Ask Not What You Can Do For Global Warming...

Here it is, October 18 and I'm still hauling in tomatoes. Like, hundreds.

Last weekend, when it was obvious that the first frost was on its way, I went out to glean all of the green tomatoes I could find. I figured that there would be a few that we could set in the window until they ripened. It took me five trips to bring them all in and still there were a bunch on the vines. Not just green ones, but big fat, red ones ready to eat.

It isn't just tomatoes, either. The basil was still alive, and the rosemary looked positively robust. I chopped the basil down to an inch of it's life, and cut the rosemary down to half. The strawberries -- strawberries! -- were producing like they never did this summer. There were six little, tiny berries on the vine, each packing a wallop of flavor. And folks, in Colorado in October, I picked two huge, ripe cantaloupe.

I covered the plants this week to keep the frost from them. I had no time to get to them all week, but this morning I went out to see if everything survived. The basil was touched, but still fragrant, and everything else was still going strong. It took me three trips to bring in the tomatoes and I can't tell you how heartsick I was to find that I'd missed quite a few red ones last Saturday. Those tomatoes had over ripened and were squishy, but then there were others that were perfect, ready to eat off of the vine and perfectly red all the way through.

I've been spending a good part of my Saturday mornings these last few weeks chopping up tomatoes and freezing them for the winter. I dried the rosemary and basil for a few days in the fridge and they, too, went into the freezer. I'm wondering how long I can keep the tomatoes going by just covering them with our old sheets. It's going to be almost 80 today here. I know that we have always had beautiful Indian summers here, but I think the climate crisis is affecting Colorado. Calderoj and I are turning into urban farmers. Our tomato plants might just feed us through the winter.

Urban Wildlife

Yesterday as I was leaving for work I witnessed an extraordinary event. As I slammed shut the front door, I heard the flapping of tremendous wings. When I looked up, I saw a large bird flying away with something white in its talons. It was a hawk, and when I looked toward the green across the street and saw the hundreds of white feathers strewn across the lawn, I knew that the hawk had killed one of the neighborhood pigeons.

The hawk landed on a fence at the end of the block, and dropped the white bird. I walked across the street to the scene of the killing and saw in the middle of that patch of white feathers six feet in diameter, newly spilled, red, red blood.

The hawk stayed on the fence for a long time. It was still there even after I went back inside to report the carnage to Calderoj. I drove by it, stopped, backed up, and attempted to take a picture of it with my phone. But it just stayed there, guarding its prize.

Calderoj reports that a dead, headless pigeon was on the ground next to the fence when he walked by on the way to the bus. Apparently, there was no hawk in sight.

Garden

So. Having dropped off a bunch of clothes that I never wear, I was walking out of the consignment shop today and I saw that it was raining. I was so surprised that I thought in French, "La mousson a arrive." For it is 17 July, and it was about 4:30 in the afternoon, and up until then the day had been oppressively hot. But the rain was cool, and in the great, front-range tradition, lasted for about five minutes.

Something about it inspired me, though. On my way to my next errand I remembered that there is a small public garden just next to the amusement park and just off the bike path that goes along the river. I have wanted to have a look at it for a while, but I never made a time, and whenever I am passing by it seems that the garden is closed -- it closes at 5pm each day, a travesty if you ask me. The hours just before the sun goes down are the best times for walking in gardens. I had twenty minutes.

Centennial Gardens was designed and is maintained by the Denver Botanic Gardens. It is laid out in a formal style, and the signs in the park refer to Versailles and to Kensington Gardens. However, the designers have taken care to use native plants or species that do not take up much water. The hedges are made of native fernwood and mountain mahogany. One section is comprised of lavender plants (and, it looks like, bees), and one has huge rose bushes. Instead of cypress, there are juniper.

The gardens are laid out in nine equal squares, with a colonnade stretching down most of the east side of the garden, and bosques of linden on the north and the south sides, respectively. The linden smell wonderful. I walked through the whole garden, then sat underneath the colonnade and enjoyed a rare 5pm breeze.

For the most part I was the only one in the garden. I saw several groups of people stop in and look from the front, but they left quickly, I think to ride the roller coaster. The only other people in the garden were a middle school-aged couple, the girl sitting literally astride the boy, who lay in the grass under the lindens. When I walked by them, they looked at me with huge, sheepish grins. Then, for the rest of the time I was in the garden, they kept looking over toward me, as if I were some figure of authority from whom they were trying to hide their bad behavior. "When is she going to leave?" They looked like they were saying. "It is irritating trying to have to pretend to be doing nothing." Such behavior is archetypal in gardens, I know.

Friday Night

Went to the Wynkoop for drinks and shuffleboard with J's office. When they left, J's brothers arrived along with J's brother's fiancee and we drank and talked. JW was not performing with Impulse Theater last night, so about 9:30 we walked to the Wazee Supper Club for dinner and more drinks, then back to J's office where I watched the four of them play Foosball. We called it a night early and tumbled into bed around midnight.

I wore my cherry-print Betsy Johnson silk halter dress with ruffle hem and red, round-toed Chie Mihara shoes.

New City

So let me tell you how exciting it is to live in Denver now.

Last night we went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which just opened its new building on 15th and Delgany. I'll write more about the MCA itself later, because right now I want to write about the view from the top of that building. It's fantastic. Just looking out to the north you see a landscape that didn't exist ten years ago. One of the farthest buildings in your view is Coors Field, which was completed just over ten years ago, and next to it you see the edge of Lower Downtown, and its collection of buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As you look to the west across the river, you see the Highlands neighborhood, marked by a Methodist church sitting on the top of the hill, looking down over the city. But when you look toward the foreground you see an entirely 21st century neighborhood. You see high-density, high-income housing rising up above the old railroad tracks. The light-rail snakes through the neighborhood, through a central park area and past a large suspension bridge. The entire picture, with its mixture of modern and old architecture, feels rather European -- as if we were a mid-sized urban area in Germany or Switzerland.

More exciting than the landscape is who is using the landscape. Kids are using the landscape. I think that this "kid-friendliness" is the most important indicator that you have built a city that works the way it is supposed to. The fact that kids are riding their bikes through the area -- at 8 pm on a Friday night, no less -- that mothers and daughters are popping into the MCA for twenty minutes before walking back home, means that the area is not only safe, but it is accessible to all, regardless of your vehicle, and its close to where people actually live. The really great part of all of this accessibility is that it isn't contrived. It is not a destination that was built just for families with kids, or for partiers or yuppies. It is a place built for people to live.

When I was growing up the city was a destination. It was far away and so was something you did as a family, as if you were going to Disneyland. It was a whole day activity, worthy of a picnic basket, and long hours spent in a museum -- many longer hours than you could stand before getting bored and cranky. But now, as I think back to that view from the top of the MCA, I see that we have a livable city. And not only is it livable, when you are living in it you are aware that you are living in the shadow of excellent architecture, and that you could just pop inside those buildings and be exposed to art and ideas.

I think back to the neighborhood I lived in when I was growing up, and thinking about what was available to us as children -- the mall, Skaggs Drugs, Big Apple Records. It was the landscape of suburban alienation. Consuming was the only activity you could do, unless it was an organized activity -- like sports, or children's theater, or church. Twenty years later, that neighborhood is exactly how it was when I grew up. It is a place of unlimited boredom -- of concentrated boredom. Working there now, I can't wait to leave at the end of the day -- not because of my job, but because the air is so stagnant, so cut off from any fresh breeze.

So when I look at Denver, I think, not bad for a cow town.