Piedra Lisa

 A couple flowers found at the Piedra Lisa open space at the base of the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque.

Hunting for Wildflowers

 We took a morning walk through the Piedras Marcadas section of the Petroglyph National Monument.  The sky was spectacular.

The only things we found in bloom were a lot of Phacelia and one lonely Sotol plant.

Cable barriers currently prevent close access to most of the rock art panels, though a few are still visible from the trails.

On the way back to the car Margaret found a small jaw, as yet to be identified.

I did a 3-shot panorama which I stitched together in Photoshop CS2.  That worked pretty well, so I'll try more of that in the future.

Digital Color

 I've decided to not shoot any more color film because of the outrageous prices being asked.  I'll go on shooting black and white in my film cameras, but any color from now on is going to be from my digital cameras.  With that in mind I took a walk this morning to the nearby Natural History Museum which has a well tended native plants garden.

Most of the garden's cacti are specimens native to southern New Mexico as there are few that grow naturally  at Albuquerque's altitude.

I walked back through Tiguex Park across the street from the museum and caught a bee having his way with a dandelion. 

I'm hoping to get up to the foothills of the Sandias in the next couple of days to see what kind of wildflowers are blooming there.