small gardens & small government

 You always hear about going from 0 to 60 as a measure of life suddenly requiring you to get busy. I've just realized I am about to enter a piece of life where I go from 60 to 0. It was disconcerting!  My life of late has been unusually busy with three basic threads twisting around each other to form a tow cable that is, well it feels like 60 mph on a skateboard. The three threads in order of importance are Deb's sister has cancer and Deb is understandable letting the likely death of her 'little' sister affect her own health. Into that has wound moving my 97 year old mother from an assisted living property. The property was best described by my father (before he died there) as "These people will never get their act together". The third thread is selling our house and moving. Moving is simple to write and certainly less important in the scheme of things but equally time consuming and mentally taxing.     Deb is right now down visiting with her sister and dealin...

 When you listen to enough Country music I guess it's natural that the songs begin to describe your life. Now in my mind I think of myself as in my 20's a 70's outlaw country fan. Ah the good old days Willie, Waylon, and the Boys will ride forever - but the modern stuff has more than a few artists worth a listen. Luke Combs is one with his song " Forever ". His song being something of a bookend thematically with Carly Pearce's "Didn't Do". My life is changing and confusing these days but damn the music's good. Well, my CDs are packed up at the moment so I'm relying on YouTube. Thus the music is good with lots of commercial interruptions!  When I owned apartments I was often faced with the decision of of 'how good of a repair' did I want to pay for. Quite often I erred on the side of fixing it like I'd 'own it forever'. That wasn't always the perfect choice but it does leave you feeling good about who you are. I ca...

  The walk with the dog this morning started with a smile. The neighbors 4 houses to the south, Brandy and Jared, are the type of folks who really overdo it with decorating for Halloween. Flying witches, front yard gravestones the whole nine yards and with a tip of the hat to the harvest season a couple of bales of straw with corn stalks and some jack o lanterns. After Halloween I noticed the corn stalks and a teeny tiny straw bale out with the trash. My notice was heightened as I had just watched a video extolling pumpkins as great compost material. The pumpkin idea was a mixed thought as I was thinking next year I would try a pumpkin out in my unloved area by the alley. Additionally my sister Donnell was about that time scouring her world for funky pumpkin seeds from Halloween leftovers to plant come spring. So it was kinda pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins on the brain. Pumpkins sure but here was a tiny bale and corn on the stalk announcing itself as trash.  I rang the doorbell...

  It's 5 in the morning, I'm just back from dropping Deb off at the airport where she'll (hopefully) be able to fly out to visit with her sister Karen. Karen's prognosis is still quite bad, and while the weather is minus something with snow, Deb is as dutiful a sister as she is a wonderful wife. Karen and I are both lucky to have her in our lives.  With Deb off the music is on despite the hour. There could be no more appropriate song for the season than Colorado Christmas by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The visual quality, if you watch, is poor but I consider it more a song of the mind. For me much of it's appeal are memories of a Colorado that is harder and harder to find. Some of the memories are just personal ones, little to do with Christmas. One memory was a small herd of elk coming out of the morning fog from the spring below our cabin. It was fall not Christmas as the bull elk chased off younger rivals and guided his ladies up to and then past our cabin windo...

 We live in the blink of an eye for a universe they say is 13 billion years old. It's two in the morning and I could sleep but before I do I'd like to write this. Then I'll do what is next, sleep.  It was a couple of nights ago, the wind was fierce my side and back were aching and sleep was not an option it, was a prayer. We get these fierce winds in Colorado and I've never been comfortable with them. I'll lay awake as the wind howls waiting for a branch to smash through the window or the roof to fly off like one of those surreal video clips you see on the news. For a person who likes a good apocalypse story you'd think this would be just a sleep through event. Perhaps it bothers me that I might die in such a pedantic way. No vainglorious tragedy of the ages told and retold for generations. Just a branch through the eye from the maple tree falling on the house. The news would barely cover it as more than a lead-in to the weather. "How 'bout that wind ...

  The page is blank and staring at me! At two O clock this morning the thoughts were tightly woven into a compelling piece you'da been thrilled to read. Sadly, I chose to not go the route of divorce - waking my wife up to transcribe my brilliance for you. You just can't get good help anymore, one of the tragedies of our times!  My brother tells me he found the last piece lacking without a musical link. I've got Santana's Abraxas playing softly as, I recall quite distinctly, part of that tightly woven dreampiece was Carlos' mystical sound track. I guess the hope was hearing it would elicit the thoughts if not the brilliance from my night writing. The rhythm is helping at least with the typing - brilliance, well, we'll see. I have incomprehensibly pair Santana with Stan Getz. That makes about as much sense as the ingredients in this mornings breakfast burrito. No indigestion yet but the morning is still young and the page is not yet screaming delete. It was a mixe...

 I'm up way too early this morning. There is a difference between getting up early and getting up too early. It seems to revolve Copernicusly around the sun. Getting up at 4:30 in the long summer days means beating the heat, getting things done. All positive life affirming, damn my life is on track stuff. Getting up at 4:30 as the days are growing shorter just means I've been laying in bed mulling, thinking, rethinking life. The body likes action the mind likes thinking. Not much you can do when it's dark outside.   Yeah, having a plan and thinking about what you intend to do with your life is huge in value. Laying in bed mulling and rethinking is just a huge time suck. Youtube offers some comfort and can be done in the dark. (If you keep the volume down and don't wake the wife!) Yet, even a good video with a bit on intentional living though is basically a time suck. Writing seems to be a good bridge between action and thinking for those times when action isn...