Home, Home Near the Range

Okay, we now live in Montana, near scenery almost too beautiful to believe as well as near the hardscrabble ranches of families subsisting on their wits and willingness to work, very, very hard. (I met just such a beautiful family yesterday, on a gorgeous ranch that basically they built from scratch!)

But some days, Alex and I just plain take it easy at our little town bungalow.

He's getting over back spasms from lifting a few too many concrete slabs (more about that later). Right now, I'm protecting myself from a few too many UV rays (living here at 3,600 feet or so) and am gardening in the shade or when skies are overcast. Or I'm simply sitting it out for an hour or so under the carport-turned-patio, with an Alex-made latte in hand. Ah, retirement for a city girl (who worked hard herself, in newspapers for 30 years, thank you very much!).

One view of clematis that we inherited, as I sip morning coffee delivered to the "patio."

Hamiltonians walk by in flipflops or zip by on skateboards+dogs or cycle by on old-fashioned bikes+dogs or peddle along the flat streets on new-fashioned bikes pulling babies behind in aerodynamic carts. At times, it's really a tableau of the best of small-town life. And when I see kids cycling alone, I remember the freedom that I had as a kid in the '50s, to go it alone or with a girlfriend, all day sometimes, no grownups monitoring our every move. It was, and is, another world.

In our backyard, we also inherited a long fence-row of raspberry canes. Suddenly, the berries are beginning to ripen at a feverish pace (see guide to "Growing Raspberries in Montana Gardens" at the Montana State University site, http://www.montana.edu/.) Below, one morning's pick...

Fresh raspberries for breakfast (or dessert!) from our yard.

We've invited our nextdoor neighbors, Pat and John, to please help us relieve these canes of so much fruit. Already, we've all filled Ziploc after Ziploc of the berries someone planted long ago. The bounty takes up an entire shelf of a freezer in the basement, with another shelf crammed with rhubarb also from the yard; I diced and froze it weeks ago. There's a sudden embarrassment of riches! And it's a tiny hint of how real Montanas subsist and live. (I plan to whip the berries with cream tonight for  cupcakes that I'll take to a party.)

But when we tire of the ease of our new town life, we jump in the old Subaru and go find a dusty road with elevation. This one is facing west, looking at the Bitterroots from the facing mountain range -- the Sapphires.

Dirt, gravel and mountains -- just what you want in a scenic drive.

Another dirt road on another lazy day takes us up high into the Bitterroots along Lost Horse Creek. Dust, if I may say, is a Montana fact of life, in town as much as it is up here. The alley behind our house is pure white dust, and any fast moving car or, more likely pickup truck, sends it billowing up and over our fence. I figure we're coated with and breathing lots of this stuff and, perhaps, it's making us more Montanan. Silly, I know, but (and not to get religious, just a bit spiritual) remember, "for dust you are, and unto dust shall you return."

Alex fishes Lost Horse Creek while I amble down the road taking pictures (I do have a Montana fishing license but, so far, have been way more interested in poking around with my camera).

There are velvet antlers on these young bucks just a ways away...

Velvet on antlers, at left.

One deer takes an inevitable look back for a second or two...

...then, jumps and quickly gets into deep woods.

I've blogged before about beautiful "cricks," as creeks universally are called here. But just look at this rock through the clearest of water in Lost Horse Creek:

Lichens on rock, in Lost Horse Creek.

We head home after a few hours and sip wine on our sunset-shaded patio, watching one or two of the four varieties of hummingbirds here come to our feeder (photos, below, are from a site called mt.gov, specifically http://fieldguide.mt.gov/displaySpecies.aspx?family=Trochilidae:

Black-chinned

Broad-tailed

Calliope

Rufous

The Broad-tailed and Rufous are "potential species of concern," says mt.gov. We've had one Rufous sighting, we think. Mostly we see Black-chinned. These are spectacular creatures, as we know from also watching our Ruby-throated hummingbirds back in Missouri, as they dip into a wonderful feeder that my son gave me.

BTW, I promised more information about the backaches that Alex experienced on a recent renovation job. It's just a hint of what he, and to a lesser extent, I, are going through. The total rehab of our Hamilton house is almost complete, and before-and-after photos will be my very next post!

 

 

Contractor Don Sylvester, at left, spent a day mightily jack-hammering out this old parking pad next to our house. Alex helped him load it (ouch), piece by piece, into Don's truck for runs to a reclamation site operated by a local concrete company. Alex was "down in his back," as my grandmother used to say, for just a couple of days. Lucky! Stay tuned for the glorious results, here and elsewhere in the yard and garden, but especially in, and to, the house! Next post, I promise.