It is that time of year again! I love the hunt for wildflowers, seeing my “old friends” and meeting new ones. Desert biscuitroot is an old acquaintance. We weren’t quite friends, since I had to look him up in my field guide. 
Category Archives: Photography
A lingering look at life
Pasqueflower Gallery
Check out my new gallery of pasqueflower photos!
I’ve been taking pictures of pasques for a few years now, so I decided it was a good time (with a winter storm flurrying outside) to compile a gallery of my favorites from over the years. Enjoy!
Signs of Spring
For about the last week, we’ve all been bracing for a spring storm, which rolled into the area in the early morning hours today. Schools and businesses are closed, parts of I-90 are closing, and everyone has hunkered down to wait out what is supposed to be a brutal spring snowstorm. We’ll see if it meets with expectations. But yesterday was the calm before the storm. We had warm temperatures, gentle breezes in the morning, overcast skies. It was hard to imagine a winter storm was on the heels of the springlike weather. I had some free time in between a doctor’s appointment and my first piano lessons, so I zipped on over to Buzzard’s Roost, a hiking and mountain biking area about 7 miles outside of Rapid City. And I knew from last year it is a great spot for pasque flowers.
Spring is here. Winter is just reluctant to head out the door.
Ember
One year (plus a little) ago, Anna gifted me with the sweetest gift anyone has ever given me, the little cat, Ember. The spontaneity is part of what made the gift so sweet. But Ember was a creature Anna knew I would love. And she was so right.
When she first became mine, she was a flighty, timid little thing that I doubted would ever be a house pet. She was scared of everything, scared of the dogs, scared of the ordeal of getting past the dogs to come into the house, scared of any sudden movement, etc., etc., etc. So I also doubted that she would ever be my cat, in the sense that she would respond particularly to me. Now, cats aren’t exactly lauded for their human bonds and really have kind of a reputation in the other direction, but over the months, Ember has become very specifically my cat. Enough so that she went on a hunger strike while I was in Alaska over the summer, and the tiny cat became the emaciated cat. She’s better now.
What a transformation little Ember has undergone! She went from being a stand-off-ish, aloof creature, to being a lively member of our small household. 
I love waking up to find her curled up in a little ball in the crook of my knees, or sleeping right on my chest. Frequently she is awake before I am, but as soon as she hears me moving around, she comes up the ladder into the loft, talking and chattering, and begs for attention. She has become a study buddy for some online classes I’ve been taking, and a movie-watching buddy on sister night. She keeps me company when I’m folding laundry, or cooking, or reading, and has her favorite places she likes to hide. She comes to her name, loves to talk, and if she happens to be inside when I get home, she greets me eagerly. What a darling.
People who don’t like cats just haven’t met the right one.
Last Year’s Bergamot
In the springtime snow, these heads of last year’s wild bergamot caught my eye.
Simple beauty.
The Hunt for Spring
The hunt began a week ago. I prowled around a certain hilltop about a mile’s hike from my house, a certain spot for pasque flowers. They grew there in abundance last spring, and I just knew I’d find them there again this year. The first two hunts, in spite of the warm weather, turned up nothing. But today, in spite of the snow and fog and freezing temps, turned up tiny, fuzzy, baby pasque flowers. They were nestled in beds of pine needles, almost invisible. I gently untucked them, took a few pictures, and re-tucked them in. They stood probably about an inch and a half high, or less.
“Just one, LORD,” I had prayed, smiling, wading through last years grasses, following deer trails up one hill and another, through clearings and stands of snow-covered juniper and pine to get to my hill. “Let me find just one.”
He let me find four.
Song Dog Journal 