A week ago Sunday, just one night in my own house, I went tired – exhausted actually – from travel, emotion, getting settled… and sore from chronic back stuff that is slowly coming around – to visit my friend Kris. She and her husband, Hal, have been building their current home over the last several years while living with Kris’ mother so as to allow her to remain in her own home. Kris’s mother has since passed on and that house is for sale – Kris and Hal are now in their new home on a secluded and beautiful piece of land with gorgeous larch and aspen, magnificent views of the mountains and ravens…

I don’t remember my back hurting after I stepped out of the Jeep, smelled the pine, felt the soft breeze and looked at the mountains through the trees. We took a walk around with the dogs, Arrow and Karl, before even going in the house….then sat in the light filled living room that looks to those same mountain views and talked…another walk with the dogs in a different direction. I drove home refreshed after visiting with my friend.

I don’t know what they are calling the Crayola crayon colors for the blue of a clear blue sky or the bright green of new spring grass, but I can picture the box of crayons…you know that big box of 64 with the sharpener on the back of the box. And I can smell that new crayon smell…

Yesterday afternoon the vivid blue of the sky and the bright green of the new grass (hay and alfalfa) – with the mountains and trees and houses – this sea of blue and green on my road home – it reminded me of those bright, clear colors and a brand new box of crayons.

Skywatch Friday which is hosted by Tom Wigley on his blog Wiggers World

Northern Light…not “lights” – I would LOVE to get a photo worthy of posting of the Aurora Borealis, which I have seen only once…but this post is about Northern Light which at my latitude of 48 North means sunrise at 5:50 and sunset at 9:11 and another month to go until the Summer Equinox so sunrise is ever earlier and sunset ever later until at the equinox there is light in the sky as late as 11 p.m. and as early as 4 a.m. … really, we have no need for Daylight Saving Time here – enough of the daylight already!!!

**added Note on 5/17 Northern Lights are the Aurora Borealis…I am using “Northern Light” to refer to the extended daylight we have in the north during the summer… sorry for any misunderstanding, I probably shouldn’t have capitalized it either…

But, yesterday morning very early and me, too impatient to get a tripod, but looking at a beautiful dawn about to happen, well, see for yourself…

And much later yesterday – 8:45 p.m. U.S. Mountain Daylight time – the setting sun with no clouds to block its rays, shines on the top of the trees casting them in gold…

And a bit of follow up… Mental Pause Mama and my friend Kris identified the bird in the Pond Post as a Yellow Headed Blackbird. See the original post for more….