Small and colorful blessings...

Yesterday was a slightly craptastic morning. I had to run one of those lousy errands...a trip to the tire store for new tires for my car. **Poof** to $500+; don't we all hate it when that happens even when we know it's coming? Of course by the time I was done at the tire shop I was rather late for work. Working for the University means parking is at a premium, so arriving much past 9 am can be parking problematic. Even if you've purchased a $200+/year staff parking pass a parking spot can be elusive.

After cruising my two, first choice, late arrival lots and finding nada I realized I was screwed and headed out and around campus to the far north end where I've heard rumors that there are always spaces in the engineering lot. And, thankfully, there were. Nothing like adding at least a half an hour to the morning commute, but at least I got to park, even if it was in Zimbabwe... **sigh**

Along with the inconvenience and expensive came a few nice additions to my day. I got to take a nice walk through a 'foreign' neighborhood while my car was being worked on, and I came across some lovely morning glories rambling over someone's fence. Later, while walking to Zimbabwe for my car after work I passed the most delightfully colored roses in a campus garden I never would have otherwise walked by. Flowers always make my day, and the lighting was nice... So here is the reason why I always like to carry my camera!

Tulip Time

Saturday I headed down to Thanksgiving Point for their annual Tulip Festival. It was beautiful blue sky day, and tulip nirvana for sure. I'd say more, but I think the pictures speak for themselves!

Wednesday evening hiking!

You know you are awfully luckily when you can head out after work with a bunch of friends, and hike to the top of the world. Tonight's hike was to the Twin Peaks of the Avenues. It was rainy and overcast all day,but lucky for us the weather cleared and gave us a lovely hiking evening. It wasn't a long hike, but the 1000 foot elevation gain made it a little work to get to the top. The views made it all worth while, and I was thrilled to see my first Indian Paintbrush of the year. Hiking season is off to a great start.

Back to my roots

A fun little weekend diversion...A trip to Red Butte Gardens for Utah Orchid Society show. Lucky for me my friend and pottery instructor Dave was displaying his magnificent ceramic planters at the show and invited us pottery peeps to attend. Not that you can tell by ragtag collection of house plants, but once upon a time ago I got few degrees in botany, so I am great appreciator of interesting plants and plant diversity.

Everyone loves orchids, right? Ok...Nerd alert here... the Orchidaceae family is a huge plant family, one of the 2 largest families of plants, the other being the Asteraceae (daisies etc.) Being such a big family, it is not too surprising that there's a great diversity of flowers types and colors, but since we are most often exposed to the handful of orchid types commonly sold in department stores and garden centers the rarer specialty varieties on display at an Orchid show were really quite a treat. There were plenty of varieties I was not at all familiar with, with interesting flowers, amazing vibrant colors, and in some cases amazing fragrances. As you can see, it was quite a feast for the eyes!!!








Dave's marvelous planters. You can see some better pictures of his work here.

To the snow zone again...

Took another little hike up the Millcreek road today... wanted to see how much snow melted since we finally had a few warm days. Quite a bit of the road cleared the last five days, so I walked a bit further than last time, enjoying the sunshine and taking lots of pictures of the little things along the way....






One of the bigger snow banks...


The same spot 5 days ago... quite a bit has melted

Pretty and amusing....

The pretty.... a few spring photos. Usually I would have taken lots of pretty spring pictures, but since we have had a total monsoon spring, I have not gotten out with my camera very much. Heck it even snowed here on Tuesday.

But here is my amusement for the week. My horoscope again. As I have said here before I am always fascinated when I have the "accurate" horoscope coincidence. And no, I'm not really a "believer", I don't even regularly check my 'scope. But when I do, I prefer to do it backwards. That is, look at my horoscope for previous days and see if they actually match the days events. Much more interesting then reading the prediction for the day and potentially biasing the result. I also have a strict never read ahead rule, for exactly the same reason.

So yesterday I opened up my horoscope and then read Thursdays horoscope:

Your gift of gab is greater than ever today, so do the world a favor and talk to as many people as you can. Conversations about anything -- from the weather to your deepest hopes and dreams -- are going to keep you interested, intrigued and popular. This is a great day to talk to strangers, too, so don't limit yourself to the folks who are already listed in your address book. Shock a stranger by asking what his or her favorite Rolling Stones song is.

On Thursday after work I had to drop my car off for an inspection. My mechanic is not far from home, so I let Daisy hop in the car with me, dropped my car off and then we walked home. As usual we meandered through the park. It had just rained so the park was quiet, not many dogs friend for poor Daisy. Leaving the park we ran in to Layla and her owner. This ended up being my moment to use my "gift of gab" with a total stranger. Daisy's dog friendly moment turned into a 20 minute conversation between me and her owner, a flight attendant, (for my single girlfriends, a really cute flight attendant!) who had just returned from visiting his family... in Paris! Interestingly coincidental, as my son is currently living in Paris, and I spent 2 weeks there at Christmas, so it turned we had plenty to talk about. So it seems that my horoscope was right on for the day, it was a good day to talk to strangers. It even solved a mystery for me... I had always wondered who owned the house by the park with the golf green for a front yard... and now I know.


And back to the amusing... here's view from my window at work Tuesday... yup, snow on May 17....

Flip flop

Flip flip of the weather that is.... to nearly flip flop weather. So you saw all that snow on Tuesday... well 3 days later ***poof***, aside from a few patches here and there, it's gone. The weather was in the 50's today, sunny and spring like. And look what I found in my front yard when I came home from work this afternoon! My first crocus!

Yup, I do still make beads....

I decided to do some gardening in glass....
Flowers! You can never have too many flowers!

Watch Me Create!

Wow. I can tell it's summertime... I've been too busy (hiking, biking, socializing) to keep up with my blogging.... guess I'll be posting some retro-blogs soon.

Meanwhile, today you can find me entertaining teenagers over on Watch Me Create!

Hiking again... Alexander Basin

Today I hiked with the Wasatch Hiking Meetup Group up to Alexander Basin In Millcreek Canyon. This hike was not for the faint of heart. It wasn't very long, only a mile and a half up to the basin,but it was steep, but about a 1300 ft elevation gain. This trail went pretty much straight up the hill with hardly any switch backs. And I mean UP! It was definitely humbling for me, as I was the slow one in the group, something that I'm usually not. Proof I really need to loose the extra weight I guess(or shave off some years as I always seem to be the "old" one in the group)

The wild flowers were incredible, and we got to see a great big bull moose!





This shot reminds me of the ending scene from "The Sound of Music"


Look close there's a moose in there!


Some wildlower pictures of course!