Biking on Catharine's Birthday

Bike Path Haiku
 
Blue sky, 
nice clouds, 
no long underwear



Lolo to Florence 
for gelato!

North Hills

 
                     

Great to see flowers 
we haven't seen yet this spring!


Out on the North Hills 
this afternoon 
we saw phlox,





 







lupine,  






 










and delphinium/larkspur 
(not quite open yet).

We also looked 
across the interstate 
to see the ball field 
and St. Mary's Cemetery 
(just over the crest of the hill).

                         

Windy April Afternoon

It was so windy at the saddle that we almost couldn't hear each other's voices, but then south of there, up in the trees, things calmed down.  



On a quick walk today we saw the peaks to the north, bluebirds, and shooting stars (Dodecatheon pulchellum).

Traveling at Home

Even in a dim, homely photo one of our happy places seems shiny in its own way.  This neighborhood trail takes us past favorite ponderosas and pretty directly to the saddle.



Being home, watching the fescue green up, seeing the first yellow in the silvery balsamroot petals, looking for the next flower to sprout by the saddle, and listening for the next returning songbird provide happiness and satisfaction. 

There have been snow squalls of the blowing-sideways variety recently, and I have covered the dicentra for the last two nights.  It was 19 F when I went out for the paper this morning.  Still, the towhees are back with their screen-door-spring call.

Some More Early Flowers

 The douglasia (Douglasia montana) popped open first, but today the biscuitroot (Lomatium cous) are blooming as well on the gravelly part of the saddle.  

I read in Schiemann’s Wildflowers of Montana that Meriwether Lewis wrote of the use of the biscuitroot’s root to make flour and collected specimens in 1806.

The Wyoming kittentails (Besseya wyomingensis) are just starting to bloom today on the saddle, too.

It was a good day to crawl around in the gravel and look around.

Early, Small, Temporary Spring

There’s a little snow in the week’s forecast, but it has been beautiful for a run of days—lows in the 30s, highs in the mid-60s, sunny blue skies—leading us to bike, look for Richard Hugo’s grave, and check to see how nearby plants are doing.

We returned from our first biking of the year feeling strong and very grateful for our strength and nice bikes.  Eric got his new bike for his birthday last year.  Mine is still the early-80s-vintage, new-old treasure that I bought in Tucson and then moved from garage to garage around the country but didn’t ride much.  We feel like kids again on our bikes.  Missoula has good places to bike; we started this year by flying down the hill and over to St. Mary’s Cemetery.

Richard Hugo’s grave is in St. Mary’s, just north of a baseball field, just below the North Hills.  The stone has words on it from his poem “Glen Uig.” 

Richard Hugo

1923-1982

Believe you and I sing tiny

and wise and could if we had to

eat stone and go on. 

Yesterday a white ceramic crock of flowers and a Trader Joe’s gift card were there.

looking north

looking west

  

The Alice Kane dicentra by the kitchen have sprouted.   

Yellow fritillaries (fritillaria pudica) bloom along the lower dirt-road part of the saddle trail, and

the first signs of balsamroot have appeared there, too. 

Tiny mats of douglasia bloom in the gravel up at the saddle.

And there are other signs of spring.