Front Range Today; Web of Nature

In the interests of balance, full disclosure, et al., here's a picture of the status quo today. I noticed, putting together the slide show in the sidebar last week, that I have a tendency to take pictures when it's wintry, or green and foggy or drizzly—all the days that are a little out of the ordinary. Well, here's the ordinary. We do, it's true, have a lot of brown. Guess that's why I'm given to photographing the green and white!

Before you get to feeling too sorry for us, I just came in from the back patio, where I was basking in 70 degree sunshine. The official temperature, absent such a protected location, is 62 F (17 C). I'm not complaining—this is the "other" typical weather for the Front Range this time of year. Sometimes our January days are more pleasant than those in March! But they are mostly brown.

I just discovered that the new edition of the Tangled Bank carnival (#97) is up over at The Inoculated Mind, featuring our post on alpine wildflowers, Life on a Cushion. FF is a little late to the party, but thanks TIM, for including us!

Reading around...

In other happy news, while getting reacquainted with the blogosphere of nature, I've made several delightful discoveries, many of which you'll find in the sidebar. As in the ecosystem, it's all about connections. Some of my regularly read blogs introduced me to

Fragments from Floyd,

who introduced me to Via Negativa,

who introduced me to naturalist-writer Marcia Bonta, and so on.

Fred also alerted me to the Nature Blog Network, on which FF is now listed. Which in turn informed me that there's a new carnival for plant lovers at Berry Go Round, the first edition of which is posted at Seedsaside.

You get the picture. It's one giant web of life and energy out there. Drop in and enjoy!