A beautiful day in the neighborhood. Clear blue skies, fluffy clouds over Black Mountain, the air cleared of dust by last night’s rain. Driving to Evergreen on Interstate 70 yesterday afternoon, there were cars pulled alongside the road taking photographs of the snow-capped mountains to the west and the buffalo herd to the north. On an Interstate. Tourist season must be getting underway.
Looking southeast from Sushi Win
And I was driving home, turning into the Front Range mountains that surround Evergreen. On a nearby one, Shadow Mountain, is our house. It’s a feeling I have often, feeling lucky to drive these mountain roads to get home.
Eating raw fish is an important part of my occasional diet and Sushi Win in Evergreen got good reviews. It was off Co. 74 and on my way, so I stopped there. The view from the window. Well.
Geologist Tom Zeiner from the Colorado Native Plant class calls it the “solar snowshovel.” Without spending a dime or even removing the snowblower from the garage, the weekend’s snow has melted and transpired from the driveway. This will continue to amaze me for some time. What a treat.
The forecast has rain in all of the next ten days save 2. That means more water going downhill added to the already high water levels. But, no snow.
“Snow for the northern and central mountains is looking like a sure-bet, and with that the National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Watch which goes into effect Saturday afternoon and continues through Saturday night. Heavy snow at elevations >8,500 feet for the northern and central mountains will add up to 10 to 20″ by Sunday morning. If your plans take you into the mountains Saturday afternoon, please plan for winter driving conditions.” weather5280
Into Denver today to pick up four Michelin Latitude Tours. Saved $300 over my mechanic’s quote for the same tire. Tire Rack.com you rock!
On the way back I stopped at Paxton Lumber Company just off Colorado Avenue near I-70. Actor Bill Paxton is a member of this family. Jon recommended it. They have wood for wood workers. I’m looking for wood to make a new top for some Ikea cabinets I have.
Woods they had, often 10-12 foot boards, many 3 inches thick: chestnut, yellowheart, padauk, wenge, pecan hickory, mahogany, teak, brown ash, walnut, alder, white ash, cherry, red oak, white oak, european beech, aromatic cedar (smelled so good) plus other, softer woods like pines, basswood, poplar. What a great place. Finishing the book shelves, getting a new top for my cabinets will mean I can organize and then use all my resources. Excited about that.
When I got back into the mountains, I made a stop in Indian Hills, a small town just off Hwy. 285. The Mirada Art Gallery there has a good reputation, the best in the Denver metro in spite of being in a relatively out of the way spot. It had a show of contemporary artists focused on the West that will close Friday.
The art, most of it, did not attract my eye. Too loose, too colorful, not enough depth. Expensive art to match your couch. However, sculpture Jennifer Stratman and painter Alvin Gill-Tapia would look good in any museum or home.
These were places I’d wanted to see for some time, but the opportunity hadn’t presented itself. Today, it did.
While I was gone, the dogs tripped over into predator behavior. They are neither pliable, nor sensible in that state. Gertie has a wound just below her left eye. She looks like a prize fighter. Vega, who had attacked both Gertie and Kepler earlier in the morning, got bitten by Kepler. The e-collar he’s in didn’t bother him. Kate said he clamped on and wouldn’t let go. It’s not a terrible wound, but it’s a puncture wound through the dermis, so she’s back on antibiotics.
Vega, in a happier moment, with her sister, Rigel
When they’re in a predatory frenzy, fights and biting occur at the door. Doorways are places where doggy status becomes critical, top dogs through first, omegas go last. In the frantic scrums like the one this morning everybody tries to get through the door at once. Havoc can, and did this morning, ensue.
The plane performed its wonder, lifting a couple of hundred people into the air. The full Beltane moon lit up the clouds passing by underneath. I stared out the window, a bit confused, leaving Minnesota to return home. This required an adjustment in my thinking.
Then, when I arrived at my home airport, it was strange, another place on the road with unfamiliar paths and habits. Mostly I enjoy learning new things, but it was 10 pm, almost my bedtime and I stumbled a bit, as I would in an airport unknown to me. This experience conflicted with Kate waiting in the cell-phone lot, ready to pick me up and take me back to the mountains. Odd.
Coming home to Colorado, the first time from away. The Woolly retreat for 2015 now over.
It’s a cliche. Felt like I never left. But true. Slipping back into the physical presence of my friends, my Woolly brothers, was like putting on a comfortable shirt. It just fit. Coming as it did a couple of weeks after the start of the prostate path, it was especially welcome. One friend has had prostate surgery. Another knew many who had. Most of the news was positive. Cures, few side effects. Offers to talk further as the path winds on. So welcome.
I suspect the level of my comfort at Camp du Nord, about a half-hour north and west of Ely, figured inversely to the level of strangeness I felt when returning to Colorado. But. I had no desire to remain in Minnesota, to reconsider our decision. I wanted to get home.
Wildfire mitigation. That was on my mind when we went to the Conifer/Evergreen home and garden show. And, in a booth for a product that costs between $20,000 and $30,000 I got an idea that will help us a lot, an external fire sprinkler system.
The concept can be implemented far more simply than the battery maintained, 500 gallon reservoir system Waterguard offers. It’s automated and assumes loss of power to the house soon after the fire becomes a problem. Loss of power is a problem unless you have a stand-alone, gas fueled generator. Which we do. It’s the first block in our system and needs to get installed soon.
After it’s in, we’ll review the various sprinkler systems available, I’m leaning toward one that is plumbed and covers the house, the garage and the defensible space. Defensible space is about 30 feet out from the house. This space needs special, intensive and unsentimental approaches to any fuel source: shrubs, grass, trees. The two together, a solid defensible space and an external sprinkler system, will bring over 90% of homes through a direct burn.
It will take a while to price and get bids for the system we choose, but we should be able to have it in place before the worst part of the wildfire season in late summer, early fall. I get sprinkler systems, having managed a twelve zone system in Andover for many years, and this makes sense to me.
We have significant snow on the ground with only 10 days to go until Beltane. Of course, temperatures will rise. Even with the temperatures in the mid-forties like the last couple of days our magical south facing driveway eliminated several inches of snow all by itself. As Jon says, sweet.
We have limited experience of mountain weather, but what we’ve seen so far we like. Snow against the ponderosa pines looks like the background of a book cover for a Zane Grey novel. The snow itself, until this last one, was mostly powder, light and fluffy, easy to remove when necessary. The fluctuation in temperatures from moderate lows (compared to Minnesota) to warm (compared to Minnesota) mean the cruel burdens of winter like long lasting ice, snow cover on roads, very cold temperatures and snow piled in huge mountains reducing the size of parking lots are mostly absent.
Under the mountain spring moon various shades of green have slowly, slowly begun to appear. The ponderosa pines have been green all winter but they’ve greened up some. The first ground cover green to appear was the bearberry when the snow melted back. This evergreen ground cover was green all along, just hidden. A shaded patch of moss has gone from a muted pale green to emerald over the last couple of weeks. There are, too, even here at 8,800 feet, dandelions. Some grass, too. Crab grass for sure, another hardy perennial. Tufts of grass that look like prairie drop seed, but are not, I’m sure, remain their winter tan.
Too, the dogs have begun to sniff through the deck, smelling, I suppose, new rodents of some kind. Along with that has come Rigel digging. With the advent of warmer soil Rigel and Vega may begin creating holes in the rest of the yard as well. Another harbinger of spring.
Birds chirp happily around 5:30-5:45 am as the sun begins to rise.
Driving along Highway 78 (Shadow Mountain Drive, Black Mountain Drive (our segment) and Brook Forest Road) the only snow that remains is on the north side of the road or in shaded spots. A pond not far from our house still has ice, but the ice has a shallow layer of water over it. The mountain streams run, burble, ice now long melted and turned into stream. Willows along the streams look fire tipped as their branches turn a green gold. “Like dusted with gold,” Kate said.
The mountain spring is a slow arriver, coming in pulses, alternated with sometimes heavy snows. We have the potential, for example, for a huge snow storm Wednesday through Friday.
While on a drive Sunday, not far from our home, on top of a large outcropping of rock where the sun penetrated the trees, lay a fox, curled up and enjoying a quiet Sunday nap. The fox was a tan spot against the gray of the rock. Mule deer have begun to return as well, we see them at various places along the slopes and valleys. Kate just called and said, for example, that we have four deer in our front yard and “the dogs are levitating.” Sure enough, there they are, finding the green just as I have been.
