I love my current bicycle commute along the Cache La Poudre River in Fort Collins, Colorado. A while back I thought I’d like to have some pictures of it, especially as the seasons change, to remember it by. This is the first execution of that idea. There’s a hot air balloon above the horizon. It…

I can’t remember much about my first one, but at this one lots of tots got to compete for the good toys while the bigger, slower folks stuffed their faces with extra-garlicy hummus, fruit & veggies, and carrot cupcakes. The boy of honor, Dyson, seemed a little indifferent toward his presents, but his parents were…

These bright red, berry-like fruits have been abundant everywhere we’ve hiked in the past month. I’ve sampled a few, and they’ve been slightly sweet and mealy so far, but supposedly they improve with a frost or two. I’ve seen so many I’ve considered harvesting a bag to see if they make good snacks dried. Know…

You may not know that all the writing on the hobolog has been run through a language filter that translates the content to be “appropriate for good clean american families with a mid-sized vocabulary.” If you want to see what the original content looks like, use this link, but don’t blame me if you find…

These attractive berries have been abundant everywhere we’ve hiked in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming recently. They look tasty, but most of them have a strong astringent flavor. The seeds and leaves can be mildly toxic and shouldn’t be eaten. Dried, the berries were a distinctive ingredient of pemmican.

I’ve been seeing these in the Northern Colorado foothills for a few weeks. They tend to appear in thick stands, usually not too far from water. Thanks again to Al Schneider from www.swcoloradowildflowers.com for the help identifiying this one, though I don’t think there’s an example on his site yet. He said it’s minty –…

The first book I’ve read in a while that fizzled for me – at least it’s short. This is a little fairy tale along the lines of A Christmas Carol, where people from the character’s life show it to him from different angles. Seemed to me like it’s been done already.

I guessed that these scrumptious-looking berries were probably edible, because when I broke one open the small round seed looked just like the ones in a big pile of bear scat we saw near Greyrock a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t try them, of course. There are a lot of berries in the upper…

We saw this plant growing by the trail on Long’s Peak just above timberline. It has me stumped so far. I have a guess as to the family it belongs to, but I can’t find anything that seems like a good match in my usual resources. This specimen was nearly three feet tall, and there…