Samain Closing Moon
A few shots from my recent trip to Colorado. Not sure what happened to the one of the three mule deer bucks looking at me in our new backyard. They let me get very close.
A Few Shots
Category Archives: Colorado
A Compression
Samain Closing Moon
A snow quiet afternoon. A pause, an interlude between stronger bursts, then the second helping, a large white scoop to fill out the rest of the dish. Yesterday it was fall. Today, it’s January. Whiplash.
We worked hard over the last month or so at outside tasks emptying the sheds, harvesting, then fertilizing and mulching the vegetables, the same around the base of the fruit trees, cutting back the perennials, having a contractor prune and mulch, scrape away the dog’s many holes. We put up fence to protect the scraped over areas to prevent new holes until a snow. I repaired a hole dug near the firepit. We moved bee woodenware and other accessories into the garage. I removed the angel weathervane from the honey house and the Davis weather station from its post in the east section of prairie grass.
This is not so much a downsizing, though there is that element to our move, as it is a 
compression, a reducing of the outside work load. Our interior space will be smaller, somewhat, but very differently organized. I’ll be up in the air overlooking Black Mountain while Kate will sew and quilt in a former two bay garage. Our reading area will be our reading chairs facing a wood fireplace while the tv will be downstairs, outside our bedroom. The laundry room is down there, too, all just five steps from the main level.
Kate’s space is behind the double windows on the right of the house and mine is above the garage to the far right.
Minnesota!
Samain Closing Moon
And the award for first roads driven while snowing goes to… Minnesota! Colorado, at least Conifer, is still blessedly shy of snow which means the fence posts will get in. It won’t last. Conifer gets 90″ of snow compared to Andover’s 45. More snow falls there, but the sun, closer by 8,800 feet, also melts the snow faster and the colds don’t get as intense, at least on south facing surfaces like our driveway. The result is more snow, but less snow cover.
The roads on my way to the eye doc this morning were icy, but plowed. Folks drove sensibly for the most part though there were the occasional frozen minds talking on the phone or even texting. A few also followed too closely for dry pavement. The laws of physics will not be repealed, no matter how confident a driver you are.
Not bad for the first storm, really.
At the front desk, on the way out, I signed a release for my medical records so they can be transferred electronically to the next ophthalmologist The same will happen when I visit Dr. Massie in a couple of weeks. This is much more convenient and better for me as a patient, too. Thank you, difference engine.
Minnesota Macho
Samain Closing Moon
Even though we’re moving to the mountains, to ski country, the winters will not be as harsh as ours. Here’s early season proof.
Good-Bye Midwest
Samain Closing Moon
Laid down two year old straw in the orchard, covering up exposed landscape cloth and soil
put in to repair holes dug by various dogs. Brought inside the garage all but two hive boxes, making the bee colony left for the showings less intimidating. Started taking up the silt fencing that protected the area we had scraped over to fill in even more dog holes. The snow coming should make digging a non-issue for the remainder of our time here.
These final outdoor chores, more than anything else we’re doing, say good-bye to the world of the Midwest, the agriculturally focused life that has been around both of us as we grew up. We participated in that life here in Andover growing vegetables, fruit and flowers. Growing anything in the very short growing season at 8,800 feet will require season lengthening strategies such as hoops for plastic tents and starting plants indoors.
Whatever we do, it will be on a much smaller scale than here. We’ll have all winter to plan it.
Winter Solstice 2014 on Shadow Mountain
Samain Closing Moon
This full moon, shining on the early weeks of Samain, illuminates important nights in our life. Already within in this new year we have purchased a new house, contracted a mover, found fence, painting and carpet contractors and readied ourselves for the final push psychically, fiscally and logistically. We will, still in the season of Samain, move into our new home and begin our new life in that house.
Then, only two or three days later, the highnight of my sacred calendar, the winter solstice, will come and we will celebrate our first solstice on Shadow Mountain. This is a potent beginning to a new year and to a new phase of life.
Leaving the Leaves
Samain Closing Moon
Outside today, mulching with fallen leaves the beds on which I spread the broadcast yesterday. As I dispersed the leaves, enjoying their rich smell reminiscent of hay lofts and the old days of burning the leaves by the curb, it came to me that Colorado, especially at 8,800 feet has mostly conifers. No leaves. There are aspen, but they are the more scarce tree, the only deciduous one that I know in the front range at that altitude. Leaving behind working with fallen leaves in the autumn. Another mark of the move.
Both Kate and I remarked that though this place has been good to us and for us, it’s time to let someone with fresh vigor take it over. On Black Mountain Drive we’ll have two, maybe three raised beds, no yard, no perennial flower beds. I will have to blow snow again, but I’m ready for that. The amount of outdoor maintenance will be significantly less. There will be some added interior work since at least until we sell this house (Andover) we’ll be doing our own weekly housecleaning, but that’s well within our capabilities.
It’s true there will again be a fence and inside the fence dogs. That means inevitable fence work. We’re going to try a combination of 2×4’s nailed between posts at the bottom of the no-climb wire fence and invisible fence run at its middle. The fence itself will be five feet high. This might work. I’m cautious because I’ve experienced a jail break from every combination I’ve used. The prisoners have all day everyday to figure a way out.
It looks like we’re going to get our first major snow event here well before Conifer, which is unusual. Every one I talked to out there shook their head wondering where the snow was. I’m sure it will come. Probably around December 18th.
Neither Here nor There
Samain Closing Moon
Finding myself in a strange psychic netherworld, neither wholly ready to act, nor wholly unwilling, between this state and that state. This mood will lift, perhaps by tomorrow, but right now. Neither this nor that. Doesn’t seem odd to me, one possible result from what feels now like a rush to the finish, yet the location of that rush to the finish being a place of stasis for over 20 years.
Living in the move has been our mantra for the last 8 months and we will, in just over a month, live the move. That’s a different interior location, the difference between preparation and action. While in the mode of preparation we have been able to live the comfortable old life and indulge in fantasy about Colorado. Now, though, the preparation is coming to an end and we will have to face the real world consequences of our decision.
One conversation I had with a friend over the last month lead us to wonder if there is no morality, just consequences. That is, ideas and actions are neither good nor bad, just consequential. Whatever the truth value of that idea, it does seem that maturation comes when we accept responsibility for our actions and their consequences.
In this case there are two large stroke consequences that have been obvious from the beginning; the notion of living in the move has been an exercise in accepting both of them. The first is a going away from, a leaving behind of friends, memories, familiar places, habits and routines. The second is a moving toward, a discovering of new places, new friends, creating new memories, habits and routines. No, it’s not as black and white as I state it here. The two consequences will bleed into each other, interact. Friends will visit Colorado; we will return to Minnesota for example.
But the consequences remain. Physical separation, especially 900 miles, changes the nature of all kinds of relationships: personal, geographical, botanical, navigational. The exact nature of the changes will not be known for several years, probably, and that’s a good thing. A gradual rather than a sudden unveiling seems easier on the psyche.
There and Back Again
Samain Closing Moon
At some point the weather of Conifer and Andover will diverge. This week is a foretaste. Andover heads into the teens while Conifer remains in the 30’s and 40’s. This divergence will increase as December and January come with Andover getting colder and colder, but Conifer remaining 10 to 20 degrees warmer. Fortunately, this process reverses as Andover heats up, Conifer remains cooler and will eventually be cooler consistently than Andover during the summer months. From my perspective this is an ideal divergence from our norms here, mildly warmer in the winter, markedly cooler in the summer. And, yes, this factored in our choice of locations.
Going to lay down the broadcast in the vegetable garden and the orchard this morning, then mulch. Kate and Anne planted next year’s garlic crop while I was in Colorado. With no additional effort then, the new owners will have apples, pears, plums, cherries, currants, raspberries, gooseberries, strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus and garlic from their orchard and vegetable garden. In addition they will have daffodils, liguria, monkshood, many varieties of Asiatic lilies, iris and hemerocallis. Clematis, daffodils, tulips and fall crocus will 
bloom, too. Wisteria, lilac, bushy clematis and snakeroot put fragrance, delicate and sweet, in the air. They will have three different sheds in which to organize their outdoor life and a firepit for family evenings. There are, too, the separated plantings of prairie grass and wildflowers that bracket the front lawn, providing habitat for butterflies and other wildlife.
In addition the property has about 1.5 acres of woods, including a morel patch that shows up in the late spring. With the inground irrigation system this is a place for a person with an interest in living closer to the earth and harvesting the literal fruits of such a lifestyle.
Included with the property is enough woodenware to get a beekeeping hobby started.
Just Beginning
Samain Closing Moon
I now feel like a temporary resident of Minnesota. When I drove back over the Minnesota state border yesterday, the sign said, “Welcome to Minnesota.” In the past welcome back to Minnesota would have been how I read it. Yesterday I read it, for the first time in over forty years, as welcoming an out-stater coming to visit.
There are many details yet to be handled before we fully leave Minnesota, yes, but the past 6 days were an immersion in the new: roads, driveways, restaurants, vistas, rooms, scents, animal cohabitants, appliances, people. That immersion has left a strong impact on me, a feeling that I am now more a new resident just beginning to learn a new place than I am an old resident grieving the loss of the familiar.