The Walking Group's Field Trip -- nonfiction

Several years ago a couple of people who participated in a class sponsored by the Consortium for Older Adult Wellness started a walking group. Since then more and more people have joined the walks. Most are active at one or more of Lakewood's four rec centers and most are senior citizens, though that is not a prerequisite.

The walking group is very free-form. Not everyone walks every time. Most of the time we walk at one of Lakewood's more than 200 parks. We do keep our walks to easy terrain because we have all levels of fitness in the group. Probably the biggest difference between our walking group and others is our penchant for coffee and treats at local coffee and bakery establishments.

We don't claim to be a weight-loss program or even a fitness program. It is an opportunity for us to get together with really nice people from different backgrounds and different parts of the country and, indeed, the world. And, of course, we use the après-walk visit to solve the world's problems.

Occasionally we take field trips to local areas of interest. Last Thursday we visited Hudson Gardens.

Hudson Gardens and Event Center is a 30-acre non-profit botanical gardens located along the bank of the South Platte River, in Littleton, the next town south of Lakewood. Walking there is free to the public. They have concerts on an extensive lawn during the summer, rent facilities for weddings and other private events. They host a big beer festival in September, and decorate for holidays from fireworks for Fourth of July to lights for Christmas.

Originally developed in 1941 as the private gardens of Colonel King C. and Evelyn Leigh Hudson.  The gardens contain varied grounds ranging from high, dry prairie to river wetlands, featuring plants that thrive in the dry Colorado climate.

  

The rose gardens are a joy from June through late summer.

This time of year, the pumpkin patch is very popular. They also have raised beds of kitchen garden veggies -- green beans, squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, etc. 

The big surprises for me were the varieties of sunflowers.

Colorado grows sunflowers in fields, like wheat or corn so I'm used to seeing the standard commercial sunflowers they grow for seeds. The fields in Eastern Colorado are actually quite beautiful and the flowers follow the sun just like the sunflowers we grow in our flower beds.

But these sunflowers come in all kinds of colors. Like these on the right. They're colored more like Indian Paint Brush, but of course they're much larger. 

And below are little white ones nestled in among the more standard yellow ones.

                  And, of course, the bees like them, too.

Then there are the water features. Because Colorado east of the Rockies is in the High Plains Desert, water is a limited resource. There are books written about it. There have been pitched battles fought over it -- both in court and with guns. So water, any water is appreciated and celebrated. 

That's Rich. He's the mainstay of the walking group. 

He hardly ever misses a walk and often comes up with

wonderful suggestions -- like Hudson Gardens.

For our après-walk it was Lucile's Creole Cafe for brunch. I get to take credit for this choice. Lucile's is my favorite restaurant in Colorado. But, then of course, I love Louisiana food and they do it pretty much right.

My place at the table -- beignets, fruit, and coffee. No, I didn't eat all those beignets myself. I shared.

The first time I had a beignet, I didn't see what the big deal was. The next morning I had one and it was pretty good. The third morning I HAD to have one.

This was us. Not all of us could be there for the walk that day, but for those who missed it and for those who didn't, we'll do it again. Laissez les bon temps rouler, y'all.

Crown Hill Walk -- nonfiction

Here I am on the trail again. 

This time the walking group visited Crown Hill Park, a Jefferson County Open Space. The 242 acre park is fifteen minutes from my house. It has 9.5 miles of natural surface and paved trails, including 1.2 miles of paved trail around Crown Hill Lake. In the northwest corner of the park is Kestrel Pond, a certified National Urban Wildlife Refuge.

This truly is an urban wildlife refuge. The park sits on the border between Lakewood and Wheat Ridge, Colorado, in the midst of a human population estimated at almost 156,000.

Wheat Ridge High School is just beyond the northern limits of the park. In the background you can see the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The haze is from wild fires in the Pacific Northwest, some more than a thousand miles away. The jet stream (one of several upper air currents around the Earth) flowing from west to east carries the smoke across the mountains. The smoke then settles south along the east side of the Rockies compromising our mountain views and our air quality.

A gentleman just coming out of the wildlife part of the park, alerted us to the presence of a deer and her twin fawns ahead. The Mule Deer doe calmly grazed in the meadow as we walked past. In the background you can see electric lines, and just beyond the trees is Wheat Ridge High School and the rest of the city.

  

Kestrel Pond is fenced so that it can be closed to humans during nesting season. This spring  it was closed for the early days of these two fawns' lives.

More a wetlands, than a pond, Kestrel Pond is home to migratory water birds and shore birds.

In addition to the Canada Geese on the bigger lake, we saw these on Kestrel Pond. The bird in the upper left is a Killdeer. The two larger birds are American Avocets and the little brown bird is a Sandpiper.

Not to be outdone by the fauna in the wildlife refuge, the flora is abundant this time of year including a plant I did not recognize.

This is the Arrowhead plant, also known as Indian potato. According to the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service the Indian potato or Wapato (Sagittaria cuneata) is common and widespread from eastern Alaska east to Newfoundland and south to Texas. The tubers have a potato-like texture but more the flavor of water chestnuts when boiled or roasted to remove their slightly bitter taste when raw. Arrowhead tubers grow in muddy soil underwater and were harvested by Indians using sticks or with their bare feet (once freed, the tubers float to the surface to be gathered).

None of us knew of their special properties, though I doubt any of us were inclined to squish around barefoot in the mud to harvest them.

Another plant new to me is the Red Smartweed -- apparently an invasive species that's hard to kill out, but very pretty with its bright fuchsia colored flowers.





I love living here. Here I am in the midst of suburbia complete with decent public transportation, excellent medical facilities, ample shopping, and world-class entertainment venues and still have the natural world practically outside my front door.

My New Hometown

Main Reservoir

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I walk with a group of people I met in a Silver Sneakers exercise class at Carmody Rec Center in my beautiful hometown of Lakewood, Colorado. Main Reservoir is where our walking group walked today. It is 1.9 miles from my house. If you look really closely that's Green Mountain on the horizon.

I wasn't born here and I wasn't raised here, but this is my hometown. I don't have to go anywhere to be in vacation country. The skies are almost always blue. The snow melt water is clear where it's shallow and blue where it's deep.

Where I was born and raised the water was red -- Oklahoma Red Earth red. You can see those red ponds and lakes and creeks and rivers from high in the sky. Now, don't get me wrong. Oklahoma is beautiful, too. In its own way.

Oklahoma's most beautiful feature is its sky. In an Oklahoma wheat field if you lie down on the ground and look straight up, you'll see nothing but sky. No hills. No trees. You can hear red-winged black birds whistling to each other. And if the wheat is ripe enough, you can hear the wind rattle the grains as it sweeps across the field.

Thunder and lightning and gust fronts can bring you rain in Oklahoma. Or not. If there is rain, you can smell it before it falls on you. And in a hot, dry summer, that is the most glorious scent in the world.

If you live in Oklahoma, you go some-where-else when you go on vacation. When I was growing up we went either to Galveston on the Texas Gulf Coast or to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Now I live year-round in the middle of a vacation.

Kountz Lake in Belmar Park

My walking group walked here last Thursday. That's an island out in the middle, favored nesting grounds for Double Crested Cormorants, Snowy Egrets, and Blue Herons. This property was once part of the Bonfils family's estate. They were the Denver Post Bonfils.

The Tuesday before that we were at the Stone House.

                                                       

                          Chickory Plant                                                           Bear Creek.
               It grows wild at Stone House.                       Bear Creek runs through the park at  

               It's identified as a Noxious Weed,                Stone House. The creek heads up near

               but grind its roots and brew with                  Mt. Evans the highest of the Chicago     

               strong coffee, serve with beignets                 Peaks in the Front Range. Those are
               and you have the taste of New Orleans.        the mountains you can see from Denver.

                                                   
All this with easy access to an international airport, an excellent ballet company, a Level I trauma hospital, more professional sports teams than I ever imagined possible, the Denver Museum of Science and Nature, nice people who've moved here from all over the world, Starbucks that will soon be serving beer and wine, The Tattered Cover (my second favorite independent bookstore,) and my favorite husband.

What more could I ask for?!

Daddy's 90th Birthday

This is my Dad.

Yesterday was his ninetieth birthday. He was born in Oklahoma County in the State of Oklahoma on May 30, 1925, Decoration Day.

Decoration Day had become a traditional holiday in the United States to commemorate the war dead following the Civil War which ended in 1865.  The name gradually changed to Memorial Day, not most commonly used until after World War II. It wasn’t officially called Memorial Day until 1967.

Daddy was born at home. He weighed just over ten pounds. His mother, Emma Mae Jarvis Weber, was a tiny little thing, barely five feet tall and not much more than 100 pounds.

His father, Lawrence Leland Weber, farmed with mules and took pride in his teams and his saddle horses. If he hadn’t already, and Daddy can’t be sure he hadn’t, he soon acquired a Model T Ford.

Daddy’s sister, Leland Mae was a toddler.

And Daddy was duly named Lawrence Alvin, making his initials LAW. Grandma felt that having initials that spelled something would be good luck.

Speaking of luck, his astrological sign was Gemini which holds that he’s supposed to be energetic, clever, imaginative, witty, and adaptable – all of which he is, plus courteous and kind. I’ve never observed him to have any of the negative characteristics Gemini are supposed to have.

Chinese astrology says that Daddy was born in the year of the Ox. People born under this sign are said to be hardworking, discreet, modest, industrious, charitable, loyal, punctual, philosophical, patient, and good-hearted individuals with high moral standards. All true of my Daddy.

In the real world that Saturday, the moon was in its first quarter. The high temperature that day was 87^o, the low was 68^o, and no precipitation. The Stock Market was closed for the holiday, but ended the day before at $129.95. That’s very low by today’s standard, but it was robust for then and on the rise. More importantly to Daddy’s family was the price of cotton – $19.62 per hundred weight. 1925 would be a good year for cotton producers.

There would be two more sisters, Virginia Ellen, and Thelma Grace.

Daddy grew up during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. His experiences were as a white child in a segregated community where most of the white people were related to him or related to someone who was related to him. His circle of friends came ready-made from birth. They were kith and kin.

In 1943, in the midst of World War II, he left school to join the Navy. He became a Seabee and served in the Pacific Theater of War. 

As with many young men of that time, it was his first experience away from home. Those young men were from all parts of the country, big cities, small towns, and the countryside. They were all there – young men from the Northeast, the Upper Midwest, the Deep South, the Great American Plains, and the West Coast.

They were farmers’ sons and factory laborers’ sons, longshoremen’s sons, doctors’ sons, bakers’ sons, and preachers’ sons. Some were single. Some were married with sons and daughters of their own. Each had joined the navy for his own reason, but all were there for the duration – until the war ended, whenever that would be. And again, Daddy’s circle of friends was ready-made.

When he came back into civilian life, he returned to Oklahoma County and his rural roots. He married a local girl, Peggy Hrdlicka. His Aunt June who was married to Momma’s Uncle Ray complained that she hadn’t gotten any new relatives out of the marriage. It was in fact the third of four marriages between Daddy’s family and Momma’s family.

Daddy farmed for a while and they had me. Then almost two years later they had my brother Matt. Each time the cost of our delivery was paid for by the sale of a cow.

Daddy was constantly on the lookout to improve our lot and it was pretty clear that he wouldn’t be able to buy his own farm so he went to work for the Rural Electric Co-op as a lineman. Then to Oklahoma Gas and Electric.

Then he bought a service station. For those of you too young to remember, that was a place you stopped at to refuel your car. You would stay in your car while an attendant came running out to fill your gas tank, wash your windows, check your oil, take payment for the gas (cash or credit only – no credit cards existed then.) He wished you a safe journey, thanked you, and invited you to come back.

They also took care of your car’s maintenance and repair – everything from washing and vacuuming to new windshield wiper blades to engine overhauls. These were where they made their money, not the gasoline sales. Those were basically come-ons to get your other business.

The service station didn’t work out, primarily due to Oklahoma’s “gas wars.” In today’s climate where you’re glad to get $2.50 plus gas, gas wars seem like a myth. The stations – and like today, there was one on almost every corner – would undercut each other on gas prices. This went so far as to get gas down to nine cents a gallon. That was cheaper than Daddy could buy the gas.

So he went to work for Sears, Roebuck selling household appliances. That was the first and only time Daddy dressed in a suit for something other than church. And from there to the City of Edmond’s Electric Department, then to Edmond’s Water Treatment Plant, then to Edmond’s new hospital as their Executive Housekeeper where he supervised the entire housekeeping and maintenance staff, then to Oklahoma Christian College where he again supervised the maintenance staff and grounds crews.

And finally, he retired.

He left the farm early on, but it was always with him. He gardened. He bought an acreage and gardened on a grand scale. He raised goats for milk, chickens for eggs and meat. He raised rabbits and two or three pigs, and a couple of cows at a time for meat. He had bees for honey. All before retirement. And after.

In all this time, he left Oklahoma County only for vacations. With the exception of living a short time in Payne County when he first went to work for REA. That’s about fifty miles away, an easy car trip home each weekend.

He added work friends and his family regularly added family friends to his circle.

Then after caring for Momma in the last few years of her life and living on his own in Oklahoma County, he and I joined our households. Three years ago we moved to Lakewood, Colorado, for my husband’s job.

Lakewood, a suburb of Denver, is more than half again as big as Edmond, the town we called home in Oklahoma. Denver is twice as big as Oklahoma City, population-wise. And we didn’t know anyone here. No ready-made circle of friends.

We have care-givers from Visiting Angels help Daddy five mornings a week now and we go to an exercise class Mondays and Wednesdays at Carmody Recreation Center. So when Daddy’s 90th birthday was approaching, I didn’t consider throwing a party because “who would we invite?” We didn't really have friends or relatives here.

Daddy’s close friends and relatives who are still living, live a long way away.

But Carol, one of Daddy’s care-givers, wanted to know what we were going to do for Daddy’s birthday and I told her I hadn’t planned anything. Well, she said she was going to do something anyway. And Yolanda, Daddy’s primary care-giver, said I should have a party for him and invite the people from our exercise class.

So that’s what we did. My husband, our daughter, her fiance, and Daddy, too. They all helped get ready for the party. Daddy and his care-giver Richard peeled and chopped apples for Daddy's famous apple pie. I baked -- cookies, the pies, a chocolate cake.

Daddy and I wondered who would come. How many would come? Would the sun shine or would it rain? Did we have enough food? 

They came and we had enough food. The sun shone. The house was full and guests spilled out onto the deck. Three of his care-givers (two with spouses in-tow) and lots of people from the exercise class came. Relatives from all over called to wish him Happy Birthday. He had a very good time. We all did.

And, you know what? Daddy has a ready-made circle of friends wherever he is. 

 Richard from Visiting Angel, Daddy, 

and Louise from Exercise Class.