weather near the Spanish Peaks

Creativity and Memory Loss

/ Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

I heard the most amazing statistic the other day on the PBS News Hour:

Creative artists experience 73% less memory loss and Alzheimers than others!

I believe it too! For me, creativity has been the key to maintaining the memory I have left after a traumatic brain injury ten years ago and 2 or 3 concussions.

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Photography, writing, interior design, and gardening are the areas I love to explore in a creative way. Creativity seems to truly relax my mind and let it flow in its own way.

The wonderful monsoon rains we have been experiencing since our Spring Wildfire the week of the 4th of July have done my garden a world of good! Plus Mike has been helping out building retaining walls in the garden.

right on the edge of a hill facing the Spanish Peaks, so we have to build it up or it will all wash away eventually.

nice garden scene at comanche drive

I’m now working on rebuilding the garden after the terrible drought we had here all winter and spring. I took another trip over to see my friends at my favorite hangout, Perennial Favorites near Rye, Colorado. They pointed out a few plants that seem to not interest the deer around here, so now I have a lavender Hyssop plant, Russian sage, only the yellow yarrow not the other colors, etc. They were so kind. They gave me two free plants because of our evacuation situation.

With all of the the rain we’ve been getting (over 3 inches so far this month!) and the cooler temperatures I enjoy working outside again. I have new garden hope!

BEAUTY is the GARDEN where HOPE grows!

First a record-breaking Colorado wildfire and then flash flooding – Never a dull moment here this summer!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

spring fire

Ever since a wildfire broke out west of us on June 28th and I called 911, I feel like I’ve been riding a bucking bronco of disaster and devastation here in the foothills of southern Colorado! We were evacuated from our home the afternoon of June 29th to La Veta, where we spent one week worrying about losing everything.

Returning home on July 7th we felt only gratitude that our beautiful new solar home was saved by the valiant efforts of so many local and federal firefighters and their support staff. At one point we had 1805 federal employees including the national guard here helping to control the third worst wildfire in Colorado history. The fire ended up burning over 108,000 acres and destroyed at least 250 homes.

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Then last night around 11 pm all hell broke loose at our house! The floods came with an amazing array of lightning and thunder. Nobody could have slept through that! It rained for over three hours and brought us as much rain as we have had in the past four months in one big fat storm! It’s feast and famine around here. I have been measuring precipitation for COCORAHS and the Weather Service for over twenty years now, and I don’t believe I have ever had 2.28 inches in one storm here in Colorado.

The Cuchara River that runs through La Veta has been bone dry for over a month now, but this morning it is running strong with black water flowing from the burned areas up around Cuchara and Pinehaven. Sure hope there were no worse mud slides or flooding up above here. I have seen rivers before full of black slurry after severe mountain fires. The water runs just like velvet.

I am unable to provide new photos on here because we still don’t have the Internet at our home! I have to run into La Veta to get online…SECOM is definitely on my shit list!

Hot off the presses: The Best of Boomer Blogs!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

It’s summertime here in southern Colorado and the living is dry and HOT!

Colorado drought monitor

We are experiencing “severe drought” this spring, ruining our usual display of early native plant bloomers. In fact, the photo in the header of this blog was taken just a few years ago at this time of year!

Moving on to the thoughts of some super HOT Boomer writers…

Carol Cassara discusses the ins and outs of making good decisions this week:

Have you noticed that good decisions and bad ones look alike? It’s an observation that Carol Cassara discusses and relates to episodes of her own life over at A Healing Spirit.

I bet you didn’t know that this is National Palliative Care Week in Australia? This is a topic we all could learn a thing or two about. We learned about this topic this week when a new friend dropped dead at 69…

Palliative care

Here Sue Loncaric from Sizzling Towards 60 & Beyond discusses why we need an End of Life plan and the need to document our wishes. This is NOT a conversation most of us like to have with our loved ones, but certainly one that everyone should have sooner rather than later.  Not sure where to start?  Sue offers some information, together with a video of prominent Australian’s all discussing this important topic.

Hillbilly elegyOnce in a while a memoir not only tells one individual’s story, but sheds light on a people, their culture and way of life. That is what J. D. Vance’s memoir of growing up amidst the people of Appalachia does. Hillbilly Elegy highlights a group of people that are an enigma to many Americans – Trump supporters. Vance did not do this purposefully. The book was published in 2016. Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting highly recommends Vance’s story of growing up in a dysfunctional family and successfully escaping his environment, an insightful, interesting must read.

In this important health report over at BabyBoomster.com  Rebecca Olkowski interviews a woman who discovered she had skin cancer (basal cell carcinoma) after twelve years of being diagnosed with eczema/psoriasis. Fortunately, she was able to find a doctor who could help her before it was too late.

Jennifer of Unfold And Begin returns this week after a short anniversary trip and she has a short but to the point post on why it’s important to keep learning.  Why trying new things is important to all of us.  Read about it in: Anyone Who Stops Learning Is Old.

On The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, is having trouble deciding what action by the Trump administration during the week was the worst. Was it bank deregulation, including the weakening of consumer protections in mortgage transactions, or a resolution overturning guidance on racial discrimination in auto lending, which allows Congress to review all federal agency regulations and prohibits them from ever reissuing a “substantially similar” rule if a rule has been nullified by Congress. To cheer herself up, Robison decided to write about her recent visit to Spain where she went cava, or sparkling wine, tasting. She visited, Freixenet, the largest cava producer in the world, Albet i Noya, a small organic winery, and Agusti Torello Mata, a winery named after the man who founded it.

Oregon trailTom Sightings asks if we remember studying the Oregon Trail in high school. Or playing the Oregon Trail game on our computers in the ’90s. In any case, in retirement Sightings has decided to set out on his own trip across the country, following the old route of the Oregon-California Trail. In “Following the Rivers” he tells about his first days out, finding a refreshing spring, a tragic grave, a reconstructed fort, and an important river.

I would only add a bit about my latest post. Here I recommend that we all:

Mike at home

“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