Sangre is nearly over!

Dear All,

Just a little blog this week. We'll be going to Bandelier on Wednesday, so that will probably feature in the final blog. Time is getting pressured. There are farewells, and sorting, and ......... I'll leave the rest to your imagination. Thank God, we still have 'Desert Days' and last week I went on a walk along the Green Trail to the En Medio Trail, which is a public one. It was beautifully green because there had been rain.

1) It was delightful on the Green Trail2) Finally I reached En Medio - you can see the stream in the background.
3) Crossing the stream (4 times) was a bit of a problem after the overnight rain. The first one I took my shoes off (BRRRRRR!). After that I used balance sticks and even then, I had to throw this tree in to give a bit more to stand on. The rocks were pretty submerged.
I continued on - you can see how clearly defined the path was. The greening scenery was really lovely. I was in my seventh heaven.

1) Every corner revealed a new vista 2) Look at these beatifuly twisted trees! 3) This was actually earlier on the green trail in the Ponderosa forest. I had lunch there. Saw a group of squirrels with wide, furry tails, chasing each other up and down and through the pines. They were too intent on what was probably a mating activity, to be worried about me. They were too high up and too fast to photograph.

With Spring trying to arrive (we had snow yesterday and today in little bursts, but much on the mountains) the wildflowers are coming out all over the place. I haven't looked up the names of these (some of them are from others' photos) but you can admire the ones below:

You can probably give the flowers names of your own! The little daisies on the left immediately above become very profuse in the near future. The little yellow daisies/dandelions are presently profuse and you can see there are a couple of varieties. Then there are the little red flowers - a bit like miniature Bird of Paridise flowers, and the purple bells. The last picture shows some brilliant red fungus I saw growing on several pinon trees. That picture should enlarge if you click on it.

Finally comes my 'masterpiece' - the watercolour from the final Lesson. We were given free choice to bring a picture we would like to copy and Joe vetted them to see if we were being too ambitious. I had photographed a picture in a gallery which I fancied, and wanted to do that. Joe was a bit alarmed, but promised to simplify it, and it worked out OK. I changed a few things eg. removed some of the houses on the hill and replaced them with trees; put sails on the boats. Someone suggested (seriously!!!!!) that I take up painting as a living!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In my spare time.

That's enough for this week. I hope this finds everyone well and in fine form. I think I am only allowed 25 postings on a blogsite, so I must be coming to the end of my little canter. Perhaps I will start a new blog for the European leg of my trip - and perhaps it will be too difficult to get onto a computer to do anything. All will be revealed.

Bye for this week. Rita