Category Archives: nature

Rabbitbrush and butterscotch.

family, nature, trees, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Last week was full of rocks and trees and even flowers. Joy and I took the children to Garden of the Gods, where red sandstone in ragged forms towers above the walking paths. Even the littlest guy walked more than two miles among the juniper and mountain mahogany, and wildflowers mostly gone to seed. The Gambel oaks, also known as Rocky Mountain white oak or Colorado scrub oak, had probably displayed more varied shades of orange and yellow a few weeks ago, but when we encountered them the leaves had aged to a rich, mellow gold.

We saw the rabbitbrush in many forms and places, but didn’t know what it was until just before we left the park and saw its picture in the visitor center. I have known of rabbitbrush for decades and I hope that after this extended encounter I will not forget it so easily. We saw its flower, two sorts of galls on the plants, and noticed its needly leaves and how they are softer than conifer needles. One of the galls is cottony gall; the other I haven’t been able to identify.

The very next day the whole family drove up to Woodland Park; it’s less than an hour to this town that lies at 8500 feet. We walked along Lovell Gulch Trail, among several species of conifers and groves of aspens. We suspected they were aspens, but we knew that birch have similar bark, so when we got home I googled around and it became clear that yes, what we saw were aspens, so plentiful in the Rockies and in dry places high up, while birches like floodplains and shade. And the few leaves that we saw  — most had fallen after turning bright yellow — matched the pictures of aspen. I only saw one bright leaf, of another species.

We admired the bark of other trees, especially one that had lots of texture, and fresh sap flowing. Soldier had a sudden thought, came close to get a whiff, and concluded, “Oh, it must be a Jeffrey pine — they smell like butterscotch.” Indeed. Oh, that was delicious! I made up a mnemonic story for myself about a boy named Jeffrey who was walking down the trail and discovered a butterscotch drop on a tree trunk.

The view of the mountains is striking from there, a different perspective from our daily one. We have seen Pikes Peak from several angles now, and don’t know the names of any of the other peaks visible from here. Soldier just read that Colorado has more than 50 peaks over 14,000 feet. Colder temperatures are coming this week, and yes, snow is on the forecast, too. So our views will grow even more spectacular.

Bright day and shining friend.

books, friends, nature, , , ,

After two cloudy days, one of which was a little drizzly “down here,” we woke this morning to bright blue skies. As I was sitting at the breakfast table I noticed that the mountains in the distance had snow on them, and were transformed. Their changed appearance added contrast and texture to the entire landscape. 🙂 I would go on the deck and take a picture of Pikes Peak as soon as I ate the last bites of scrambled egg.

I forgot to do it, but I did take a picture of my sourdough sponge that I had put to ferment the night before. There isn’t a large enough bowl here for it so I had put it in a casserole and then set the lid on. It was nice and bubbly this morning and I put the lid back on. In a couple of days it will be sour enough for me to want to make some kind of bread with it.

I forgot to take that mountain picture because I was so excited about my trip to the Denver area today to see blogger Pom Pom! She and I have known each other through our blogs for nearly ten years, but this was to be our first in-person encounter.

It took me 45 minutes to make the drive, in Soldier’s little Honda Fit with its stick shift. It makes me feel younger to drive a manual transmission; when my back is not out it is fun. The short trip was pretty nice, watching the sky and few clouds, and the fascinating and varied terrain, which I resolved to read more about. What is this — the high desert, the high prairie, a high mountain valley, or something else? I got more views of the snowy peaks on my drive there, and again late in the afternoon on my return. The topographic high point of the drive was Monument Hill, 7300 ft.

My time with Pom Pom was quite lovely. Of course she is a much fuller and whole person when encountered altogether and not just through words, and I already knew that I loved her. We did talk and talk, and we took a walk around her neighborhood that is very colorful with turning leaves. She gave me a yummy lunch, with the slenderest candles burning like sun rays out of apples decorating our table. I wanted to take pictures of everything in her house, but I didn’t take one picture, because she in her shining self commanded my interest — my very self-centered interest, it appears, because I do believe she got me to talk about me 80% of the time. Well, we will meet again and I hope again, when I visit Soldier and Joy in the future.

Here is something so surprising, that Pom Pom and I found out today. We talked about our book groups, and what we had been reading, etc., and discovered that the current selection for each of them is a collection of Flannery O’Connor’s stories. How unlikely is that? Her group is meeting before mine so she may help me prepare for a challenging discussion.

This evening I interrupted my dinner when I saw the sunset, already fading, and took its picture. Next week we may get some snow, before I return home. And one day maybe I’ll get an image of the snowy mountain view posted here. For now, to you, a Colorado evening turned to “Good-night!”

 

The beauty of souls and red rock.

family, nature, , , , , , ,

Colorado Springs – I am still here with Soldier and Joy’s family, but having a quiet and slow morning, as Joy has taken the children to visit an old friend she ran into at church. Today is cold again, after a week of warm and sunny weather, and the winter season will settle in before the end of the month with freezing temps every night. The town lies at 6300 ft. elevation, with Pikes Peak in view, so one would expect a mountainous feel to the air and the seasons.

I’m a little homesick for my usual mild climate and the abundance of beautiful plants all year long. This Airbnb house is in a neighborhood that appears a little drab to me. Is the relative dryness of the region the region the reason that the leaves on the trees don’t turn beautiful colors, but merely shrivel and lose their color before falling? Out the window we see a broad and flat expanse of dirt and dry weeds between 40-yr-old housing tracts, where it seems more houses are now going to be built, so if you are a little boy who likes to identify excavators and cement mixers you will enjoy that view. I tire of it and lift my eyes just a bit to the large sky, and one morning, there was a sunrise palette.

All the males and I went on an outing to Manitou Springs on the weekend, where more than a hundred years ago bricks from ancient Anasazi ruins in the Four Corners area of the Southwest were used to build a full-size replica of cliff dwellings. It was fun for the boys to walk through the passageways and explore rooms cut into the rock, and there was even a small arrangement of native plants by way of a botanical garden for me to investigate while they went through the dwellings a second and third time. I love that red rock!

The natural beauty I have most appreciated has not been of the broad landscape, but what I’ve found close up, like the above, and the ubiquitous junipers and blue spruce that will stay fresh and green all winter, and which are a  clean contrast to the nearly aways blue sky. The town is known for the way the sun shines all or part of the vast majority of days. Yesterday I had the boys to myself for a few hours and they ran outside on the green grass; we scooped up leaves with a snow shovel and I taught them to run and jump in our little pile. The leaves smelled sooo good.

The most sublime images of creation I encounter day by day are the humans, with their souls that glow with the life God gave them, and who have the potential to be changed into His likeness as they follow the desires of their deepest longings. I am in awe of the parents’ conscientious care of the children, the thousand responsive decisions they must make every day about how to answer questions, how to deal with squabbles and tantrums and meltdowns — after they have already made many intentional and pro-active planning decisions.

I know, I also used to do that same job day after day, and I wonder at the person I was! It’s all of God’s grace, that we have the strength to do it again the next morning, and that the children grow up at least somewhat prepared to live without the constant supervision and training that they need early on. If they can learn to return to God time after time after time, to receive forgiveness and everything else they need, that will be the best thing.

rain with quinces

food and cooking, nature, , , ,

In the evening of this humid day I was cooking, and waiting for my computer guy, who never came… Rain began to fall about 5:00, but the air is mild, so I opened the windows wider so as to smell the indescribable and rare scents of these early rains. When you live where the whole summer is dry, often for five months, the first showers of fall are especially delicious.

I was peeling and cutting up the smallest quinces I’ve ever seen, and surely they are the most rock-like. For years I’ve been on the lookout for neglected quince trees, which I know used to be common, when I didn’t have time to experiment with them. Last month I was invited to go with my new neighbor Kim up in the hills to pick fruit at her friend’s estate. The word was, the fig trees were loaded.

When we arrived, we found that the figs were mostly not ripe. Passing over the monster zucchini, we picked kumquats that turned out to be more sour than lemons, a few apples and pears, and these dwarf quinces. Note to self: tiny quinces are not a good deal.

I interrupted my tedious quince prep to make tomato soup for dinner, using roasted cherry tomatoes of every color, preserved in the freezer from a distant summer, and other hoarded tomato treasures. Then I decided not to eat my garlicky soup after all, because I am going to the dentist tomorrow. I munched on a few handfuls of sunflower seeds.

Then it was back to the quinces: At this point they have been poaching for a good hour, and did get soft, but they are more sour than the kumquats, reminiscent of rhubarb, in spite of me adding extra extra sugar. Now I’m wondering if the tree they came from was some kind of sport — but no, there was more than one tree….

So many of my thrifty cooking projects lately have ended up terribly time consuming, but at least today I was able to feel appropriate to the fallish weather, in my efforts to use the garden harvest. The fresh and damp air was such a tonic that only laughing, not grousing, seemed natural. When I took this picture, a light rain was watering the earth.