Summer Most Heat Moon
Another estimate. This time for yard work. We’ll get three. Two in now. This is for thinning, pruning, getting the front ready for visitors, potential buyers in February. With 
the gardens in the back, flowers and vegetables, and the orchard, we’ve lost focus on the front, letting it become overgrown. Now it’s going to take some effort to put it back in neat, suburban form. (about which I care very little, but which buyers will. sigh.)
Our caring has focused on tomatoes, beets and carrots, iris, lilies and snakeroot, plums, cherries and apples, not on the appearance of our front. I’ve always thought the Chinese have the best idea here. Some Chinese let the front entrance to their homes become disheveled, run down. It’s not until you’re inside, beyond the outward appearance that you see the beauty of the home.
Kate will return today, her Western scout phase over for now. She’s driven many miles in the Rockies west of Denver. Yesterday she and Granddaughter Ruth drove from Golden to Boulder and then back to Idaho Springs. Kate reported that, as you know, it’s very important to see houses in situ. Each one she saw yesterday looked great, but had one thing or another that ruled them out. One had the 2 acres we feel we need, except they were vertical, not horizontal. Another had beautiful views, a great house, but was back 10 miles of dirt road. And so on. That’s all to be expected and we only need one house.
(left flank of St. Mary’s Glacier, 2007. St Mary’s Glacier is located 9.2 miles north of Idaho Springs in the Clear Creek Ranger District of the Arapaho National Forest. The glacier – technically a large perennial snowfield – is a popular year-round destination open to hiking, skiing, glissading, climbing and sledding.)
She has settled on St. Mary’s Glacier as the key area on which we should focus our search. That’s helpful because it narrows the field and makes paying attention much easier.
I’ll be glad to have her back home. We all miss her.
