It's happening outside

My boys and I arrived late Friday night at my mom's house in northern new Mexico. We gave her a bouquet of flowers and some birthday presents. Of course, we sang Happy Birthday and watched her blow out the candles on her birthday cake. Then we headed up to my cabin for the night. We are welcome to stay with my mom but I love my little cabin at the top of the mountain.

When we unlocked the shutters on the windows in the morning we saw my lodger sleeping under the window boards. He takes a little while to wake up. Then he flys away for the time we are at the cabin but he comes back when we leave.
We had egg burritos with sausage, green peppers, cheese and salsa and freshly brewed coffee for breakfast. Then it was time for a little work.
A couple of years ago my husband cut an enormous pine tree down that was growing too near the cabin. This was taken last fall and it doesn't do it justice. The tree is much bigger than it looks. The base is easily 2 feet across. This is a view of THE TREE from inside my cabin. This is the upper part. You can see how close it is to the cabin. If it had fallen wrong it would have taken down the cabin.It still needs to be cut up for firewood. Ross is quite handy with a chainsaw so he went to work at it. However, our big chainsaw wasn't acting properly and the small one wasn't big enough to do the job so we only got the upper branches cut up on this trip. It was still a pretty good load to bring home. Here he is trying to figure out what to do with the blasted chainsaw!After the woodcutting, Ross wanted to have some fun, so he went fishing at one of the little ponds down at the bottom of the mountain. I joined him for a while but he wasn't having any luck at all.

I decided to go for a walk near my cabin. I only made it to the field next door but I took lots and lots of photos.

This vine was growing up through a pine tree. Does anyone know what kind of plant it is?

I love how the rocks are mossy and the trees grow all around them. It rained a few days earlier and this rock still had a puddle of water in it. This is a four foot high boulder that I climbed on.
Does anyone know what this cute little vine is called?
Look at all these young pine trees! They're all about 2-4 feet tall.

I love how all these branches are so crooked. Unfortunately, they look like dead trees so we'll need to take them down.
This pretty pine tree is growing up through the branches of the other trees.The ranchers were very creative in the old days, using anything they could for fencing.

There is a whole art on barbed wire. Every rancher twisted his a little bit differently.
I came across some scat, a lot of scat actually! This pile was huge!!! This is only a few hundred yards from my cabin. Seeing that, and then another pile near it, I decided it was time to return to my cabin.

Later in the day, my boys were driving away from my mom's house at the bottom of the hill and they saw a black bear run across the road in front of the truck. It was huge, they said, 300-400 pounds! Judging from the pile of scat I saw, I would agree.

Here's a picture of Trevor, kicking back and enjoying the cabin.

Soon it was time to go home again. Always, too soon!

FYI- I spoke with my mom yesterday and she saw the bear walking near her yard. She agreed that it was big! And the other day, she saw a hawk circling around near her Pug dog. He must have decided that Tobey is too big because he gave up and left. There are eagles in the area though so I guess she needs to keep an eye out for Tobey when he's outside now.

It's happening outside- song: Outside, artist: David Bowie, album: Outside