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This is a painting my daughter Beverly owns. It is similar to Washakie Dreams, same theme and same location, but quite different color and feeling. It has had a more complicated life than most of the paintings. I painted it in 1975 from a very poor reference photo I took in the 70s, and it turned out soooo dark that I never could like it, although it got sweepstakes in the county fair the next year. In 1983 I gave it to Beverly, and in 1996 after we talked about it, she returned it to me again. It had a lot of good things going for it. The drawing and composition was pretty good. So I repainted over the old painting and added the horses. By then I knew a lot more too, so was able to salvage it. Then in case painting over old dried paint might cause some trouble in the future, I thought it was best to keep it in the family. Now she doesn't mind having it hanging in their beautiful home.
We had an inch or two of new snow this morning. It must have fallen in the early morning hours, as last time I let the dogs out about 3 a.m. it hadn't happened. So I woke up to a brilliant sunny morning with the landscape all clean and white. By 10 a.m. it was dark gray overcast again. In another hour the wind was blowing snow horizontally past all the windows. The weather report is for chance of snow all weekend.
Joe took the dogs and went out early this morning to get yesterday's mail. He is doing that so he can go while the road is still frozen and not cause such awful ruts later in the day since its very muddy right now.
Spring is sure late coming. I've heard several different times how hard this cold weather has been on the new born calves, and the people taking care of them too. Lots of calving happens in the middle of the night, and the temperatures have just been staying well below freezing and many nights below zero. So when a new little baby calf is born, it might nearly freeze to death or could even die so quickly before the person who is checking calves in the night finds it. Then they bring all these new calves inside trying to get them warm enough to survive. Sometimes the ranch wife has several calves in the kitchen getting warm. They are all getting pretty overworked and tired out.
