Daily Archives: July 10, 2016

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

Among the Wild Flax

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Summer                                                                  Park County Fair Moon

wild flax
wild flax

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

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Summer                                                                  Park County Fair Moon

ballgameSummer 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.

computerRight 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.