Thanks for all your kind & understanding comments on Sunday’s post. I appreciate Eberle encouraging me to post that essay very much, & am very gratified by the response. At least a couple of good blogland friends mentioned they’d like to see more of the meadow, so here it goes—actually I ran out of space in the earlier post. Hope you enjoy the rest of the tour, & I hope to post some similar pictures somewhere down the line.
Weenie reconnoitering up by the loafing shed (for those who don't know, a loafing shed is a simple shelter where animals - llamas in this case - can take shelter from the elements).
The loafing shed & part of the corral; the pool cleaning net is for scooping duckweed out of the pond - it actually works pretty well. The shed is open to the east because east winds are rare here; most open shelters in these parts are built in this orientation.
Looking southeast across the pond. The red limbed bushes are a form of willow - it's really quite lovely & useful for those who are handy with it (Eberle made pea trellises from this type of bush). The red limbs are a sure sign of spring.
Llamas are creatures of habit - the well worn trail you see was worn by them going their daily rounds to the upper pasture. Looks like some days they go east, & some d
ays they go west.A gnarly old plum tree about three-quarters of the way up the ridge. The spring that used to feed our old house is near this tree, back in that tangle of underbrush; yes, the old house had gravity-fed water.
Two mulleins growing gamely on the ridge.
Had I stepped back a tad this would have been a better picture. Oh well. This is a plant Eberle calls "beadweed" - for fairly obvious reasons I think. You can see a bit how the ground around the pond is uneven - it's almost "wavy."
Pond surface full of clouds.
& we return to the stile back of our old house. I built the stile several years ago, & kept it pretty steep on the pasture side. We had a lovely old llama named Willie (since gone where the good llamas go) who was a trained pack animal, & I had to get it steep enough to convince him it wasn't a ramp he was supposed to climb.