One Month In Durango

I am exhausted right this second, but I know I'm overdue for a blog - especially now that I've realized it's one month to the day that we moved to this fine place. I'll do my best to catch you up on all the fun. Once again, I write this to indulge myself so go ahead and skip to the last paragraph and the pictures. Ha!

Let's see. Four weeks. How do I keep this brief and just highlight an eventful month...

We are completely moved in. There are beds in the bedrooms, pictures on the walls and we remember which cabinet the dishes are in. Cocktail hour on the deck is somewhere around 7:30pm so we can enjoy the gorgeous sunsets. Tim is still building us furniture - for instance, our TV is still sitting on a big red cooler - but he's got a lot built already. More on that later.

Our first house guests were Marisa, Jeremiah and 8 of his friends when they came up on the 3rd and camped out in our yard (2.5 acres leaves plenty of room for campers). The whole crew of us spent the entire afternoon on various flotation devices making our way down the Animas River, literally cruising from one end of Durango to the other. You can bet that Tim and I will be buying ourselves some inner tubes. Walmart has a floating cooler too - I think it would only be right to have that tethered to us. Right? When we all came back we grilled, drank some beer and played with my glow bocci ball set that Jeremiah bought me for my bday/housewarming. It was a great time.

Yesterday Marisa and David came up and we spent this morning making me (....drumroll....) A GARDEN! Two, actually. No, three. We tilled the front area of the deck, put in wood blocks, built up the soil for raised planters and planted my 7 rose bushes. We also tilled out the area where my veggies will be planted next spring and (while we were at it) we put in a little walkway from the deck to the veggie garden and David even made rows for me. AND (why not?) tilled out an area outside the garage where I scattered wildflower seeds. I also threw seeds along the sides of the planter by the deck, along the walkway to the veggie garden, around the veggie garden and next to Willy. In about 4 weeks this place should be looking very colorful. Oh, and we did all that in less than 4 hours. YEAH! Amazing. SO thankful for the help - if I were alone I'd be out there til next Tuesday.

Tim has been busy as usual, building a whole lot of awesome things for the house. Once again I'm awestruck by how quickly he works and how inventive the guy is. He gets this idea to build a corner bar in the dining area. Then, four days ago he says "I should make it a pirate bar!" As of this morning, the bar (a.k.a. The Baaarrrrrrghh) is now finished and in it's place, complete with wine bottle holders, a red light under the liquor bottle shelf  and a pirate sword across the top. It is the most amazing thing to me that he can put something like that together in just a few days and it's SO COOL! What a guy I got.

We spoke with a commercial real estate agent who says we have a good chance of finding what we want store-front wise by late summer/early fall when vendors close up shop at the end of tourist season. We want to open for business by late September....opening party date TBA. In the meantime we are building inventory for the shop and I've been building up my online business like crazy. Workin our butts off over here. Tim's business partner is coming to Durango next week and we're all excited to get some particulars ironed out, especially since we sort of have a new vision for the store. More on that to come.

Monsoon season started right on time - just after the 4th. We've had thunderstorms every day since which has kept the temperatures nice and cool, and which will also be good for the planting we did today. I just sat on the patio enjoying the breeze, the view of my new planter, the bright orange hummingbirds in their war over the feeder, the wind chimes tinkling and the sweet magical serenity that envelops this place. When you move to a new place far away, finding a space for things doesn't just mean where to put the coffee mugs. You have to find space for you, too. You have to find where you and all your little facets belong. So far, I'm happy to report, we are feeling awfully tucked in and cozy here. We feel at home. Mom and Sis will be here in less than a month and I can't wait to share it all with them.

Till next time, love you, miss you.

We were far from the big CO Springs fire, but we had some small local ones. Turns out fires make for great sunsets.

Weird little beetle guy. 

Willy's resting place. I scattered wildflower seeds over there today. He liked eating all my flowers before so....

Just another sunset from the deck. Ho hum. :)

We have these HUGE dandelions here. This isn't even as big as they get. Reminds me of when Mom and I were in Wisconsin when I was a kid. 

I don't know why, but I feel like maybe now is a good time to try something new.

Tim is REALLY good at chess. He and J both competed when they were in high school. I'm having fun learning from him.

Loving these summer storms.

So I pour a cup of coffee and go sit on my step like I do every other morning and I say, "What a glorious day, look how beautiful...HOLY SHIT that's a deer." He's a buck - see his little velvet antlers coming in? I named him Jerky.

Even the grasshoppers are friendly here! Hahahahh!

 Here's the progress of the garden(s) from earlier today....

David workin the ho.

Before. Ugh.

Rototillers are AWESOME! We borrowed this from Don and what would've taken hours to till took minutes.

Planter is up! Marisa is moving around the soil we shoveled in from another place in the yard.

David and Marisa making the stone walkway leading down to the veggie garden.

My little walkway! So pretty!!! You can see the garden square tilled out at the end of the walkway.

Happy roses! The little triangles on the left were Tim's idea and they hold lemon balm and peppermint. Off to the right leaning on the post - that's the monster aloe I brought from CA. He's still a monster.

The Baaarrrrrrgh. Complete with bar-style wine glass holder on top and a space for our wine fridge on the bottom.