A Local Ghost Story

The "Spur of the Moment" is a local roadhouse and bar. According the the Perry Park Sentinel, it has been around in one form or another since the stagecoach days. According to a local real estate firm's website, it's the current incarnation of an old business called the Larkspur Cafe, dating from the 1920's or 1930's. In any case, it's been around for quite a while and is a local landmark of sorts.

There's a ghost story associated with it.

Shaun Boyd, an archivist with the Douglas County Libraries, was quoted as saying that a ghost named Fred White sometimes hangs out at the bar. One presumes that he's a former patron or employee.

"Boyd said people working at the bar have reported seeing a friendly-looking ghost wearing a cowboy hat and kerchief pulling bar taps and tugging on patron's ponytails. The ghost will reportedly turn off lights and switch on the jukebox for fun, Boyd said."

We don't hang out at the Spur, so we can't give any first-hand reports one way or the other. We can report that the Spur is still a popular hang-out, offering food, drinks, live music, and lots of non-ghostly locals.

Pumpkins on Parade

We've been to several Halloween parties this month. One of them featured pumpkin carving as an activity. We brought pumpkins and carved them. They look quite lovely when lit by a candle at night. I'm not sure they'll last until Halloween, so I took these photos today.

This beautiful model features the eyes as windows to the soul. The rest of the design is a variation on a classic theme. It was designed by our youngest, carved by one of the adults, and further decorated by the designer.


Here is the pumpkin designed by the middle child. It combines a classic pumpkin theme with an added piratical flair. This handsome squash displays an eye patch and a hat in addition to the X'ed eye and the raffish goatee. The skull-and-crossbones carved into the lid glows most alarmingly in the night.

The design was conceptualized by the child, drawn onto the pumpkin by me, and carved by the main knife-wielding adult.


The oldest child came up with the concept for the pumpkin to the left. It is an ominous-looking spiderweb. The spider was drawn on afterwards. The knife-wielder did most of the actual design work during the carving process. It looks wonderful when lit by the candle inside.

If we manage to take a photo of these pumpkins at night, with lit candles inside, we'll share the photo with everyone.

Recipe Corner: School-Lunch Bread

We make this bread-machine loaf in order to have bread for the week's lunches. It is a simple bread which keeps well enough to use for the whole week. If there's any left over at the end of the week, it becomes garlic bread or croutons as part of a weekend dinner.

Put the following ingredients in the bread-machine loaf pan, in this order. Do not mix; let the machine do it.

1-1/4 cups water
"some" olive oil (probably a few tablespoons)
1 teaspoon salt
4 heaping teaspoons sugar
3-1/2 cups flour (we use the local all-purpose flour)
"some" dry milk powder (probably a few tablespoons)
1 heaping teaspoon yeast

Put this in the bread machine. Use the "French Bread, rapid" setting and the 1-1/2 pound loaf size. On our machine, the time-until-done is 2 hours and 22 minutes. Hit the start button and go away.

Caveats, comments, etc.:

1. We live at a fairly high altitude, above 8000'. People living at other elevations might have different results. In particular, we often need less yeast than we would at a lower elevation. The texture of the final bread is probably a bit different than it would be at a lower elevation. Add similar caveats for our local flour versus someone else's, our low humidity, etc.

2. We will usually monitor the dough for the first 10 minutes or so. Sometimes we need to add a bit of water or a bit of flour, or we have to use the spatula to re-unite stray unmixed ingredients with the main dough blob.

3. We will often remove the dough-mixer thingy from the dough as the last rise begins. But not always. It depends on how busy or absent-minded we are.

4. The variations seem obvious -- use a different oil, use buttermilk powder instead of milk powder, replace part of the all-purpose unbleached white flour with something else, etc.

5. We buy baking yeast in bulk at the local natural-foods stores. We get a little bag for a few dollars. We store it in the refrigerator. It will remain good for at least a year or until it runs out. A package of store-bought yeast is a bit less than a tablespoon of yeast (maybe 2 to 2-1/2 teaspoons), for comparison.

We make a lot of different kinds of bread, both in the bread machine and by hand. This one tastes plain but good, keeps well enough, and is willingly eaten by all family members. Thus it has become the default school lunch bread.

First Snow!

We got the first real snow of the season last night. It arrived with thunder and lightning and a 20 degree drop in temperature. We had rain, sleet, snow, graupel, slush, and other early-season cold and yucky varieties of precipitation. And wind, too, of course. The Palmer Divide gets a lot of wind.

We had about 3" of snow over a layer of slush and ice this morning. Temps were down in the 20's, a contrast to the mid-50's we had yesterday afternoon before the front came through.



These photos are from this afternoon. Things looked much the same earlier except that it was dark and everything was covered with snow, not just the ground.

The paved roads were in dreadful shape this morning. Everything was incredibly icy and slippery.


I guess it's not summer any longer. I say that every year.


The Local Inspector



This guy was peering in our window last week. He came through the yard with 3 or 4 of his buddies. They nibbled on late-season weeds and aspen leaves before heading across the road and down the hill.

Our cat was quite intent on the visitors. He didn't get as excited as he does when he sees birds or rodents, but he was definitely paying attention. We call anything that entertains the cats "Cat TV". This was the Deer Channel. The cats like the Deer Channel, though it's not quite as thrilling as the Grouse Channel or the Chipmunk Channel.

A Late Season Rose



This is a rose that was blooming in front of Lewis Palmer Middle School last week. It was pretty and I had the camera with me, thus the photo. I have no idea what the variety is, but it must be something pretty darn sturdy to survive in front of the local middle school. I wonder if there will be any more roses this year, or if the buds all died with the snow?

Watson's Falls Rock Pile Caves

Ok, jp has been after me to post something, so here it is. Yesterday, I went to a neat area called Watson's Falls, a small stream near Devils Head. The interesting part is a cascade of waterfalls inside a large pile of huge boulders. In and around the boulders are lots of passageways and larger cave rooms. All with the sound of and some with the sight of the cascading waterfalls. And of course, hidden somewhere inside is a geocache.

It's great fun inside (though no place for small kids). With 4WD, you can drive to about 1/2 mile away.

A Palmer Divide Journey, Mid-October, 1873

Isabella Bird was a well-to-do English lady with a taste for travel and for publishing books about her travels. A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains is her account of an autumn she spent traveling in the region on her way back to England from the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). She started in the Sierras of California. Forest fires were smoldering as she boarded the eastbound train. She arrived in Colorado and ended up stranded for several weeks due to a Bank Panic. Although she had funds in her accounts, the banks wouldn't cash any checks. She spent time in Estes Park while waiting for things to ease. Then she continued on her way.

In mid-October, she rode a horse from Denver to Colorado Springs. She came through the Palmer Divide, describing places that are quite recognizable today. Some of the details have changed, some she didn't get quite right, some place names have changed. It's still quite interesting to read about the area as it was 135 years ago.

The weather in mid-October is unpredictable. It can be warm and sunny one day; cold and snowy the next. Blizzards with 2-3 feet of snow are not all that unusual, though they do not occur every October. Ms. Bird encountered a typical October snowstorm on her way through the region. Brr! I wonder if we'll get one this year?

Here are some excerpts from letter 10, written in Colorado Springs on October 28 and describing the previous week's events. I've skipped several bits and added a few extra paragraph breaks.

-------------

That night on which I last wrote was the coldest I have yet felt. I pulled the rag carpet from the floor and covered myself with it, but could not get warm. The sun rose gloriously on a shrouded earth. Barns, road, shrubs, fences, river, lake, all lay under the glittering snow. It was light and powdery, and sparkled like diamonds. Not a breath of wind stirred, there was not a sound. I had to wait till a passing horseman had broken the track, but soon after I set off into the new, shining world. I soon lost the horseman’s foot-marks, but kept on near the road by means of the innumerable foot-prints of birds and ground squirrels, which all went in one direction. After riding for an hour I was obliged to get off and walk for another, for the snow balled in Birdie’s feet to such an extent that she could hardly keep up even without my weight on her, and my pick was not strong enough to remove it. ...

I rode twelve miles, but it was “bad traveling,” from the balling of the snow and the difficulty of finding the track. There was a fearful loneliness about it. The track was untrodden, and I saw neither man nor beast. The sky became densely clouded, and the outlook was awful. The great Divide of the Arkansas was in front, looming vaguely through a heavy snow cloud, and snow began to fall, not in powder, but in heavy flakes. Finding that there would be risk in trying to ride till nightfall, in the early afternoon I left the road and went two miles into the hills by an untrodden path, where there were gates to open, and a rapid steep-sided creek to cross; and at the en-trance to a most fantastic gorge I came upon an elegant frame house belonging to Mr. Perry, a millionaire, to whom I had an introduction which I did not hesitate to present, as it was weather in which a traveler might almost ask for shelter without one. Mr. Perry was away, but his daughter, a very bright-looking, elegantly-dressed girl, invited me to dine and remain. They had stewed venison and various luxuries on the table, which was tasteful and refined, and an adroit, colored table-maid waited, one of five attached Negro servants who had been their slaves before the war.

After dinner, though snow was slowly falling, a gentleman cousin took me a ride to show me the beauties of Pleasant Park, which takes rank among the finest scenery of Colorado, and in good weather is very easy of access. It did look very grand as we entered it by a narrow pass guarded by two buttes, or isolated upright masses of rock, bright red, and about 300 feet in height. The pines were very large, and the narrow canyons which came down on the park gloomily magnificent. It is remarkable also from a quantity of “monumental” rocks, from 50 to 300 feet in height, bright vermilion, green, buff, orange, and sometimes all combined, their gay tinting a contrast to the disastrous-looking snow and the somber pines. Bear Canyon, a gorge of singular majesty, comes down on the park, and we crossed the Bear Creek at the foot of this on the ice, which gave way, and both our horses broke through into pretty deep and very cold water, and shortly afterwards Birdie put her foot into a prairie dog’s hole which was concealed by the snow, and on recovering herself fell three times on her nose...

The snow began to fall in good earnest at six in the evening, and fell all night, accompanied by intense frost, so that in the morning there were eight inches of it glittering in the sun. Miss P. gave me a pair of men’s socks to draw on over my boots, and I set out tolerably early, and broke my own way for two miles. Then a single wagon had passed, making a legible track for thirty miles, otherwise the snow was pathless. The sky was absolutely cloudless, and as I made the long ascent of the Arkansas Divide, the mountains, gashed by deep canyons, came sweeping down to the valley on my right, and on my left the Foot Hills were crowned with colored fantastic rocks like castles. Everything was buried under a glittering shroud of snow. The babble of the streams was bound by fetters of ice. No branches creaked in the still air. No birds sang. No one passed or met me. There were no cabins near or far. The only sound was the crunch of the snow under Birdie’s feet. We came to a river over which some logs were laid with some young trees across them. Birdie put one foot on this, then drew it back and put another on, then smelt the bridge noisily. Persuasions were useless; she only smelt, snorted, held back, and turned her cunning head and looked at me. It was useless to argue the point with so sagacious a beast. To the right of the bridge the ice was much broken, and we forded the river there; but as it was deep enough to come up to her body, and was icy cold to my feet, I wondered at her preference. Afterwards I heard that the bridge was dangerous. ....

The rest of the day’s ride was awful enough. The snow was thirteen inches deep, and grew deeper as I ascended in silence and loneliness, but just as the sun sank behind a snowy peak I reached the top of the Divide, 7,975 feet above the sea level. There, in unspeakable solitude, lay a frozen lake. Owls hooted among the pines, the trail was obscure, the country was not settled, the mercury was 9 degrees below zero, my feet had lost all sensation, and one of them was frozen to the wooden stirrup. I found that owing to the depth of the snow I had only ridden fifteen miles in eight and a half hours, and must look about for a place to sleep in.

The eastern sky was unlike anything I ever saw before. It had been chrysoprase, then it turned to aquamarine, and that to the bright full green of an emerald. Unless I am color-blind, this is true. Then suddenly the whole changed, and flushed with the pure, bright, rose color of the afterglow. ...

The next morning was gray and sour, but brightened and warmed as the day went on. After riding twelve miles I got bread and milk for myself and a feed for Birdie at a large house where there were eight boarders, each one looking nearer the grave than the other, and on remounting was directed to leave the main road and diverge through Monument Park, a ride of twelve miles among fantastic rocks, but I lost my way, and came to an end of all tracks in a wild canyon. Returning about six miles, I took another track, and rode about eight miles without seeing a creature. I then came to strange gorges with wonderful upright rocks of all shapes and colors, and turning through a gate of rock, came upon what I knew must be Glen Eyrie, as wild and romantic a glen as imagination ever pictured. The track then passed down a valley close under some ghastly peaks, wild, cold, awe-inspiring scenery.

After fording a creek several times, I came upon a decayed-looking cluster of houses bearing the arrogant name of Colorado City, and two miles farther on, from the top of one of the Foot Hill ridges, I saw the bleak-looking scattered houses of the ambitious watering place of Colorado Springs, the goal of my journey of 150 miles. I got off, put on a long skirt, and rode sidewise, though the settlement scarcely looked like a place where any deference to prejudices was necessary. A queer embryo-looking place it is, out on the bare Plains, yet it is rising and likely to rise, and has some big hotels much resorted to. It has a fine view of the mountains, specially of Pike’s Peak, but the celebrated springs are at Manitou, three miles off, in really fine scenery. To me no place could be more unattractive than Colorado Springs, from its utter treelessness.

---------------

The rocks really are that scenic. The sunsets really can be that spectacular. And yes, the cold and snow and silence are all features of our winters. I've hiked in that kind of weather. But it's always been a short journey, with a warm car and warm clothes at the end of it. It must have been an exceedingly cold and unpleasant trek on horseback in October, 1873.

The area Ms. Bird referred to as Pleasant Park is now called Perry Park. An upscale rural subdivision is there now, though the geology is still lovely and mostly accessible. I find the reference to the servants interesting; the homogeneity of the current population makes me suspect that this part of Colorado has a "sunset town" history.

The "top of the Divide" with its "frozen lake" is the site of Palmer Lake. Its elevation is 7225', not the almost 8000' Ms. Bird claimed for it. The hills around Palmer Lake are certainly higher, of course.

Monument Park was a famous tourist attraction in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was an area of interesting eroded buttes and spires that is now part of Colorado Springs. There are many famous photographs of the area in old archives. It no longer exists except in these old accounts. What's left of it can be seen in places like Woodman Valley Open Space. Probably some suburban houses have bits and pieces in their back yards or in small suburban green spaces. It's quite possible that some of the spires have finished eroding and fallen to bits after all the tourist activity and construction activity. I'll probably babble about Monument Park in some future blog post.

Glen Eyrie is just north of Garden of the Gods. Both are in modern Colorado Springs. I'm not sure if she considered them to be separate places or if she's referring to the whole valley and ridgeline.

There are many more people here now than there used to be. But parts of the area are almost as wild and empty as they were in 1873.

We usually get our first really awful weather no later than Halloween. Sometimes it's earlier. Halloween is notorious for its dreadful weather -- snowy, icy, cold, windy, and so on. Rarely we'll have weather that is merely cold and windy instead of actively dangerous.

The entire book is fun to read. It's not Deathless Literature for the Ages. It's interesting for its glimpse into the western US during the 1870's, and for its portrait of an English Lady Traveler. Ms. Bird writes about her travels, shares tales told to her by others, gives her impressions of the locals, describes the places she visits, moralizes at random moments, and name-drops quite shamelessly.

Some Local History (but not too much)

I found a few books on local history at the neighborhood libraries. Here are a few quotes.

What and where is the "Divide," you may ask --

Between Colorado Springs and Denver, beginning about at Monument and extending to Castle Rock, an elevated plateau reaches eastward from the mountains. It is about thirty miles in width at the Front Range and tapers to a point a few miles north-east of Peyton; it ranges in elevation from 7,000 to 7,500 feet. This ridge is the birthplace of a number of creeks which run into the South Platte and Arkansas Rivers and on many old maps is shown as the "Arkansas Divide," but today it is simply termed the "Divide" by most of those people who live upon or near it...

The Divide area comprises parts of El Paso, Elbert and Douglas counties...

A century ago the Divide was heavily timbered with fine Ponderosa pine which gave the name of the "Pineries" to large areas of it; today that name is almost forgotten.

The above is from Early Days around the Divide, by Carl F. Matthews and E.C. Matthews, Sign Book Co., St. Louis, MO, 1969.

These days, people talk about the Divide, but they may also refer to the Palmer Divide or even to Monument Hill. I'm not sure how far eastward Matthews thought the Divide extended. These days, it's considered to extend eastward to Limon.

Part of the area once known as the Pineries is today referred to as the Black Forest region. Front Range and Rampart Range are used interchangeably, though the Rampart Range is only one part of the much-longer Front Range.

Here's another interesting snippet from Carl F. Matthews:

In these modern times people may wonder how a family of six or seven managed to live in a one room house. They just pushed the furniture around, and it was all very simple. At meal time it was a dining room, at night it was all bed room. If they had company and there wasn't enough beds; some covers were spread on the floor.

People were glad to have a house of any size and we never heard anyone complain.

Carl F. Matthews was born in the region in 1885 and spent his life here. He died sometime before the book was published. His younger brother finished it and guided it through publication.

-------------

I don't think people quite realize how big the timber industry used to be around here. There were sawmills all over the place from the mid-late 19th century through the mid-20th century. This is in spite of several large fires. The trees went for firewood, telephone or telegraph poles, railroad ties, mining timbers, general lumber, and charcoal manufacturing. Pike National Forest was established in part to keep the Rampart Range and environs from being devastated by over-cutting.

Here's a quote from another book that explains something I've wondered about.

In 1875 ties were being cut on top of Mt. Herman and slid down the mountain. Some of the big slides on the Mountain can still be seen.

That's from Through the Years at Monument, Colorado, by Lucille Lavelett, Palmer Lake Historical Society, Palmer Lake, CO 2004.

We've seen some very steep and straight trail-like features on, for example, Raspberry Mountain. We had speculated that they were some old water-piping route. But perhaps they're old timber slides.

Ms. Lavelett has a very odd sense of humor. She includes a section on Halloween pranks. Apparently, it was considered the height of hilarity to fool around with outhouses. One year, the women's outhouse had a sign saying "Democrats Vote Here," while the men's outhouse was given a sign saying "Republicans Vote Here." Most of the other examples of humor, both Halloween and non-Halloween-related, also involve poop.

---------------

Since I'm on the subject of the old timber industry, here's a quote from The USGS: Geological Survey Bulletin 707 (Itinerary): Guidebook of the Western United States: Part E. The Denver & Rio Grande Western Route. The author is listed as Marius R. Campbell, and the publication date is 1922. He quoted Smith Riley, a former district forester, for much of the following.

The Pike National Forest includes the mountains west of Denver and Colorado Springs. It includes most of the drainage basins from which Denver, Colorado Springs, and many smaller towns, having altogether a population of about 350,000, derive their domestic water supply. In addition to this supply its streams furnish water for irrigating 400,000 acres of rich agricultural land at the foot of the mountains.

The region now included in this forest furnished an immense amount of timber during the early development of local industries, about 500,000,000 feet b. m. having been cut prior to its establishment as a national forest...

In Gilpin County considerable areas of forest land were practically denuded, for trees of all sizes and even stumps were removed and utilized. This cutting was followed, from time to time, by fires which fed upon the "slash" left on the cut-over areas and killed the remaining trees. The bare hills then permitted a rapid run-off of water after heavy rains, which caused considerable destructive erosion. Similar conditions mark other parts of the Pike National Forest, but erosion has not cut so deeply into the slopes, and owing to generally favorable conditions, many areas have naturally become reforested.

In the early days all ranch buildings were constructed of logs, and even furniture was made by the settlers. The trees also furnished the entire supply of fuel. In many localities they serve the same purposes to-day—the ranchers and new settlers put up their own buildings of logs obtained from the national forest under free-use permits, or established ranchers can purchase at a low price, equal to the cost of administering the sale.

From 1875 to 1895 most of the railroads of the mountain region were built, and practically all construction was done with local timber. Most of the cutting was done by small operators, with sawmills of 6,000 to 10,000 feet b. m. daily capacity, who would locate or purchase a small tract of timber land and then cut not only that but the timber on adjoining Government land. The operators of that day paid little or no stumpage for their timber and cut only that which was the most easily obtained or which was best suited to their purpose.

Since 1905, when the forests came under the jurisdiction of the Forest Service, the Government's timber has been sold to private purchasers at fair rates of stumpage, and cutting has been restricted to trees whose removal would benefit the remaining stand...

The amount of timber cut in the Pike National Forest for the year ending June 30, 1921, was 3,420,000 feet b. m.... In addition, about 1,000,000 feet b. m., mainly of dead material, was granted free to settlers and miners for their own use....

In the early days of settlement in this country the forest suffered considerably from fires... The present fire-fighting methods and organization were unheard of. In 1869 a fire started by hunters on Pikes Peak is said to have burned intermittently for eight months and to have covered many thousands of acres, though there were several times during this period when a small crew of men could have extinguished it. Similar fires covered about 250,000 acres in the Pike National Forest...

Forest fires still cause great destruction in the national forest... The possibility of fires in the Pike National Forest is great, because eight railroads traverse it, 5,000 people live in it, and 250,000 tourists seek recreation within its borders.

Since it is such a cool online resource, here's where to find it. I might well quote from it again someday.

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/geology/publications/bul/707/

Although logging is not a huge industry here at the moment, the fire danger remains. I'm pretty sure that the big fire near Pikes Peak referred to in the above is the one thought to have covered almost the exact same area as the big Hayman fire of 2002. There are references in other local history books to particularly devastating local forest fires, including several on and near Mount Herman. That's one of the reasons we have the Monument Fire Center here. It used to raise seedlings to replant areas burned in previous fires.

The title of this post promised "not too much" local history. I'd better stop writing soon unless I want to change it to "way too much."

One of the things I want to do in this blog is ramble about the local area, including its history. Get used to it.

October on the Divide

We had our first frost and our first flakes of snow this weekend. It's late this year. Usually, the snow flies on the first day of fall.

None of the snow has stuck. We're supposed to get more tonight. We'll see if any of that sticks. The ground is still fairly warm.


Here's what The Deep Dark Forest (our yard) looks like this weekend. The aspens are turning. Leaves are falling. A few late asters and yarrow are still blooming. The above photo shows mostly the aspens and the Douglas fir. It's a gray and dreary day. The weather is supposed to turn warm and sunny again later this week. We'll appreciate it all the more. The last few pleasant days are always a gift.


This photo and the next are of some visitors we had recently. They wander through almost every day. The photos are a bit grainy because we took them from inside the house. We didn't want to scare away our visitors, after all. The grouse are fun to watch. They make cute little noises.

A few of them sat on our car. Others sat on rocks in the yard, or sauntered around in the driveway and on the ground.

We were running late for an appointment. Eventually, we had to open the door and head out. The grouse called to each other in alarm and flew off to another part of the yard.

They came back the next day.


Introducing Sprinkle



Yes, that's Sprinkle. Sprinkle is a Polka Dot plant, Hypoestes phyllostachya, probably the variety called Pink Dot. The youngest family member chose the plant last year and decided to name it. Why not? We name all the other pets and most of the stuffed animals, dolls, etc., that make our way into the household. This plant's name is Sprinkle. Today we noticed that Sprinkle has decided to bloom.

Sprinkle is an easy-going plant in spite of the rather haphazard care we give it.

A Random Artsy Photo

This was taken on a recent walk in a Boulder County open space.

Teasels aren't my favorite plants. They're stickery and non-native. I do like the way they look when I'm in the right mood. Obviously, I was in the right mood when I snapped this photo.

At this time of year, the weather may be warm or cool. We may have sun, wind, clouds, rain, snow, fog, you name it. The leaves are turning on all the deciduous plants. The grasses are going gold and brown. The annuals have set their seed and given up, except for the few late-season flowers still valiantly blooming. The bird population is changing as some head further south for the winter and others head here for the winter.

There's always that sense of transition. A lot of things are changing along with the season. The earth and its inhabitants prepare for the coming winter while still trying to eke out the last bits of summer.

It's one of our favorite times to go hiking. Well, most times are our favorite times. But fall is always special.

Tourist photos

Here are some photos from a recent trip to northwest Oregon. We'll probably share more in the next several weeks/months.

The following photos were taken at the Swan Island Dahlia Farm, near Canby, Oregon. We visited about a month ago, in early September.

The fields in full bloom are quite beautiful and spectacular, as you might imagine. We took dozens of photos. We were overcome by a sudden urge to raise dahlias. We got better, but still a few wistful twinges remain.

We also liked the ornamental pond with its large and attractive fish. I took the photo to see if it would come out OK, or if the sun and reflections and quickly-moving fish would make it impossible to get a clear view.

I still want to have a pond or tank with attractive goldfish. That seems more achievable than successfully growing acres of gorgeous dahlias in our climate and with our soil, topography, and high altitude limitations.

And, speaking of fish, the Paradise Ponds and Landscaping store in Monument has all their fish and pond plants on sale. They're trying to reduce the stock before they close for the winter. The fancier fish are 50% off. The simple goldfish are 5 for $5. We now have 5 goldfish to entertain us throughout the winter. Next year, we'll put them into our small outdoor pond for the summer so they can eat mosquito larvae.

This is where I should put a photo of our new goldfish. Too bad I don't have one available yet. Perhaps it will get added later.

Book revew

the book Exotic Herbs by Carole Saville is a "Compendium of exceptional culinary herbs." It has 60 herbs with recipes and it explanes about the familes like the Allium family. In the beginning it has how to make herb vinegar, herb- infused oils. In the back, it has books in the bibliography and herb sources,sources. Now onto what the book is like. It is a little boring but it has a lot of good information like the herbs and recipes. I liked it. I also got it at Powel's books the greatest bookstore west of the Mississippi river.

Ski Monument Hill!

That's the local joke. It refers to the treacherous winter conditions on the roads near where we live. We live on the Divide, a low east-west trending upland that separates the Platte River drainage from the Arkansas River drainage. The rise doesn't look like much, but it affects the local weather to a surprising extent.

Welcome to our blog. This is a family blog. Different family members will comment as they wish, on whatever topics they wish. We all have different styles and different interests. Some of us may have other blogs on specialized topics. This is the general, anything-goes blog. It may overlap the specialized blog occasionally, or maybe not at all.

We are doing this for our own entertainment. Join us if you wish.

An addendum:  Ski Monument Hill merchandise is occasionally available from the Tri-Lakes Chamber of Commerce.