Big wonderful old trees!

 Well, the best laid plans, and all that...

Yesterday an interesting offer came my way. Did I mention before that I had applications in for several apartments near my son, not just one? Well, the first one had been offered, and I showed you photos of it Wednesday. And I had all intentions of moving there.

Until!

Another apartment came available, and it's in Durango. And it's my very first choice in Durango. And so I said yes yes yes!

I have to be approved again, so that process which took so long with this first apartment in Cortez has prepared me to do everything possible the right way. I will spend hours and hours as my own administrative assistant (a job I held many times in my working life!) And hopefully things will come together, with the same move in date, just a few miles closer to where I now live. And unfortunately a few miles further from my son in Cortez.

But it's right downtown in Durango! A block away from the main street...and the railroad. That will make me feel like home, since the railroad ran a block away here in NC. (Though it seldom does now!)

How do you like those trees? Better, eh? I don't think my apartment will face this direction, but rather out over the town, and probably a view of the mountains beyond. 

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Now back to my prepared post!

Almost a goodbye luncheon...

Puff pastry topped my chicken pot pie...so good!

And who says you can't have a side of mashed potatoes with brown onion gravy? I certainly had it!

Teresa had the garlic white wine pasta dish with veggies and parmesan. She had a side of green beans.

I can't believe I didn't take photos of our deserts! The main thing I go to the Pisgah Inn for is their French Silk Pie. 

We spent a long time trying to connect these mountains indicated in the chart with what we were seeing.

Our conclusion was that the chart wasn't to scale. We would finally just count the peeks from one that was recognizable. 

Probably the pointed one is funnel top.

This was probably my last time to visit the Pisgah Inn. But Teresa and Helen and I have another day trip planned at the end of the month, including another fun restaurant to enjoy!

Sharing with Thankful Thursday 

The trees are not there

 

This is the photo that shows with the rental information. Love the trees. Love the lawns.

Sure it's not all that private, but thinking how great that shade would feel.

It's a senior apartment complex.

Google Earth views as of 2003. Not very shady. Cute little fences for privacy. No shade.

It doesn't even look as if they've planted any new trees. It must have been quite a big venture taking out all those old trees. Makes me sad.

Well, with drought conditions, I guess this makes sense. The trees in the background? There's a RV park on the next property...so they can camp beneath trees still. 

These are the apartments where I'll probably be moving. The homes across the street do have trees, so I can take early morning walks and enjoy their neighborhood. That's the plan! It's located within walking distance of a grocery store, and various restaurants only a long block away.

I have been spoiled by living in a virtual forest in North Carolina. I will take lots of photos before I move! But having dry air to breathe means I will most willingly give up the humidity of these trees.

Last Monday we drove to Pisgah Mountain for lunch. Here are the beginnings of that trip to enjoy the trees and acclimate myself to higher elevations, my new home will be more than a mile high at 6191 Feet! 

Leaving Asheville on the Blue Ridge Parkway you can stop and see the French Broad River.

I will probably use my shot of the river as a header photo later on.

Before even arriving at the restaurant I was glad to have brought the portable oxygen generator (concentrator? whatever it's called!) I was coughing up a storm, and really out of breath at the restaurant, which they say is at 5000 feet. But Pisgah Mountain, right up the hill, is supposed to be 5721 feet, and it didn't look that much taller. who knows! Maybe that wasn't the actual mountain top...

More about lunch in a bit...

Montezuma Castle

 I shared a photo of Mesa Verde last month in a header, and here's a different site, but similar building.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the dwelling was constructed as early as 1125 AD and occupied until as late as 1395 AD

Montezuma Castle National Monument protects a well-preserved cliff dwelling located in Camp Verde, Arizona.

I am a bit amazed to find it's just down the road from Sedona AZ, a site which was recently visited by my daughter-in-law.

When European-Americans first observed the ruins in the 1860s they named them for the famous Aztec emperor Montezuma in the mistaken belief that he had been connected to their construction (see also Montezuma mythology).^[6] Having no connections to the Aztecs, the Montezuma Castle was given that name due to the fact that the public had an image of the Aztecs building many archaeological sites in the American Southwest .^[7] In fact, the dwelling was depopulated more than 40 years before Montezuma was born, and was not a "castle" in the traditional sense, but instead may have functioned more like a "prehistoric high rise apartment complex".^[8] Many tribal groups throughout the Southwest have specific place names for the cliff dwelling in their respective languages.

Montezuma Castle is situated about 90 feet (27 m) up a sheer limestone cliff, facing the adjacent Beaver Creek, which drains into the perennial Verde River just north of Camp Verde. It is one of the best-preserved cliff dwellings in North America, in part because of its ideal placement in a natural alcove that protects it from exposure to the elements. The precariousness of the dwelling's location and its immense scale of floor space across five stories suggest that the Sinagua were daring builders and skilled engineers. Access into the structure was most likely permitted by a series of portable ladders, which made it difficult for enemies to penetrate the natural defense of the vertical barrier.

View of Montezuma Castle from 1887

The walls of Montezuma Castle are examples of stone-and-mortar masonry, constructed almost entirely from chunks of limestone found at the base of the cliff, as well as locally acquired mud mortar. Studies have shown that several different types of mud mortar were especially engineered for specific purposes like durability, strength and color.^[9] The ceilings of the rooms also incorporated sectioned timbers as a kind of roof thatching, obtained primarily from the Arizona sycamore, a large hardwood tree native to the Verde Valley. Other wood used for roofing includes Ash, Alder, Ponderosa Pine, Douglas Fir and Pinyon Pine.

A diorama of what the interior of the castle may have looked like when it was in use

History:

Evidence of permanent masonry dwellings like those at Montezuma Castle begin to appear in the archaeological record of Arizona's Verde Valley about 1050 AD. Archaeologists recognize the earliest cultural traits of the Southern Sinagua-consisting of a recognizable set of objects and architecture-as early as 700 AD.

The area was briefly depopulated due to the eruption of Sunset Crater Volcano, about 60 miles (97 km) to the north, in the mid-11th century. Although the short-term impact may have been destructive, nutrient-rich sediment deposited by the volcano may have aided more expansive agriculture in later decades. During the interim, the Sinagua lived in the surrounding highlands and sustained themselves on small-scale agriculture dependent on rain. After 1125, the Sinagua resettled the Verde Valley, using the reliable watershed of the Verde River alongside irrigation systems left by previous inhabitants, perhaps including Hohokam peoples, to support more widespread farming.

The region's population likely peaked around 1300 AD, with the Castle housing no more than 30 people in at least 20 rooms. Radiocarbon dates from multiple construction beams at the Montezuma Castle suggest that the cliff dwelling was constructed between 1125 AD to 1173 AD with remodeling and additions in the last decades of the 13th century. A neighboring segment of the same cliff wall suggests there was an even larger dwelling ("Castle A") around the same time. Castle A had an estimated 45 rooms and would have had a large number of inhabitants that contributed greatly to the population of the area. Castle A is in a relatively poor state of preservation with remaining architecture consisting mostly of stone foundations. The site's excavation in 1933 revealed many artifacts and helped archaeologists to develop a more detailed understanding of life in the area. Archaeological evidence and Native American oral histories suggest the Castle A site was destroyed by fire sometime between 1375 AD and 1395 AD and both dwellings were depopulated shortly thereafter.

Many of the large pueblos within the Verde Valley were likely depopulated by 1400 AD This was a time of great demographic and social change throughout the American Southwest. While the reasons for the depopulation at Montezuma Castle are not entirely clear, the Castle A fire along with drought, resource depletion, and conflict are possible explanations. The inhabitants of the Montezuma Castle cliff dwelling did not mysteriously disappear as some people have suggested, instead they moved to different villages. Many tribal communities do not like the term "abandoned" as it suggests that important places, like Montezuma Castle have been forgotten about.

Like many archaeological sites in the area, the cliff dwelling was heavily looted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An early account of the site was written by Army Doctor Edgar A. Mearns in an 1890 article in Popular Science Monthly. The article describes the appearance of the site before widespread looting and site damage occurred. Because of the rise in settlers, tourists and the overall popularity of the Montezuma Castle, the monument was under threat until its establishment as a National Monument.

Montezuma'sCastlenearCampVerde,Arizona,ca.1893-1900

 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montezuma_Castle_National_Monument

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Sharing with Tom's Tuesday's Treasures

Celebrating new life

 Another month begins today. May you have all your wishes come true, rabbit rabbit!

By Charlie Tefft

by Christiana Biaggge

Beginnings by Sally Strand

By Jade Beale photography

'Hope, II' (1907-08, oil, gold and platinum on canvas) Gustav Klimt

by Colleen Barry (American, born 1981)

Gustav Klimt

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Good news! I have been approved for an apartment in Colorado! Now I need to follow each step to move there. It may be the biggest challenge of my life. It sure feels like that at this place, standing at the bottom of the steps that need to be accomplished to attain my goal. Here's how I feel right now. The artist uses small pieces of paper for each stripe of color. I thought I'd saved it...

From FaceBook

When a tree isn't a tree

 

...it's a cell tower.

I may hate these strange looking things. But I do love having cellular communication available 24/7. When I moved here (2007) I couldn't get service for my phone in my bedroom. The mountains were not friendly for cell service. Now when my son calls while driving between his home and Durango, there's a known "dead spot." We just wait till he passes through that area. His newer car than mine has built-in wi-fi. I just have a speaker button on my phone.

This is just a small portion of the cemetery at Gashes Creek Baptist Church, which is on the way to my new primary doctor's office in Asheville. The tower is also on that road.

They have 1595 memorial records there (according to "Find a Grave"). But I don't know if all those people are buried on this hill. And I don't know how old the church is...trying to see if there's a quick answer to that. Not really.

The back cover of my recently purchased book "Traversal" by Maria Popova, editor of "The Marginalian" newsletter. I'm so very interested in seeing what and how she weaves thoughts from diverse literature into this tome of 570+ pages. I like especially that there will be some mentions of my recently revived interest in plate tectonics, i.e. continental drift theory. Here's a page of the bibliography. It will take a while before I get to the pages that are indexed which mention this synchronicity.

When I was about to get back in the car across from my local bookstore, I noticed these...and had to pause to capture their beauty.

I've noticed by the photos that we get this garish pinkish red.  They just don't look right to me.

I took this photo several weeks earlier near my home. Same problem. Having had my cataracts removed several years ago, I'm really aware of colors. In real life they may have the same hue, but the leave are just as bright, so the roses don't look so artificial as they seem to do here.

Choosing to have joy is not naively thinking everything will be easy. It is courageously believing that there is still hope, even when things get hard.

MORGAN HARPER NICHOLS