Morning in Monte Vista

Morning in Monte Vista
11" x 14" Oil
$295.00 + $10. s/h

This is another landscape from our trip in March to the Monte Vista Crane Festival.  I painted it after the trip from a photo.  I love the late winter colors of the grasses.  I'm sure that now it would be beautiful greens.  The area is full of marshes, so there's not a problem with lack of rain and dry, ochre grasses that we often have.

This week in our front yard:

We left the garage door open, which we almost never do, and the deer came right in!  She just meandered away when I came out and looked at me as if I was bothering her!  

Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge

Wildlife Refuge
11" x 14" Oil
SOLD

This is the same spot as the last post, although in this one I left out all the Refuge visitors!

This area was historically an agricultural area and water is intensively managed on the Refuge.  Irrigation includes numerous dikes and other water control structures that provide water to many divers wetland habitats ranging from shallow wet meadows to open water.  The Refuge includes pumped wells, Artensian wells and irrigation canals some dating to the 1880's.

Here you can see some of the sandhill cranes having breakfast.

Majestic Migration

In Flight
6" x 6" oil on panel
$100.00  $10. s/h

SOLD

Last month my husband and I went to Monte Vista, Colorado, in the southern part of the state, to see the sandhill crane migration.  During the month of March 20 - 25,000 cranes migrate through, and spend a good part of the month loading up on fuel in preparation for the continuation of the flight north.   At any given time there are about 10,000 - 11,000 greater sandhill cranes at the Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge.

They say that the cranes have been stopping off in the the San Luis Valley for millions of years.  On a cliff southwest of Monte Vista is a well protected six foot petroglyph of a crane.  This tells us that even 2,000 years ago man was anticipating the annual return of the sandhill cranes.