Bear Aware!

Happy August!

It has been a very active bear season in our community this summer.  

 My neighbors have been sharing these photos of multiple bears that have been roaming around on our community Facebook group.

We live on the Colorado Front Range at the beginning of the foothills and near some wilderness, so it should not be a surprise that we get wildlife visitors from time to time. 

Bears have a super sense of smell and a veracious appetite.

Sadly, even though people are asked to take down birdfeeders in spring and summer and not store garbage cans outside or place them out at night, many forget or don't heed the warnings.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife has reported sightings of at least six different bears in our area this summer.  They tell us to haze them away by making loud sounds, such as shaking rocks in a soda can or banging on a pot, and of course, keep our garages and cars closed and locked and remove all food sources. 

No one wants to see the bears euthanized, especially the Momma bear that visits who has three cubs!

Click on this photo to enlarge it

We do have warning and informational signs on our trails about the wildlife that frequents our area.

It may have to soon add moose to that sign, as there have also been moose sightings in our community this summer! They are often sighted in the mountains, especially on the western side of the Continental Divide, but more have been heading to the more populated eastern side of Colorado in the past few years.  They look friendly but they have a lethal kick and are naturally afraid of dogs which they perceive instinctively as wolves.  If you ever see a moose with its ears pinned back be extra careful as it is distressed and may attack. Happily, this moose found its way back to the wildness again.

Most days I just see deer when I look outside my windows...

...but sometimes we may get a glance at many other wild animals.

 

It has been a summer of wild, unpredictable weather. In the afternoon hours, big cumulus clouds tend to gather.

This summer we have had frequent afternoon thunderstorms with lightning. Some parts of eastern Colorado even had tornadoes and...

...enormous hail!

Happily, my area has not seen hail like that, for which I am grateful.

In addition to the frequent rain that brings rainbows, we have also received other blessings. We have also had many days of beautiful weather, without the high heat and humidity that have been plaguing much of the US this summer. Our hills remain green and drought-free. We live in a beautiful place and even with all our wildlife excitement it has been a wonderful summer so far. I hope your summer is also a happy one!

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Pumpkin Cornbread

A view of the original cattle rancher's mansion The Manor House in our Colorado foothill valley.  We average an elevation of 6,000 feet (1828.8 m) in our valley so fall color fades quickly and our first snowfalls arrive early.  We've already had two snowstorms, but both melted quickly under our usual sunny skies.

Most of the leaves have fallen from our trees and the deer have been enjoying eating them! We often leave a pile of leaves in a rocky part of our yard as we've noticed the deer will dig through the winter snow to find them.  

As I promised in my last post here is the recipe, shared with me by a friend, for a variation of a sweet pumpkin loaf cake made with cornmeal and coconut.  It is moist and delicious!

 Pumpkin Cornbread --- Pan de Maize y Calabaza Bread

Oven - 350 degrees.

Grease and flour a loaf pan.

In a bowl, whisk together:

1/2 cup oil

1 cup sugar

1 cup pumpkin

3/4 cup coconut milk

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In another bowl, whisk together:

1 cup flour

1/2 cup cornmeal

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

generous 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

generous 1/2 teaspoon allspice

1/2 teaspoon salt

Blend both mixtures. Pour into the loaf pan.

Bake until done, about 45 minutes or so.

I roasted and pureed pie pumpkins to make my own puree which I froze in one-cup measurements. I've used it for my favorite pumpkin bread and the recipe I shared above.  

"In November, the earth is growing quiet. It is making its bed, a winter bed for flowers and small creatures. The bed is white and silent, and much life can hide beneath its blankets." 

~ Cynthia Rylant

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Ken Caryl Ranch's Historic Barn

The suburban community I live in, which is located in the foothills of Colorado west of Denver, was once a cattle ranch with its first owner, John C. Schaffer, purchasing the land in 1914.  In 1921 he hired Littleton builder William F. Sorensen to build a barn to house his purebred, award-winning, Hereford cattle.  The barn survives and was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Information from the History Colorado website:

"The barn is an excellent example of the gambrel-roof variant of the Transverse Frame Barn type as executed in the western United States. Character-defining features include the barn’s rectangular plan; gambrel roof with cupola ridge ventilators; second-story hayloft; hay hood and hayloft doors at the gable end; symmetrical interior organization with two interior aisles flanked by stalls running the length of the barn; and large sliding barn doors on the front and rear walls at the ends of the aisles. The unusual choice to use structural clay tile as a wall material adds to the barn’s significance."

You can read more about the barn by clicking on the photo above to enlarge the photo.

You can also see an interesting YouTube video about John C. Shaffer and his beautiful ranch on this link.

Our community's historic society had an open house this past fall to allow visitors to tour the barn and learn its history.  It now houses horses and is part of the Ken Caryl Ranch Equestrian and Training Center, which also contains two fully groomed outdoor arenas and a large indoor arena.

The enormous hayloft construction in the barn was amazing to view!

It has strong construction that has withstood much weather and time.

Our community has over 4,800 acres of native Colorado open space and many miles of trails that Ken-Caryl Ranch resident hikers, bicycle riders, and horse riders can access.  

It really is a wonderful place to live! 

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100 Things I Love about Grandma Book Review

This is a new journal book I received as an advanced reader's copy for an honest review-- A Love Journal:100 Things I Love About Grandma, by Lisa Carpenter, which will be on sale December 7th, 2021. This delightful book provides a variety of 100 prompts to help a grandchild recount important milestones, funny moments, and all the special things they love about grandma. An older child can fill it in by themselves and a younger child can answer the questions with the help of a parent. Either way, it is a gift all grandmothers would cherish receiving.

When I first began to blog, back in 2007, I first "met" Lisa Carpenter and her blog "Grandma's Briefs."  Back then blogging was rather new and blogs were simple and brief, yet right away I knew Lisa had a flair for writing and shared my joy of becoming a new grandmother.  She asked me to participate in a feature she has on her blog called "Grilled Grandmas" where she sent us a list of questions about being a grandmother to answer and asked us to send a few photos of our grandchild(ren). It is a fun feature and a nice way to find other blogs written by grandmothers.

My oldest grandson as a baby

I only had one grandson at the time and lived in New York City--quite a distance from Denver where my son and family lived. Lisa was also a long-distance grandmother at the time and we commiserated over living far from a grandchild. You can read my 2007 Grilled Grandma Q&A on this link. 

My sweet cheeked little baby grandboy from 2007 is soon to become a teenager! He now has a younger brother and sister, and, along with my daughter's little girl, I have four grandchildren now whom I adore and love with all my heart!  Happily, nine years ago my husband and I were able to retire and move to Colorado to live close to both of our children and all our grandchildren.  We have been so happy and blessed to have been able to spend lots of quality time with them all.

This brings me back to this wonderful new journal book by Lisa Carpenter --A Love Journal: 100 Things I Love About Grandma which publishes December 7, 2021.  Not only does each page have an easy-to-answer prompt to be filled in by a grandchild, but it also has spaces for "extra love" on which a child can do a drawing or post a photo, etc.   

Some of the heartwarming prompts are:

 

#13 You encourage me to be better at _______

# 36 I hope I get to _____ the next time I visit your house

#43 We both like ______

# 65 I was thrilled when you surprised me by _____

#98 I know when you were my age you loved to ______

I think you can see how any grandmother would love to read their grandchild's answers to these questions (and more!) and would treasure a completed book like this. It would make a wonderful gift for a grandchild or grandchildren to give to their grandmother!  I look forward to giving it to my grandchildren to fill in. 

If you would like to order a copy of "A Love Journal:100 Things I Love About Grandma" you can order on this link.  I'm so excited and happy for you Lisa Carpenter!

Now for what is new around here...

Photo collage of Denver area foothills and wildfire.

Our area of Colorado has continued to be in extreme drought.  The long-time record for the latest snow in the Denver area has been broken already by weeks.  The weather has also been unusually warm. We broke a high record of 73 degrees this past week. As we feared, the dry conditions and wind brought Red Flag Warnings, and then today a wildfire broke out in the foothills above our community.  The terrain is rough and dangerous up high in the hills and the high winds were preventing helicopter water drops as is the usual way to fight fires like this. All we can hope is that fire breaks can be dug overnight and that the winds will die down. Please keep our community and the firefighters in your thoughts and prayers!

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A Colorado Time Capsule

We've had a lot of cool weather and rain and snow showers this spring but on a warmer day last week, my community's historical society had our first outing of 2021, to visit some sites that are literally almost in our own backyard.

The Colorado Archaeological Society conducted 33 archaeological digs in our community, Ken-Caryl Ranch, beginning in 1973. Our resident archeologist explained that the study identified five distinct periods of occupation of ancient people in our area including two from the Archaic period and three from the Plains Woodland period. The investigations uncovered artifacts such as pottery, projectile points, and hide scrapers. The people were hunters and gatherers with little knowledge of farming since no farming tools were found. The area above is close to a creek so a water source was available and the hogback mountain formations allow for good lookouts for both wildlife and possible enemies.

Our community, and others along with nearby areas of the Colorado Front Range also have large red rock formations.  These south and west-facing rock outcrops of the Fountain and Lyons Formations captured the sun’s warmth and provided shelter. Quartz, granite, and petrified wood were available for toolmaking. Wild plums and chokecherries lined the nearby creeks, which attracted wildlife. All of these factors made this area well used by ancient peoples.

In 2009 two young resident boys stumbled across a mastodon mandible (see above) in another creek in our community that had been uncovered by floodwaters. The Denver Museum of Nature & Science reported that it was the best example of a mastodon ever found in Colorado to that date, and could be 50,000 to 150,000 years old! Further investigation uncovered a tusk as well.  

Discoveries of the bones of Mammoths, camels, horses, and bison have also been discovered nearby at Lamb Springs Archeological Preserve in Littleton, Colorado. You can read about our visit to that interesting site here.   Recently, during an Interstate 70 construction re-route project near Denver, the remains of a prehistoric fossilized camel were found!

Do you remember my blog post "The Secrets Beneath Our Feet" about the archeological dig that was conducted on a foothill in our community in October of 2020? You can click on the highlighted link to read more about it if you missed that post.

Another archeologist who lived in our community happened to find a mano--which is an ancient tool used to grind food by hand--on a trail in that foothill. I'm sure I would have walked right past this stone, but he knew what it was right away. Upon further investigation, he saw that there was an area nearby that had eroded a bit and which contained a large amount of blackened soil that meant it may have been a fire pit at one time. After telling our historical society about this find we decided to have an official archeological dig done. The archeologists removed a lot of soil and small artifacts in the layers they uncovered for analysis and carbon dating. 

The report came back recently and this is what our historical  society archeologist excitedly wrote to us in an e-mail:

"The site yielded a carbon date of some burned tuber from the roasting oven at AD 133-324! This date of almost 2,000 years ago was when Romans still ruled the Mediterranean world, the Classic Maya were just getting going, the Anasazi were still in primitive pit houses, and before the Christian New Testament Canon was formed! It is at what archaeologists call the end of the Late Archaic Era and the beginning of the Ceramic Era."

This was not the first archeological dig that we witnessed. In 2014 we were invited to one in a cave area in another county which also led to interesting discoveries, including a spearhead that was 8,000 years old! You can see that post here. 

All of Colorado is rich in ancient artifacts and there have been many serendipitous discoveries of ancient tools such as the Mahaffy Cache that we saw on display at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Museum of Natural History exhibit.  You can read about the discovery of this large amount of ancient stone tools found buried in a garden on this post.

Stegosaurus dinosaur tracks

Even older evidence of life can be found in our area. The Morrison Formation, named for the town of Morrison to the north of Ken-Caryl Ranch, is notable for the number of dinosaur fossils that have been found. Giant reptiles roamed this region for a few million years until the seas again returned to form the beaches of the Dakota Sandstone, 100 million years ago. Evidence of the dinosaurs walking these preserved ripple marked beaches can be seen in Dinosaur Ridge National Historic Site. Dinosaur footprints and bones are preserved there in stone. I blogged about this historic site here and here.  

A dinosaur exhibit in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science

Construction sites in Colorado have also unearthed rare torosaurus dinosaur bones and a triceratops dinosaur in recent years. There have been many other dinosaur discoveries made in Colorado, and they are on display throughout the state. You can see a list of where to see these dinosaurs and fossil sites on this Colorado.com link.

It is certainly interesting to take a look back into time and think about all the forms of life that lived in our area from the dinosaurs to ancient civilizations to more recent Native Americans, pioneers, and now us as suburbanites. I wonder what traces our era will leave behind for future generations to discover?

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The Historic Manor House at Christmas

 As promised in my last post, I wanted to show a little more of the "Old Fashioned Christmas" neighborhood party that was held at a special mansion that is located in our community, called the Manor House.

Click on to enlarge

A plaque inside the house tells of its illustrious first owner, John C. Shaffer, who built the house and turned the land into an award-winning cattle ranch.

John C. Shaffer in the center surrounded by his wife, two sons, two daughters-in-law and grandchildren.  He named his ranch Ken Caryl after his sons, Kent and Carroll.

The Manor House looked very impressive from its position on the highest hill in the valley, all lit for the Christmas season.

The Manor house is now privately owned and is used primarily as an event/wedding center.  The owners opened the house to the Ken Caryl Community to see how it was decorated for Christmas and to allow for the community to gather and celebrate.

It was a very well attended event! There were food trucks outside and the bar was full of customers. Neighbors were having a good time sitting and talking.

We enjoyed seeing the beautiful decorations...

...and fine antiques.

The Manor House was also the site of frequent entertainment in the Shaffer years, and frequent guests were President Theodore Roosevelt, and President William Howard Taft, as well as industrial chieftains from around the world and celebrities of the time.

The staircase is lined with historical photographs.

 Upstairs, the crowd was thinner and we were able to enjoy a quieter conversation. Our daughter and granddaughter are in one of the photos.

This large ballroom is a recent addition to the house, and most often used for wedding ceremonies and receptions.  On this evening a band was playing music to entertain our fellow residents.

It was so nice to visit this historic home for the Christmas holiday and meet with neighbors to celebrate the season in style.  I hope it will become an annual tradition!

It would be remiss if I did not mention how sad I am for the terrible fires occurring in Australia during this their summer season, and the concurrent destruction of human life and property and wildlife. I visited Australia in 2011 and enjoyed all its beauty.  One of the highlights of my trip was visiting Taronga Zoo--click here to see that post--and where I had the chance to hold this koala bear, as well as do a "walkabout" with kangaroos. Wildfire is always a danger in the United States West, so I truly sympathize with all the people of Australia and I hope and pray all the fires will be resolved very soon!

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