The wildfire haze that blanketed Monte Vista brought us a week of striking, otherworldly sunrises. Even with the geese flying through clouds lit in vibrant oranges and purples, the beauty is bittersweet. We were aware, each morning, that this light came at a cost. The fires in Arizona and Utah...

I didn’t have much energy, so I sat quietly and watched the blackbirds. Thousands of them, red and yellow all mixed together, but I was waiting for just those three redwings to line up perfectly. While I waited, you spotted the marsh wren—and I loved that I captured him too.

We almost never saw another vehicle on the refuge, except when the sandhill cranes arrived. But on this Monday we did see another vehicle. While I was taking photos of this wonderful little night heron that we always looked for, they drove by and we know they never saw him.

At MVNWR, I gasped and you stopped. Two big buck deer and a doe just past the entrance watched us, and we moved on without disturbing them. A minute later, the great blue heron had to leave as soon as he saw me. It was still fairly dark and he was on the other side of the lake.

We took the road in the previous October and it was snowed in, and we waited until August because even in July some of our jeep trails would still not be open, and by September it could be dangerous again. It was all we had wished for, and we made it on a gorgeous blue-sky day.

We had a break from 100 degree temperatures, but our visitors were gone. I was surprised to hear a chickadee and even got a photo of one, but every day, even with temperatures in the 80s birds and bunnies were few and far between, and most hurried off. Humidity was 17%.

So nice to see you again! Always so appreciate your support! :heartpumpred::waving3:

Each year the greenhouse had very few cannas when we got there, so we went earlier this year. We picked red ones, and the only ones there had bronze foliage. Each year the cannas surprised us, and this year we got through most of July with only pea-sized hail. The colors were amazing!

Kate's chiari surgery has her getting daily seizures now, some as much as 15 minutes. I told her BFF to tell her Happy Birthday for me because I can't get through, and this is her reply: She will be told. She got up today by herself and ended up having a seizure and falling down. They switched...

A few iris flowers bloomed in the area that had been a bog a few years back. I remembered going out into the field and turning my travel shoes into spares when it was unexpectedly soggy. There had been dozens of plants but we were thankful to see at least a few survived the drought.

A new bird for the trail camera in mid-July: the pine siskin. And after a violent hailstorm without damage, there were more visits to the feeders when the daily highs dropped back into the 70s. I didn't know if we had more monsoons or it was just that I could see each one on the camera.

Even hundreds of yards away, I could tell the little speck of white on the far shore moved like an avocet, so I took many dozens of photos. It was weeks later, when I had sifted through them all, I settled on my favorite. It was the one with the bonus of a whole family of cinnamon teal ducks.

I was fascinated by the iridescent colors of the grackles, and they came in large groups and reminded me of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. The look when there was no food was spooky. What changed my mind about these heat-tolerant birds, was watching them feed their big babies.

We got to the refuge exactly at sunrise, but the morning started out moody and dark. A little bit of fog was coming off the first little lake. My happy place— where yellow-headed blackbirds would be singing long before sunrise, and it was a joy to capture photos with so little daylight.

The mallards left the water and were out of view, as soon as they saw me. We watched the line of geese, and I loved seeing them swimming past the hardstem bulrushes, a wetlands favorite of mine. On the trip back to the hotel, I became a huge fan of the Rocky Mountain beeplant.