Lugnasa Harvest Moon
The clouds are at 8,800 feet this morning. We’re surrounded by and inside them. A foggy start to the day.
Bear Creek Design starts work today on our redesigned bathroom. It’s an aging in place design with a zero entry shower. With no bathtub and no rail for a shower door we will be able to use this shower with a walker if we ever need to. Also, less likely to trip. We don’t need it now, but when we do, it will already be done.
Kate gets a new crown today. I asked how many that made for her now and she said, “More than sit on monarchs in Europe.” That Kate.
In the latest divorce news wrangling over specifics has produced: zilch. If Jon and Jen can’t agree through their lawyers, then they will have to go to court on Friday. A judge will decide what will be in the temporary orders. Temporary orders cover things like custody, decision-making authority, sale of the house. The final divorce decree has been rescheduled, now probably sometime in November. This whole process began formally in May.
Black Mountain, which is covered in lodgepole pine and actually green as a result, has small gold flecks this morning. Those few aspen groves on its slopes have begun to turn, as have more and more aspens between here and Evergreen, but not those on our property. Too, Orion appeared in the southern sky a week or so ago, the early morning southern sky. On Shadow Mountain Orion and the changing of the aspens are true harbingers of autumn.
Palisade, Colorado has had a bumper peach harvest. There is a small area on the Western Slope that has an ideal peach growing microclimate. They have other crops, too: lavender, apples, sweet corn, strawberries and vegetables. The newspapers have carried photo spreads of workers in the orchards with peach baskets gently picking and placing the delicate fruit into baskets. Back in Andover, this time of year, the honey harvest would be in, the raspberries just beginning. I would be out planting garlic and pulling the last plantings of carrots, beets, leeks and onions. This is the peak harvest season, when the land and its workers combine to feed millions, even billions of people.
Being so far removed from farms and large truck gardens feels strange to this former Midwestern lifer. No more so than in this long harvest season. Corn pickers and combines have begun to roll through fields. The state fairs have swept up 4-H’er raised cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens. The vegetable harvest has peaked. Self pick apple orchards have hayrides and cider stations set out. Not there, though.
Labor Day does mark the winding down of one season long harvest up here: tourist dollars from Denver folks. July and August are the heaviest tourist months for our favorite mountain town, Evergreen. We’re not a winter tourist destination, at least not like the ski resorts, so the roads will have less traffic and fewer visitors in Evergreen’s restaurants.
