they paved paradise, and put up a parking lot. . . NOT

Joni's been right far too often over the last 30 years or so, but not this time. It's just a little parking lot! and not paved, and much needed. I went out to Clear Creek when I had a spare 45 minutes, to take a quick walk and stretch my legs, enjoy some fresh 70° air. I discovered a pair of utility guys putting in a pipe-framed fence inside the Collins gate, fencing an area big enough for maybe 8 cars to park. It will have a pedestrian gap in the corner, and a gate for maintenance vehicles. Hurray! No more parking with your tail end barely off Collins and climbing the gate.


They said I wouldn't be in the way parking there for half an hour, so I walked on over to the area that probably used to be a gravel pit, to look down into what we were calling the Secret Pond last year. No surprise, no water. I flushed a couple of doves out of the brush; I suppose they were Mourning Doves. I'm not used to having to look to see whether they might be White-winged or Inca Doves, since when I was a kid Mourning Doves were all we had around here.
There is a bluebird house mounted just west of the overlook down into the Secret Ex-Pond. I need to find out whether it is OK to frequently walk in the neighborhood of nest boxes, or whether you should stay away from them. I was hoping to make a little mowed trail to the overlook.

On the way back I found a fairly dense stand of dried Eryngium (Purple Thistle) -- not a thistle at all, despite the prickles, but a member of the carrot family! They don't seem to have been harmed by the drought. One wonders how they were able to make all those flowering heads. Though that was back in September or October that they flowered, and while the drought was serious then, it was the almost complete lack of rain also in November and December that has really gotten it to disaster stage.