Margaret's House

My high school friend Margaret lives in Hygiene, in the St. Vrain Valley near Boulder and Longmont. She is a sculptor and ceramicist, and they have a house filled with her artwork and an amazing garden and menagerie of goats, chickens, and a sweet dog named Agnes. They have a zip line between their trees.

They have the choice of using city water, installing a cistern to store river water, or periodically opening up the ditch to flood their property with water from the St. Vrain River. They chose the most environmentally friendly and labor-intensive option--periodic flooding. I couldn't picture how it worked until we visited them two weeks ago.

When the farmer upstream is finished irrigating, Margaret's family can open up the ditch. They have long plastic irrigation tunnels, which they move around their property. They poke holes in the tunnels, and the water flows out.
It's a big, tiring, dawn to dusk affair. It's amazing how much labor and logistics are involved. Positioning the tubes, turning on the water and letting it flood, then turning off the water, draining the tubes so they are light enough to move, putting them in a new position, and starting all over again.

It was a big watering-day party. The kids get gloriously muddy sailing leaf boats down the ditch.

It was a great lunch too. Margaret makes hummus with white beans and almond butter, and it is so much lighter and better than the tahini-garbanzo version. I have been making it like that ever since. You are always in for several revelations at Margaret's house--that was just one.

Margaret tends her flocks.



She has a beautiful garden. Tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, onions, lots of different squashes, beans, herbs, salad greens. I know I'm forgetting a lot. We brought her two tomatoes and a Japanese eggplant, and she sent us home with a big bag of straw for mulching, which THRILLS me.

R was thrilled with their pet rats, Sammy . . .

. . . and Valentine. (My apologies if I got that backwards.)

Violas, chive flowers, and (Sammy? Valentine?)

Feeding the goats. Who are as sweet and friendly as dogs. Margaret says they're like that if you raise them from babies and bottle-feed them.

Geyser!

Baby girl in a tangerine towel.

We drove home as a rainstorm was collecting itself.

We stopped at Harlequin's Gardens on the way home, a sustainable nursery that my other high school friend Tom keeps telling me about. We came home with a Rosa Bianca eggplant, a lovely Coosa summer squash, and another exotic summer squash that I can't remember the name of. It's apple-green, round and good for stuffing. The rain was beating down by the time we got home, and I bet we all slept well that night.

Charlie is One Year Old!

R worked hard on his party invitation.


They delivered them to two neighbor families.


She also worked hard on a sign and decorations for his party. A recurring theme in all his party decorations is, "The biggest bone in the WORLD!" I love to see her testing the limits of the paper to make the bone as big as she can imagine.

She made him a card. She had this all planned out months ago. She has been asking me about Charlie's first birthday party since we first got him.

The guests arrive!

It was a very fancy party.

We made him a birthday cake from a recipe I found on the internet, with chicken baby food, whole wheat flour, carrots, and banana/peanut butter frosting. The humans had carrot cupcakes.

Charlie really didn't like the "party" part of his party. I tried to be sensitive to that, to give the kids their big moment, but not freak Charlie out too much. He loves kids, loves attention, loves to play, but singing and the candle flame and Dan having to hold him because a couple of the neighbor kids are afraid of dogs . . . he was a very good sport. He did not enjoy it.

The kids sang happy birthday, then we hustled him outside so the dog-lovers could play with him and the not-so-sure-about-dogs kids could watch him through the glass door if they would rather.

He did really like his cake.

He loves kids, loves all people so much that I am impressed when he follows his training and doesn't jump on them. He just quietly explodes inside his body, but from the outside, he is perfectly behaved.

I think because he is a border collie, and feels like he is in charge of everyone on his property and must know where they are at all times and protect them against unexpected dangers like open flames and loud noises, he especially appreciates the quiet aftermath of a party.

Charlie is one of those remember-all-your-life dogs. I already had one of those, another border collie named Gracie. I didn't think I would get another one. I wasn't expecting it. I was expecting a companion for R and a dog we could all run and walk and play with. For awhile, that's what he was. A funny and beautiful little puppy, who made us all laugh and fit right in to his space in our house and took to his training like the brilliant dog that he is. When he got his second set of puppy shots, it must have really hurt. He climbed on me, up me, as far as he could go, and buried his head in my neck and then relaxed his body like he thought he was safe. I remember thinking right then, oh no, this is not going to be a dog that I love like that. Who utterly breaks your heart if he gets hurt or sick or dies. I remember steeling myself against it, trying to get back to the much easier role of detached friend and care-giver, which I was taking on for the sake of my daughter, you know. But of course, they are all dogs that you love "like that." Especially Charlie.

Everything is Blooming!

This has been the most glorious spring for our yard. It's only now getting hot and dry--now that it's almost June.

Our new Ingrid Bergman tree rose, planted where we dug out the rocks along the driveway. We had almost given up on the tree roses, until the dead sticks started growing new shoots.

There are green cherries on the new cherry tree!

The front yard garden is mostly all planted.

Beautiful broccoli.

Aspens by the front door, in the last light, shivering and rustling. There is a beautiful passage in a James Russell Lowell poem, "The Singing Leaves":
Only the pattering aspen
Made a sound of growing rain
That fell ever faster and faster
Then faltered to silence again.

There are Siberian Iris by the side gate, and a small patch of strawberries.

And a visitor inside the iris, that I didn't see when I was taking the picture. What in the world kind of bug is this?

Then on to the backyard garden, the messy, work-in-progress garden. Everything back here has to be reclaimed from years of neglect and overgrowth. And the cursed, cursed, rocks, with weeds growing up through them, that are everywhere. Why would someone landscape a one-third acre lot with mostly rocks? I guess so you don't have to water. But it has been a frustrating thing to inherit. Before you can plant, you have to excavate. Charlie also charged through the beds and ruined a few early crops, so we built a rabbit fence around them.

One of two lilac bushes. This one is much more fragrant than the other one. It makes you swoon when you walk by.

The peonies are close to being my favorite thing about the house. There are two more back here that never flower--maybe they don't get enough sun. And a gorgeous ruffly paler pink one in front of the house, that is just about to burst into bloom.

They are also delicately scented. Just an impossibly lovely flower.

English peas, planted around St. Patrick's Day. They are still not blossoming or setting pods. I don't know if I should be worried. They are lush and beautiful though, climbing their trellises.

There are some really dazzling parts of this yard, that survived the neglect of intervening years. I love the dwarf blue spruce when the giant purple alliums are blooming all around it. I think these allium are called Star of Bethlehem.

R carried her net around the backyard tonight "collecting treasures." I love to see what she collected. Some of Charlie's tennis balls and a mysterious golf ball; his squirrel toy with the stuffing gone, that looks heart-stoppingly like a real massacred squirrel when you find it in the grass; some pretty rocks; lilacs and an allium blossom.

Almost Summer Bento

Only a few more days of school. The neighborhood pool is already open, and we're ready for summer. Lots going on in the garden! I'll update soon.


Last weekend we had a front yard tomato seedling sale. My neighbor friend and walking partner Julie and her kids came over to help and to run the lemonade stand. We put these signs up around the neighborhood.

This is my next door neighbor Jeri on her way over to patronize the lemonade stand and thrill the kids.

The kids had fun at first, but it was so windy that there wasn't much walking-by traffic for their lemonade.

Julie helping.

We had a bake sale too. It took forever to make everything, organize the plants and make the signs, set it all up. D got called in to work for the whole day Saturday, so I was on my own. I thought about canceling, but I had already put an ad in Craigslist. Then the gale-force winds started. They blew down all our signs within the first half hour. The plants all blew over and some broke. The kids took shelter under the tables. At one point the wind picked up a kids' chair and blew it down the street. The best laid plans . . . it was discouraging. I did sell a few plants and met some interesting neighbors and got some gardening advice.

May Snow

We are back from a wonderful trip to New Mexico to celebrate my Dad's 80th birthday with my mom and my brothers & families. What a memory--a lot of pictures to go through.

In the meantime, we came back to an overnight snow. The crabapples are just budding and the cherry blossoms are out, but it looks like the snow didn't hurt them. We're supposed to get a few more inches of snow tonight.

Our new little Montmorency cherry tree that we planted last spring. This is its first year for blossoms.



I like the crabapples best when they are at this stage, the intense pink just before they open.

Happy Birthday Dad! Thanks for all the time you spent with us. More pictures to come.

Hoppy Day Bento

This rabbit bento pick says, "Have a hoppy day." First graders love puns, and sometimes you just have to accommodate them.

I love that it's sometimes warm enough these mornings that she can play outside with Charlie for awhile before school. They both have so much fun that I hate to make her come inside, do her hair, put her shoes and backpack on . . . soon it will be summer and they will have lazy mornings.