I had heard the term "trail blazer" many times. I thought it meant "explorer".
When we came to Utah and started hiking and riding through the woods, Steve exlained to me that blazing refers to hatchet markings on trees to identify a trail. (Must be a guy thing to pick up such obscure information!) We travel lots of seldom used and therefore badly overgrown paths that would be impossible to follow without these occasional markings.
A trail blazer is the person who carves out the actual blazes, which consist of a short upper cut and a long lower cut. This is to distinguish a purposeful blaze from an accidental mark made by one tree falling and scraping off the bark from another.
Mischief doesn't care about the significance. He just likes having a handy tree with rough bark for scratching his itchy head.
The hay crop is mature and ready for cutting. Our farmer neighbor (who will cut our field) needs a 4-5 day dry stretch to do the job, but we've had rain or a strong likelihood of rain every day for the last 2 weeks. Maybe someday the hay field be cut and baled. Until then, it's a lovely field of dreams.
On a desert outing last week, we saw raindrops on the cactus, which demonstrates how unusual our weather has been.
Here's my wildflower garden patch, all volunteer from last year. I love the colors, even if I can't identify many of the plants.
