Ready or Not

Brussel sprouts snap right off the stalk, particularly when it’s super cold. After driving home from Colorado Springs on a blowing blizzardy day, I couldn’t walk past anything still poking through snow in the garden without doing a bit of harvesting. The big brussel plants were already bending over laden with snow, but with a brush of my gloved hand they stood erect. Yep, one glance under and up showed row upon row of tight little brussel balls!

I filled a stainless steel bowl till it was over flowing, the sprouts rolling off into the deepening snow when I wasn’t careful. Before too long my pant legs were soaked and a familiar wet cold seeped into my leather Ariats. In late spring I planted six of these starter plants. By mid-summer they had grown into impressive bushes with massive leaves shading stalks that were pumping out the little sprouts at regular intervals. Just before the snow hit the entire plant seemed to burst into one large cabbage-like head, unfolding like a huge flower celebrating a summer of stirring effort all along its way from distant root to tip top.

I actually thought these plants were done with the last early freeze. The zucchini were splayed out the next morning and the tomatoes and pepper plants all withered and soft. The firmer brussel sprout leaves were drooping so I assumed they, too, had finished, but by afternoon they were fully stretched flat soaking up warmth and coaxing the sun’s rays toward their sturdy stalks. How I love a tenacious plant!

We’ve grilled these babies, steamed plenty, and chucked them in soups. Adding some portabella mushrooms, savory leeks, a little roasted chicken, some fresh sage and then simmering the entire collection produces one of the tastiest fall soups I’ve ever had. The kitchen cabinet is still covered at one end with sage, basil, oregano and marjoram I hastily swept up before the next to last freeze. I’ve fully intended on carefully drying these out and having herbs for the winter, but they rest in the same baskets I placed them in after that hurried harvesting. Oh well, easier to grab for tossing onto the brussel sprouts.

This winter pounced on the front range of Colorado. Ducks have flown right past us, not stopping on their regular migratory routes. Leaves that were just beginning to turn from green to gold found themselves iced and plopping on the ground rather than a colorful, graceful fall descent. Even this early morning as I ploughed my way through two plus feet of snow, I noticed full cottonwood trees with mostly green leaves on sagging, heavy branches. Snow sits atop my garden’s solar lights like a heavy drum major’s plumed hat. Time moves fast enough, and this kind of weather has made me feel like things are fast-forwarding even more.

The days are growing dark and cold so swiftly. I only recently dragged in my last garden hose, and a forgotten plastic sprinkler is already buried somewhere under mounds of snow. I fully intended on spreading some straw around the herbs and roses, but this thought occurred to me when I was hundred miles from Denver listening to the freezing weather forecast. By the time I got home, only the brussel sprouts were visible. Feeling the tiny balls snap off I said my goodbyes to another productive summer garden. Just look at what we can grow if we only take the time and make the space, regardless of the insistence of days to zip by from morning to night amidst a landslide of light instead of allowing dawn and dusk to creep softly in and out of our awareness.

The Best is Yet from Montana

Today is 9/11, a day I remember more for my sister’s birthday than
the tragedies that occurred in the US in 2001. Paula Johnson was
born on this day of 1944 in Gainesville, Texas. My father was away at war, on the Navy ship the USS Enterprise. He didn’t meet his apple cheeked daughter with the golden curls until she was 18 months old.

Paula turned into a gorgeous woman, impressing many with her artistic talents from an early age. Still hanging in my mother's living room is a beautifully framed oil still life of flowers in a vase that Paula painted around age eight. My own house looks like a gallery for the artwork of this sister, with a collection of pieces from more than four decades.

In her late thirties this sister decided to legally change her name to Billy Rae Montana. By then she was picking up a pen as often as a paintbrush, composing some poetry that read with a simplicity and clarity that allowed even her words to turn into pictures. I remember her sitting in front of an old Royal typewriter with tall circular keys that needed a punch to get the ink on the almost transparent typing paper.




I’ve watched this sister for many years, coursing through two marriages and a few other relationships, always loyal to her partners and loving with a ferocity. She’s tenacious, and tried to make her relationships last just as she has been dedicated to every job she has ever held.

BR, as I like to call her, lives alone now with three curious cats and a stodgy old cattle dog, Sargent Pepper. They are an active, homey family, this bright, eccentric sister of mine and her satisfied canine and felines, talking and singing and taking care of each other lovingly.


Billy Rae Montana says she is going to do more artwork soon, choosing to retire in March of 2010 from her work with the small north Texas town of Whitesboro. I am ever so hopeful that her lines of poetry and colors on a canvas will soon grace the world and enhance our perspectives. But like a dear friend and writing colleague of mine recently said, we have to “stay in the room” to establish the discipline necessary for accomplishing our art.

Maybe my sister will use the shed outside her house to set up a space like the author Annie Dillard constructed: no windows, no distractions, nothing on the walls. Annie says from a space of nothing her creativity finds the room to move and grow and expand, allowing her to fill her little work shed with the necessary perspective and the sharp focus that allow her art to form.

This, more than the tri-level, multi-faceted kitty gym that my sister Pamela and I already gave our older sister, is what I wish for Billy Rae Montana on this, her 65th birthday. To “stay in the room” and once again write and paint and allow her creativity to soar across southwestern skies. (photos, including older ones, by Patricia and artwork by BR Montana)

In the Glow of Pegasus

(all photos taken during my wanderings at Graceland)

Storms roll into the San Luis valley mid to late afternoon as shadows lengthen. Wind rushes down the slopes and through the pines thumping the trailer at regular intervals. Scrub jays caw and call along with a swoosh of breezes. Grasses dance like a thousand conductors’ batons keeping beat for nature’s symphony.

Such a contrast to mornings when an idle stillness allows me to hear air slipping through the feathers of crows in flight. Fingers of sunlight slowly stretch across the valley floor, bringing an enticing warmth after a crisp early fall night.

Last night a full show was delivered right around dusk, just a few hours after my arrival here at Graceland, our blessed spot here in this southern Colorado valley. Thick bolts of lightning screeched across the skies leaving the air tingling. I found myself holding my breath while sweet Amber cowered in her doggy bunk, her head buried in pillows.

The beauty of wide open spaces thrills me. Maybe it’s all those years in Texas. These vast places allow me to feel like I can empty out all the clutter from living, enough to then fill up with deep breaths for the month ahead.

Crickets, coyotes, and owls drape the night over me in such a way that sleep comes with ease. If my eyes open while I’m turning in the night, I find the entire universe peering through the open windows on three sides. The Milky Way decorates the dark sky and both familiar and unfamiliar constellations fill any gaps. Presently Pegasus glitters gracefully.

A little more than a couple of decades would suit me fine for the rest of my lifetime. Filling those years with time here in the valley reading, writing, gazing, hiking, looking closely at everything, birding, and being with people I love sounds incredibly rich. Though I still care to travel, having a magical place such as this to surround myself with quiet and mystery and stillness appeals to me now. I feel this all seeping into my cells and then hear my breath slow and deepen, becoming acutely aware of a steady, even pounding of my heart. This, I think, is what allows me to feel so thankfully passionate about being alive.

Revenge of the Zucchini

After a full work weekend, my friend Nancy asked me what I was going to now do for fun.

“Blanche and freeze zucchini,” I answered.

“Whoo-hoo!” she responded, laughing.

I don’t feel like I have a choice. They’re pummeling me every time I walk through the garden, pulsing out of the plants night and day. I can’t keep up with them. I’ll pick a batch one evening, and the next morning Bill tells me he sees more ready to be harvested. I’ve become a slave to my zucchini plants.

This summer started off cool and then the rains began, continuing every afternoon. Great, I thought, until I started noticing the plants remaining small, apparently missing their regular dose of sunshine.

For example, I still don’t have eggplants. By now we’ve usually been grilling those every evening and happily mixing them with zucchini for ratatouille. Even our varieties of pepper plants are only just now becoming ready to harvest, hopefully to soon take salsa-making off the hold list.


And the tomatoes, finally, are turning. I’ve come to expect this in Colorado, clumps of fat, green tomatoes on the vine for weeks, slowly dispelling my memories of juicy, red ones ready in Texas in early July at the latest.

But here, fresh lettuce and sweet strawberries whet our appetite early, and then the lull stretches out as we wait for any more garden goodies, and this year it’s been one long lull.

The zucchini, however, sneaked up on us. One day the tiny plants were sitting unobtrusively on their mounds and the next day I swear the leaves were like patio umbrellas and the zucchini as big as baseball bats. Walking through the garden feels a bit treacherous, with scenes from a potential horror flic “The Revenge of the Zucchini” popping up in my head.


So we stuff these babies, steam them, fry a few (including the blossoms), and bake it in bread and quiche, and I could still use some different recipes (got any?). Last year we got a small freezer, so we’re taking the time to “put some up” as my granny used to say, blanching and freezing. This is hard work even with a food processor to slice them up before dipping them in the boiling water and then scooping the pieces out to toss in a sink full of ice water. The assembly line starts in the garden with the plants rolling out the produce, eventually ending in the oven when something delicious has been created. Often I must remind myself something tasty will come out of all the labor.

Bill thought he’d improve the freezing process this year and avoid the freezer burn we noticed from last year’s crop, so he bought a machine that vacuums and seals bags. Only after two long evenings of blanching and bagging we still haven’t been successful at getting the darn thing to seal our piles of veggies, feeling like further evidence of revenge of the zucchini.


Like with everything else, I remind myself to stop, take a deep breath, and alter my perspective. The zucchini is not out to get me. My garden, of course, is doing just what I want it to do, produce! What a lovely opportunity the garden always provides to give fresh veggies away. And best of all, even if we’re struggling with some new cantankerous kitchen gadget, the times when Bill and I are bumping around together in the kitchen often turn into some of our favorite memories and good laughs for long winter evenings when we reminisce about last summer’s garden.

Unrehearsed Adventures

With mountain ranges all along the periphery, it’s as though the entire San Luis valley in southern Colorado exists just to hold the huge mass of air that has slid down the slopes of the various mountain ranges that comprise its edges. Add to that big bowl of oxygen chunks of people’s lives, with a few lost and realized dreams sprinkled on top, and there you have it - a real life place swirling with heartfelt stories. I recently added a few of my own to the mix.

My Houston friend and colleague, Sharon Fabriz, and I decided to create a day’s writing experience for each other during my valley visit in early July. In the mid 90s we led reflective journaling workshops together for Houston teachers, and since that time we have each continued to expand upon reflective writing experiences for teachers in Houston and Denver. Sharon and her life-partner, Pat, have built a cabin about 30 minutes from Graceland (our trailer and land), so we decided to spend a full day writing at each of our places.

Like much of Colorado and New Mexico this year, the San Luis Valley is lush with wildflowers and running streams. Most afternoons a storm blows in, filling the vast skies with occasional rains while flippant winds toss dusky clouds above the valley’s bowl. All the while we continued to write, slipping into warmer jackets when the sun dipped behind clouds, and reading to each other over tasty picnic spreads.

One of our writing activities was to compose a timeline of our lives. We discussed landmarks to note as we surveyed our years lived, stopped to write or tell stories that helped us both remember experiences and envision our futures. Like the quote from a book I just read (Sonata for Miriam), “Good or bad, our past is the reference we need to enable the future.” I figure I need all the help I can get, especially after taking a close look at this timeline of where I’ve been in the past 57 years.

We took old continuous feed computer paper and began stretching out our lives, year by year. After the years were marked down on paper, we discovered it wasn’t necessarily a linear activity, for memories unexpectedly popped up here and there in revealing though haphazard ways. It was more like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle without having a picture on the box to guide us. Stories surfaced while we wrote and took intermittent hikes, even churning in dreams during sleep, prompting sketchy recollections that often turned into vivid details.

It was as if I were taking the building stones of my life and organically placing them over a lifespan where they each belonged, resulting in a long picture of where I’ve been, what I’ve done and learned, with occasional glimpses of how and why I’ve become who I am.

Several days later another close friend, Nancy Fisher, drove over from Durango and we drove south to Taos to visit former Austin friends/soccer and college colleagues, Mary Humphrey and Connie Ode. Here were three remarkable women whom I’ve known for over 30 years. After a day of hiking, Mary dug up an old slide projector and we watched slides of a backpacking trip we took in September of 1974, all of us with our long blonde hair, thick wool socks, and huge heavy packs. Never was there a hat on our heads to protect our sunburned faces, though we had zinc oxide slathered on our noses in several slides. We looked so very young, and surprisingly strong. Twenty-two years old and traipsing across Colorado wilderness with confidence and curiosity, dreams of the future piling up in front of us, but not a water lawyer, ICU nurse or public school teacher yet among us. My timeline was pretty short at this point in life, and little did I know that I would be noting this trip on one 35 years later. We remarked that we most likely wouldn’t be watching the digital pictures of that day’s mountain stream hike either in another 35 years. Possible, but not likely, with the time stretching before us offering a much shorter span of life than what now lies behind us.

But future there is, don’t get me wrong, and stopping and taking a close look at the past seems to help me create a vision for the unknown time that lies ahead. I turn 57 this week, and I feel damn lucky considering a few of the observations from constructing my timeline. Maybe you’ll consider a bit of your life’s journey and share with me or others some of your own discoveries. After all, if you are reading this, it looks like we’re in for some part of this unrehearsed adventure together.

1. I’ve lived in 36 homes in 3 countries and 4 states
2. Lived in rural areas as a child for 10.5 years, and as an adult for 9 years
3. Traveled to 11 countries
4. Have had 13 transformative travel experiences: 3 in France, 2 in Mexico, 1 in Canada, and 7 in the Southwest
5. Had 11 dogs
6. Gone to 11 schools (K-university)
7. Learned 3 languages and still speak 2
8. Had at least 36 jobs from ages 13-present
9. Worked as a camp counselor at 5 children’s camps before directing an adult fitness camp, for a total of 10 summers
10. Have learned to do 8 outdoor activities well, though I’ve continued to do barely half of them
11. Taught at 8 schools with a total of 13 principals
12. 4 hospitalizations
13. Known Bill 28 years, married for 15 and counting
14. Knew Steve (1st husband) 13 years and married for 3
15. 10 so called “serious” relationships, but now only in touch with Bill
16. About 20 friend relationships, sprinkled from age 13 on, that at this point I believe I’ll know the rest of my life (including a stepson and his wife)
17. lost 2 friends to suicide, 1 murdered, 1 with AIDS, 1 to cancer, 1 to heartache
18. Came into my teens in the mid-60s right after JFK’s assassination, with RFK & MLK following within years just before graduating from HS at 17 yo
19. I was 9 when my first sister graduated from HS and 14 with the second
20. I lived alone with my parents for almost 4 years after my sisters left
21. Spent HS & college watching and listening to Viet Nam and my 50s with the turmoil of Iraq
22. Apparently the southwest is powerful for me, having found times and places for solitary and/or empowering retreats here more than any place else I’ve been. Guess this is why it’s home.

Ancestral Dirt

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Just after passing through a tunnel of trees called “Black Hollow” (pronounced “Black Halla” here in north Texas), my great uncle Doug announced that we would soon have a “bird’s eye view of Marysville.” I smiled hearing the name of my blog (unknown to my uncle), and also in anticipation of revisiting the grounds of my ancestors. Our journey through the thick wooded area where the swells of the earth dip down for creeks to merge no longer holds the likelihood of robbers like it did decades ago. Carriages, wagons, and ponies were hustled through dusk’s shadows and the low light of the woods in hopes of an uneventful and safe journey as early Marysville settlers scurried home.

These days one can’t really call Marysville a town, despite the mesmerizing turn of wind turbines stretched across the horizon or the cattle grazing around an occasional hidden homestead. Unlike much of the sandy north Texas area where my parents and sisters now live, there are no horse ranches in these parts due to the sticky soil that presents problems in a horse’s hooves.

But the population of the area was first affected in 1942 when the U.S. army decided to take over thousands and thousands of acres of this north Texas area and create a massive, military training ground for troops being prepared for combat in WW II. (Not my navy Dad though, who survived many a battle aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. Note his beloved hat in photo below.) Marysville families had no choice but to sell their homes and land for unreasonable sums and relocate. This included my maternal grandmother and grandfather’s families. Hundreds of homesteads were demolished as a large hospital and acres of barracks went up. Somehow the old Davison (my grandfather’s ancestors) home, the school house, Baptist church, and remains of the general store all held their ground, and of course the Marysville cemetery, which feels like the real sacred hub.

The fierce thunderstorms of the morning and early hours of this June afternoon made for sweltering Texas temperatures. My mid-eighties parents struggled through the high grass and uneven terrain of the cemetery, but they were up to the challenge of this visit. My great niece, Megan, proved an incredible sport for an 11 year old with five adults ages 56 to 86. Great Uncle Doug’s enthusiasm for sharing intricate and endless details of our family’s genealogy could test the endurance of even the best among us.
Until the second world war, my grandparents’ families were apparently quite content to be farming corn and cotton in that sticky north Texas dirt. Johana and John Davison had traveled clear from Georgia in the mid 1800’s, and later their son Luddie Pinkney (no kiddin’), a Baptist preacher, married Mattie Francis and soon begot Chester Bernice in 1896, my granddaddy. Luddie must have decided that changing Davison to Davidson would make up for his questionable middle name. Mattie’s parents (one being a Jim Crow, hopefully not a lawmaker) descended from Jane and Steven Crow, who also took westward to Marysville, journeying from Mississippi and South Carolina in the early 1800s.

Meanwhile Joseph Forrest Fletcher roamed in to Marysville from Missouri, while Emma Gertrude Vanderford trickled down from Springfield, Illinois, and the two of them hooked up and viola, Emma Clare, my granny. Come her early twenties with her commendable eighth grade education, Emma Clare was the perfect candidate to become the Marysville school marm, soon catching the eye of my future grand daddy, Chester Bernice, who was working the fields at the time. They married in 1917.

So Marysville holds many of the graves and a lot of memories of my maternal grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents. Whew. Now my parents and sisters are living less than an hour away from this place. See why I called this a sort of sacred hub? I mean, there was some covered wagon traveling that happened for all those people to even make it here from the deep south and the Midwest to Marysville, but the road seemed to finally stop just past Black Hollow. Maybe they all experienced the fear of God amidst those dark forests and chose to shout hallelujah and stake their claims in the fertile soils once making it through the hollow’s ominous shadows and the tricky sands of the Red River.

I don’t know why it fascinates me so to meander through a cemetery holding the gravestones of ancestors. My legs were itchin’ and bugs were sticking in the sweat running down my neck. But I recognized the flowers poking up among the engraved old fashioned names and when I closed my eyes I could tell I was in Texas just by the bird calls. I spent only one lone sabbatical year in this area amidst 42 years I lived in Texas (well, I was born not too far from here, moving away at age 3), but I get a sense of the root of the root of the root of who I am around here. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about wanting to live in this neck of the woods again; I’m planted oh so happily in Colorado. But connecting to a sense of place in one area seems to help me feel more in touch with this blessed earth wherever I am, whether in my garden in Denver, roaming the rocky trails in the San Luis Valley, or walking on the dirt of my ancestors. It’s all home, baby.

(Photos: 3rd is old Davison homestead; 4th is old school house; 5th is my parents Rosalie and Joe, me, sister Pamela, and her granddaughter Megan; 6th is Luddie and Mattie with their children, oldest being my granddaddy; the rest are old family gravestones)

Colorado Cruisers

“Roar, roar, roar!” Gavroche was in killer stance, hair standing up on his back, looking pretty fierce for all his 16 pounds of testosterone. His barks bounced across Rocky Mountain Lake landing on four American White Pelicans. They were huge.

“Whoa, Gavy, that’s something to bark about!” The birds were easily twice his size. He looked up at me, proudly protective, a snarl still posed on his lips.

The pelicans floated like massive multi-deck cruiser ships. They appeared to have a plan, closing in on shallow water fish where they could scoop them into large pocketed bills, amazingly able to hold almost three gallons of water, point the bills down to drain excess water, then tilt their heads back for a long, extended swallow.

Coots and cormorants milled about, gabbling and squawking about who knows what while the pelicans silently controlled the waters. The low rider cormorants skulked along with sleek black backs barely visible on the water’s surface, necks poking up like submarine periscopes. In contrast the coots (who resemble ducks but aren’t) pumped chicken-like heads on top of their short, fat necks, occasionally prompting the pelicans to flash their nine-foot wingspans and send the coots bob-bob-bobbing along.

By then I had managed to get my pocket digital camera out and wedge the two extend-a-leashes between my knees. Holding the camera at arm’s length I tried to fit the scene I had been observing into the elusive viewfinder, but the sun’s glare and my precarious hold on the leashes had me teetering at the water’s edge. A mallard couple splashed out of winter’s smashed cattail reeds and the dogs lunged. Let me tell you, it wasn’t a graceful sight. I managed to stay afoot, not drop the camera, and most important, grab the leashes, but I’m pretty sure I looked like a windmill in a hurricane. The pelicans, who had been quite tolerant of us only moments before, cautiously navigated toward deeper waters. With slow flapping outstretched wings, one even heaved itself into the sky. I swear I felt the air shift.

I sank back into a dazed stare as the dogs settled down. The remaining three floated on in unison as if doing some kind of dance, occasionally making exaggerated head movements that I later learned are the way they keep their under-the-bill pouches elastic and supple for the next fish roundup. A fishing lure tangled in the nearby reeds caught my eye, along with a floating plastic bottle and a crumpled potato chip bag. Nearby another walker called to her young Labrador, off-leash and crashing gleefully into the reeds. I thought of how pelicans are another species in decline, mostly as a result of general human disturbance along with diminishing wetlands and generous use of pesticides. Once again I reminded a fellow dog owner of nesting season at the lake, and the necessity of the leash laws. She acted genuinely surprised about leash laws and the existence of birdlife on the lake, glancing around as if looking for proof of feathered creatures.

Last year warm temperatures fooled hundreds of pelicans, convincing them to hang out in the north two months longer than normal. When their internal alarm clocks finally pushed them to fly south, they bumped into paralyzing winter storms leaving many frostbitten, ill, and extremely disoriented. Believe me, this did not make major headlines. Most readers, like the dog owner above, are generally not interested in birds, for God’s sake, or the fact that more than 10,000 pelicans spend the summer here in Colorado, nesting, lounging around, and resting up for the next long haul south. I looked up to see the fourth big bird soaring overhead. I wondered what a baby pelican looks like and wished I could show one to the off-leash Labrador’s owner, hoping that might convince her to pay closer attention.