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.