BREAKING THROUGH — my favorite sculpture at the University — cowboy on a bronco is a symbol of Wyoming, but a woman rides this horse — symbolizing that women had the right tow vote here since 1869.

One could barely make it on cross-country skis on March 30.

As I already eluded to, winter ended as planned, on the first day of spring. That was well, for right the next Friday, on 25th, Tom and I drove to the University again, this time to enroll him. The University is located relative to our home through a 8,500 ft high mountain pass (incidentally the highest spot on Interstate 80, which spans the continent), and on a bad weather day the freeway tends to be closed. However, forecast promised a spring day, so I put on a thin soft-shell jacket — which marked me a Californian spoilt rotten, since balmy fifty five degrees inspired many a local to show up in shorts or light summer dresses. Our instructions suggested comfortable clothing and to expect much walking. I thought that they were just exaggerating, but they were right — our parking was a the sports stadium, (everywhere else on the campus only with a permit), a presentation took place in rooms under the stands, but then we really walked across the whole campus to the main building, into one of the lecture hall. We got an option to hop on a shuttle, but face masks were required and really — we could not waste such a beautiful WARM spring day.

Four days later one could lose one's skis there.

Some ice was still visible at Hidden Falls in mid-April.

Enrollment day applied to all accepted students, and so information given that day repeated somewhat from our previous visits. For Tom, the most important block was a meeting with his study counselor, where he was be able to start picking and signing up for lessons that he would need in his studies. For us, that block was scheduled for afternoon — so after introduction we went truculant —instead of participating in our 4th repeat of a campus tour — we had lunch in a local sushi place. Thus we piled on an extra "town tour" — as it was nine block northward to our car, but elevent blocks southward to the restaurant, which came out about even.

I did get to walk more that I had expected in the end, and I was rather glad for my spring jacket — I would have likely felt chilly in summer clothes. After lunch, Tom sat down with the counselor, signed up for some elementary classes, with the next round coming in May when they set up all majors. It's important that his access to the school system and registration works for him, and he's got somebody to turn to when the system does not cooperate. In the meantime, we the parents were shown workshops and labs. This being technical college and most boys' parents being mothers, it was rather funny — workshops chiefs showed us magnificent machines (I was particularly captivated by one that can grind holes and shapes into glass, by means of pressurized water and fine sand), and we, elderly matrons, were nodding our heads, but I doubt that any of us could appreciate such a technological wonder. Yet — it's not us who's going to attend, is it?

How do you know in Wyoming that the wind is up

...it's no goat weather.

I've put in one more cross-country ski run on thirtieth of March — my favorite track along the south side has melted away, and I was bound to take an unmarked connector back to the woods and the groomed routes. On third of April I went again mostly to have a feeling that I had used up the whole season. I first had to take off my skis when I could not find a path through the wild growth around a tree fallen across the trail. Second time came when I discovered that even the aforementioned connector had no snow, and I had to walk back to the groomer. A third moment came when I had given up a down-hill — I was scared to pick up speed on re-frozen spring snow — moreover, one was afraid to find another melted-off stretch of the trail behind the next curve. I had to take my skis off the fourth time in the finish — I could see the bald spots there from higher up. Bottom line, I can check of that box, I skied throughout this whole season. Still more snow fell later, but they wrote even on the cross-country skiing block about bald spots — and I went down with sinus infection, and could not check it out personally.

But when the sun comes out and spring is in the air, our pasture looks like a battlefield.

Jet began to lay artistically shaped eggs.

It's been eighteen months this spring since we moved to Wyoming — which is important because me and my girlfrineds came to a consensus that it's just that time it takes one to get used to a new place. It's got nothing in common with whether one likes it there or not, and how well one is doing there — it's the moment the honeymoon ends — and one finds self engulfed by a daily routine and "belonging". We had found ourselves in Wyoming playing the role of refugees — not knowing anybody or how things work, not being attuned to the local wavelength. No matter how much we liked it here, we had to discover things — sometimes disbelieving, sometimes with anger, mostly at least surprised.

Now we feel like old hands — we know what to do. For locals, we stopped being exotic, and became part of the scenery. The other day I came back from town and stopped by our mailboxes (there's a cluster of them at a crossroads). I was just getting back into my car, when a mailman arrived with a new batch — he got out and said, "I don't have anything for you today." — so I asked him, how he knows who I am (the boxes are numbered, with no names or addresses) and he recited our address — without knowing that I am the one who accesses the box matching that address... He must have seen me outside out house many times, but either his eyesight or his memory is phenomenal — or I simply became an (old) settler.

Another trip to Hidden Falls — on a warm day and no more ice.

Pasqueflowers came out even at eight thousand feet.

Another such situation happened while going to a dinner in the town. Tom ran around the house unable to find his sunglasses — he checked all tables and drawers and cars — nothing. Eventually he drove glass-less — it was overcast and getting dark. We enter the restaurant and a server runs up to us with Tom's glasses — that he had left them there last time (i.e., about a week earlier). Other time, having gone to a mall for a fast lunch in a food court, another server reported that our sun had stopped there for lunch on previous Friday (with Lisa and friends).
But the most important moment came when our friends came to visit and a dinner — local friends, people whom we can rely on in need, but mostly just spend and enjoy time with. We stopped being strangers.

Trip to Hidden Falls.

Trip to Hidden Falls.

After winter hibernation sprinkled with skiing, spring awakening was relatively harsh. Although I've added another section of compost already some time back in February, it became clear that as soon as everything unfreezes somewhat, it would be necessary to dig last-year's compost into the prairie to make room. Downslope from our basement, there's a stretch of our property brutally disturbed by construction — almost nothing grows there, because there's only sand in the better case, otherwise remnants of cement and gravel in the worse. And since nothing grows there, deep puddles and streams form there that wash out and away last remnants of any nutrition or plants. Hence I hatched a plan already in the fall to dig compost in there, and plant grass. I invited a specialist from the local Conservation District — and had him give me a "prescription" for a mix of wild grasses and plants, and these I ordered and paid for dearly.

By February I began to look for someone who would undertak the digging in of my compost on such an area, but I had not much luck. Borrowing a small plough to attach behind a small tractor is possible — but that I found too risky — for once, how to even get that thigh all the way to our place — and for second — who'd know how to us it? What would happen if we broke the machine? By the end of March, I have not cracked this nut still, but I desperately needed to move the oldest compost somewhere. So I decided to move it where it belonged. Having moved it, I figured it would be a good idea to spread it out to see how much of it there is. Having spread it out, it occurred to me that I should spray water on it, lest the wind blows it all into the basement or the kitchen window. But now that it was wet, turning it over with a shovel in the sandy soil was not much of a problem... well, to keep it short, my moving of the compost ended with me digging for a week, raking, and eventually sowing everything on my own. Just in time to discover that our friends have a large plough attached to a tractor, and then a small manual one, and they would have been willing to help us out.

Dandelions were the first to blossom up in the prairie.

First trifids began to sprout.

But I had sown already, followed by weeks of tension what would come of it. Inasmuch I understand animals, I never managed to strike a relationship with plants. I don't understand them and they pay me back by willfully and intentionally dying. During our moving out of California, I donated my outdoor planters, including one with a raspberry bush, to Vendula; that bush brought her fruits — I could count raspberries ripened throughout five year on fingers on a single hand. Simply put, I'm no gardener, but I said to myself that raising GRASS on a PRAIRIE cannot possibly be such a problem. After about three weeks I declared defeat — seen from our windows, sown area looked quite sterile and brown. At closer inspection (kneeling down, wearing glasses) I found among brown sand thin spiky stems of something sticking out — something brown gray and by far not matching my idea of a juicy green spring grass. Then I realized that I implored my expert to recommend grasses that are durable and can thrive among thistles and weeds, which invariably frequent such poor soils — and which would not mind not being regularly watered and mowed. So it seems that I'd truly sown some kind of grass very remote from a Central European idea of a lawn.
Now the question is whether I accidentally managed to raise trifids, who will eventually mug and eat me. I would not blame the plants for wanting a revenge for years of dilettante care, but I still hope that they will consider that I did not torture them willfully — and that I'm really trying hard.