Two Hours - That is All I Ask For.

Spring is a risky time of year in Colorado. Snow is always threatening and winds can be brutal but finding a morning of quiet sunshine can make it all worthwhile.
Last week Sue and I took a chance on the weather and went out to her ranch to paint.  The morning looked to be a short one with winds coming up from the south and clouds flying overhead but we took some relative protection along a fence. Cranes flew overhead and landed with in a few yards. We could hear them warble to each other and wondered if they could hear us chatting while we painted.
About 11 we could see the snow really come down over the San Juans to the west, that was our cue to clear out.
Spring is the most difficult time of year to paint but I no longer think of it in terms of good days or bad. I think of the season in terms of a good hour- here or there; chasing weather, or running from it - maybe crouched behind a fence, - what ever it takes to get the job done. A couple of good hours will keep me heartened against a week of wind, dust and snow.
At the top is my take on the view and Sue's directly below.
Click on the photo to view it larger.

Spring in the San Luis Valley

One word describes it: WIND.
The demon wind, the devil wind, the deadly wind. It rattles your teeth, sucks out your breath, your will to live and makes the house shriek and moan like a live thing in the throws of death, one rusty nail at a time. It's enough to make you mental, or worse, wax nostalgic about winter painting when the temps hardly got above 0 for weeks at a time.
May came in like a dove, but I was in Taos, then Durango, then Buena Vista and the last two weeks have been screamers. Now the kids are out of school and any sense of a work schedule went out with the Memorial Day weekend garbage. So it is a small consolation when I wake up to gale force wind and know - I probably couldn't go out anyway.