End of February

We've been here three weeks. One day I feel I'm getting comfortable in our new home and another day I think: What am I doing here? I've always lived in Dallas. How will I be able to adjust after half a century somewhere else?

We had our trees trimmed for fire mitigation. It made our acre lot look much bigger and the trees look nice with the dead cut off. I learned a lot from the guys cutting the trees. Now I know pines don't like to have their feet wet. That is why over the leach field of our septic system the pines are yellow. We have one spruce on the north side of the house where a drain empties. Spruces like the moisture and the tree is a beautiful dark green that is a wonderful contrast to the pines. The man we bought the house from planted trees on the north side of the house in 1979 when the pine beetles last hit the area. One is a small pinyon pine that hopefully will produce pine nuts someday. The man cleaning up the lot told me this was a tree with history from the local Indians--- somthing else to research.

In another couple of months I want to plant a tree to mark the year we moved into our house. Tad would love a flowering tree so I asked what we could plant that the deer and elk wouldn't eat. We can try New Mexican Locust, or Common Purple Robe, or Russian Hawthorne.

We had 1 to 2" of snow on the 20th. The snow is soft, dry, and melt before the morning ends. I took the boys to see a movie on Saturday. We had fun getting out of the house and becoming familiar with a part of town we can visit again. There is a bookstore, a mall, a huge Target--- places we can go when we want to come down from our mountain and go shop. The boys also told me about the animals across from their school. On Sunday we went and fed elk, deer and goats. The animals are in a wildlife preserve with giant food dispensers that give out pellets for quarters. There was a goat that bullied the deer. The pupils to his eyes were horizontal lines that gave him an unfriendly appearance; and his attitude to any animal that wanted to share the pellets we were handing out confirmed he was indeed unfriendly.

The boys both have Valentines Day parties at school that I get to go. The classes here go all out with games and foods for the kids. Grant's class makes crowns and has a table where the kids get to make their own sundaes. Justin's class plays bingo and has outdoor games. Watching the kids outside feels strange because in the background are mountains around the school.

By the end of February we are able to find our way around easier, but we are also missing the friends we left in Texas.