddy tooked some slow-motion movies of me too. you can see them by following this link and this link and one last link here. mom and dad think they are funny but i don’t get the humor of it all. it’s just me being me after all.

p.s. daddy said to tell you that what you see in the movies is really one second of real time but the movies last about 40 seconds each.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad at the cabin 8,650 feet above sea level

Okay, first things first. My old camera was a 35mm Canon Rebel XSi. Without the ability to really research cameras from the road we just replaced it with the next generation: a 35mm Canon Rebel T2i. If you bundled the camera together with a nicer lens (55 to 250 zoom) you got the nicer lens (normally a $400 lens) for only $150. A sweet deal for a sweet lens. I normally use the 18 to 55 lens and fill in with my big zoom (75-300). This new lens will bridge the gap nicely.

I had to get a camera on the road. I just had to. Not having my camera (and especially up here) is like having only one arm. I would probably prefer to break my arm than be without a camera.

And, I am loving my new keyboard/cover for my iPad. It works great! A little on the expensive side (from Brookstone) but worth every penny. The keyboard is removable so I don’t have to use it with the cover. Very cool.


After settling in yesterday and giving the dogs a short walk we sat down to a glass of wine and dinner. We sat on the front porch even though it was on the chilly side and listened to the hermit thrush singing. It’s one of my favorite birds and we’ve only ever heard one up here. No owls though and no coyote concert.

I’ve put out bird food and peanuts for the stellar jays but as yet have not seen even one. Usually they show up right away and greedily carry off all the peanuts.

Rick put out the hummingbird feeders this morning and within one hour of hanging them we had hummers. I had forgotten how much bigger this species of hummingbird we have up here (broad-winged) is than the tiny ones that visit our house in New Jersey. Plus, they make noise when they fly and ours at home are pretty much silent.  He’s out there on the front porch steps with the slow motion camera we brought along trying to get some footage. We’ll see how many show up. Usually we have to fill the feeders every day due to heavy drinking at the sugar bar!

This morning he made bran muffins for breakfast. They were delicious! Here they are upside down cooling straight from the muffin tin. They have so many good things in them: yogurt, golden raisins, brown sugar, bran cereal, molasses, vanilla.



After breakfast we took a walk to the top of the sage-covered hill opposite our driveway. From up here you can see pretty far, all the way to the Snowy Range.



This section of land is almost like tundra. Little flowers grow here that don’t grow in other places. It truly is an alpine environment.





This tiny cactus is about to bloom soon.



There were several of these moths flying around. This one landed and we weren’t sure if it just didn’t like flying in the wind or it was at the end of its life cycle.



Happy free range dogs!


These evening primroses love disturbed soil along the road.


The furry seed pods of pasque flowers that have finished blooming.


We have tons of larkspur!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

For those of you who might be new to the blog, I am going to fill you in a little on our cabin in Colorado since for the next two weeks+ I’ll be blogging from there. For everyone else who already is familiar with the cabin, well, ho-hum for you! But why not read on anyway and you might learn something you didn’t know about it, okay?

We first bought the land in 1988 right before we moved to Holland. Seventy acres (or thereabout) of high sage covered prairie, deep gullies with mixed forests of aspen and pine, a beaver pond (which then had a beaver), a little creek that runs in the spring with snow runoff, and an absolutely perfect meadow for a cabin.

Rick standing by one of our property markers high above the cabin. The trees you see in front of him are on our land.

We didn’t get to enjoy it much before we moved, but while living in Europe for five years we always made a point when we were back on home leave to at least picnic on the property.

After our return in the summer of 1993 at first we camped on our land (tent style). A few years later we camped in the RV. We visited at all times of the year to take note of where the snow lay deepest and what parts were accessible in the winter and which were not so we were sure we were putting the cabin in the right spot. Sometimes in the winter we could make it in and sometimes the roads were drifted over and impassable.

We finally built the cabin in 2000. Rick kept a journal of it’s “birth” and if you’re interested you can read about it here. We had originally thought we would harvest the wood from our own lodgepole pines on the land and build it log by log ourselves, but thank goodness we came to our senses and tossed that romantic notion out.

After the cabin was built we spent every available weekend there. It was a two hour drive from our house in Ft. Collins. We also spent a full week in spring and one week again in the fall. Our spring week was always when my mom was visiting. She loved the cabin so! Here we are in 2004 with Sailor and puppy Hailey. (I personally love this pic!)

Our land lies just shy of the border between northern Colorado and southern Wyoming. The closest city (town) is Laramie. From Laramie it’s about a 45 minute drive on dirt roads which are sometimes not in the best of shape, depending upon when they were last graded. There is a cattle guard at the border and from that point on the roads are not plowed by the state of Colorado. Beyond here there be dragons. Travel at your own risk!

We are off the grid, providing our own services. The cabin is mainly powered by batteries that store energy from our solar panels on the roof. We have a propane tank for the furnace and propane fridge and stove. We also have a big wind turbine that has been left dismantled in our absence but when it’s in operation we get most of our electricity from the wind.

The wind blows here. A lot. When it snows the roads drift over. Even when it’s not snowing you can encounter white-out conditions due to the dry top layer of snow being whipped by the wind. We’ve been in one of these and trust me, it was not fun.

The year that stands out in my memory was when we had our neighbor down the road (about two miles) plow a path in the road to our cabin. One morning he called us and asked us how the weather was at our place. Our cabin is so sheltered by trees that we had no idea a white-out was happening. He was coming to get us. We packed up quickly and thought to meet him outside our driveway. The snow was about three feet deep. When we started out we could not tell where it had been plowed at all. We also got stuck up to our bumper. We were sitting ducks until our savior, Larry, could be seen in his big John Deere with the huge snowblower attachment blowing snow like crazy. He blew us a path to follow him out on while behind us the snow filled in almost immediately like some hungry monster gobbling up the space. It took forever to make that trip and it was terrifying to see the sheer brutality of winter up there.

Several people now live up here year round and it causes some problems. One person likes to plow his way out, thereby causing the roads to drift over worse than they would have if left alone because he doesn’t plow them correctly. The secret is to go over the snow instead of through it so most people have an all terrain vehicle with tracks and park their cars over the border at a friend’s house.

What people don’t realize is that this land is untamable. Wild. It’s always been that way. It lets you know, albeit subtly, that it is in charge; not you. You need to live with the land up here and not against it’s natural flow.

Some people are trying to tame it and make it more like a subdivision in town. We’re hoping the land takes charge and it never happens.

There’s a very good book that’s been written about the land surrounding our cabin. It’s called “The Meadow” and is written by a man whose family homesteaded here. It was a rough life and a good read. It’s still available at Amazon.

One of the old homesteads along the road (but not the one featured in the book!).

There is just something about the whole area that gets in your blood. I can’t explain it. It’s just there.

On and off we’ve toyed with the idea of selling it since we are so far away and unable to get there more than once a year, but we just can’t quite bring ourselves to do it. It is still Rick’s dream to live there for one entire year, winter and all, and I have agreed to see how it goes. Until then I can’t see us giving up our 70 acres of paradise.