We are not sure how we missed this around noon yesterday, but here is a very short clip from the game camera that shows a cow moose and her new baby. I am going to lower the camera, so maybe if this happens again, we'll get a better shot.

Painted birdhouses that Rick's dad built for us.

When we first arrived we still had snow in the meadow, and for a short time there was an actual little creek running through it. Now the meadow is grassy and green and star arnica is blooming everywhere. Just gorgeous. It remains to be seen if the wildflower seed we planted last year actually came up. We have more seed coming from Pawnee Seed Company — a mix of prairie grasses and wildflowers that we'll spread around the burn pile areas and the area that was excavated for the trenches for the new solar panels.

There is lots of lupine coming up around the house as well as Wyoming paintbrushes, pink plume, larkspur and fireweed. Most of it will probably be blooming later this week. Soon we will be surrounded by flowers of all different colors. Already the meadows are full of brilliant paintbrushes!

The pasque flowers have gone into gossamer seed mode, but still equally as beautiful.

Unfortunately the mosquitoes are also "in bloom" right now. They say the mosquito hatch only lasts three weeks up here, so we shall see. Right now we douse ourselves with repellent before we go outside. We both smell like Lemon Eucalyptus all day, not a totally unpleasant smell. We've found a repellent without DEET that appears to work great. We also have one of these handy little gadgets, the Thermacell Mosquito Repellent Appliance, that uses butane to heat a synthetic form of natural insecticide, forming a 15-foot-wide area of protection. We used it yesterday while out in back potting the herbs we bought. No mosquitoes dared come close!

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Here is the progress on our huge snow bank on the road below the cabin. It's melting, but it's also had some help along the way. 

Two days ago when we walked up to the top of our driveway we saw a truck parked at the edge of the snow bank. The tailgate was down and there was a guy doing something, but it wasn't clear exactly what was going on. Since either side of the road where he was is our land I walked up to him to see what was going on. It turns out that he's a new neighbor and he and two friends were digging with snow shovels to create a path for them to get through. 

They seemed nice enough, young men in their 20's, and said they wanted to be "good" neighbors. The parcel they bought shares a property line with the cabin parcel up the hill in back. There is nothing on the land, no cabin, etc., so I am not sure what their plans on for it. I hope that they are just weekend campers. More than likely they bought the land for hunting purposes, and if so we'll have to have a conversation about where the property lines are.

They were not successful that day at getting through, and I warned them about the steep drop-off if they tried to squeeze through in their truck. Plus, the weather turned stormy and I think they turned tail and went back to wherever they came from. 

You can see that soon it will be possible to get a vehicle through but there is still A LOT of snow to melt.

The meadow was a busy place early on Thursday morning. First, three buck deer visited. They hadn't been here very long when they took off, looking over their shoulders as they trotted off. I looked at the other side of the meadow and saw four long brown legs at the other mineral lick. A moose. 

Due to the placement of the mineral lick, which is right behind a pine tree when looking out the dining room window, I couldn't tell which moose it was, only that it appeared to be smaller than either Morley or Hannah but it did have antlers. We waited patienly as he took his fill of minerals, camera at the ready. When he finally came into full view we could see it was indeed a different moose altogether. A very young bull moose. He didn't stay long after that but we're happy he stopped by anyway.

It was such a pretty evening last night that we decided to take the Ranger out for a short drive down to Bucky Beaver's. Bucky wasn't ready for visitors but we did see this cow moose, right where we saw the one yesterday morning, (same one?). She was camera shy and beat a hasty retreat.

The light at this time of day was wonderful! 

Clouds, always clouds!

Patient Rick waits as I snap some quick shots.

Poor us!