Ordinary Days

It's been a series of ordinary days around here and I'm so glad I can say that.  Yesterday's horror reminds me again to appreciate fully all the goodness that life brings despite the fact that, as Kamala Harris said in her remarks last night, "Our hearts keep getting broken."

Ben and I got away for a pleasant trip down to Canyon City, southwest of Colorado Springs to visit our friends Sandy and Gina who just bought a vacation house there as a home base for rock climbing, hiking and fly fishing.  

The area is known for the Royal Gorge, a ten-mile long steep canyon formed by the Arkansas River.  We didn't see that but we did enjoy the beautiful way the city has incorporated the river into a natural park and waterway.    

We visited one of the several wineries, tasting wines and sampling a delicious assortment of appetizers. Although the wine is made on site, the grapes are generally imported from vineyards in other states.  

While Ben and Sandy were rock climbing, Gina and I hiked up to one of the long limestone walls.

It was the maiden out-of-town voyage for our Tesla, and it was fun to figure out just how the super charging works.  The car's computer led us right to a charging station outside a "quickie mart" type of place, so you could use the facilities and get a snack if you wanted during the twenty minutes it took to recharge. 

Back at home the end-of-the-year celebrations for CU students continued.  Seemed like everywhere there were parties, kids getting their photos taken in their graduation gowns, and very full restaurants.  Walking across campus one day Lotus and I ran into a brass band leading what turned out to be the faculty and graduates of the law school as they paraded out of the hall where they had their departmental graduation ceremony.  Coming across a brass band is always exciting and I was intriqued by the array of gowns, hats and stoles and cords that the faculty wore.  

Ben had a birthday!  Doesn't he look great in this photo? This was taken on the way to Canon City, but for his big day we were back home enjoying a feast of seafood from Maine.  

We had ordered scallops, mussels and an unspecified "firm white fish" from Down East Dayboat.   The fish turned out to be Monkfish.  Ever hear of it?  Me, neither!  But I found a super easy "Monkfish with Caper Sauce" recipe from the New York Times cooking site and it was delicious.  Monkfish fillets are thick enough that you can slice them into nice little fillet chunks that soak up the butter sauce.  So good! 

courtesy of the NY Times

When I asked Ben if he'd like me to make him a cake he said he'd really like a piece of the Triple Berry Pie that we had loved at the Lahaina Grill in Maui in January.  It turns out that restaurant posted the recipe in its online newsletter one Christmas and it was easy to make and just as wonderful as what we had in January.   The recipe is here if you want to try it, and you should!  I made the crust in a food processor and it worked out fine.  It's not a flaky crust but a softer, sweeter one and extremely easy to roll out.  

We have two home improvement projects underway, and I do love to have something going on in the house.   One is that we're replacing our old ready made bookcases by the fireplace with ones that will be custom-made to fit the space better.  The two walls next to the fireplace have different dimensions, so each case will be the same height but different widths and, we hope, will look built-in.  The current bookcases are slated to go to other places in the house, so we'll have a net gain of more shelves for the books that we seem to keep buying.  It's going to take another three months or so for the fellows to make the new cases, so we all have to wait a while for this project to be completed. 

 

Meanwhile we're filled with anticipation and are glad to support our local Boulder craftsmen. 

The other project is an outside one.  We replaced part of our yard with xeriscaping, covering the existing grass near the long perennial bed on Collage Avenue with landscape cloth and six yards of mulch, thereby eliminating much of the grass in that area.   Luckily we didn't do the actual work ourselves but had several capable and smart workers come do it so it was all done in five hours.   

We managed to plant eight Dahlia tubers, six tomato plants and several pots of flowers just in time for the temperatures to plunge and for eight inches of "concrete snow" to hit us the day after Ben's birthday. 

This is the third time since we moved here eight years ago that we've had a heavy late snowstorm, so we weren't too freaked out about all that crushing snow and freezing temperatures affecting our plants.  We just covered them up and hoped for the best, and we did pretty well, losing just two stems off of one small tomato plant.  But it made for an exciting day or two!