Thankful

We had five at the table for Thanksgiving dinner and two more joined us for dessert. The dessert table was quite photogenic, I thought!




Two of our guests were from India and one was British. The most special part of the evening was the presence of our friend, Ian. When I last saw him, it was July and he was in the hospital, in a coma, receiving dialysis and breathing via a machine. He is walking three miles a day, now and is ALIVE! Thanks, indeed!

Mountain Jam at the Gold Hill Inn

This past summer, we went up to the Gold Hill Inn, up in the mountains, for the Mountain Jam. It's an annual fundraiser event, and we were keen to attend and hear the band, Open Road. Ten years ago, Open Road was THE band around here, with rumours of national aspirations and predicted to be the bluegrass band that would put Colorado on the map. They traveled around and packed shows for five or six years, and then hung up their cowboy hats: too much travel and not nearly enough money to be made.

The four guys went on to different projects; one of them lives in Nashville now. This summer, though, the big RockyGrass Festival scheduled a reunion of Open Road as one of their performers, and the Mountain Jam folks jumped to put them on the lineup for their event.

Dave and I went up with our friends, Dick and Janice. It was a fabulous show, with the uber-talented Tim O'Brien sitting in for some tunes with Open Road and doing his own thing with some of his family members--Party of Seven.

Here are some shots from the sold out show, that was held in the side yard of the Gold Hill Inn.


Here are Dick and Janice; it was a boiling hot day, with no shade. We all covered up pretty good with clothing and sunscreen!



Here's Fergus Stone, local DJ and musician, warming up the crowd.



And Open Road--after all these years!


Caleb Roberts and Bradford Folk, founders of Open Road.




I take lessons from this extraordinary bassist, Eric Thorin.


Tim O'Brien joins the band for some tunes.


Tim also did a fabulous set of songs all by himself.


Then he performed with members of his family.




It was a great day!

Dave's Bird Rescue

Recently, I noticed a robin hanging around out in the yard. It seemed unable to fly, and I noticed it off and on as I worked in the garden one weekend morning. I mentioned this to Dave and he put on a couple of heavy-duty work gloves and marched out to investigate. He captured the bird pretty easily and it had a white string hanging out of its mouth. Dave removed the string and sent it on its way; he said he didn't know how it would do, but he had done his part.

Less than a week later, I was in the garage puttering around and as I was going inside, I lowered the garage door, and before I got inside the house, I heard a clamor. I stood for a minute, wondering what the racket was, and then saw it--a hummingbird was inside and banging against the window, trying to escape. Of course, I called for the local bird rescuer. As I opened the garage door back up, we watched to see if the little bird would find its way out; it didn't, so Dave got a broom and guided it over to freedom.

Last summer, there was another robin hopping around our yard, with a white stripe around its neck. Initially, we though it was a foreign object, but after observing him, decided it was a pattern on his feathers. I named him Stripe and we saw him around for a few weeks. It was kind of fun to see him out there and recognize him--how often does that happen?

Butterfly in the Garden

One evening Dave told me that there was a surprise for me on the camera. A few days later I investigated and found pictures of this butterfly. Dave had noticed it in the tree outside the sunroom and took some shots of it before going to work that day. It is beautiful--I have never seen one like it around here.

Steel Pennies at the Brunner Farmhouse

Earlier this summer, Steel Pennies played at the Bruner Farmhouse in the nearby town of Broomfield. We were part of the summer concert series that they host on Sunday nights. The setting was charming--we performed on the porch of an old farmhouse that was relocated to the middle of town some years ago.

It was a Sunday evening and we had a good turnout from the community. Here are some pictures taken by an audience member, who then emailed them to us. We really liked them.

The Cantenna's Strike Again

Dave and I and our friend, Eric Permut, are the original members of the Cantenna Trio, who play bluegrass at the annual Boulder Amateur Radio Club picnic. This year we were joined by our bandmate Terry Skaggs and our good friend Warren Kennison to make up a quintet of ham radio operators playing some hot bluegrass.

Here are some pictures from our performance. Warren was especially stylish that night. It was a lot of fun.

Nostalgia

When Dave and I lived in Germany, we took advantage of our military discounts at the various 'liquor' stores and bought two bottles of Dom Perignon. One of them we drank after our wedding. We brought the other back with us to the U.S., and it has been sitting in our basements ever since.

A couple of weeks ago, Dave was going through some wine on the wine rack and he decided we had better drink the bottle of Dom, and that there was a good chance it might have already gone bad. I brought it up and put it in the refrigerator, and we decided that we would drink it over the 4th of July weekend.

So, last Saturday night Dave went to the store and bought the fixings for a surprise dinner--even he didn't know what we were having until he got to the store! He came home and started whipping stuff up: boneless pork steaks, fruit slaw, bread and cheese, grilled veggies. For dessert, he had a little cheesecake with some fresh berries to go on top.

When it was time to eat, he opened the bottle of champagne and we held our breath. The date when it was bottled was 1983; we bought it in 1990 or 1991. Everyone we mentioned this to, said it would be vinegar. Well, they were all wrong. It was absolutely wonderful. Who would have thought.