At Home in Broomfield

I turned 60 years old on Saturday, 1 October 2011.  It was also General Conference, which meant 2 hour conference sessions at 10 AM, 2 PM, and General Priesthood Meeting at 6 PM.  That doesn't leave much time for celebrations.  Except for a nice breakfast, we planned to have the celebration on Sunday.

Just a few minutes after the first session ended, I was getting ready to watch one of the shows broadcast between sessions.  Then the phone rang and the doorbell rang at the same time.  Mom was just coming into the intersection from the hall, so I asked her to answer the phone while I answered the door.   That turned out to be a good choice.  As I stepped outside, there was a delivery man with a balloon bouquet.  He asked if I was AL as he handed me the bouquet.  I was so shocked I just kind of stumbled getting out that I was AL.  He also handed me a florist calendar then left.  I came in still a bit stunned.

Mom told me that it was R on the phone.  Mom examined the bouquet while I talked to R.  She said that there were 11 balloons in it.  R was a bit perturbed to hear that.  Later I let Mom talk while I examined the bouquet a bit closer.  I moved the bouquet and the 12th balloon became visible.  The rubber balloons sank pretty fast but the mylar ones are still doing pretty good.

The bouquet consisted of 6 Mylar balloons, all with Happy Birthday on them; 6 rubber helium filled balloons; a little bear; and a small box of chocolates.  The bear is cute, but maybe not gray enough.  I was really surprised and happy to receive the gift.  The card that came with it was nice.  There was a typo, but it was good one.  It was meant to say: From your posterity, all 17.5 of us.  However, it said:  From your prosperity, all 17.5 of us.  I do think that my posterity is my prosperity.

On Sunday Se and Mom gave me other presents.  I received a jar of spicy pickled green beans. OK. so I like them.  I also received a large Hershey bar, a DVD of  "17 Miracles", an egg separator, a clip that holds stirring spoons for pots, 2 boxes of Rockies cookies (like animal crackers) and some very nice cards.  JA's card also contained a check.  It was a nice birthday weekend, starting with the win over Utah State, conference, and the dinners and presents.  I also received a gift certificate for the Boulder Dinner Theatre on Tuesday.

So below are pictures of the birthday.







Thanks so much to all the family for providing such a nice surprise.  Mom and I will enjoy attending the Dinner Theater as well.

I finished an interesting book today.  The title is Free-Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy.  I pulled the book to fill a hold a couple of months ago.  I found it again last Friday on the shelf and checked it out.

Lenore Skenazy has been called "America's Worst Mother". She is a reporter and columnist.  Her 9-year old son asked her if he could prove he could travel by himself.  They live in New York City, so Lenore took her son to a department store and let him travel home by himself on the subway and a bus.

Lenore Skenazy wrote about this successful trip in her column.  People were outraged.  She received lots of email.  Lenore was also invited to appear on network shows.  The first one she was on ended up with her being attacked by both the host and a special guest "parenting expert".  She started a group called Free-Range Kids and wrote the book to explain her reasons for her parenting style.

Preliminary:

Mom and I have talked several times about terracing the front yard.  In May Se started designing a terrace for the catalpa side.  He even marked lines with catalpa bean pods where we would want to remove sod and dig.

The original Se design was for retaining walls using bricks.  But Mom had seen some yards that used rock for the retaining wall.  She thought about the large rocks scattered about our yard.  So the design changed to look more natural, with rocks of different sizes and shapes forming the retaining wall. 

Then on Memorial Day, Se and Mom started the actual work.   We started taking pictures a couple of days into the project.  I helped a little but it was almost all Se and Mom.  They worked early in the morning until the shade moved off the project then in the late afternoon when there was shade again.

Part I:  Flower bed

Se and Mom made a decision to put a flower bed along the sidewalk leading to the house.  We would like to put some perennials in the bed eventually but felt it would be too late by the time we finished this year.












As they excavated, Mom and Se discovered sprinkler pipes and large catalpa roots.  They used smaller rocks to hide these items.  It made for some nice divisions in the flower bed.

The flower bed was made ready for planting on Saturday, June 11th.  We decided to go shopping for plants later in the afternoon.

Mom and I chose some annuals that were already flowering, mostly petunias and pansies.  Mom decided to plant them even though it was getting late.  The evening was pretty long.  However, the planting led to an adventure:

Skunk!

As Mom started to work on planting the flowers, she heard birds across the street being very noisy.  She discovered a young skunk working its way down the sidewalk by Burnworth's.  The skunk eventually went into their south shrubs.  The birds kept at it and it eventually re-emerged.  Mom was planting as fast as she could, while keeping an eye out for the skunk.  Then the skunk came across the street and wandered around the sidewalk and driveway of our yard.  As soon as it came across, Mom opted to leave the planting and come inside.





We watched the skunk from inside the house.  Mom thought it was gone and started to go back outside.  There was the skunk on the second step from the door.  She came back in pretty fast.  The skunk finally wandered away and Mom finished planting the flowers even though it was almost dark..  She planted about 5 dozen plants.

Flowers

The following pictures show the flower bed just after it was planted.  The last 3 pictures were taken July 16th. 







Front Excavation

With the flower bed created and the flowers planted, the area between the front sidewalk and the caltapa became the focus of the project.  The ground around the catalpa was raised to a mild slope.  The boundary of the raised area is about 2 feet from the catalpa trunk. At first, concrete blocks held up the raised area.  The area from the rocks to the sidewalk was excavated.  Then the blocks were replaced by rocks.  All these rocks already existed somewhere in our yard.










 The original plan was to dig the entire bed to planting depth, put sifted dirt back in to an appropriate slope, and plant some ground cover. The modified plan, after Mom and Se spent 10 days in Utah, and then 9 of the next 10 days had daily thunderstorms (some very heavy), we have decided to put in mulch which we can get free from the city.  We plan to put some of our other rocks in to help hold the mulch and make the area more interesting.  We would still like to put some perennials in but we are afraid it might be too late in the season this year.