Category Archives: Colorado

Nocturne

September 23, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Fall New (Falling Leaves) Moon

Back into the packing, sorting realm tomorrow. Two days in a row. Then, I’m going to take a rest from it for a week or so. We are, if anything, ahead of even our more rapid timeline and I need a break.

Watch movies. Go to museums. Take hikes. That sort of thing. Put the garden to bed. Restoratives.

(Michaelmas on September 29th.)

One quality I expect in our new home that I’ve not emphasized as we’ve looked. Quiet. At night especially. I’ve grown used to the calm here at night.

Off to read.

Colorado, Garden, The Move

Last Day of Lughnasa, 2014

September 21, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa (the last day for 2014) College Moon

The season of first harvests is drawing to a close. In our garden the harvest is largely over with only raspberries, leeks, carrots and beets left. Well, a few peppers and an egg plant might make it, but they’re pretty small. Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, this is the last Lughnasa in Minnesota. When we hit August 1st next year, we’ll either be looking at vegetables in a new garden or getting a garden ready for 2016.

It’s been an abundant year here with plenty of onions, garlic, beets, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, collard greens and chard already brought in. There are all the herbs, too, plus the currants and the gooseberries, the blueberries. Apples, cherries, pears and plums were in scant supply this year, but that means the new owners should have a great crop next year.

What I’ve learned about horticulture and bees, I’ve learned thanks to this land. The soil and the sun, the rain and the plants have all offered themselves as partners, and willing partners. Their language is more clear, more straightforward than the one in which I write here. I’m ready now for another teacher, for Rocky Mountain soil and sun, the sparser rain and more abundant snow, for plants that thrive on elevated ground.

Too, there is a project, a project of wondering. How will a lifelong flatlander, a Midwestern boy all his days, react to life among the earth risen up, pushed away from the surface, grown massive and hard? How will a 40 year Minnesotan, who has lived among lakes and rain and rivers, with cropland and gardens, respond to an arid land where the dominant element is rock, tough and tall? This is not a wondering about which is better, but about what each place teaches.

This student is definitely ready.

Colorado, The Move

Up Date

September 20, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

Business meeting at Key’s, breakfast of champions. Money doing fine. Work proceeding according to a flexible time-table, but staying up to our expectations. We’ll get everything packed and all the clean-up and fix-up work done in time. A good feeling.

(Janus is the official God of our move.)

More packing today. A busy week until SortTossPack comes on Friday. Putting most of the garden to bed, a bonfire, more of our own packing and pulling stuff out for SortTossPack to pack. Of course, Latin. Feeling some pressure to get back to writing, too.

After the 26th, SortTossPack day, the whole process should slow down some. We’ll have done the bulk of the pre-moving time period packing, if not all of it. Odds and ends, fiddling around with some outdoor work, scheduling the last of the fixers and cleaners, talking to the stagers.

Colorado, Commentary on the news, Minnesota, The Move, Travel, World History

Vive la difference!

September 18, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

How different we are from Europe. Scotland has a population of 5.3 million, Ireland about 4.6 million, England 53 million. California alone has 38.3 million people. Texas 26.5. New York, 19.6 with New York City 8.3 million. Of course, we’re all tiny compared to the behemoths of India and China, but I’m interested right now in Scotland’s vote, underway right now, for its own independence as a nation.

It’s as if Minnesota were a dependency of Caltex and wanted to break away, put up its own borders and start issuing passports. My point here, heightened by our upcoming move to Colorado, is that we move between states often equivalent in size to many of the storied nations of Europe: Netherlands-16M, Greece 10.6M, Sweden 9.5M, Denmark-5.6M. Iceland-324,000.

Think of the history of Greece. Greece! The wine-dark sea. Homer. Zeus. the 300. Or, the Netherlands, home of Spinoza, holding back the sea, pot-friendly, deeply anti-semitic. Or, Denmark, Hans Christian Andersen, Copenhagen. Places redolent with backstory, filled with the architecture and the palmprints of genius.

Minnesota and Colorado sit next to each other on the population chart: Minnesota at 5.4M and Colorado at 5.2M. We could be moving from Denmark 5.6M to Norway 5M.

Imagine crossing borders, having to register as a resident alien or the equivalent, learn a different language, be aware of a different deep history. And in that imaginary case only moving 375 miles. While we will go 966 miles, almost 3 times as far to arrive in another “nation”, where the natives speak our language, share our currency and most of our habits and customs. We are a big country and our relative unity is a wonder. It might even be a miracle, albeit a very human one and no less miraculous for that. Too, we’ll have remained roughly within the center of the nation, with hundred of miles to go to an ocean from either place.

We’re so young to be so strong. And yet the world looks to us, perhaps less so now, but still…é

Colorado, The Move

Momentum Shift

September 17, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

We’ve decided what the second (and probably last) SortTossPack day will entail. They will move out all the red boxes and sell them at Halfprice Books. They will pack fragile and clumsy items. They will remove at least two desks, one file cabinet, three bookcases, and a small chest of drawers.

We have about a week and a half before they come. Most of our pack ahead work will be done by then, leaving only items we’ll pack just before the move. That means October will be the month to call moving companies and get bids.

Momentum has shifted. Now we’re thinking about leaving. Kate will probably start to look in earnest, as I think I said here before, sometime around Hanukkah. Whatever we do we want to move before we put the house on the market. That will make matters much easier and eliminate storage and kennel costs.

Having this large project underway since late April has had an interesting effect on me. It has given me a clear way to prioritize time and energy which has reduced my anxiety overall. Makes me wonder what I can find to take its place. Of course, there will be a year or so of settling in to the new place, so the question won’t arise until late 2015, early 2o16. Plenty of time to decide on something.

Art and Culture, Colorado, The Move

Another Layer

September 17, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

Files and notebooks. Old magazines, posters, prints, objet d’arts, paintings, novel notes and manuscripts, office supplies. Perhaps more books as I admit I can let go of some of the ones I saved back and some of the books on my study bookcase. Not let go as in red tape, outta here, sayonara, but let go as in green tape box and inaccessible until the move is over.

This sorting is even more intimate and difficult than the books. Do I really need all those essays on the humanities I’ve saved over the years? Well, of course. Do I need this one on quantum mechanics? Maybe not. How about the files on the Great Wheel? Definitely. And what of the art do I love and which do I merely like? The likes go. The loves stay with me.

Those stone sculptures I bought at Artisans D’Angkor in Siem Reap? Stay. The Shiva Nataraja I bought in Boulder? Stay. The Open sign we bought at the going out of business sale at Lights on Broadway? Stay. O.K. This might be hard, too.

This is getting ready for SortTossPack who will come again on September 26th, a week from this Friday. We plan to have them pack the fragile stuff, some of the art, carry some boxes, take some furniture back to the consignment shop. It’s also, of course, getting ready for the actual move. Soon now we’ll need to contact moving companies, get bids. Wow.

Colorado, The Move

Nocturne

September 15, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

A certain softness, a wistfulness has begun to creep into the Woolly meetings for me. If we buy a house and move in January, only three more third Mondays remain.

The depth of feeling I have for these guys will last, I know that, but the relationships will grow more tenuous. That’s inevitable. They will not disappear, of that I’m sure, but without the regular gatherings things will change.

The circus tent ropes have gone slack and some of the canvas sides have begun to fold in on themselves, the tent poles are still in place: the home in Andover, the Woolly’s, the personal Twin Cities created by 40 years of memories, but each of these tent poles will eventually come down, too.

Feeling it tonight.

Colorado, Our Land and Home, The Move, The West

Widdershins

September 15, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

We’ve cleared out the three sheds. This morning the dog barrier on the orchard fence (which never worked) came down, the hardware going in a plastic bucket. The new place will have fence, too. All of the electric fence parts, from the charger to the plastic clips for the fence line and the electrified rope will go with us, too. Bears, mountain lions, mule deer, elk to keep out and dogs to keep in.

It feels like we’re walking widdershins around our property, unwinding twenty years of presence, trying to neutralize the most intimate space of all, home. Doing this now, in the fall when the air is cooler, makes it all seem appropriate. The growing season has begun to walk widdershins around the plants, seeing them revert to their ground level selves or to bare their branches, fatten up roots and otherwise end the time of producing.

We are undoing the enchantment we have created here. This place has become, through vigorous effort and the work of many, a place where we could enjoy life. It has become our home. Fires in the firepit, vegetables in the raised beds, apples and cherries and pears in the orchard, meals on the brick patio or out on the deck. Years of dogs creating paths in the woods and in our hearts. Now this enchantment has to be undone and stored for use in another location.

We will, I have no doubt, do the same in Colorado. It will be a different same of course, the paradox of home being where the heart is, not one physical place. We will have a smaller garden, but we will have one. We will still need to contain dogs. Our new home will be xeriscaped as soon as possible, so flowers, unless native, will not be part of it. We will still need a study and workout room for me, a sewing room with space for the long arm quilter for Kate. And in creating these spaces and functions we will become one with a new place. A new spell will be cast, one with Western themes instead of Northern.

Colorado, Latin, The Move, Translating De Bello Gallico, Translating Metamorphoses

Moving on

September 13, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

It’s been another full tilt day. Business meeting in the morning, then shed cleaning. We worked, ate lunch, napped, and worked some more. Geez. I told Kate after this experience that I believe we should do the same in our new place. Every 20 years just like here.

We’re over half done with packing and decluttering, the momentum seems to be shifting now. More like we’re moving toward Colorado than away from Minnesota.

In my Latin yesterday with Greg we decided I would keep on with every two week sessions, reading Caesar and Ovid and whoever else, I think Vergil’s Georgics, too. Apparently at my particular place in the learning curve reading and more reading, grappling with each nuance is the way forward. After the amount of time I’ve invested so far, I’ve decided to go all the way. I want to become a fluent reader of Latin. That’s a ways away, but no longer imaginary.

It’s odd, I realized, but every two weeks for one hour is 26 contact hours in a year. A language class for a 12 week quarter would meet at least 3 times, usually 5 with a lab, which is either 36 or 60 hours a quarter. We’re not even doing a full 26 because we have sessions that we miss or extend for three weeks. That means I’m advancing ok given the number of contact hours of teaching.

Plus, while it’s certainly luxurious to have a personal teacher, a tutor, there is additional learning from being with a group doing the same exercises-a class. All this is self-talk, really, about taking 4 years plus to get to this level. Seems like a long time to me. But maybe not.

Colorado, The Move

A Productive Week

September 12, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

At 11:30 am today I had to leave Caesar’s description of Orgetorix’s agreement to a plot against his own people, the Helvetians, and pay the seal-coater. It was a sudden and complete disjunction.

Most of the exterior work is done, with the exception of the landscape crew yet to come. There’s also the Seven Oaks metal sign to have made and hung on the mail-box post. Some things remain on the inside, but they’ll come nearer to the time we put the house on the market, or move, whichever comes first.

It’s been a busy and productive week. The biggest accomplishment was Kate’s securing our preapproval for a second mortgage in Colorado.

We’ve made steady, regular progress since late April and will need to continue right up to the move. Once we’re in Colorado we’ll have a different set of tasks, settling in, adjusting. I’m ready for them, too.