Phunque's Desk

Faithful dog found with owner 10 weeks after Pagosa Springs man went missing A faithful dog survived for 10 weeks next to their owner’s side after the 71-year-old man sat down next to a tree and died in the wilderness east of Pagosa Springs, according to law enforcement. Rich ...

Some people are poor, but rich by heart.

Three days of bluegrass
I guess I’m just not rated for three days of bluegrass any more. I knew that getting old was going to create problems but I had no idea that I would wear out early at a bluegrass festival.
Actually the Bluegrass Meltdown in Durango starts at 6:00 Friday night and the final concert of that first day ends at 10. It fires back up at 10 Saturday morning, goes until 10 that night and starts at 10 Sunday. Of course, there are always amateur jam sessions after the concerts end. I’ve heard they sometimes don’t ever stop. I can’t say that I have personally witnessed that. For years now we have rented a room a couple of blocks from the action and, not long after 10:00 p.m. this old man gets tired.
Anyway, there are three stages in three different buildings. Each band, and there about 20 of them, plays for an hour and then makes way for another band. It actually takes about 15 minutes to get all the microphones adjusted, so each set is more like 45 minutes long. Sometimes that is plenty. Other times its over in a blink.
They generally have a couple of headline bands from back east and they are nearly always good. The trouble came early this year when the and that is THE headline band leader came down with Covid. The moderators all weekend were just so happy that the Meltdown crew had been able to find a replacement with almost no notice. And they really did, too. The replacement band was a mixture of people from North Carolina and other noteworthy places and those guys were more than good. They were great. Maybe that’s why I got so tired. They were so good they wore me out.
For many, many years they had what they called a Super Jam on Saturday night. Band members that generally don’t play together were put on stage and after a few songs, they rotated in somebody else. They kept the five bluegrass instruments (banjo, fiddle, mandolin, bass and dobro) on stage most of the time and some of the combinations were fantastic. But last year they apparently couldn’t find a qualified coordinator and picked somebody who could neither sing nor play with any talent, and furthermore, he didn’t want anyone better than himself on stage.
I hollered at him. Between every song I yelled, “rotate” at the top of my lungs and, although I didn’t know it until too late, the manager of the Durango Arts Center was headed my way to tell me to shut up. I was in the process of trying to drown my sorrow and just as he walked up to me, I pulled out my little whiskey bottle and he escorted me to the door and threw me out. They sell whiskey. You can’t bring your own bottle. I was a little worried that they may have some sort of facial recognition devise and would turn me away at the door.
And that is the main reason that my better half will no longer accompany me to the Meltdown. Even though she wasn’t at the concert and didn’t witness the ordeal.
But anyway, the Super Jam was such a huge disappointment last year they didn’t even schedule one this year. They had one of those super bands play for two hours and I didn’t have to yell at anyone.
I did ask one band to play the Beaumont Rag, but they answered that they didn’t know that one.
Two bands played the Cincinnati Rag and it’s even better than the Beaumont Rag. I have some learning to do.

The screen door
It’s not just the people in this house who are getting old. Everything else is getting old, too and the screen door fits that description. Its hinges gave out this past summer and the top slid over far enough that you have to lift it to get it to close.
We discussed what to do for several days. The Wife was in favor of going to a bigger town and trying to buy one there. I favored ordering one on the internet and letting a freight company deliver it to our door.
But the more we talked about it, the less we wanted to actually replace it.
Finally I said, “Look, we have an air conditioner. We don’t need a screen door. Why don’t we just do away with it.” The only advantage I could see was that it might keep out a little cold in winter.
“Okay,” the Wife said, “take it out.”
She did caution me that the inner door and the screen door could be one piece. I inspected it as carefully as a dummy could and decided that the two doors were not hooked together.
There were only 20 or 30 screws on the outside of the screen door and I grabbed a battery powered drill and took them out. There were a few little bolts, but I found a socket that fits in the drill that also fit the bolts and in only another few minutes had everything ready to slide out.
I did look at the caulk and tell the Wife, “It may take a D-8 Caterpiller to pull this thing loose.”
Boy was I right.
I started with a screw driver. It was a big tough one and I drove it under the door frame with a hammer. I did that at the top and I did that at the bottom. I pried and twisted and I gained absolutely nothing.
Then I went to the shop and got a short wrecking bar. I used the hammer on that, too and I also used both ends of it. I gained a quarter inch or so on the top but then progress stopped.
So I went and got a longer wrecking bar. It was powerful enough to bend the metal edge of the door and eventually break it in several places. I did not, however, get the frame any closer to turning loose.
Eventually I realized that the hinges were fastened on with Phillips screws, three screws on three hinges. The door wouldn’t open enough to use the battery powered drill so I went and got a hand powered Phillips screw driver.
The first eight screws came out fairly easily and I said to myself, “You watch, that final screw will be so tight I can’t turn it,” but it wasn’t, and finally something worked as it was supposed to.
I threw the door on my scrap metal pile and had a cup of green tea. The door has two nice panels of glass and I need to save those to make a better hot frame lid to harden my baby tomatoes and pepper plants in.
As of March 15 I have planted the 2023 pepper plants. The instructions say to plant 10 weeks before transplanting to the garden and I do that June 1, or thereabout.
So the door frame is badly bent, but that sucker is still there and from here it looks as if it will be until the inside door wears out as well.

The wood box
I have several kinds of wood in my wood shed. It’s all local, so there’s no hickory nor oak. There is a little oak brush that I stole from the BLM just after I moved to town in 1977. Has the statute of limitations ran out on that? On second thought, that has probably all been burned.
If you can find oak brush big enough it burns wonderfully, but it has to be a really special place to grow big oak brush. Most of it is so little it isn’t worth messing with. I did find some one time that was six inches through and I’m not saying where that was. It is probably that big again.
My dad died when I was 13 and I pretty much took over wood acquisition from that point. I don’t remember when I talked Mother into buying me a chain saw, but I’ve had some dandies. I’ve had some absolute failure’s as well. One was supposed to be a “self- sharpening” model. It had a whet stone that was mounted inside the cover and you were supposed to gas the engine until the chain turned and then press the stone against the chain. The engineer who designed that took an awful cussing from anyone who ever bought one.
My early wood gathering efforts were limited to cedar and pinion, all dry wood. We lived 12 miles southwest of Dove Creek and there was a lot of wood toward Cedar Park. When I found an old oil well site it was easy to fill the pickup in just a few minutes.
We had an all family reunion at Thanksgiving and I started inviting relatives to bring their chainsaws. I would have a year’s worth of wood piled up and everyone would saw while women and kids carried the cut and split wood inside the wood shed. We worked up a good appetite for Thanksgiving dinner.
In 1978 I married and moved to town. The first thing I did was install a wood stove. At that point, I added two kinds of wood to my arsenal: pine and elm. At that time the Town had a wood pile behind the water tanks that anyone could use to get rid of wood they didn’t want. For years I raided that pile and learned that elm saws and splits well when it’s wet, but don’t let it dry out. I also learned that a big piece of elm can burn all night long. Actually it takes two pieces of elm. I don’t split my elm very small. Big works way better.
Both my brothers farmed and I worked hours, so I had more spare time in the summer and I was still the wood gatherer.
I also learned that burning pine and pinion alone can gum up your stove pipe. When the neighbor calls and says, “Hey, there’s flames shooting up four feet above your stove pipe,” you know you have a chimney fire.
The best way to treat that, if your pipe is in good shape, is to get you a bundle of cardboard and purposely have a chimney fire. Either that or climb on the roof and clean out your stove pipe. A gunny sack filled with a log chain on the end of a rope works well as long as you don’t want to keep the gunny sack.
There was a time when I hauled wood for my mother-in-law, my daughter, and myself. I like to cut wood, but now I’m only cutting it for myself. I guess I’ll make do.

Getting old
After a certain number of years, birthdays get destructive. They are no longer an exclamation point. They are an arrow that is pointed directly at the grave.
My Wife and Daughter, and you will notice that those words are capitalized, made great fun of me when I turned 30. I sadly announced that half of my life was over. I don’t think I would have even remembered that if they hadn’t preserved it so carefully. Anyway, I see now that it was a significant mistake. The age of 60 went by so softly that I hardly recognized it. I certainly didn’t see any stairway into the grave.
Actually the Wife and I have both decided that the grave yard isn’t for us. We’re not having a funeral and we are not going to be buried. Our grandchildren are going to scatter our ashes and there will be no grave maintenance involved. Or whatever they decide because our decision making will be long past.
I have lived way longer than I should have. In 1983 my blood sugar took a turn upwards. I had hypoglycemia for several years before that. That’s low blood sugar. So I reasoned that if exercise burns blood sugar, that is exactly what I would do: I would burn it.
My 1977 Ford was my vehicle at the time and I drove it to the point where County Road 7.7 joins Stash Road. Jasper, our dog at the time, and I started walking down Stash Road. Jasper was smarter than a lot of people, and it wasn’t long until he decided that he had walked enough. One morning he moved over to the side of the road and sat down. I thought he would reconsider, but he didn’t. He was just a tiny speck still sitting there when I finally turned around and walked him back to the Pickup. He never asked to go again.
So as of 2023, I have been going down County Road 7.7 for 40 years. For a few years when we had the newspaper, I took Thursday morning off to go to Cortez to get the newspaper, but the Wife eventually started making the Thursday morning runs so I could exercise.
So getting old has been fairly gentle on me. I did have to get hearing aids. My ears were screaming at me. I have shot too many big guns and drove too many high-powered tractors without ear protection. The Wife bought me a pair of ear protectors and they are hanging beside the door. I wear them if I think of it. I have a chain saw that roars like mad. I haven’t surrendered to the lawnmower and the tiller. If it’s not loud then I don’t need protection.
I had the lenses in my eyes replaced a few years ago, one at a time. They chose lenses that don’t allow me to read close. I can still see across town, but I need glasses to read. I think
they anticipated that my close vision would abandon me soon.
But I’m still exercising every morning. When it’s 20 degrees or above, I put on my workout clothes and I head north.
I give that road full credit for reducing my blood sugar and recharging my metabolism, and of course, allowing me to get old.

The gift that keeps on giving
When we were in the newspaper business we used to advertise that a gift subscription was a gift that keeps on giving. We sold quite a few of them, too and had some people who just kept giving a few gift subscriptions to certain people for years.
Still, the majority of our income wasn’t from subscriptions; it was from advertising. The more advertisements we sold, the more money we made and for years I made a trip to Cortez on Friday. I remember being completely exhausted and downhearted because you have to be upbeat when you are selling ads. Some days I didn’t sell a single one. Both the Wife and I went the week before Thanksgiving because one person couldn’t hit all the potential advertisers in a single day. We always had a lot of pages in the edition just before Thanksgiving.
But this year I believe I have received another Christmas gift that keeps on giving. The Wife has purchased me an assortment of 30 little bottles of hot sauce. Each jar contains .67 of an ounce of hot sauce, and if you can believe what it says on the jar, every continent is represented. They are however, all made in China. I asked the Wife if she thinks the Chinese manufactures actually looked up the ingredients of what they were supposed to me making and she said, “Oh yes they did.”
I’ve been savoring a few drops from each bottle with supper and some of them take several days to disappear. There are indeed several different colors. They range from yellow to green to red. So I don’t know if they are authentic or just different.
Naming hot sauces must be fun. There is Machu Picchu Chipotle Pepper Sauce. That one doesn’t say where it is from, but the Indian Tiger Blood must have originated in India. There is a Stay Golden California Hot Sauce that is red. The Belize Blaze is more pink than red. Chucks Famous Buffalo Style Hot Sauce is cream colored and says it is from New York. Mexican Style Hot Sauce is almost exactly the same cream color as Costa Rica Lava Heat Hot Sauce. The Garlic Del Fuego Hot Sauce has a picture of a motor scooter with a platter of spaghetti on the seat. The Baja Heat Mango threatens me with the announcement of habanero peppers. Death Valley Rattler Hot Sauce is more green than anything but the Fire Tusk Pepper Hot Sauce is pink. The My Out Back is Burning Hot Sauce is pink. The Authentic Thai Pepper Sauce is kind of green with a hint of pink. Dragon’s Breath Garlic Hot Sauce looks a lot like dirty dish water. Rio De Janerio Carnival Habanero Hot Sauce is a deep red while the Smokin Jamaican Hot Sauce is a lighter shade of red. The Argentinian Hot Sauce is a darker green.
I will have to admit that every time I find a hot sauce I haven’t tried on the grocery store shelves I buy it. Most of it is not really hot, but I do have one, a sauce made with ghost peppers that I use to heat up something that needs it. I also make Pico de gallo when I have field ripened tomatoes and you never know how hot the jalapeno pepper pods are going to be. It doesn’t matter because one spoon of that ghost pepper hot sauce will fix whatever ails it.

All I get for Christmas
At some point I stopped worrying about what I might get for Christmas. I had about everything I wanted, or at least all I could afford. Each year I would jokingly ask the Wife for underwear and fish hooks and I always got them.
Back then I actually need fish hooks because I went fishing. This year I didn’t use up any hooks. I’m ashamed of that.
I actually don’t remember the Wife giving me much choice this year. I don’t think she even asked me, but I would have told her the same thing.
So one day about two weeks ago here comes a package. The Wife was gone, as she usually is and I retrieved the package from the porch. The tape had come off the package almost the entire way, but I had already been warned not to be opening packages with the Wife’s name on it.
But it just fell open and I was afraid to close my eyes. Something might break.
It didn’t take me long to figure out who that package was for. It contained a package of 30 different varieties of hot sauce. The Wife does not eat hot sauce. She accuses me of burning all my taste buds off. She may be right. I can’t taste much anymore. But I still enjoy hot sauce.
I have jalapeno pepper plants growing in my sun room and the pods are beginning to turn red. Every once in a while I harvest one and slice it into thin slices at supper time. Lately I haven’t been able to get through a whole pepper because those things are hot. But I do have some hot sauce that I bought at the store. When I find it simply too hot to continue eating the fresh jalapeno pod, I slice it into tiny pieces and add it to the hot sauce.
So I am having trouble waiting until Christmas to start sampling my new sauces.
So just today the Wife and her friend from Texas, Dianne, went to Cortez and I helped carry in the bounty she had purchased. It wasn’t long until I discovered new underwear and I put that out in the table. She said, “Oh I guess I forgot to wrap that, too.”
Then it wasn’t long until I came across a little electric skillet and the Wife had exactly the same comment. “Shucks,” she said, “I forgot to wrap that, too.”
She said that it is favored by college kids. They heat their soup in it in the dorm rather than go to the cafeteria, although I can’t imagine why. Wait, I can imagine why. The food at the first college I went to was not good. I went there two years and after a summer of good food, the first meal I ate there the second year brought back bad memories of three months before. It tasted exactly the same. The second school was a university, and the food quality improved 100%. During my final year, I lived off campus and I mostly cooked venison for protein and cornbread for carbohydrates, although I was not yet a diabetic.
So tonight at supper I fired up that new electric gizmo and cooked me a slab of Italian sausage that I got at Care and Share. I actually had to purchase some potato salad (deviled egg). It worked well.
The Wife says she has one more present I haven’t spied on. I’m betting its fish hooks.

The first time in 60 years
I am embarrassed to say this, but 2022 marks the first time in 60 years that I didn’t go fishing.
What is going on here? How could this have ever happened?
I haven’t invested a lot of thought at this point, but I am wondering how someone decides that he is interested in fishing.
My parents were not fishermen. They had important things to do. They had gardening and farming and anything but fishing. But somehow, from way back when, I wanted to fish.
I was born with several deficiencies and a weakness for fishing was apparently one of them.
Our neighbor Granville Atkinson gave me my first fishing pole. It was about three feet long when it was collapsed, but it was extendible. That silly thing was about eight feet long when it was extended. I clearly remember sitting on the bank at Narraquinnep looking at the end of that rod, trying to force it to show me a bite. The rod was all metal and the reel was one of those cheap bait casting reels that backlashed if you forgot to hold your thumb on the reel. I took it in the back yard to practice, and despite Granville’s warning, backlashed that thing into a wad of string the size of a grapefruit. It took the rest of the day to get it untangled.
In about 1959 or 60, Dad took us to Arkansas to see his sisters. I walked down town, which to a nine-year-old who lived 12 miles from town was in itself a wonderful experience. There was a hardware store and it had a gold colored fishing reel with a push button on the back. It was a Bronson Savage 910.
I held that reel in my hot little hands for several days and eventually talked Dad into buying it. I held it just about all the way home to and imagined I was fishing in each body of water we passed.
Dad died of a brain tumor when I was 13 and that same summer a guy from our church offered to take me fishing every Saturday. He made mother buy his fishing license.
Elmer had a 12-foot boat and a 1956 Ford pickup. Every Saturday he idled up the driveway and we headed for Narraguinnep. If he found an adult friend to go, I was deposited on the dock. The bank was really steep under the dock and it was about 30 feet long. The water under the dock was about 30 feet deep and, most of the time, there were little trout 10 inches long on the bottom. There were crappie six feet under the dock and Elmer always bought me a can of minnows. I loved that dock and that summer’s worth of fishing.
Then in high school, our VO-AG teacher, Ray Fosdick, was an enthusiastic fisherman. He took FFA members to every corner of the state to conventions and we always had our fishing poles. The FFA had a summer fishing trip a few days after the beans were planted and even after I got out of school, I was still invited and my brother, for whom I was working, was generous with my days off. I don’t remember exactly when I grew up and worked through the FFA fishing trip.
But this spring it was so dry, and the lakes were so low, I just couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to actually go fishing.
And this fall I guess I was just too lazy.
Next year, early for sure.

2022 a year we won’t soon forget
It is amazing to me that a school the size of Dove Creek is able to produce such outstanding athletes in both girls and boy’s sports.
As of this week the boys are 10-0 in football. The closest score was 26-34 against Mancos. Dove Creek has outscored its opponents 527-148 and most of those points were scored in the first quarter because some of the starters started sitting down. Dove Creek has not one, not two, not three, but at least five players who have been able to out run other teams. And not by just a little. When any one of those five players has a step on the competition, it’s a touchdown. Dove Creek has scored a lot of touchdowns this year sending runners around the end on the long side of the field with instructions to, “out run em.’”Finally, West Grand had a defender who was actually able to catch a Dove Creek ball carrier.
It’s probably going to get tougher for these final few games. Dove Creek is scheduled to play Merino this Saturday. Merino is ranked 10th in the state and has a 6-4 record. They lost to Haxtun, Akron, Lyons and Mancos. Mancos beat them 46-6, so unless the wheels fall of the wagon, Dove Creek should advance.
And the Colorado High School Activities Association says the game is in Dove Creek Saturday at 1:00.
Headed into the State Volleyball Tournament Dove Creek’s volleyball team is 25-0 and is the only team in the state that hasn’t suffered defeat. McClave is closest at 24-1 and is ranked number 3.
Merino is another school with outstanding athletes in both football and volleyball. Merino is ranked first in the state in volleyball and has a 22-3 season record. La Veta is no slouch either with a 23-2 season record. Idalia has won 22 and lost 3 matches. Fleming is ranked fourth with a season record of 20-5. Kit Carson is ranked second had has a season record of 21-4.
Other teams in the Class 1A tournament include Stratton, Wiley, Briggsdale, Simla, and Otis. That should be 12 teams if this – out of practice reporter – didn’t leave some out.
It isn’t often that Dove Creek’s volleyball team has height, but this year there’s plenty. And these tall girls are powerful, too. Dove Creek has about five hitters who, if they get a good set, that ball is not coming back, or if it does, it hits the back wall way out of bounds. Dove Creek hits the ball so hard terror starts showing up on the faces of potential receivers.
But it’s not all power. There’s speed in Dove Creek’s hands and feet. Some of the hits they dig are amazing.
In the match against Flatiron Academy, Dove Creek missed too many serves, but that happens when servers are going for service aces. There were several of those, too. Flatiron missed few serves, but they didn’t have a lot of aces either.
The bottom line was that Dove Creek beat them 3-0.

The non-stick skillet
I don’t remember how many years ago it was that the Wife came home with a non-stick skillet. Mother was a great believer in cast iron and she had several sizes. She used one of her cast iron skillets every evening to fry potatoes.
But anyway, I looked over that skillet and noted that the edge was rounded. Cast iron skillets have a distinct corner, but the non-stick variety has an edge that isn’t sharp at all. I studied that for a day or two and decided that it wouldn’t hurt an awful lot to see if I could flip an egg without using a spatula.
So I buttered up the non-stick skillet, cracked a couple of eggs and prepared for the initial flight of breakfast.
I had already lost my breakfast cook. The Wife gets up slowly and does not like to engage in complicated dialogue at breakfast. I, on the other hand, get up completely full of hot air and a distinct desire to exchange ideas.
The Wife summed it up succinctly, “Fine,” she said sharply, “cook your own breakfast,” and the next day I did.
I discovered that flipping eggs in a non-stick skillet is so simple that even I can do it. You pick up the skillet once the eggs are ready to turn, and you quickly draw it toward yourself. The curved edge launches the eggs into the air and turns them upside down. Then, you slide the skillet back under the eggs and set it back on the skillet to finish cooking.
I think I was the one who introduced egg flipping to the Fireman’s Breakfast. I’m certain that I participated and still do when the Bluegrass Festival in Durango doesn’t interfere. Although the Wife says I’m not going to bluegrass next year but I haven’t signed any agreement about that yet.
Nor do I remember how long ago it was that I found my present non-stick skillet in the dumpster at the Community Center. I was checking on aluminum cans that morning and my eyeball happened to land on a skilled that looked new. I rushed it home and have used it every morning since.
But a month or so ago the Wife inspected my skillet as she walked past the stove and said “Uh oh.” She pointed out that a scar was making its way across the middle of the skillet. It wasn’t long until a little of my breakfast egg was sticking to the skillet despite the butter.
My first attempt to replace the skillet was at local stores and one came close. There was a 12-inch non-stick skillet, but I wanted an eight-inch skillet.
“No problem,” I said to myself and started seeking skillets on the Internet. I picked one out and the Wife agreed to order it for me.
I waited expectantly for two long weeks and finally the new skillet arrived. It looked nothing like the one I thought we ordered. The poor little thing was only 5 inches across and the bottom was not rounded at all. It was at least non-stick.
So breakfast was an adventure these past few days. I can’t just slide the skillet backward and cause my eggs to flip. I have to throw them in the air and attempt to catch them. It has not been pleasant.
Later today the Wife says she has a doctor’s appointment near a large department store that starts with the letters Wal. I have issued her a cash payment for a round-bottomed, non-stick skillet.

The end of garden season
When your memory is as bad as mine, every garden is strange. When you can’t remember one from another, it’s all new every year.
But I do believe this was one of the most unique gardens I have ever raised. When It started raining in September, the tomatoes decided that getting ripe was not part of the program. They just started growing and blooming. Getting ripe was no longer on the table. I had to scrounge to have enough ripe tomatoes to eat.
My garden is in the back yard of the Wife’s Air BnB, so I tried to make sure the renters had field ripened tomatoes to eat. I was not always able to do that. I completely abandoned the idea of canning tomato juice or stewed tomatoes, although I wanted to. They just wouldn’t get ripe.
I planted three summer squash: a new type of zucchini, a grayzini and a scaloppini. I was never sure what was new about the zucchini because it looked exactly like a black zucchini. Maybe it was just more productive, because it produced a mature squash every three days all summer. The grayzini and scaloppini were wimpy little things that never thrived. I think I ate three greyzini and two scaloppini.
I only wound up with two cucumber plants and neither of them ever produced anything. My garden is definitely cucumber deficient. I’ve got to find some kind of new fertilizer for next summer’s efforts. I like cucumbers so right now I am cucumber deficient.
The green beans were good. We crunched on fresh green beans for several weeks until fall informed the beans that they should shut down. (I have now planted several new plants in the sunroom and I think we are going to have a winter crop of green beans. I’m excited. The variety is called Calima.)
The half row of corn I planted dried out before I realized it and was a near total failure. We ate a few ears, but most of the sweet corn we ate this summer came from the store.
But the end of summer always comes. I try to make the garden last until Halloween by covering the garden with quilts.
This year I chickened out. The temperature October 24 was predicted to get down to 25 and I feared that my quilts couldn’t cut the mustard. I wanted full shelves of green tomatoes, so I stashed my quilts while they were still dry October 22 and prepared to pick tomatoes October 23.
Good thing, too, because it was snowing straight down at coffee time October 23. I had four five-gallon buckets and a whole lot of green tomatoes. Actually one of the buckets was more like three gallons.
I put on gloves, a good coat, long pants and a flannel shirt. I filled all four buckets and didn’t realize how cold I was until I stashed the tomatoes in the pantry and hit the shower. I was worried that my hands may have a little frostbite, but I’m always a worry wort.
The pantry has shelves that are filled with empty beer bottles or full ones most of the year and I cleared as many of those as I could. They are now lined with green tomatoes. Some have a little color but not many.
When I go to bed tonight I will mourn the loss of another garden and I will wonder how many more gardens I will have the opportunity to love.