Front Range

taken from our back deck

In my last post I mentioned views of the Front Range. 

We have a pretty nice view of the eastern foothills... 

and the mountains behind them. 

They line the horizon to the west.

We're about 35 miles "as the crow flies" from the foothills. 

Due to the low humidity here, 

we often have very clear views of the mountains out of the back windows of our house. 

With a 30x zoom lens you can see snow blowing off of peaks, 

clouds forming, trees on the slopes, and shadows in the ravines.

Devilshead

Our view starts just north of Pike's Peak 

(which is behind the ridge next to us) 

and just south of Devilshead. 

It continues all the way up past Denver. We can see see skyscrapers and cityscapes too.

The city twinkles nicely below us at night, 

but I haven't figured out how to photograph it yet.

We get a fair amount of fogs as well, as I mentioned in my first post this year. 

Some of them are quite "thick." 

Many of them cause fantastic hoarfrost. 

Some of them are thinner and it's more like being in a wispy cloud. 

On foggy days, our view (or lack there of) can be nice too.

Metal

Every house we have owned 

(THREE now!) 

has had trash and brush strewn about the property when we bought it. 

The first was because it was so old and things had accumulated over time. 

It was built between 1860 and 1890. 

It was also incredibly overgrown. 

You couldn't even walk to the front door when we purchased the place! 

We spent 12 years fixing it up 

(or should I say, saving it.)

It was a "fixer-upper" in every way, in and out, 

but I still love that home with an irrational love.

What can I say? 

It was always flooded in light.

The ceilings were high. 

It was full of angles, decorative touches, and color.

There were tons of "old lady flowers", 

like lilacs, peonies, daffodils, roses, and hostas.

There was room for chickens, a goat, and gardens.

Three of my children were born there,

and a fourth lies in the little cemetery nearby.

Our second home was also a jungle of sorts when we purchased it. 

Multiple kinds of ivy, autumn and Russian olives, and saplings and undergrowth from the encroaching woods had taken it over. No one had trimmed the bushes in years. 

A tree leaned on the house. Waist-high weeds were left standing in the yard. 

A deep carpet of leaves blanketed everything.

Farm and other inexplicable trash was strewn everywhere, things like baby pools, hog sheds, broken-down fencing, balls, toys, sports equipment, trash, food containers, articles of clothing, medicine blister packs, writing utensils, animal bowls, etc.
And the house was full of junk too. 

But the privacy, wildlife, and space were well worth it all. 

And we "christened" that house with the birth of our youngest.

After our five years there, it was very near to being a little piece of paradise.

This time of year I long to hear the sandhill cranes calling to each other as they fly over.

I want to hear the geese splash down on the pond as I wash the dishes.

I want to stand in the twilight near the waterfall, 

watching the sun set through the trees.

I want to hear the spring peepers in chorus 

as I sit in the screened porch after collecting eggs.

I want to see the giant forsythia hedge and many daffodils in bloom 

when I look out the window in the morning.

Obviously I'm posting "after" pictures... 

because I'm homesick for Indiana. 

But to get to the subject at hand, 

our latest home in Colorado has it's share of grunge and trash too. 

It's even overgrown in places- in its own Colorado way. 

Although, our larger problem will be establishing turf. 

There is a lot of bare earth. 

We're consistently foolish... or in this case, 

desperate to be settled as soon as possible,

and brave enough to dive into a place like this.

listing picture from three years ago

There are bits of broken plastic, pieces of dog toys, broken pottery, ripped up stuffed animals, remnants of shoes, crushed beer and soda cans (some chopped up by a mower), ruined books, broken glass, water bottles, floor mats, old fence parts, bailing straps, parts of broken lawn furniture, broken birdhouses, food containers, scraps of carpeting, cigarette butts, bits of grocery and garbage bags, pieces of broken irrigation, large "river rocks",  etc. strewn all over. 

I spent over three hours this afternoon
picking up the comparatively small section behind the house 

and filled a large garbage bag with junk!

Left to deal with are a bunch of carpentry scraps dumped next to the driveway by the house (probably for firewood since neither the thermostat or pellet stove worked when we moved in.) There's an overgrown, tumbled-down wood pile full of painted boards with nails in them! There's trash, fasteners, whirligigs, wire mesh, fence posts, and other leavings where a greenhouse once stood (and then a makeshift enclosed garden was.) Someone let their horse roam at will, so there are huge piles of "horse apples" all over the property, even next to the house and deck. Speaking of horses, the horse barn is full of junk- in fact one stall is full of tires, storage drums, etc. And the interior of the house- well I won't bore you any further with those descriptions.

On a recent Saturday I wanted to look at the pastures and the tumbled-down fence 

(which I hadn't yet had a chance to do) 

and to be outside. 

I set out with my middle boy. 

At the first corner that I came to, 

even with the end of our driveway and kitty corner to the road, 

we hit a snag. 

There is a copse of little scrub oaks along the fence. 

My boy decided to walk through them. 

I decided to walk around them and meet him on the other side. 

When I turned on my heel, I noticed a large, rusty screw on the ground. 

I bent to pick it up... and noticed several more near it. 

Then I realized that there was rusty metal all over the ground around me. 

I picked up what I could easily reach and soon had a large pile.

We fetched a garbage bag and a magnet bar and went to work. I didn't want to ruin any tires whenever it was that we would have to mow the sparse vegetation.

Every pass with the magnet roller yielded many rusty items.

For a long time, there seemed to be a never-ending supply.

But the day was beautiful, my husband was fixing the kitchen faucet which had broken, 

and my youngest was happily playing with his oldest sister. 

So we just picked up as much as we could.

the view from the corner where we collected (The driveway is between the wooden fences.)

There was SO much rusty metal. 

The bag wasn't strong enough to hold it all. 

I had to carry it up to the house in something else.

When I weighed it, there was over 6 ½ lbs. of metal!

I found a nail embedded in a piece of melted glass when we were getting started, 

so eventually I formulated a theory. 

I think that after the greenhouse 

(which I saw in an old satellite photo) 

was ruined in the hail storm that my husband heard about from the insurance agent 

(who knew about it because the roof and solar panels were replaced because of it)

they hauled all of its framing to the corner of the property and burned it. 

What we were picking up was left after the burn. 

This would explain the high concentration of 

hinges, brackets, bolts, nails, corner braces, wire, screws, etc. 

I had already picked up a ton of metal around the fire ring and behind the workshop. 

I picked up quite a few rusty screws and nails in the back yard today too. 

Hopefully I've hit the worst of it, 

but I'll have to haul the magnet bar out there soon to make sure.

Whatever the case, I'm sure I'll come to love it here just as much as I've loved my previous homes. I'm already learning to appreciate the aridity, sunshine, and wind. And no one can complain about a view of the front range, especially when the sun sets behind it. Plus, the house is large, unconventional, and quirky. Those are all good qualities for a sizable family like ours.

Keeping it Real

This morning was unproductive... at least physically. I got up at 6:20 with my youngest two. They always begin their day early and are soon whining for food. I usually try to hold breakfast off until the girls wake. I made a batch of French toast for breakfast this morning when they did.

As I made a steady stream of pieces, two at a time, the children bickered and whined about how the next one should be for them as I poured syrup and cut bite sized pieces for the littlest between flips. Eventually their hunger was assuaged and after wiping off sticky faces and fingers, they trotted off to get ready for the day and to play until things were cleaned up.

Finally the dishes were cleared, the syrup was wiped up, etc. But just as I turned the corner to walk out of the kitchen, my oldest walked in. Lately I feed my husband after the kids and then my oldest either joins in at the end of his father's breakfast or he eats breakfast leftovers whenever he wakes up while I am busy schooling the other children.

This is a new development, as he was always in the kitchen for breakfast by 8:30 sharp in the past. But seeing as I only have a handful of months left with him before he leaves for college, he's been traveling a great deal, working hard to maintain his grades this last semester, up late with activities many nights, and devoting countless hours to his robotics team, I've felt indulgent and let him sleep. After all, nobody skates through when earning an engineering degree, and he IS currently pursuing admission to the Webb institute where in 4 years you earn a double major in marine engineering and naval architecture, as well as graduate with 8 months of on-the-job work experience after 4 internships. He'd better get all the sleep he can get now.

Anyway, as I fired up the skillet and whipped up a new batch of French toast, my youngest daughter called down that she was going to get my youngest child dressed for me if that was okay. I called back my thanks and proceeded to feed my young giant. When breakfast was cleared up for the second time, I stopped by the laundry room on the way upstairs. I had a load of laundry to switch before getting the rest of the day rolling.

To my surprise, I nearly wiped out. My foot shot out from under me and I found myself hydroplaning on about 2 inches of laundry detergent. Here's what happened. My thoughtful daughter was trying to help out, so she stripped my youngest of his PJs, took off his wet pull-up, and proceeded to get him dressed. (Side note: I am currently failing at potty training my fifth kid.) Then, considerate child that she is, she trotted the wet diaper down to the laundry room where I put soiled diapers in a special can.

Unfortunately, I had set a new container of laundry detergent on the trash can lid the night before after using up the previous jug. (The can is next to the washer.) My daughter lifted it off and put it on top of the running washing machine to put the pull-up in the can. She left the laundry soap on the washer. When the machine hit the spin cycle, it shook the container (a large one for a family of 7) off. It fell to the floor and exploded. The lid and the spout popped off, splattering detergent all up the wall, on unpacked boxes of filing that were waiting in an out-of-the-way place, and onto a box of tools that I keep handy for small household jobs. Then the detergent glugged out- all of it!

So I spent the rest of the morning cleaning it up. I started by scooping up big dustpans-full, as if the dustpan was a shovel, and dumping them into my mopping bucket. This took a lot of "doing." And rinsing it out of the bucket and off of the dustpan was no small task either. It was concentrated detergent for our HE machine.

After that joy, I began wiping up what I could with paper towels, as it would take too long to rinse and wring out cloths, and it was too much to just throw into the washer, which had warnings about not using too much detergent. Luckily I had just purchased a huge pack of paper towel! Soap had seeped under the washer and dryer, under the trash can, under the cardboard file boxes. It had splashed onto a drill battery and charger, onto tools, on the baseboard, wall, and appliance fronts. I used every roll but one.

After that I had to rinse everything and wipe it down, repeatedly, until the lathering stopped. In some places the remaining detergent had begun to dry in thick, clotted streaks. So I spent hours either on my knees, or trotting to the wash tub in the basement to rinse.

Eventually, I had remediated the disaster as best as I could. It was nearly noon. I headed upstairs to smell that my youngest had pooped in his new pull-up already. He had proceeded to sit in his own filth playing. He was alone in his room happily modifying a lovely Duplo house with multiple stories. I assumed that since I was hearing all of the kids' voices and that they had asked for crayons, that they were coloring together. Plus, they knew what I was doing and were old enough to entertain a 4 year old.

"Didn't you notice that he had pooped?" I asked.

"Yes," replied my oldest daughter disgustedly, "Why do you think we're all out here?!"

-And yet she did not think to tell me. This statement pretty much sums up her usual attitude, which is why I let my younger daughter, who is thoughtful, although inept, try her hand at helping me.

When changing my littlest's diaper, I found that my silly girl had put the pull-up on crooked, so all of the feces had been forced out of a leg hole and had become embedded in his pants leg, etc. It was another disaster that put cleaning up a detergent spill into context, and made it seem much more pleasant in retrospect.

When the poo-splosion was all cleaned up and the room aired out, it was time to start cooking lunch. This, folks, is why I get so little help at home. It usually turns out badly. Hopefully you have enjoyed the humorous word-pictures that I have painted for you. I, on the other hand, although I DO see the humor, am enjoying the lovely citrus scent of detergent that is still lingering in my home and the very, very clean laundry room floor. (My little son's bum is no longer clean, however. I am not enjoying that.)  :)

Freezing Fog

Things have been an endless onslaught since moving to Colorado. It's a little un-real really. But I will spare you the crazy details of our move and home purchase, the litany of hardships and tasks, and the boring details that will come off as kvetching. Instead, I will share with you an afternoon's beauty.

Up here at over 6400 feet elevation, we often get freezing fogs. I headed out with my middle boy for a brief walkabout one afternoon after one such fog. We marveled at the crystal encrusted scenery. 

The grass was coated in ice.

The frost slipped off of each blade, a frozen straw.

In the moments when the sun slipped through the clouds, everything shimmered and sparkled.

The wild, unkempt yard glittered.

Everything was covered in a shiny, sugar-like glaze. 

Each drop of fog was frozen like a pearl and melded to the frozen droplets next to it.

The broken-down fences filmed with frozen fog were shining silver in the sunlight.  

Small icicles were strung on their drooping wires like sparkling Christmas lights.

Leaning weeds were luminescent.

Wide-bladed grasses were furry with frost. 

Old, sagging gates in overgrown pastures and adorned with rusty barbed wire wreathes were made lovely. 

Even the little ramshackle workshop was picturesque when framed with silvery branches.