Spanish Peaks Country

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!

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month

/ Laura Lee Carter / 5 Comments

There isn’t a lot I can do to “change the world” these days, but one area that I have too much experience with is serious brain injuries and how they can change your world. So this month I will try to educate everyone a bit about what I have learned on this topic.

A traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one where you lose consciousness for a period of time and often have a bleed in your brain afterwards. It is a sudden injury that causes damage to the brain and may happen when there is a blow, bump, or jolt to the head. This is a closed head injury. A TBI can also happen when an object penetrates the skull. This is a penetrating injury. In my case I fell head first off of my bike while riding downhill. I was unconscious off and on for hours afterwards along with fractured ribs, a thigh injury, a wrist injury, and spent 24 hours in the ER and the hospital neuro-unit under observation. At the time I could not stand up without passing out.

How long does it take to fully recover from a TBI?

Depending on the severity of the injury, recovery time for a TBI may vary from a few weeks to six or more months. Each person reacts differently to injury and illness. Thus, recovery time will vary between individuals. The length of recovery time for TBI depends on how long a patient is unconscious and what parts of the brain are injured.

Are patients ever the same after a TBI?

Moderate to severe TBI can cause permanent physical or mental disability. Because polytrauma is common with moderate to severe TBI, many patients face additional disabilities as a result of other injuries. Even patients who appear to recover fully may have some long-term symptoms that never go away.

My experience:

I would say it took a few years for me to feel “normal” again after my TBI in 2008. My main form of rehabilitation was writing books, reading a lot and maintaining my blogs.

Unfortunately, I have been prone to falls and further head injuries since then. I fell again with serious concussions in 2015, 2019 and 2021. My most recent concussion was most serious and caused permanent balance, memory and vertigo problems. I now use research, writing and game shows like Jeopardy to spur my memory and keep me sharp. I also love old movies, soft music, and nature shows on PBS. They really soothe my brain.

Does TBI affect IQ?

In the end, a brain injury does not make a person less intelligent. It does, however, make certain mental activities, such as learning, require more time and effort. This is because the brain works less efficiently after a brain injury.

My biggest pet peeve around my present condition is that others may look at me and assume I’m not quite all there. I am definitely as smart as I used to be, it just takes me longer to arrive at the answers. I do have trouble getting around because of my oxygen machine, but that doesn’t mean that I am someone to feel sorry for. I do not feel sorry for myself.

I think I have a great life here with Mike and my puppy Rasta, and this fantastic view of those beautiful Sangre de Cristo Peaks.

Some Romantic Advice From a Sexagenarian!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day To Everyone!

What a crazy celebration this truly is, considering this Hallmark holiday where some get a temporary high from spending lots of money, began as an excuse for pagan partying. Yes, Valentine’s Day began as a raucous annual Roman festival where men stripped naked, grabbed goat or dog skin whips, and spanked young maidens in hopes of increasing their fertility!

As you might guess, in my many decades of romantic experiences I have earned the right to be called a ‘sexagenarian” (better known as a person between 60 and 69 🙂 ) You might have heard that older people spend more time thinking about their past, which only seems natural since we have more past to look back on. It only seems fair that I share a few wise nuggets from my decades as a single and married woman. Here’s the most important romantic advice I can give to you, especially if you are still young:

If you allow someone else to control your emotions, you’ve already lost.

I know, you’re probably thinking, but isn’t love when you don’t control your own emotions? Isn’t that what being “lost in love” is all about? Well, that’s what they’d like you to believe, especially the person who is trying consciously or unconsciously to control you. Which brings me to my second most important piece of human communications advice:

You cannot control how other people receive your energy. Anything you do or say gets filtered through the lens of whatever they are going through at that moment, which is NOT ABOUT YOU.  

Now I know this is probably not what you want to hear about falling in love, but I sure wish someone had shared this kind of advice with me when I was young and falling in love on a regular basis.

Now I finally realize that I regularly mistook “falling in love” with having any kind of deep, meaningful conversation with a male I was even slightly attracted to. Now I have these kind of conversations regularly without mistaking them for romance or love. Yes, hormones are awfully powerful, but don’t let them take full control of your emotions or your brain.

We all will make plenty of stupid mistakes when it comes to love, or what we sometimes mistake for love. Just try not to do any lifelong damage to yourself along the way. Trauma is such a painful teacher, and it can keep you stuck emotionally for years.

Falling in love is the BEST high I have ever experienced, even at age 49 when it last happened to me. After that Mike and I decided to fall in love all over again, as many times as possible until we die. Why? Because falling in love rocks!

Postscript: The absolute best book I have ever read on finding success in love is called, “How to Be an Adult in Relationships” by David Richo. Check it out!

What is great about Spanish Peaks Living?

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Nine years ago this month, Mike and I drove down from Fort Collins to choose a few acres in Navajo to buy. We didn’t know much about this area, only that we loved how it felt to our suburban souls. It took us another year to build our passive solar home facing the Spanish Peaks and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains with Mount Mestas to our west.

I was reminded again early this morning why I love living here. I woke up around 6:30 AM to see an unobstructed view of a bright red sunrise to our southeast. This is BIG SKY country to me, where the landscape and the silence are the main characters! Every time I go outside in the morning I stop and feel astounded by the silence. This is what the earth used to be like. Maybe a few bird sounds, but otherwise perfect silence…

Sure there are also unattractive features to this area, but the land is encouraging and haunting all at once, and the summers are glorious!

Our first summer here we had so much fun exploring the back roads and back stories, like this dilapidated adobe schoolhouse slowly sinking back into the earth west of here…

or taking the train up to Fir to hear the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band play in a big mountain meadow.

When I first met Mike he said he wasn’t moving again until he could look at something besides the house across the street.

We found this cartoon in a magazine and laughed together about it. Then we went in search of someplace with truly ‘spectacular views.’

We found those here and so much more…

1883: “You have the journey – that’s it!”

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

I have been blown away by watching the Yellowstone prequel “1883” in the past week or so. I did not know a “western” could be so poetic, authentic and full of heart. I loved it so much I watched it again after I got back from Christmas and loved it even more!

First, a little background. I was raised in Kansas near the prairie where my ancestors arrived many decades before me. When I first started reading books, I loved stories about the pioneer West. The first stories I ever wrote were about Native Americans and their ponies. Then I started reading everything by Laura Ingalls Wilder and the personal journals of westward women. I only wanted to play “pioneer woman” as a kid. I guess you could say I have been unconsciously searching for the perfect “western” my whole life. I finally found it in “1883.”

First of all I love that the main character and narrator is a teenage woman. The whole story is told from Elsa’s perspective, with just the right combination of authentic and sensitively-written narrative and dialogue. I felt like I could see into Elsa’s heart, while also understanding the other characters’ inner lives as well. As the writer, Taylor Sheridan, explains in “Behind the Story,” he wanted this story to feel as intimate for the audience as reading a good novel, or even the personal journal of a young woman on a wagon train heading west. He does a masterful job of that, and yet I keep wondering how a man could have such an intimate understanding of a teenage woman’s worldview.

As I think about it now, the ever-changing landscape is the main character in this story, that and the silence. So many of Elsa’s observations remind me of my own after moving to rural Colorado eight years ago. My amazement at the silence and beauty of each sunrise and sunset, the comfort of the wildlife passing by our home each day, the glorious seasons we experience so intimately, this is what I love about living out here. Elsa’s story seems to authentically capture the beauty and the violence of the American West over one hundred years ago around the time the transcontinental railroad began changing everything. There is so much truth in some of her observations like:

“I think cities have weakened us as a species.”

Another profound aspect of Elsa’s story is how living in the West allowed so much more freedom for women. I enjoyed watching her relationship with her mother develop as her Mom tries to remind her of the limitations of being a woman in 1880s America. Elsa rebels every chance she gets. Elsa enjoyed the loss of rules and customs as they moved west. The big transition came when she decided she was a cowboy and got herself some pants to wear instead of dresses.

I loved the writer’s sensitive portrayal of the other characters, especially when it came to ‘race.’ Race is not a word I use, because I do not believe we humans are different ‘races.’ But back in 1880s America, blacks were treated badly as a general rule. Thomas, the old Civil War friend of Shea, played by the wagon train boss Sam Elliott, understood how badly others could treat him for being black, as he stated at one point, “You ain’t never been whipped.” Native Americans play an important role in this saga and mostly as sympathetic characters including members of the Comanche and Crow tribes. The true “bad guys” of this Western are “bandits.”

Suffice to say this is by far the best western story I have ever seen. It shows the beauty and severe violence of the American West in no uncertain terms, and I believe it may be more authentic as a story than any other I have read. I found the very last phrase in this story so vivid and relevant to my state of mind these days –

“There is a moment when your dreams and memories merge together and form a perfect world. That is heaven, and each heaven is unique. It is the world of you…”

“I’ve spent too many years at war with myself…”

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Every time I listen to Sting sing “Consider me gone” I get stuck on these words. Why do we spend so much time picking on ourselves? As a psychologist I assume we learn how to do this from our overly self-critical parents, and then carry on the practice by habit. Some say these patterns get stuck in our brains and are almost impossible to fight against or change.

I know I have been far too self-effacing for as long as I can remember and then, of course, others along the way helped me become even more critical. Now, in my 60s, I’m still working at fighting this pattern in various ways. It helps so much to have a close friend or life partner who points out how hard we can be on ourselves. I remember back in my late 40s I gained a lot of new insight when I read Gloria Steinem’s book “Outrageous Acts & Everyday Rebellions” but this is a process that will last forever I’m afraid.

The three Carter kids at Grandma’s house at Christmas

Just recently I was rearranging things and came across a small photo of myself at around age three, looking pretty sassy in my new Easter clothes. Now I focus for a few minutes everyday on that little girl, on loving her all the way through and sending good thoughts for the many ways she might feel really good about herself for the rest of her life. I feel so much compassion for the battles she has fought in her war against herself and visualize how much easier her life could have been if she had learned self-love at an early age. I seems it has always been easier to be critical rather than compassionate towards myself.

I watched a marvelous 2005 movie recently called, “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont.” It’s about a retired older woman, played wonderfully by Joan Plowright, who befriends a young man, played by Rupert Friend, (YUM!) by chance on the streets of London. It’s has a lot of insights into aging and how we treat our elders with a number of great lines, but the one that keeps coming back to me is:

“It’s very important to praise people a lot early on, otherwise they might die of disappointment.“