K is for Knoll

My Theme for the A to Z Challenge: Desert Canyon Living

When English is your second language, you sometimes have to look up a word in the dictionary. Usually, it's a word of many letters of Greek origin (I learned some Latin in school, which has been very helpful) but sometimes a simple one, like knoll. I thought I knew what a knoll was, but my very large unabridged Webster's Third New International Dictionary had so many definitions (and why does the text keep getting smaller and smaller as we get older and older, I could barely read it) that I will just hang on to the last and very simple one: Hillock! Don't you love it? My small and much beat up paperback Webster's New World Dictionary had more of what I thought it meant: A little rounded hill; mound.

I don't know if the rounded hills in the canyon qualify as knolls, but I will use them here anyway. They are probably too big, more hills than hillocks, but I think worth a second look.

On top of this knoll there is a ring of rocks that looks like an old castle wall or rampart. This is the knoll that Soldier and I were supposed to hike to the top of this winter. Now that I remember, we will try again.

This knoll is at the end of the shorter hike that we usually walk with the dogs. You can see our house and the fields from the top. We walk/slide downhill here. It is very rocky at the top, something I don't much like, but after that it's smooth, soft, soil. You can also see junipers here and the green grass that grows underneath many of them in spring.

As I went through my photos, looking for knolls, I came upon this one of the doorway to one of the old ruins at the sandstone quarry. If the hill in the background is indeed a knoll, then I think I lucked out with this composition. 

This knoll is in our backyard.

Here is Princess looking at our house and the fields from the top of that knoll. As you can see, it is a big hill, not a hillock, exactly. Princess passed away last summer and I spread her ashes in the snow on this hill. She loved the snow and would dive head first into it and roll and roll around. I miss her so much, she was my country dog and constant companion. But that's another story, already written somewhere in this blog. I hope you enjoyed finding these knolls with me.


Finally, a thank you to Deirdra of http://astorybookworld.blogspot.com who gave me a Powerful Woman Writer Award yesterday. I put it at the top of my sidebar for today. Check out her fairyland blog, it's lovely. I am honored to receive this award, a boost to my confidence as a writer, for sure.


P. S. Thank you so much for all your comments on my last two posts and for deciding to follow my blog. (Samson says: Our blog Mommy!) My husband is back and we have go to town and run errands today, so I may not have a chance to visit everyone, but I will catch up on your posts later. Have a great day.