Under a Red Roof

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

Apple

May 19, 2022 in Quoting by Colleen | Permalink

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

Martin Luther

Tags: Quoting

Last Monday

May 16, 2022 in Exploring, Listening, Loving by Colleen | Permalink

Howdy from the Ogden Theater last Monday. Fontaines D.C. baby! Even though we loved live music and only lived ten blocks away in our early marriage days, this was our first time at the Ogden. In an old people with money to spare fashion, we paid in advance for nearby parking, arrived early enough to snag actual seats, and were utterly shameless in saving our hearing with neon green ear plugs. The lush life and a damn good time. Also happy to report there were plenty of other grey-haired attendees having fun in equal measure. Awesome, yup, yup.

I guess this is us openly admitting that we want the damn pandemic to be over. I am not in denial about numbers rising or the staggering number of people without a single shot, but we are thrice vaccinated and don’t want to live in a state of fear and anxiety. SO, when a favorite band announces a date in the area and all works in our favor to attend, we are doing it.

The show was fantastic – great crowd, great energy! We loved the opening band, Just Mustard, which is always such a fine gift. Grian and the gang were on top of their game, everyone doing their best at their given role, yours truly included – singing at top of voice, of course. They didn’t play Roy’s Tune, but did Jackie Down the Line, so it was all good in the end. Very, very good, actually.

We stayed with my parents, which kept us from being uber-fatigued drivers on the south bound 2-5 Monday night. We made a right deal out of it, packing the pizza oven for a tip-top luncheon, playing the usual games, watching movies and comedy (Nate Bargatze!) and such. Five out of five stars, peeps. F I V E .