Mosquitos!

It's finally happened.  All the monsoon rains have made it wet enough that the mosquitoes are making it up from the valley floor to my home's higher location.

Darn!

Fortunately, they have not yet made it to the top of Winiger Ridge, although there are plenty of less hostile insects there.

Pine pollen season over

The ponderosa  pines release their pollen on the first hot spell of the summer. This started about 10 days ago and ended about 3 days ago, at the start of hail season.  What I mean is that it was sunny and hot for a week, without any precipitation. This allowed the pollen to coat everything with a yellowish coat of pollen dust.  Then, 3 days ago, it started hailing every afternoon. This quickly washed the pollen off of everything the hail hit.

Sometimes, a gust of wind will pick up all the pollen at once.  This gives a curious image where a yellowish green shadow of a tree will suddenly drift downwind from the tree that gave rise to it.

At times the pollen in the air will get so thick that you can see waves and waves of it drifting across the country side. Distant mountains will disappear behind clouds of yellow green pollen.

Look carefully at this video and see what I mean:

Hungry Bears Will Do Almost Anything

I recently found a 3 foot half rotten log all torn up right at my favorite hiking spot.

As best as I can figure, a bear tore it up while looking for insects.