Artist Deborah Butterfield’s stunning installation for the Denver Botanic Gardens is called The Nature of Horses. Made from bronze casts of driftwood, her mares are like spectral steeds, left to run feral after the Wild Hunt.

I’m always trying to time my visits to the gardens to maximize the flowers, but something is always fading, something else has not yet reached its peak. You can’t freeze anything in time, except maybe those spectral bronze horses.

It continues to be soaking wet here, with minor flooding in places. The ground is every bit as squelchy and boglike as you can imagine. Check out this forest near our house: the cottonwoods are standing in a foot of water. It’s timeless and beautiful.

In between rainstorms, I made a geeky pilgrimage to the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, where it’s almost possible to believe there’s a place for me on the Hogwart’s Express. We saw ancient locomotives, and we stepped in lots of mud. It was a good place to lose track of time.