(If you received this blog by email, you might
want to visit the actual site. The pictures work much better there.
Just click on the title “Spring-ish.”
For
those of you who don’t live in Colorado, spring may have arrived as scheduled.
But here, we’ve been sloshing through weather so un-Colorado-like that folks
are struggling for analogies. It’s like living in Oregon. Or Washington. Or
Michigan. Or a rain forest (although without the heat). A meteorologist on NPR said
something about 5 weeks straight of rain. That’s 5 weeks of one storm after another, with only the
briefest of breaks, like half a day a few times. It's mostly light rain, to be sure. Not the deluges that inundated us September before last. But enough to make us wonder whether we'll reach Colorado's legendary 300 annual days of sunshine this year.
For
folks (like me) who really want to get outside—make that need to get outside—and
for those who live in Colorado precisely because it’s sunny and dry, this sort
of weather is miserable. But it has its good sides. For one thing, we need the moisture—a common refrain whenever it rains (or even
snows) in Colorado. Some areas in the northeastern part of the state have had a year's worth of moisture in the past 5 weeks. And for farmers, this much moisture is likely welcome indeed—though
maybe not for those whose fields are too wet to plant. And
then there’s the gift of the rain-induced impetus to get to the gym for a long-postponed
exploration of aerobics classes—necessary after a winter of sloth-hood
recovering from last fall’s injuries. But the best payoff of all came yesterday
when, for a brief period—maybe half an hour—the sun was out at the same time
that I actually had free time to take an outdoor walk, a very rare experience of
late.
It was delightful. For one thing, nature has proceeded apace with flowers galore—and an occasional mushroom (uncommon in eastern Colorado's high desert climate). A few pictures ...
The birds were glad for the sun, too, and I saw
and heard lots of them—a great blue heron flying over the wetlands, flocks of swallows snatching insects, red-winged blackbirds (“squeaky gate
birds”) calling from the reeds, a kingfisher hovering over the pond and then
rattling to a perch in a small tree, killdeer with their frightened call
taking off from the shoreline. I also got to see the results of over a year’s
careful restoration of wetlands that were destroyed in the floods of September 2013.
The ponds themselves, now lush with growth, and the land nearby green and
flowered, dotted with newly-planted trees.
At one spot, you could see Boulder Creek, which is currently very high from all this rain, spilling into the wetlands—exactly as planned.
I turned back happy with my brief outing—only to see the next round of thick, dark rain clouds rolling in. Nice (lucky) timing, nice respite, nice reminder of the beauty of spring in Colorado … even a very rainy spring.
© Janis
Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to
the post.
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