Forsythia in March

One thing I've come to love about the Grand Valley in springtime is the forsythia. One day everything looks like winter, and then without warning every forsythia plant in the valley blossoms screaming yellow.

I've waited a bit long to take this picture, because now the grass is turning green, too. Sometimes yellow is the only color you see. I took this photo across the street from the post office in the parklike patch of grass next to my dentist's office. I love those big rocks right in the middle of town. And you can still see a little snow on Grand Mesa there in the background.

Spring storm, Palisade, Colorado

Here it is the end of March already. Not all of the trees have leaves, but the globe willows are glorious in their bright pale green. This is some of the first color in the trees each year. I love it. I love the wonderful contrast between our globe willow, the sky, and the Bookcliffs on a day like today.

These are all taken from our front yard on Milleman Street.

The airport again

See the post and barrier in the left corner? This is how you board planes in Grand Junction. You like up at one of the two doors in the airport terminal, and when the plane's ready they let you walk out to the plane. It's kinda cool. You can actually see the person you're picking up when they get off the plane. The planes almost invariably are commuters like this that go to Salt Lake or Denver, then you catch a bigger plane if you're going any distance. The plane may or may not have a bathroom. We learned to be prepared before take-off! Today I'm seeing Kate off. Her visits are never long enough. It's hard to believe I have only the airport pictures and none of her stay (except for steaming a tapir) and none of her. But I've always had trouble taking pictures of people, and at this point I'm not always carrying the camera.

This view is approximately northish from the north side of Grand Junction. The Bookcliffs are long, long, long. I think they stretch into Utah.

Here we're looking more or less east, so we can see Mt. Garfield, then a valley, then Grand Mesa, "the world's biggest flat-topped mountain." It was created only about 10,000 years ago due to volcanoes, and the flat top is a lava flow. The plane is FedEx. It seems to be there most of the time.

Fixing a stuffed tapir's ears. Honest.

No, this is not some nefarious form of tapir torture. Kate and I are fixing the ends of the ears. When they arrive from the importer, the fur is regrettably flattened in some areas and you have to fluff it up to look nice. This is not true of all of the stuffed animals I get for the gift shop, but tapirs are such slow sellers, they sit in the boxes at the importers for a long, long time. We're trying to help make them more known, popular, and in demand. It's quite a job. Meanwhile, for those who know and love tapirs, or are just getting acquainted with them, we want the ears to look nice!

Surreal scenes at the airport

Scenes from the airport in Grand Junction, Colorado. I was picking up Kate for one of her rare and wonderful visits. Kate is magical. Now about the goat: I love the white goat with white pipes. It looks so surreal. It looks like something Robert Rauschenberg would make. Or Duchamp, I don't know. Anyway, did they realize what they were doing? I love it!

I can't explain it. For someone who loves animals, I can also look at them in this condition, maybe just because they are animals. You can get up close and see the detail. Of course, if I'd known the animal alive, I'm sure it would be a completely different story. I've drawn animals that are stuffed and don't move, but I didn't come back to draw these.

I like airports. It doesn't matter much about the size or location. My dad loves them, too. He says it's about the excitement of going somewhere, even if you're not boarding the plane that day. I'm sure that's true. We both have it. And then the bears: It's weird enough seeing stuffed bears in an airport, and the mountain goat up there on a piece of granite, but I also thought the red wheels made a strange juxtaposition with the planes. It may (or may not) be a modern way of doing whatever it is they do (fire extinguishers?), but it looks like a mix of two centuries, and that would be odd. I also wanted to include this photo because it shows Mt. Garfield from the Grand Junction side and gives a hint of how far the Bookcliffs stretch. Palisade is tucked in behind the tail of the plane on the right.

Elvis and the Fax Machine

I don't know why she took to it the way she did, but Elvis loved to lie with her front legs stretched across the feeds of the fax machine. I don't know if she thought she was "mousing" the paper or if it was just comfortable. She has some pretty weird sleeping places, but then she's a cat.

Amazing sky: Palisade, Colorado

Some days you win the jackpot, and this was one of them. What a magnificent storm. All four photos were taken from our house on Milleman Street. Wow.