Interesting day

After a heavy rain during the night there was a very light rain this morning and I found several more flowers blooming near the river.

Holboell’s rockcress, Boechera pendulocarpa ~ Arabis holboellii

Narrow-leaved Desert Parsley, Lomatium triternatum

And a member of the Saxifrage family that I have seen before but just now identified.

Peak Saxifrage, Micranthes nidifica

Soon after these photos were take it began to snow…. hard! Five hours later and after about five inches of heavy, wet snow it looked like this:

After taking the previous photo I headed back to the house, then instead of going in, decided to hike down near the river and perhaps get an interesting photo in the storm. On the way, about a quarter of a mile from the house I heard a loud crack and looked toward the sound just in time to see a large dead pine tree fall across the highway. I headed straight for it to stop and direct traffic and perhaps remove enough of the tree to permit traffic flow. There was too much tree on the road, but a pickup stopped and two men got out to help, leaving their truck with flashers on to block the lane that was completely blocked by the tree. I jogged back to the house for my chain saw while they directed traffic. When I returned it took just a few minutes for the three of us to cut enough of the tree to clear the roadway and get traffic moving again. I’m glad the tree didn’t wait until dark to fall!

An interesting day!