gardening at 7000 feet

August Colorado Foothills Garden Scenes

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

Although just north of here has received more than abundant rainfall this summer, we are very low on our Water Year measurement at only 11 inches so far, with less than two months to go. That has been pretty tough on my xeriscape garden & landscape.

But my Blue Mist Spirea bushes are bigger and brighter than ever!

And curiously, all the big sunflowers have sprouted on a hill below our home on the east side.

Our fountain & bird bathes continue to attract all kinds of birds, bunnies, chipmunks, bobcats, badgers…

…and, of course, deer. It’s so fun to look outside at various times during the day and enjoy their antics.

This year is in stark contrast to the much wetter August of 2021, when we had had twice as much precipitation by this time in the water year! GO SEE PHOTOS HERE:

A Tour of My CO Sky Garden, End of June 2023

/ Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

I haven’t been out to my garden lately because of a painful hip and various illnesses in our family. But this morning was glorious, with temperatures in the 60s and great light, so I took a walk around and this is what I found.

First I noticed the loveliness of the East Spanish Peak, with a sash of wispy clouds around it.

Then I was drawn to my center piece of golden yarrow and those Rocky Mountain Penstemon who survived the deer that ate most of them in early spring.

Behind and to the right is my Buddha decorated with native Showy Four O’Clocks and Catmint. I still have a yellow Coreopsis that should be coming in soon to the left of Buddha, if the others leave enough room!

My yarrow and lavender plants are coming along well…

My yellow Columbine is almost finished blooming. Now it’s spreading its seed for next year…

My favorite time of year in my garden!

We had a quiet time celebrating the solstice this June. Our loving pup Rasta is now almost completely blind. Glaucoma just took his other eye this week 😦

My Early June Garden After a Rainy May

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

Although we haven’t had the kind of moisture that Denver and Colorado Springs have had this past May (with over five inches!), we have had over two inches here with cloudy rainy days for quite a while now. Today is a good example. Here are some pictures of my plants and bloomers in my foothills garden in southern Colorado today.

Starting on the west end, we have some very happy yucca, cacti and evening primrose plants, although the flowers and fruit of the yucca were rudely eaten off by some kind of varmint. Note the cute little honeysuckle bush in the upper left. It always blooms too early in the year!

Next we have the plants that bloom around my Buddha. On the left is a native Penstemon volunteer still blooming, some catmint coming in on the right and a native Four O-Clock fighting its way through in the middle. That will have magenta flowers eventually… Love it!

What I’m most proud of is my yellow Columbine, because I’ve never had one bloom in my garden thus far. Although it is the Colorado state flower, it usually gets bitten off before blooming.

On the east end I have some lovely irises blooming with the West Spanish Peak behind them!

Overall I’m so pleased with what I have so far, because I know that those May and June showers will bring some great blossoms later on! I’ll keep you posted…

Survival in my CO Foothills/Mountain Garden

/ Laura Lee Carter / 3 Comments

First, let me say, gardening is so much fun and so rewarding! It makes me look forward to spring with such enthusiasm! But that is not to say that there aren’t some MAJOR disappointments as well.

My greatest problem here at around 7,000 feet just north of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains are the critters that come out at night and champ off the flowers on my plants that are just about to bloom for the first time in a YEAR!

For example, my first few years I had the most beautiful Rocky Mountain Penstemons. These are from spring 2020.

Since then, every time I see a new crop is thinking about blooming they get eaten off overnight. I know I can cover them, but I somehow get convinced that this year will be different and then it isn’t. They even ate some of my native penstemons last night! I’ve also had very bad luck with Evening Primrose out here.

Slowly but surely I’ve turned to the mostly shrub-type plants that never get eaten and seem to love life here.

I’ve never had any problems with my Walker Catmint, here with a native Four O’Clock growing through it!

The Blue-Mist Spirea on the left has not yet bloomed, but the yarrows and lavender are quite happy!

I love when my Jupiter’s Beard comes in for the contrast to all of that purple out there. I seem to almost always choose the purple or yellow plants. I have learned that any plant that is woody and herbal, the animals don’t eat, like lavender.

And if I want to grow some annuals, I put them up far away from the critters!

Buddha & Me: A Few Of My Best Buddha Photos

/ Laura Lee Carter / 5 Comments

I have had this Buddha statue for twenty years now, and taken many pictures of him in all seasons and at the few homes I have lived at in that time. I bought him for my 47th birthday, after I bought my very first home in Loveland Colorado. I had two great shelties back then, Mica and Calla.

A few years later I moved in with Mike in Fort Collins

He had a magnificent backyard with over thirty aspens in it. I placed Buddha under a big old Upright Willow tree and then planted flowers in front of him. I had Lilies of the Valley, Johnnie Jump-ups, Sweet Williams, Hosta and Bleeding Hearts. By then I had my dog named Rasta.

With our thoughts we make the world.

Oh how my garden grew! I called it my Peace Garden.

I took photos of Buddha in all types of weather back there. Buddha loved his coats of snow!

Then we moved to Walsenburg to begin building our solar home west of there… We rented a rundown hundred year old miner’s home there and Buddha was not so happy sitting out back in the weeds. I asked him and he said, “YUCK!” He said,

“Build me a glorious garden with a tremendous view of the mountains, so we did.”

The garden grew and grew and Buddha smiled.

Sometimes I could barely see him, but he didn’t mind…

…because he knew that spring would come again in all of its brilliant natural glory!

What kind of character do you wish to manifest?

How to give yourself credit for the life you’ve lived… is it simply luck, or something better?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 5 Comments

Yesterday we were watching a Youtube video of a boating tour around Venice. Visiting Venice in the mid-1980s was one of my most favorite trips ever. It felt like a trip back in time for me and I loved it! As I watched I kept saying, “I was so lucky to go all of the places I’ve been in my life!” Then I questioned that statement. Was it just luck? Not at all.

When I was young I got the travel bug from my Dad, so whenever I decided to go somewhere, I just did it. I would spend money I didn’t have to go live in Bangkok, float down a number of rivers all over the West, or go sailing in the Caribbean. A friend and I took what we called “the people’s ferry” up the Pearl River to Guilin, China before anyone else was going there. None of these were planned tours, we just went.

This was not a simple case of luck, but rather a perfect example of my belief that ‘what you focus on grows.’ It was my natural inclination to see as much of the world as I could. Luck had little to do with it. Of course the tough part was the bronchitis I had in Bangkok, China, Taipei and Venice, and my difficulties breathing at 8,300 feet in Cuenca, Ecuador. Health scares drove me to visit as many places as I could before my lungs became a problem, making me ever more thankful that I traveled so much when I was young.

Another example of apparent luck? Having such loving beings around me as I find myself not so healthy or able to travel easily. Now I see that was not luck at all. I am one of those people who doesn’t have many friends, but those I have are completely loyal. They know me and love me unconditionally, through thick and thin.

Believing it was just luck that I now live in such a naturally quiet and beautiful place with an amazing garden is pure foolishness. Getting here took quite a bit of time, stress and energy, but it was all completely worth it!

Through this thought process I realized how easy it can be to simply feel lucky, but I think it is important that we give ourselves full credit for the choices we’ve made consciously throughout our lives.

Perhaps we have been better at life than we thought! Imagine that!