The predicted foot of snow turned out to be about three inches of snow, or maybe it was a foot and melted so fast that only three inches were left.
The dog, of course, insisted on going for a walk in blowing snow, but since it wasn’t very cold, it wasn’t too horrible. As we turned to go on the canal road, there was another canine making its way along the fence line toward us. Chess finally saw the coyote, and it saw Chess. We went on our way; the coyote found something in the grass that it thought was interesting. Or maybe edible.

Looking northwest. The conifer on the extreme left, with branches hanging down, was purchased as Pinus pumila, which is a low growing thing; it’s something else, and I don’t know what. Next is Abies lasiocarpa var. arizonica ‘Glauca Compacta’ (or some combination of names close to that), and then the tied-up Picea pungens ‘Fastigiata’, which is tied up just for snows like this one was predicted to be. Heavy snow bends the branches and spoils the upright look.

Otherwise, there’s next to nothing going on. More echinocereus have germinated under lights, but out of 21 pots sowed, only one-third have germinated seed in them; the rest are just sitting there. I only sowed about ten seeds per pot; the packets came with 40 seeds each and I thought I would treat the rest with GA-3 and then sow them under lights, later. The ungerminated pots in this first venture can be set outside for germination in June of 2014. This might be too much patience even for me. But these are mostly Echinocereus coccineus, and the Alplains catalog described flowers of purple trumpets, peach trumpets, orange, yellow, white. I want them all. And I want lots of them.

A boring snow movie. I got frustrated trying to get pictures of the downy woodpecker and the white-breasted nuthatch at the suet feeder, so just made this little movie. The old park bench came from an antique store up in Morrison.