One of the things that surprised us, when we drove out to Montana the last week of August, was how dry the hillsides were.

Our first trip at the end of June looked like this (green, green, green, punctuated with bright bursts of blue and tipped with tiny white snow patches):

But our second trip at the end of August looked like this (brown, brown, brown, just like our So. Cal desert hills at home, and positively no snow in sight):

We also saw a lot of end-of-summer hay bales.

Some were classically rectangular, while others (like in the photo above) were cylindrical.

I was strangely excited to see these. For me, hay bales are simply decorations you see in Michaels Craft Store when fall begins to arrive. But out here — on these real ranches and farms – hay bales are … well … real.

I guess my slow realization of that fact, coupled with my giddiness at seeing them, tripled with the way I whipped my camera around each time, and quadrupled with the fact that I have several of these exactly-the-same pictures on my memory card (all taken between Idaho and Montana), probably give away the fact that I’m such a city girl, huh?

Sheesh. Silly city girls. …