No Plastic...

After a week of recuperating from a fast paced Thanksgiving week, highlighted here, we got down to decorating our place and for the wreath, I needed something round and one thing we have a lot of in the sheds are bike tires.
Can't take the credit for the idea, its Daughter #2's  via pinterest.com, but really from...

directions here

I didn't have to go to town or to the dreaded Suckyoursoul-Mart to get anything. Literally took the front wheel off my allotted, hand me down mountain bike, rinsed the cobwebs and few spiders off of it, its not used much since I am the non mountain biker in a mountain biker family, I just take the photos...

The boughs? Just went out to our forest, though sadly, I was a little more careful this year on which trees I snipped from, since we lost so many of our trees in the fire two autumns ago...

                  

and my husband is a little protective of the remaining trees. But I took my shears and when he wasn't around to be emphatic, very selectively snipped the ends of various pinons branches and made a bicycle tire wreath. Unlike the REI version, I did use a whole bike tire, black rubber included. My husband should be happy about that, cause it would not be me, putting the tube back on the rim, thank you very much and I didn't take a tire off one of the more used and much more expense bikes. Can you imagine, discovering your wife absconded the front wheel off your Salsa bike, to use as a craft project?

So recycled bike tire, mine not his, boughs from our own trees and well wire that was probably about two decades old, from when just moving here, to the Four Corners, I thought I would make fresh wreaths to sell at the Christmas Bazaars,  something others in my family have done rather successfully at Christmas markets on the East side of the Continental Divide.
So made a few dozen wreaths, only to find that there was not a great market for fresh wreaths around here, being informed of this at my craft booth by countless ladies who were quite happy with their plastic wreaths and garland that they just took down from the closet shelf for the season...

In fact a lot of elderly ranch ladies went out of their way to come over to my table and tell me that! 

So check that idea off the list and so for years I had a whole lot of green wire and metal hoops, buying in bulk when the idea first hit.

Plastic foliage is very prevalent over here adorning people's doors, flower pots and cemeteries. 

Not where I grew up in Northern Colorado, where there's fresh wreaths and garland at Christmas time and fresh flowers inside and outside, especially come Memorial Day at the cemeteries.

 something I talk about here, a very long time ago.

Why not here?

Well, it seems to be a regional thing. Plastic affords bright colors and no needed of water or tending, plus it is a whole lot cheaper than the extravagance of fresh at the holidays, or so the locals here seem to think, something that is really starting to fascinate me, regional-ness- why people in a certain region do what they do and a great book to read on the subject is...

The author, Colin Woodard, doesn't get into fresh or plastic flowers and foliage, but he does get into the migration patterns of the different ethnic groups that first settled the US and here, in the Four Corners, where yes Native Americans and Hispanic cultures have a strong hold, but where the most prevalent white Europeans is Scots Irish and well it has been my personal observation, after twenty years of living, teaching and working here, such a heritage leans towards well, not fresh but plastic and practical. 

Red and Green, Santa Fe Style...

After a fun Thanksgiving with family here in Colorado, where I got to use the squash from a friend's farm...

some of us, crossed the border to New Mexico and headed to Santa Fe...

Where the crowds for Black Friday were not bad at all....

and a couple hundred years of history surrounded us, like the old Santa Fe Library entrance...

On Saturday, to support #smallbusinesssaturday, we headed down to the newly renovated Railroad district and partook of local goods...

Of course chilies were everywhere, extra beautiful coming into this special season...

and never have I seen such a large tub of Chimayo chili, unique to Northern New Mexico, from the valley of Chimayo, where we had gone a few years back around New Years, read HERE  This gentleman and his buddy, called me over like they were selling something illegal. But once he lifted the lid, how could I not take a really good whiff of the sweetest red chilies ever. As I savored the smell, he told me how to heat it up in a skillet and make a sauce or add it to meat.I bought a half a kilo from him....

A few hours later I found the same thing, except this time, packaged up all nice for the out of town tourists in a kitchen store down at the plaza...

 and an eight of what I bought for twice as much.

Getting Ready for a Long Winter's Nap...

It is a great comfort that no matter what is going on in our lives, the season move forward. In a time when the clouds, on occasion, dip down lower then the mesa, without us remembering to instruct it, the sun tilts sides way, the wind blows and the grass starts to turn brown. ...

and the evenings turn golden, just barely enough light for the deer to come into the lawn and pick the last of the apples on the almost leafless trees. 

More because the elements remind us, we humans do slip into our autumn activities. First Homecoming, where school is let out early and the students, parents and locals line Central ave for the parade, the cheerleaders riding restored fire trucks from up the mountain. 

Here the Homecoming royalty... 

aren't escorted in the backs of convertibles but pickup trucks and the homecoming dresses might have cowboy boots under them.

The other Fall activities- discussions of the weather, how cold and how much snow the mountains will have this winter and elk hunting. But it stayed too warm for the elk to come down low enough for a successful hunt this year. Warm enough to keep the windows cracked on the drive back down the mountain in Grandpa's old truck that carries the camper shell...

 Another activity that took much time this Fall...

Not riding horse, like you might think, but Daughter #2's involvement with the local high school's production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, set in the Wild Wild West. Someone leaving the borrowed boots on our porch yesterday, were so pretty in the tilting sun. 

The wind is still blowing down here on the canyon ridge, and the grass is still showing, though most of the leaves are now off the trees. 

Not so, farther up, where coming home from a weekend away on the other side of the mountains, we had to navigate this...

 and we meet these guys...

 who, looking for the grass, worked their way through a wire fence deciding the brown grass on the side or the road looked yummier. To hear them "churp" go HERE, 

As Far as I could reach...

I haven't been active on this blog lately due to some big life changing events, like the ones I talked about HERE, a few weeks ago. The last big event I mentioned in that post has to do with the above picture, well actually book cover and I've been debating how to and in what order to tell everyone about it and the other part of the story. Way to much for one blog post, so first things first and that started over ten years ago, actually I think it could have been more like twelve, when, on Saturday, over in Utah, we hiked in between places like this...

 and along the river beds like  this...

 and along the rim of this...

and there would come a point where bribery would be necessary to get these two...

back to the truck!

 
The bribe would go something like, "Wow! When we get back to the town, what do you want...?" And the "want" usually was something sweet, ice cream or a fancy drink and a book at the old Arches Bookstore in Moab, where we would also indulge in dinner or a late lunch before heading back over the border to Colorado.
Arches is no longer there, consolidating with the bookstore across the street a few years back, but a decade ago, it had the best children's section tucked in the far corner of the tiny store and we would trade, Jon and I, one would get to browse and one would take up post near the girls while they debated with much excitement which book to buy.
It didn't take long, when it was my turn to let Jon browse, to discover that the section next to the children's was that of local history and the local history in Utah, is pretty focused on the land, Edward Abbey, the Uranium boom that supplied some of the atomic bomb and most of the Cold War and  Mormons and polygamy. Who knows what I would be writing about if we lived in Ohio?

But in Utah I picked this book...,

denoted  as used by a red dot on the spin, costing me $6 and the rest is history.

Since little girls are tired after all day hikes and the two hour car drive back home is quiet, I would read my book, look out the window at this....

and wonder about the zealous religious people that had the tenacity to hack out a life in this unforgiving land no one else dared even try in places like this,..

and like this...

And so over the years,  as the girls grew, a story grew in my head and then I started to write it down and  to seek out more history and more places to make it real as possible, a willing husband, who was glad to go  along for the drive with the promise of more hiking, backpacking or mountain biking...

This place, the Four Corners, what was cut by the Colorado River and all its tributaries, is known as the backwash of the country, to wild to be tamed and very much looked over in the rush to the more fertile land on the western edge of the country, has moved me since I laid eyes on it, first around Moab, thanks to friends who had been jeeping there for years and then on our own, hiking and backpacking...

Canyonlands, Arches, and far off places like Zion and  Escalante, many of which I have written about and sketched over the years...

But something else was happen about the same time, people were talking about Uranium and the Atomic age. There was a cost to mining the uranium that supplied the atomic bombs of the Cold War. It polluted the land and the people who live here and the government, about ten years ago decided to start cleaning it up. It was in the news and on our drives back to Colorado, we went past the reclamation, clean up sites.
And I started to talk to my dad, way up in Idaho, who as a boy, during World War 2, had to have a security pass to go to the grocery store because my grandfather worked on the antennas for the the atomic bombs in Oak Ridge Tennessee, a town that did not exist before the war and was created for the soul purpose of the Manhattan Project and reading up on my families history and part in such a monumental event in our country's history, I found Utah again, where a covert operation sent soldiers with geological and mining experiences back to find and mine the uranium for the bombs.
And these interesting bits of history melded in my brain, on the long drives home or while doing art and Moonflower came to be...

"Motherless and her father too busy with his three other wives,

 their children and leading a Fundamentalist religious group, 

young Luna has the freedom to wander around Cathedral Valley, 

Utah in the summer of 1942.With no one paying attention,

 she forges a friendship with Josh McCormick, a geologist secretly sent by

 the Army to find uranium for the atomic bomb. When he returns after the war

 to mine the uranium, Luna is seventeen and their renewed relationship could

 mean freedom from a life she does not want as a second wife

 or it could mean her and her families destruction."

 Getting it down on paper, is a whole other post as is why I picked the wild Utah flower, most consider a weed for the title of not only my story but as you all know the word that connects me to my art as well....oh! And I have a whole new website...still at moonflowerstudio.biz but now also at juliakelly.biz

Up, Over and Back Down Again...

For my birthday, well a few days later, we drove up and over Lizard Head Pass to enjoy the changing colors of the aspens, which were every shade from green to yellow to orange to brown, the weather of rain, cold and snow and warmth, confusing them. You can see, above,  the line of Highway 145 to the left and then below, the old railroad grade to the right, the space in the middle is over 1,000 feet down, if you were wondering.

Right before that we had turned off the highyway to drive up around Trout Lake to get a closer view of part of the San Migels of the San Juans...

 Then at Alta Lake, we took the dirt again and drove up through pine and aspen to get to the high lake just at the edge of timberline, where on the other side of these rocks is the Telluride Ski Resort....

Even finding a fish, impervious to the cold, though he was swimming rather slowly...

 But I would be too if I had to swim at 10,000 ft above sea level, burr!...

Driving back down to the highway, while the sun thought about coming down in the sky...

we got to Telluride for a late afternoon lunch or early dinner, enjoying the last bit of warmth, before the crisp cold comes to southwest Colorado. The moon starting to come up....

as the sun came down, captured through the glass of the gondola that connects Telluride below with Mountain Village above...

Back at the truck there wasn't quite enough light to capture a herd of elk graving as we made our way back out to the highway....

Thankful that on the weekend the dreaded road construction crews were taking a break in their race to get as much of the road work done before the snow and the skiers come...

 As we went back over the pass to our own side of the mountains, the sun no longer illuminated the aspens for us, but  in the growing twilight, they were pretty just the same...