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!!

Getting Fancy

September 22, 2021 in Making, Remembering by Colleen | Permalink

Good Wednesday to you, dear reader! How about the zoodle ramen above? It was pretty and damn tasty. The jalapeno was one of the hottest we’d come across in quite some time; neither Greg or I could eat the very few slices in our bowl. Yikes!

Time for a pack nap. Sooo cute!

Still beautiful in our neck of the woods…

One of my first memories as a child is the sound of the percolator at my grandparents house and the smell of coffee wafting to the guest room. I’d hop out of bed and pad down the hall to the thrill of Grandpa’s whistling. There in the kitchen, he’d be moving to an age-old dance, to and fro, to and fro, in slippers, old school jammies, and a robe.

From a very young age, I’d get to have a cup – a very pretty teacup, white painted with delicate pink roses. He’d fill it three-quarters with cream, add a tiny spoon of sugar, and top it off with coffee. Then we’d head wordlessly to the patio, where I’d snuggle next to him while he read the paper, puffed his pipe, and, of course, sipped his adult version, minus the sugar.

When Greg and I started dating, he did not like coffee. At our first outing to Paris on the Platte, as I knew he had always been a chocolate person, I convinced him to try a mocha – chocolate and a tower of whipped cream just the right combination to set him on the path to coffee nirvana. It worked! Before long, the pair of us were grabbing coffees at the the businesses popping up everywhere. Mochas, cappuccinos, black, with cream!

It should come as no surprise, on the occasion of our 50th birthdays, we decided to splurge on an espresso machine! After nearly three months on back order, it arrived, and we’ve been enjoying learning the ins and outs for the past few days. The coffee is delicious, amazingly so, and takes me right back to my very magical first espresso on my 16th birthday and all the other heady coffee house days since.

Our next project is to master latte art! Cheers to that…

August

August 2, 2021 in Making by Colleen | Permalink

Try as I might, this shot never quite turned out as I hoped, so squint your eyes and work with me here.

Do you ever make vision boards? I hadn’t made one in probably twenty years, but as I was watching Dr. Pimple Popper (oh, yes!) one evening last week, the spirit moved me, and I obliged. I could not find the glue, so it is this delicate and imperfect creation, akin to a sand painting, waiting to be scattered to the four directions to potentiate this very august dream.

Keep Trying…

April 12, 2021 in Exploring, Loving, Making by Colleen | Permalink

My beautiful, witty, and hilarious best gal, Andie Card! We’ve been friends since we were sixteen, with a giant book of cherished memories under our belts. We hadn’t seen each other for a well over a year, all this COVID misery destroying the best laid plans. Her pup insisted on being in the photo, and I give you more and more of a glimpse of him edging in, which explains my smirk in the first picture. I am trying not to laugh at him doing his best photo bomb! The pictures aren’t perfect, but our love and friendship surely is.

My parents! We stayed a couple of nights at their house, my growing up place, playing Spades, Sequence, Boggle, and Code Names. Eating and eating, all manner of homemade goodness, plus my best prickly pear margaritas and some Popeye’s fried chicken! Not too shabby.

I made my Mom’s necklace!

The park of my childhood universe, Little Dry Creek, through which I ventured to school for seven years in all manner of weather, and played and played and played. Most striking are the trees, all grown up and wise in sunshine and shady ways.

My Mom and I made Vivian Howard’s banana pudding (from Deep Run Roots), which tasted most spectacularly of said fruit, a whopping nine of them in the mix. A true labor of love. WOW!

Shooting for that corner pocket. My Dad won more games than Greg, but it didn’t really matter, all the fun they had playing.

S W I N G ! !

post script

Due to multiple problems with the J & J vaccine, I got my first Pfizer shot yesterday. Much gratitude to ALL the wonderful people who made the process both kindly and dream-like in speed and efficiency at the Broadmoor World Arena. WOOT!

In the same vein, COVID falsehoods and conspiracy theories debunked.

Lift

April 6, 2021 in Learning, Listening, Making, Thinking by Colleen | Permalink

I am not a religious person, but a very, very spiritual one. And though my Dad has read the bible daily, for as long as I can remember, I have never had the desire or inclination to do the same. I’ve found people’s interpretation of religious texts, and religion, as a whole, to be more dangerous to the general population than not. The Crusades, Islamic terrorism, Hindu & Buddhist extremism, the sexual abuse of priests and pastors on the innocent, the list goes on and on and on.

That being said, there are two very powerful notions of God that are with me daily. That he or she resides within every body and especially that a person can encounter God any place, any time. I always had difficulty believing this when encountering the cruel people of the world. Why would God reside there, when there are far nicer places to be? But then I thought about the awful person being an instrument of teaching for others, for me. God works through that person to show me how NOT to be. What to stand up for and rise against.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about how when I was little and would see a brilliant sun beam, I believed God was shining a light on a person in need. How the thought left me joyful. The sticky bit was in wondering if the person knew it. How often are we aware of that brilliant light shining on us? How often do we take the time to recognize the beauty and love around us? I think it’s time I do more to seek that awareness. That presence.

And a perfect tie-in to the photo up yonder. When my Great Aunt Mary died, my Grandma Tess found hundreds of Catholic medals in her room. I took maybe a quarter of them and fashioned a necklace with a few of them a while back. I liked the spirit of it, of having metal worn by her prayerful hands, but the look wasn’t quite right. I took it apart and made this one, with all my favorites. It jingles and sings, speaking loudest of her, while buoying my spirit, too.