Under a Red Roof

Encouragement II

July 8, 2019 in Gardening + Nature, Learning, Thinking by Colleen | Permalink

A chickadee nest taken from our bird house, the majority of which, I believe, was made from Juniper’s fur. So cool!

pavement rose – an unfortunate name for a stellar scented shrub

lamb’s ear

traditional hyssop in blue and pink

Jupiter’s beard

dianthus

yarrow

showy milkweed

opuntia

pink evening primrose

callirhoe

rose that came with the house

purple cranesbill

Hiya! Welcome to more encouragement for turning a lawn into a xeriscaped oasis. First off, look at the variety of flowers currently blooming in the front yard. Do you notice a theme? I didn’t want to feel overwhelmed by color in either garden, so I chose to have only pink, white, purple, and blue out front; and red, orange, yellow, and white out back. Though there are a couple of aberrations, the opuntia (I thought it was pink) and the rose, which was one of the few plants that came with the house. Perfect in its imperfection.

So, aside from all the beauty and color, another great reason to consider a garden is the cost. If you’re lucky and have a well cared for lawn from the get-go, this may be of little interest. Since our back garden was such a mess of weeds, we would have needed a lot of pricey mediation to get it right. And at about 5,000 square feet, the minimum price to tear out the weeds, prep & grade the soil, and install a less thirsty sod would have cost about $25,000. Who knows how much it would cost to water, either. One neighbor said she pays about $200 a month. As our friend Sean would say, “That’s A LOT of cabbages!!”

Not to say we haven’t put a chunk of cash into the garden, about $10,000 for the front and back, but that is for everything – 15 tons of rock, hundreds of feet of edging, rental of the Bobcat, the cost of hauling away the old patio and associated garbage, more than 40 yards of mulch, and all the purdy plants, trees, and shrubs. But, as I mentioned in my last post, our maintenance costs are next to nothing.

I can’t imagine how much more we’d be paying to keep a lawn looking nice. All that crabbiness from moving the hose hither and yon surely would have led to a sprinkler system, which, for our large yard, would cost about $5,000 – 6,000, not counting annual maintenance. Maybe we’d upgrade to a riding mower ($1,200 – 2,500!) to cut down on the hour-long mow, too. So many cabbages!

So, yeah, we’re pretty happy with our choice to have flowers, shrubs, and trees over a lawn. It’s easy and pretty and so filled with life!

Encouragement

July 7, 2019 in Gardening + Nature, Learning, Thinking by Colleen | Permalink

Illuminated skies over our little slice of Colorado Springs and the deluge that followed. I wish summer could always be this way, enough sun for life without sweaters, ethereal rises and sets, and enough rain to keep the earth damp and our two hearts aloft.

Oh, love…

crested white prickly poppy

orange horned poppy

red birds in a tree

feverfew

Japanese honeysuckle

black raspberry blossom

blackberry

red currant

lemon variegated thyme

It is frequently asked or plain assumed that our garden is more work than a lawn. All those plants – they must consume our days with backbreaking labor. Only the first half is true now. They do consume our days, in observation of spritely butterfly, bee, hummingbird, and sometimes wild romping dog in and amongst their blossoms. Our work is minimal, a few minutes here and there to pull errant weeds, a bit of water here and there when it is scorching.

It’s the real beauty of xeriscape. The work is mostly at the beginning, getting the groundwork laid, doing the planting, watering to get everyone happy and established. Had we chosen a lawn, we’d have so much more labor.

When we first bought the house and had a lawn out front and the giant weed patch in back, it took and hour and a half each week to mow and trim. Don’t get me started on all the time it took to move the sprinkler to and fro, getting every last square of turf, and the volume of water and fertilizer it required to keep it barely green. How crabby it made me! I LOVE green and crave it like mad when deep in the throes of winter, but I am wild about foliage and color and height, too. Grass simply cannot offer what a varied landscape can.

So, think of this as encouragement, for anyone considering a change of garden scene. Choose plants wisely, and do the hard work to get it going, and your garden will be more joy than care, too.

High Desert Morning

February 15, 2019 in Exploring, Learning, Making by Colleen | Permalink

When we visited Santa Fe last year, I bought a Dryland Wilds Sagebrush Plantwater, so I could mist my face with one of my very favorite scents on the daily. After using it a short while, I wondered what other wonders I was missing. To my great luck, the lovely Robin Moore and Cebastien Rose make much more than plantwaters. They are high desert wild crafters, sustainably foraging native and invasive flowers, leaves, and resins, and harvest plants that would otherwise be discarded to make the most exquisitely intoxicating scents of New Mexico.

It’s no surprise I became a huge fan. In addition to the sagebrush, I purchased pinon plantwater, luxurious soaps, evening primrose and copper mallow lip balms, and beauty oils infused with willow and loosestrife, sagebrush and snakeweed, rosehip and thistle. Each is evocative, efficient, and positively uplifting!

Imagine my delight upon learning they offer a perfume making class. And what great luck to have the date correspond with our anniversary! So we planned our trip to Albuquerque around a Sunday afternoon. Cebastien is a fantastic teacher, educating about the various perfume notes, and encouraging us, via scent combining exercises, to try what would normally make us run for the hills. It culminates in the exciting creation of our own scented oil.

I call mine High Desert Morning. An infusion of ruby red grapefruit, balsam fir, honey mesquite, and labdanum. Initially, it only contained the first three, as I imagined peeling a grapefruit to the rhythm of the rising sun. It was lovely but lacking. So I pondered Cebastien’s teaching and decided to go for a run-for-the-hills essential oil. I tried the labdanum, and that drop on my perfume card made it all come together, for the missing element was Greg. Labdanum is on the musky side and reminiscent of his sweet bearded cheek. Crazy fantastic!

So if you need a reason to head to Albuquerque besides fabulous food and turquoise, treat yourself to a class. If you are less adventurous, try a soap, beauty oil, or plantwater, and inhale the magic of the high desert.

Tags: New Mexico, Traveling

The End is the Beginning

November 13, 2018 in Friendship, Learning by Colleen | Permalink

Happy Tuesday!

As part of my day rave experience, I received Belong, a book written by Daybreaker co-founder Radha Agrawal. It’s all about creating communities where we feel valued and thrive. By completing a series of written and exploratory exercises, the reader creates the shape of her life by filling it with the people and activities that spark the most joy and connection.

I’d been plugging along with it when a friend texted to say she needed some girl time and really wanted us to hang out. Since I started doing the Belong work, I had some doubts about our relationship. She had a habit of not allowing space for me in conversation and making fun of me or Greg but had other qualities that I enjoyed, so I started to make plans, which sent a flag up for me.

This friend also had a habit of saying I was missed but never seemed to want to do the work of making the connection. It fell on me to choose the date, time, and activity. So, I wondered what would happen if she had the responsibility, offering ideas but leaving the execution to her. This was weeks ago, and I never heard back.

As I am wont to do, I fretted and found ways to make myself the bad actor. Then I looked back on one of the Belong exercises that asks what I do and don’t want in a relationship. I reread the qualities and was gobsmacked to realize she has ALL that I determined were deal breakers. And so I quit, not in an instant, see above(!), but over a few days, culminating by unfriending her on Facebook. I still feel a tad twitchy but know the relationships I am currently building are keepers, where positivity reigns and I am valued equally and treated respectfully.

Thank you, Radha, for helping me get to this place!

Epiphany

November 2, 2018 in Learning, Loving by Colleen | Permalink

Have you ever felt so drawn to a place that it defies explanation? Round a bend of highway where you have never lived and felt the most incredible sensation of home? That, to me, has always, always been Southern Colorado and New Mexico. For fellow travelers who know where I-25 bends just south of Larkspur to reveal Greenland, this is the where my heart goes positively aflutter. I had always thought it was the anticipation of visiting New Mexico where my Nana lived most of her life, and my Grandpa and Mom were born. It turns out, there’s more.

In conversation with my dad last week, talking about family, he casually mentioned that my Great Grandma Tillie was part Comanche – she is second from the right, with her mother to the left, and her siblings Clifford, Henry, and Lula. Her mother’s maiden name was Serna, so I always assumed that part was solely Mexican (or Hispanic or Latina, depending on your persuasion). But, as a Catholic, her family had taken a Spanish name, so it’s difficult to know much there was of each in her. But that knowledge! I am part Comanche! What a delight to think upon my ancient sense of home when rounding that bend. My ancestors of the Comancheria had likely made camp on the very spot.

And today’s photos, of last Sunday, spent with our cousins Brent and Bronson, sharing more of our history, along with delicious food and even better company and that incredible view of the Spanish Peaks – home to my heart and ancestors, the ancient and recent.