The day after Denver was rife with allergies. The next, somewhat better, began a saga of ceiling patching around the stovepipe but also brought the sad news that Lola, fifteen years the

faithful companion to Luz and Christine from well before Izel, had left this mortal sphere.          L. is here depicted scrolling through Luz’ images of her as dogs commiserate:

Saturday morning meant more mudding before Gardner, the Walsenburg dump, Safeway and finally the Habib to break up branches never collected by our erstwile/disappeared yardcleaner and stuff them into the truck before belatedly continuing to La Veta [at the base of distant Huajatollas below, right] for a wonderfully relaxed lunch of Indian foods on Adrienne and Mary’s porch with good friends Michael and Nancy…

Somehow midday festivities leave one fairly useless the rest of the day these days but a Sunday

recovery allowed at least a last mudding, a sighting of the little Sprout up the hill, all the usual

walks and the patches painted just before the temperature plummeted to a point requiring

the stove’s resuscitation.  On a chilly cloudy 28th, Linda’s 75th birthday, we set off in ephemeral flurries of corn snow to make the once-daily-now-infrequent ascent to the Lone Pine

in celebration.  It turned into a gorgeous morning allowing L. to contemplate over half

a century in and overlooking this landscape after which we duly descended

from the Lone Pine

past Dazzle’s Last Stick

and “the steps” to

lunch [not shown], followed by a relaxed afternoon of ‘ordinary pursuits’.

We dined by candlelight that evening, two of said candles having survived L.’s breezy 70th

in Benicia...a propitious entry into our next quarter century.  We hope.

I presented her with the only thing I’ve finished all summer, a summer long gone…

What the next quarter portends remains more than a little uncertain although the immediate

subsequent autumnal days brought the brightest best blue skies so far which, combined with the angle of the light, reinforced the conviction that my pre-Covid cataract surgeries were

well worth the trouble.

Sumi thinks similarly; the better to see her with.