The "Magical Summer Snow"

    JR & I first visited Colorado 5 years ago in June.  We fell in love with the gorgeous mountains and summer sky.  My favorite part was the "magical" snow that was falling, even though it was super warm out and there were no clouds in the sky.  That's right-Colorado is wonderful because snow falls even when the sun is at it's peak and no clouds can be found.  Perhaps it was the snow pack blowing off the mountains.  Maybe there were clouds, but they were invisible-better yet, the clouds were too thin to see....
   As we watched the fluff swirl around on the ground, I could not get over how amazing this phenomenon was. And to think-the townsfolk must be keeping this secret to themselves because I had never heard of it before!
   Sadly, when we took a closer look at this majestic white stuff, we discovered it had more substance to it than ordinary snow. (I, however, was still convinced it was frozen water crystals from the sky.) We eventually discovered that my "magical snow" was actually cotton.  Apparently trees produce cotton too (we're from the east coast-we've only known cotton to grow from the ground), so the amazing white stuff floating around everywhere was actually cotton that falls off trees.  Since it's so light and fluffy, it spends alot of time floating in the air, or swirling around on the ground.  This discovery was really depressing and it took me weeks to recover.
                             A close-up of the fluff

                        See??? It looks like snow....

                  Cottonwood trees (i think) from which the cotton hails...