Category Archives: Our Land and Home

Now

July 21, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

Hard to believe how much the Republicans want Hillary to win. In any other combination of opponents she would be up against the ropes with her gloves covering her face. In this case however Trump and crew bang their head repeatedly on the ring posts, leaving themselves bloodied and confused. The convention so far: rogue delegates try to unseat Trump’s nomination, plagiarism, former candidate refuses to endorse. Wonder what they have for us today?

Brother Mark is doing well in Saudi Arabia. He’s in his second year of teaching at Jubail, his students members of the Saudi Arabian navy.

Kate leaves today for Jackson Hole where her sister, BJ, will be moved tomorrow. A fan of BJ’s, a former anesthesiologist at the Jackson Hole hospital, has found a very well respected orthopedic surgeon for her. He only does shoulders. They may operate tomorrow after her move. Kate will be there tonight.

Jon had his sawzall at work cutting through the old bathtub in their downstairs bathroom when I visited yesterday. He’s made a lot of progress, but the working conditions, hot and humid, are brutal. The divorce continues with the level of conflict continuing to amaze both him and me.

Staining still underway. The shed has had two coats as have portions of the garage. The monsoon rains here have impeded progress somewhat.

Family, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

A Collective Sigh

July 19, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

Staining the wood is an involved process. First, there’s power washing, cleaning and laying bare the wood, followed by extensive masking. These tasks took a week. The application of the stain is, itself, labor intensive. Though it can be applied with a power spray, it has to be back brushed to force the stain into the wood. Since the process requires two coats, that means each inch of the garage, shed and two decks will get stained and brushed twice. Longer lasting siding and much increased aesthetics will result. Nathan, Chris, Dean and Matthew have been working steadily.

While they were finishing up yesterday, we had a thunderstorm. As in Minnesota, a thunderstorm breaks the heat, but here it comes with a collective sigh. The rain has a salvific effect, much like the rain in movies after a long drought or the coming of the monsoons in India.

We’ve had several red flag warnings over the last week plus and the forest service signs, common along roads here in the mountains, have all had Smokey’s finger pointed at High. Jefferson County, our county, instituted a level 2 fire ban. No fires at all. The rains give us some respite from the risk of wildfire and that’s most welcome.

Jon is in Denver for the next five days working on finishing a deck railing, remodeling a bathroom and moving his stuff out of the house. Jen and the grandkids are in Orlando for a hemophilia conference. Today is a phone conference between Jon and Jen’s lawyers trying to hammer out some differences without the principles involved. May it be fruitful.

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Family, Humanities, Literature, Our Land and Home

Indolence in Horse Country

July 18, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

An indolent day yesterday. Kate, Jon and the grandkids left for Fairplay, about an hour west of here in South Park, headed to the Park County Fair. Neither Jon nor us has a vehicle that comfortably seats 5, so somebody had to stay behind. Me.

Did a little binge watching, read the Sport of Kings. This book, Sport of Kings, is a major American novel. It catches American aristocracy (that strange self-inflected club), slavery, westward expansion, effectively compares the breeding of blue-blood humans and blue-blood horses-thoroughbreds, the respective dynamics of working class, upper class and poor black families, all seen through the prism of Kentucky bluegrass horse culture. It’s one I may read twice.

Jon’s into Denver today to work on his and Jen’s house, getting it ready for sale in the red-hot Denver market. I’m following in just a bit to pick up some portion of his stuff: tools, clothes, walnut boards for the loft, machines for ski-making. This whole process has been icky so far, but I’m entertaining a hope (maybe, really, a fantasy) that this week marks a modest turning point in the acrimony.

Ladders rattle over the roof of the garage as the final masking is underway. The staining will commence on the whole very soon, perhaps today. The preparation for a good painting/staining job is painstaking, time-consuming.

Cinema and Television, Family, Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants, Shadow Mountain

Weekend Stuff

July 17, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

Went to a delightful children’s movie, BFG, with the grandkids. A Spielberg film, it uses CGI as seamlessly as anything I’ve seen. This is a big-hearted movie with childish wonder spilling out all over the place. A Roald Dahl book. The story of an orphan who inadvertently sees a giant deploying dreams. He kidnaps her because she’s seen him. They develop a relationship, one threatened by other giants. Sweet and sad.

Ruth and Gabe were here overnight. Ruth and Jon worked on printmaking in the garage. He’s developing a body of work focused on found objects, metal objects crushed by traffic. He inks them up, then uses a press to transfer the ink to paper. Gabe and I talk because he likes to come up here in the loft and play.

The staining of the garage is underway. It will look good and last longer when this whole project finishes. The shed and decks, too.

Wandering the back yard now, looking at flowers that grow here with no help. I’m going to gather seeds, then reseed with them in the fall. We have two varieties of penstemon, wild flax, columbine, sulfur flower, indian paintbrush, daisies, shrub roses and a few I haven’t identified. Work with what already likes this soil and this microclimate. Encourage them.

Later in the fall we’ll plant lilacs and more shrub roses in the far back, perhaps some aspen. I want to plant some aspen out front, too.

Family, Humanities, Our Land and Home, Politics

Law

July 12, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

enver Court House Lobby — Denver Courthouse Lobby

All day yesterday two young men from Timberline Custom Painting power washed our two decks, the shed and the garage. They now look clean and bare, ready for the clear stain. The low humidity up here dries wood out, can crack and split it, so wood siding demands care just like a painted surface.

We got the bid back for the bathroom. Ouch. Need to get other bids, other ideas because the one we talked about with Bear Creek Design is more than it makes sense to spend. Part of the process.

The divorce and legal matters continue to roil up family life. Lawyers and courts and judges, decrees and orders. External power, again the state’s coercive authority, enters intimate areas, areas usually outside the pale of government interference. The capacity of the law to circumscribe behavior is chilling, inexorable when it comes down on you or ones you love. Yet, necessary. Common life, especially in a democracy, occurs among individuals with widely varying goals, ethical assumptions and moral positions. Conflict is inevitable and at times the conflict demands mediation, even arrest and imprisonment.

The law, made in assemblies of elected officials, too often reflects the biases and values of a majority, giving bare attention or actual suppression to those less well represented. Think sodomy laws, restrictive abortion regulations, voting measures like reading tests and i.d.’s, Native American reservations. The law is about power and like all things related to power subject to corruption.

Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Red Flag Warning

July 11, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

A red flag warning means that critical fire weather conditions
are either occurring now... .or will shortly. A combination of
strong winds... low relative humidity... and warm temperatures can
contribute to extreme fire behavior.

All that fire mitigation work makes sense when the weather services throw up a red flag warning as they have yesterday and today. Those of us who live up here know this is a price for living in the mountains, but that fact doesn’t mean we want to pay it. The dilemma is that we live in a desirable area, so folks from all over come up here to play, to be in the mountain wildernesses, to do research, to hang out, camp. The visitors are not as attuned to the dangers here, so that s’more or that can of beans or heating the water for coffee seems innocent. And it is, until it isn’t. One spark.

Jefferson County fire fighters closed westbound I-70 and Colorado 470 east (which connects to our nearest highway, 285) due to a grass fire on Hogback Ridge. Yesterday a truck lost some trash which flew in the air, contacted power lines, burst into flames and fell to the ground. So freak accidents, careless tourists or locals ignoring reality put us at risk.

A person reported a neighbor yesterday for burning stumps. He puts charcoal on them, lights it up, then covers the stump with a metal can. He was indignant when asked to put them out. What could possibly go wrong? In another instance folks moved into a new development near Bailey and spent the 4th and this last weekend setting off fireworks in their driveways. Geez, guys.

And, as friend Tom Crane knows, there’s always the possibility of a propane explosion. Cheery thought.

Anyhow our weather is like a femme fatale: gorgeous, sensuous, potentially murderous.

Garden, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants

Among the Wild Flax

July 10, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

Conifer is big and diverse. I drove 20 minutes from home this morning to Reynolds Park, a Jefferson County Open Space Park. It’s still in Conifer, nestled in a canyon, filled with Ponderosa pines, creeks, forested hills and plenty of montane ecosystem plants.

The Native Plant Master class held there ran from 8:30 to 12:30, a long time in the heat. At least for me. By the time the morning was over I was hurting. That arthritic knee, right hip and lower back crying out for surcease. No more plants, please! Lay us down, right now. Frustrating because the information in this class is germane to our home on Black Mountain Drive.

We found the Harebell, a wild geranium, three different grasses including Timothy and Broomtail, keyed out a Ponderosa and an Aspen and a Rocky Mountain Maple. There were two members of the Sunflower family: Rudbeckia-the black eyed daisy and a flower with multiple white petals whose name I can’t recall. A native bee crawled into a Penstemon, gracilis, getting pollen on its back in the process, nototribic. We visited a wild Flax with delicate blue flowers.

Two more classes yet to go. Right now, I’m looking forward to the information but not the wandering pedagogy.

Garden, Great Work, Jefferson County, Latin, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants, Science, Shadow Mountain, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Getting Back To Work

July 10, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

Summer has come in full glory and I’m still not back to work. Getting frustrated with myself, need to get a discipline underway. Back to the work in the morning pattern that has seen me through several novels and lots of Ovid.

It is now a year and a day since my cancer surgery, a real spade turner in the soil of my psyche. Are my old goals still appropriate? Does the divorce and the engagement with Jon and the grandkids override them? Doesn’t feel that way. My ability to give correlates with the care I take of myself. Taking care of myself means continuing creative and scholarly tasks. That work plus exercise are central to my life and cannot be avoided without damaging my Self.

Right now the days float by. This meeting with Jon. That power washing of the solar array. Mow the fuel. Reorganize the loft. Work in the garage. Read the NYT. Keep up with the presidential campaign. All of these things are important, even necessary, but I’m doing them and not creating the daily discipline that longer projects require. I know how to do it. I have done it. But not now.

This morning I have my first class in a Native Plant class that focuses on the montane ecosystem, the one in which we live. It’s a start in the discipline. What I need is to protect my mornings again. Get up here in the loft, write a thousand words a day, translate at 5 verses of Ovid.

I need encouragement to get this routine started again.

Holidays, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

A Holiday Sunday

July 3, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Moon of the Summer Solstice

Caught the dawn on Black Mountain while getting the Sunday paper. A red cast to the usually green mountainscape. Multiple shades of green brighten yards, trees, creek sides, valleys and mountain slopes.

It’s cool here, 48 degrees. The third day of cooler, wet weather. National Forest Service fire signs post the key information about all this, Fire Hazard: low.

Kate has declared the pine pollen season over, saying there was no yellow rime on the driveway after this latest rain. May it be so. This fine lodgepole reproductive matter puts a light yellow cast on everything it touches. And, in a time when the windows are open, it touches almost everything.

Pinecam.com has been abuzz with holiday traffic postings. The interesting word, citiot, gets flung around. It’s true that the city folks, who make up the majority of tourists on Hwy. 285, don’t understand mountain driving, going alternately too fast, then too slow. Their frustration once 285 goes two lane (just beyond Conifer) finds many passing on yellow lines, following too close or exhibiting the finer elements of road rage.

Bailey and Conifer residents recount the amount of time it took them to get home on Friday, July 1st. One person told of leaving Denver at 4 pm and getting home around 7:15 pm, a journey of less than an hour without holiday travelers. Part of the congestion follows wrecks: too fast, too slow, passing in the wrong place, bumper riding and over use of the middle digit.

Otherwise up here on Shadow Mountain it’s a quiet holiday Sunday with the 4th tomorrow.

Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Garage Logic

July 2, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Moon of the Summer Solstice

That garage looks better now. Over to Mountain Waste System’s transfer station outside Pine Junction. Backed up to a big trench, a mega trash compactor. Boards, pieces of old kitchen counter, some plastic bins, a too damaged drafting table, and a printer stand with a slot for the paper feed from a dot matrix printer went in. Would have been a perfect place to dispose of a body. Paid the guy $10 and left.

Shelving is up in the garage and has my journals and other too much stuff stuff from the loft. Kate put up a tire rack which now holds the four Blizzaks, ready for the next winter. Jon and Max (his buddy from Minneapolis) have started work on benches for our tools and the top for my multi-purpose cart. The whole space has become more organized though there’s still a good bit to go.

Meanwhile rain has come down most of the day. Eduardo rented a machine to augur in foundation supports for the new carport he’s building. A wet day for that sorta work.