Appreciating Mother Earth

Retirement in rural southern Colorado: If you don’t take the risk, how will you ever know?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 9 Comments

Four years ago, on June 17th, Mike and I sold our nice home in suburbia and left behind everything familiar to us. After living up in the Fort Collins area for the past few decades, this move felt like a gigantic leap of faith.

906 Deer Creek Lane front view

Here’s a photo of our past home in south Fort Collins. In the past four years it has increased in value more than $100,000! Wow, the prices of homes up in metroland are growing by leaps and bounds!

morning sun on comanche drive

After over a year of emotional and financial struggle, we triumphed over a million difficult challenges to create this passive solar home west of Walsenburg Colorado. We have been quite happy living here for the past few years. Retirement agrees with us, and especially in such a quiet, natural part of the West. BTW, passive solar works great down here!

Most of my worries about moving here never came to pass, and other completely unexpected problems replaced those. The biggest challenges for me have been health-related. My body made a quick decision to start falling apart soon after age 60, creating new opportunities for compassion towards others who suffer. And the truth is, I have met so many here who have been forced to retire early because of health concerns and disabilities.

great Mike photo of snow and Spanish Peaks

Huerfano, meaning orphan, is a poor, rural county down near the New Mexico border, with a total population of around 6,500 and an average age of 54 years. With few good jobs and an abundance of natural beauty, the Huerfano attracts those with less money and more appreciation of rugged country and rural life. We live on three acres in the Pinon-Juniper ecosystem right around 7,000 feet elevation.

Judging by the rapid increase in traffic in Walsenburg, the many homes sold here in the past few years, and how crazy Highway 160 has become in the summer, it looks like this area has been “discovered” by those living up north in metroland.

AMAZING sunrise over the Spanish Peaks January 2018

We have found this area to be slow and quiet, especially in the winter, and windy as hell. If you hate the wind, don’t move here! The slow country ways are what now attract me. I can go into La Veta and always see people I know. I like that.

Laura and Rasta on insulation 2014 (2)

Laura Lee Carter is a professional photographer, writer and psychotherapist. Her midlife crisis included a divorce and the loss of her career as an academic librarian, misfortunes she now finds supremely fortuitous, as everything wonderful flowed from these challenges. Laura now sees midlife difficulties as once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for personal liberation. She has produced four books and one workbook on personal change, midlife psychology and how country living changes you.

Don’t miss her new one: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado

My New Xeric Garden in Southern Colorado

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

nice garden scene at comanche drive

Now on to my favorite pastime, where you can find me every morning bright and early, my rock garden outside my door! I know, it isn’t much to look at this time of year, but my new plants are just getting established, some last spring and some this year.

IMGP7375

Some plants came back with enthusiasm! I have found that Rocky Mountain Penstemon (Penstemon Strictus) never bloom the first year they are planted, but all three of them are blooming this year!

And this one I forgot all about, but it is sure happy in my garden this year!

may-garden-with-spanish-peaks-2019

I have some cute little pussy toes! All blooming very soon I’m sure!

I haven’t had many problems this year with rabbits or other animals chowing down on my plants. I try to choose the ones the animals don’t like, but I just learned how much they like certain Yarrows!

Portulaca Mix

I learned the hard way my first summer out here that they LOVE tender, well-watered Portulacas! Perfect rabbit salad! These are the only “annuals” I buy every year. Sometimes they do re-seed themselves in their own pot. Now I keep them up on a shelf away from all hungry critters.

garden scene outside my bedroom door

THE VIEW OUT OF MY BEDROOM LAST SUMMER…

I’ve also had great success with Blue Mist Spirea bushes, Jupiter’s Beard, Lavender, most sedums, Gallardia, and I’m working on establishing a few Walker’s Low Nepeta (Catmint) for their lovely purple color in the spring.  Nice to see a few native plant volunteers too! We plan to add hardscaping this summer. It should look wonderful in just a couple more years… That’s the way with new gardens, patience is key! The main problem we have here is the drying wind. I like what Merrilee over at Perennial Favorites said about that: “We hate the wind, but the plants really don’t mind.”

Why take major risks in midlife?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 7 Comments

I met a nice couple who just moved in below us on Tuesday. They are like us, newlyweds in their 60s from the metro area up north. They came by to explore their new neighborhood, although in our case the homes are pretty far apart. I showed them my memoir about the tough process we went through when we first got here and they bought one.

Mike woke up one day after we moved in, went straight outside and did this!

Then I started reading my memoir again. How time flies! It’s been almost four years now since we plopped ourselves down in Walsenburg, and started building west of town. And yes, an author can actually forget what they wrote a few years ago.

Although certainly imperfect, this book is an honest and funny account of my experiences in a part of our country which at first felt a bit like a foreign land. Building here was fraught with major challenges. In case you don’t know, one definition of fraught is: “causing great anxiety or stress.”

Why did we do it? Here’s a short essay from my book that explains everything:

The American Dream In Progress  –   March 6, 2015

I am surprised how much interest there is in building solar in rural America. My views on this blog have increased dramatically recently, and that includes views from all over the world.

But then I got to thinking, and realized the dream we are presently pursuing is the most fundamental of all. The immigrants who risked everything to come to America did so just to be able to purchase their own land and build a new life here. Having your own piece of land is, in a sense, what this country is all about.

This realization makes me very happy and proud. My husband Mike has held this dream for most of his life. Building a passive solar home has been his primary goal since he was a teenager. Now we almost have our home completed, and in spite of the many unexpected difficulties and inconveniences that have arisen in this process, we will soon be living the life we only dreamt of last year.

Hold on to your dreams! Don’t give up when those dreams require taking risks that scare you. Don’t let others talk you out of your most important goals. You have the needed vision to live your dream.

“The person who says it cannot be done, should not interrupt the person doing it.” –  Chinese proverb 

Do YOU have what it takes to follow your dreams? Check out my memoir…  and please follow me on Twitter!

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

Watching the news lately, I can’t help but wonder if anyone truly respects women in this country or in this world. It sometimes seems like a free for all for anyone with money and power to demean and abuse their acquaintances and partners. Even the POTUS does it in well documented ways, and his supporters think that is just fine.

This all brings back memories of a report I clipped from the newspaper back in 1993. It is still on my bulletin board, brown and tattered, about a report from the United Nations which stated back then:

Women to have clout in 1,000 years. And I quote: “It will take nearly 1,000 years for women to gain the same economic and political clout as men if current trends continue…”

After over 60 years of witnessing worldwide demeaning attitudes towards women, I believe they may be right, although I wonder how anything will ever change in this country. Remember the Equal Rights Amendment 35 years ago? Why was that impossible to pass in Congress? What happened to the crusade to enshrine women’s rights in the U.S. Constitution?

love and respectWomen generally raise men, and yet men also tend to be the worst abusers of women. Go figure! Even some women treat themselves with incredible disrespect. I have trouble with the women I see everyday on the news, who find themselves in horrible relationships with abusive and disrespectful men and yet they stay. What is that about?

Yes, I have found myself around completely disrespectful men. I have even stayed in bad relationships for short periods of time, but something inside said “Get the hell out of here!” and I did!

Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, helps you grow, or makes you happy!

I do see very small signs of change occasionally. I was shocked last night to see a short segment in the Miss USA pageant devoted to asking the contestants whether they had personal experience with #MeToo. And sure enough, these stunningly beautiful women all spoke up about being treated badly or even abused.

Change is so SLOW! In fact it seems like nothing has changed at all when a known woman abuser can get elected president! It seems only outrageous examples like the POTUS on video stating that he loves to “grab pussy” brings out a strong reaction from those of us who demand the rights of women to be in the world in a respectful and safe way.

I am ashamed of what the present administration represents to the world and sorry we did not leave a better world for girls growing up today.

Mother’s Day with special thanks to the women who have taken care of me my whole life!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

In offering gratitude for the gift of our lives, we celebrate Mother’s Day as it honors all forms of caring and nurturing ourselves and others. Mother’s Day reminds us to express our love and thanks to all of the women who have cared for us, our birth or adoptive mother, our grandmother or teacher or therapist or elder friend who helped us grow up. It also serves to remind us that caring for others is a uniquely valuable skill, one which is not particularly honored or valued in our culture.

When we look at those who devote their lives to caring for others, we see a subculture of healthcare workers, daycare workers, teachers and counselors who are not paid well for their services. And no matter how amazing mothers may be, they are not paid anything for raising the future citizens of our country.

Let us also appreciate that Mother’s Day has its roots in the peace movement.

For more than a century since its inception, Mother’s Day continues to be a day of protest. Historically, women have taken to the streets to call attention to the injustices of war, poverty, inadequate healthcare, child labor, gun violence, and more. These are the fierce, socially engaged underpinnings of Mother’s Day.

So this Mother’s Day, I invite you to honor the mother-figures in your life and also to marvel at the intricate web of caring that holds our world together. Let us honor the work of taking care of each other in recognition of our profound interconnectedness with one another, appreciating and celebrating the deep bonds we all share.

In gratitude for the nurturing and radical power of love, I wish you all a loving and peaceful Mother’s Day. 

GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

One lesson we can all learn by travelling to other countries is that Americans are awfully busy. I have lived in southeast Asia, China, France and Italy, and can find no other group of people who feel the need to be constantly busy. My favorite country was Italy. They seem to have such a generous sense of time compared to us, and an ability to enjoy the process of living without guilt over stopping to enjoy each moment.

How did we ever get so busy and guilty about simply relaxing?

Freefall for blogI really don’t know how we got so driven as a culture, but I do have a few tips on how to give yourself a break from all of that internalized pressure: Take days off from your ‘normal’ life where you can truly do whatever YOU want to do. No rules. No guilt. Be lazy. Watch trashy TV. Eat mac and cheese. No food shaming either. Try really hard not to judge yourself or others for just a few hours. Celebrate having the time to just be yourself!

Let your mind wonder on a regular basis. Free thought is where all creativity comes from. How could your life be better? Free your mind to consider ALL of your options. What barriers would you need to bridge in your own mind to have a much better life?

What rules do you need to get rid of right now?

For some reason, aging can be quite the catalyst in freeing your mind. Being perfectly clear on the fact that your years are numbered can clear your head! What do you want to do before you die? Stop all the daily busyness long enough to do those things now!

feeling satisfied everyday

Stepping out of the busyness, stopping our endless pursuit of getting somewhere else, is perhaps the most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit.  — TARA BRACH