July 2018

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HELLOOO! If you’re local and haven’t tried the I-Cool Thai Ice Cream, do yourself a favor and go, go, go! They use super cold frying pan-looking surfaces to make liquid turn to ice cream, lickety split quick, which is then rolled up like a super thin crepe. Boy is it delicious, too! We shared a banana nutella and got it topped with coconut, caramel, and M & M’s. A perfect Happy Birthday to Greg!

At the Fine Arts Center now for Free Friday. We practically had the place to ourselves, which was rather nice.

Monique Crine

He’s handsome coming and going.

Alex Harris

Julia Fernandez-Pol

Always beautiful Pike’s Peak

Had a fun jaunt to Victor for Gold Rush days. We hiked and snooped around the various mines. What history!

Juniper saw no gold but looked pretty stinking cute in her new bandanna!

Oceanspray at nearly 10,000 feet

This building was used to store dynamite. BOOM!

Victor is sweet and sleepy and in need of a little TLC in places. If you go, make sure to stop at the Victor Trading Company on Third. It’s a lovely collection of everything you never knew you needed. We bought a beautiful broom (hand made right there!), letterpress cards (also made there), and a swell hat. If your jam is beeswax candles, old-timey cookie cutters made from tin or a period correct tin (also made at the store!), they’ve got you covered there, too.

I am not a baseball fan, but put the teams in period era costumes, and I will at least give it a second thought.

A very fine weekend to inaugurate the hubster’s 47th trip around the sun…

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Happy Monday, dear reader, and welcome to our June 2016 garden! Though, it would be far more accurate to say our 2016 weed patch. A very small portion of the plants here were anything but the insidious and horrible little boogers. This was after pulling the mega weeds that were as tall as the hubster and filled one third of an equally mega dumpster with their remains. It is before we replaced the cool looking but falling down and totally lacking in privacy fence or jack hammered the hideous and quite unsafe patio. And people wondered why we weren’t inviting them to tea. Our house was a shit hole, that’s why.

Here we are a couple of weeks ago, with all the latest plants in the ground, and the majority of last year’s (seen here – scroll down a bit) doubled in size.

Fifteen TONS of rock delivered!

We got super serious and rented a Bobcat! As you can see from the photo above, it was a rather spritely one, the actual smallest of the lot, at 36″ wide, but perfect for maneuvering around plants and in and out of our back gate. In a hindsight is 20/20 world, we would have done this first, but honestly, the thought never occurred to us before our backs were sore and tired of digging. Hopefully I am now saving you much, much time, and aches and pains, of the bodily and pain-in-the-ass to shovel variety.

The dumpster was 4.5 feet tall, 8 feet wide, and 18 feet long. We filled it about one-half of the way, mostly with rock from the unsafe patio. It was a LOT of trips down the alley. A LOT.

This morning, under the shade of our neighbor’s massive cottonwood. The paths are made from the rock we had delivered. It’s called Sunset Breeze, and we are both super pleased with it!

In front are my hail-mauled peonies, looking rather sad. The two patches of crocosmia are going like gangbusters and making our resident hummingbirds (Rufous and Calliope, mostly the latter) very, very happy! Also pictured, but not easy to discern: milkweed, horehound, foxglove, yarrow, iceplant, mallow, feverfew, honeysuckle, red birds in a tree.

I really couldn’t be more in love with the way it’s coming along and delight in thinking about every plant growing bigger and even more beautiful. Our red hot pokers, for instance, only made five flowers last year. They’re on their way to more than fifteen this time around! It is worth every bit of effort to walk along the freshly laid paths and admire the flowers teeming with bees and butterflies and to watch the scores of birds, squirrels and rabbits flitting happily about. As our friend Travis says, “It’s like a Disney movie!”

There is still much to be done, like moving the rock that delineated the paths before the addition of sunset breeze, putting weed barrier and rock down in the fenced garden, planting more plants, moving a couple shrubs, finishing the woodwork on the patio, building a shed for our bicycles (currently stored in the basement), and possibly getting a wee patch of grass for Juniper Beulah to roll in. Soon, I hope!

Flood

Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.

Pema Chodron

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The hubster and I both dreamt about my Grandpa last night, of him being with us before realizing the reality of his death. Both of us reminded of the truth that the dead never leave us. He is here, beside us, as we type, move, and breathe. Always.

There is serendipity in the dreaming, too. Today, my grandparents house sale is finalized. The last place to smell of them, of sixty years lived well in one treasured spot. The porch light will not be left on for me. No more glimpsing through the windows, across the street, onto the porch, or the Skulavik’s yard. I have taken one last look in the mirror at the end of the hall. Grandma hasn’t swept nor dusted in more than three and a half years. My hand will no longer shhhh down the banister, to the raucous stair creak of a million exuberant Lewis, Sohn, and Johnstone steps. Every game, National Geographic, book, and beloved record, Chicken Fat to Herb Alpert, emptied from the shelves my Grandpa built. A snazzy rack void of his ties. And I, the not terribly sentimental type, weepy at the thought.

There will be traces, however, a beloved photograph buried in a jar. A few pieces of furniture, and the remains of our love and laughter, racing like neutrinos, through every atom of the house.

GIANT

 

Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

Rumi

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