I've started taking sunshine for granted.

It's so beautiful here all the time that I'm starting not to fully appreciate the beautiful puffy cumulus clouds and intense blues of the picture-perfect summer skies.


I've been thinking of making a separate cooking blog, so I have all the recipes I've tried and liked in one place rather than strewn about this blog. I'm just working on what to name it -- I sort of like "Rhymes with Orange," but I'm not crazy about it. "Hummingbird Belly" is another; it doesn't seem quite perfect, but it's pretty accurate -- Silver always laughs about how I get hungry every two hours. Suggestions?


I also got the most beautiful pair of cowboy boots -- I'll have to post pictures really soon. Yesterday I found a comfy, but pretty worn pair at one of the thrift shops near here. I was a little on the fence about them, and when I came back this morning they were gone. BUT the amazing woman who works in the shoe department there asked me my size, and as it turns out there was an even nicer pair in the back, that had everything that I liked about the first pair. They were also in nicer condition than the first pair and didn't have toes that were quite as pointy (definitely a plus for me). They're a little funny to ride a bike in, but I love them. I'm wearing them right now.


Yesterday afternoon Silver and I drove up into the Medicine Bow mountains in Wyoming. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life, and it was blessedly cool on a hot day in a record-breaking stretch of hot days here. We were up near Mirror Lake and picked wild flowers. We saw a chipmunk that got awfully close to Silver, and a damselfly, and heard some birds that were pretty ticked off at us for sitting in their field. The altitude got to me quite a bit -- it was over 10,000 feet, probably the highest I've ever been except in an airplane, or right around there (Sandia Crest is the highest I know I've been for sure, but this was maybe a little higher).