Under a Red Roof

Kintsuge

May 31, 2022 in Being, Learning, Thinking by Colleen | Permalink

Do you know about kintsuge? Also known as Golden Joinery, it is the practice of fixing damaged pottery by adding gold to the repair. This enhances the broken bits and becomes part of the history of the object. I have known about it for a while but never had occasion to put it to use.

My Mom bought me this tray for Christmas. A New Mexico license plate?! So cool. It sits, with pride of place on our kitchen counter, a nice spot for fruit. I clumsily dropped an ice pack on it, and it snapped in two. Instead of searching for another or tossing it, I immediately thought of kintsuge and bought a kit. My repair, being my first, is FAR from expert or even terribly pretty, but I like it! Which, I believe, speaks loudest to the purpose of the practice.

Our broken bits can be made whole again, beautiful and useful, too! We need only believe them to be and willingly make the effort.

Of course, this got me thinking about how I have the opportunity to make my life this way, too. I used to feel a lot of shame around patterns I allowed to repeat over and over. Women came into my life, and I put aside my needs and feelings to make them feel loved and appreciated. That I was a friend they could count on. I’d drop anything for them. Give anything to them. Keep quiet about their negativity, insults, and slights.

I didn’t see it as me being a doormat. Until. I felt the first cracks in my being and knew I could do something about them. I stood up to them. The ways were mostly small, the glue filling the tiniest of fissures. A flimsy, yet valiant, first effort. Definitely no gold.

I experienced the seams holding and was emboldened. More and more, I uttered yes to me and no to them. I also started seeing the behavior more quickly in new relationships and ended them the moment I felt a fracture, even the tiniest of one. It leaves me with very few close friends, but I don’t see it as a negative. I am sprinkling gold about and enjoying the shimmer, the promise of all the history, of all that I was and now am. It is far from perfect but pretty grand.

Sparks Fly

May 30, 2022 in Cooking + Baking, Drinking, Gardening + Nature, Making by Colleen | Permalink

The late snow kept Pike’s Peak in prime prettiness for days. Another silver lining…

Our girl gets the bestest belly rubs and poses with brilliant iris blooms. She is all that and then some.

The petal parade has begun….

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary, twenty-nine years!! It is quite the number, which leaves us both pleased as punch. In celebration, we went to Dos Santos, our favorite taco joint, on Friday, and yesterday I made bouillabaisse and homemade garlic and red pepper aioli (high falutin’ word for lip-smackin’ good mayo) for the day-of celebration. It is slathered on extra crunchy French bread croutons before being delicately dipped in the broth. Every manner of happy tastebud sound follows. We enjoyed it with a bottle of wine purchased on our Missouri vacation last year – Hermanhoff White Lady. It made for one heck of a way to celebrate!

While I labored in the kitchen, the hubster labored in the garden and on our screen door. Juniper is sometimes an impatient little booger when it comes to getting in and out of the house and had made enough of a wreck of the screen that insects could get in, no problema. So we had a heavier duty one installed (by Mullet Screens – a kindly guy who comes round in a van!) and bought the “screen saver” (HA!) to keep further damage from occurring. It needed a little trim, and Greg made it so. It looks quite nice and seems built to last.

All the sprouts tended since January are snug in the ground and looking quite lovely! The stick structure in the middle is made for beans to climb and came from fallen branches in all these terrible winds we’ve been having. I am super excited to think about our summer harvest. Though I won’t be counting any beans until they’re actually off the vine. Now that snow is out of the picture, we are in prime hail season. Oh, Colorado….

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Happy 73rd Birthday to my MOM!!

Turn Off the Light

May 26, 2022 in Quoting by Colleen | Permalink

Small as a peanut,
Big as a giant,
We’re all the same size
When we turn off the light.

Rich as a sultan,
Poor as a mite,
We’re all worth the same
When we turn off the light.

Red, black or orange,
Yellow or white,
We all look the same
When we turn off the light.

So maybe the way,
To make everything right
Is for god to just reach out
And turn off the light!

Shel Silverstein

Tags: Quoting

Redemption

May 23, 2022 in Eating, Gardening + Nature by Colleen | Permalink

Up yonder – roasted zucchini soup with toasted pepitas and a chicken thigh with smoked paprika gravy. The soup is a godsend when your giant Costco bag of zucchini gets overlooked for a few days, and the whole three pounds needs to be eaten, pronto. Just roast it under the broiler until it’s got a nice char, and whir it with a little bit of water, a can of green chiles, garlic, cumin, and salt in your Vitamix. Done and done. Here we have homemade tamarind soda, not a root beer float. I’m a big tamarind lover! Nothing tastes quite like it.

neighborhood blossoms

Our garden, complete with lovely butterfly on Thursday. I was out there soaking up the beauty and thinking what a great year it’s gonna be out here.

Then the snow started falling Friday afternoon and didn’t stop until nearly a foot fell at our house. We went out a few times to shake the heavy snow off flattened bushes and trees, which gutted me, truth be told. It’s all melted now, and does look a bit worse for wear, but most of it is better than I expected. Grandma’s rose still has tons of blooms and even more buds! There are quite a few other broken bits that I don’t think will recover, sadly.

This being me, it should come as no surprise that there is much to be happy about here. Redemption! Drought conditions and red flag wind stoked too close for comfort wildfires within minutes of our house earlier in the week. They’ll be put on the back burner for a bit, as the ground is positively saturated. So, yeah, gratitude runs the day!

Tags: Colorado Springs