We've been here for 6 weeks now and I finally ran into my first Elk!
I
actually almost literary ran into them, since they were nearly
invisible where they were laying in the grass, and they didn't notice me
until I was right in front of them either.
But they finally got a whiff of me and although I crouched down immediately, I managed to hit a pine-cone with my shoe and off they went!
It wasn't until than that I noticed many others, it was a big herd, at least about 30 of them!
I only saw one male, the one on this pic, but many cows and calves. Cool!
Although I felt very guilty about disturbing their rest .. I try not to do that with any animals I come across ..
At least these birds were not too bothered by me:
The one on the left is a Western Meadowlark and the one on the right an Eastern Kingbird.
And
this Hawk wasn't so much worried about me, but more about that feisty
Flycatcher that tried to chase him away from his nest/territory.
I finally finished my back-(b)log of our travel adventures from Florida to here! Yeah!
It's
amazing how much time that frees up, and I've picked up several things
that I hadn't done for a while, like Tai Chi and spinning ..
The weather is as steady as it comes, just beautiful warm summer weather (80-85F) and I spent most of my time outside.
Unless I'm baking raspberry scones of course. James insists that I keep those pastries coming!
OK, he works hard for it, I guess .. he's now a part-time farm-hand too:
Here he's scrubbing out the water trough, under the critical eye of a super-visor .. we've got 5 horses in the pasture now, instead of the one when we came up here.
They're fun to watch and they add a lot to the laid back 'country-vibe' around here!
Talking about country, a couple of days ago I opened the door to see this ..
These are only a few of the 25+ steers that stood in the yard, enjoying the nice green lawn, one had even climbed in the flour-bed!
We thought we could wrangle them back to the road they came from by walking up behind them, but the only result was that they spooked, which caused them to stampede (!), and they ended up busting right through the wire fence into the horse pasture!
Oh well, we're not exactly cowboys are we ..
I don't have much else for this week, here's a few pics of the sun going down at the end of the day. Which is getting noticeably earlier already!