Under the rainbow

Yesterday afternoon gave us sunshine and light rain at the same time, a combination that reliably produces a rainbow no matter where you live. And boy did we ever get one. It was huge! For some reason it was much, much lower and wider than any other rainbow I've ever seen. I was so in awe of it, I actually stopped my car in the middle of Bijou Street and, after triple checking to make sure that I wasn't blocking any oncoming cars, I quickly snapped a picture through the windshield.

Green and gold

Well my garden was kind of a bust this year. A lot of my friends had a similar experience. July was incredibly rainy, and we got hailed on in August. Sigh. I am only just now starting to harvest tomatoes! My potatoes never really came up and my cucumber plants all died after being infested with bugs. Same thing with the acorn squash, just dead. The zucchini was stunted. It flowered a lot but never fruited, and the bugs have been eating away at it too. In fact, lots of my leafy plants had bug issues, mostly the kale and cabbage. I actually dug up a few plants that were covered in bugs and threw them straight into the trash. How sad! (Nevertheless, I did manage to rescue most of the kale -- it's delicious -- and the cabbage is gamely coming along.) Some of my other plants did fairly well by comparison, including the dill in the foreground of this photo taken a month ago, and the beans in the background. I got a surprising amount of green beans and ended up freezing batches of them for the winter, and there are more on the vine yet, hooray! Since the cucumbers croaked and I can't make pickles, I've been giving fragrant dill to my friends. Soon enough I'll be able to harvest some carrots and a bumper crop of onions too. And I've gotten lots of nice chard and basil over the last several weeks. I love to make basil pesto and freeze it for the winter. There's nothing like homemade pesto!

Sunday Style!

I have no tattoos and I have mixed feelings about ever getting one -- at this point I feel like a rebel for not having one. I spied these at a wedding a couple of weeks ago and thought they were kind of cute.

Change is difficult

Lately, a few big changes have been made downtown and in the Old North End to encourage and accommodate bicyclists. Weber Street from about the police station northward to Colorado-ish has lost a car lane and acquired a bike lane, and the same goes for Cascade Avenue northward from Bijou Street. If you're used to having two lanes on those two particular streets, you've had to adjust to only having one. I have to admit that it took me a couple of tries to get it right on Cascade especially, but I soon got used to it. As for Weber Street, I don't think that particular stretch of it really ever needed two lanes to begin with, so it's not a huge sacrifice to lose one.

A lot of my friends are supportive of the new bike lanes, but as usual when there's a big change to the status quo, others have been less positive. Here are my thoughts: many large cities learned to accommodate bicycles on their streets long ago, not just here in the U.S. but all over the world. It's high time we in Colorado Springs wrapped our brains around the idea and started sharing the road with serious cyclists like the guy in this picture, and even just schmoes like me on my old Schwinn. After all, we are the home of U.S.A. Cycling, the U.S. Olympic Training Center, and the U.S. Olympic Committee, not to mention the world renowned 7-11 Velodrome. There is a huge cycling community here. Given these facts, how is it we have never been terribly accommodating to bicyclists? That's just shameful! Progress means change and change is difficult, but we need to keep moving forward in this city or we'll continue to be treated like Denver's redheaded, backward stepsister. Those new bike lanes aren't going away, better get used to them!

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A shot I grabbed while shooting a wedding downtown in mid-August, as sunset verged on twilight. I love this time of day.

The Alexander House

I had a big Colorado Springs History Nerd moment recently, when I was lucky enough to see the inside of a home I've loved from afar for many years, the Alexander House at 1830 Wood Avenue. I have always wanted to see the inside of this 1906 Tudor! I've even fantasized about buying it if I ever won the Lotto. Sometimes my job hands me the coolest opportunities, and this was one of them. I have a bride whose mother is close friends with the newest owner of this home, and since they will all be getting ready at the Alexander House on the morning of the wedding, we decided to have a powwow there last week. How exciting! I didn't take any pictures of the interior, to protect the owner's privacy, but I can tell you that it has an extremely rare Choralcelo pipe organ, a ballroom/music room, a solarium, and downstairs there are "gentleman's quarters" -- an old school man cave, billiards table and all. Holy mackerel! It's so beautiful inside! And it's over 12,000 square feet! A few details on the history:

• It was designed by Thomas MacLaren and built in 1906 for railroad magnate Thomas Curtin.
• It changed hands in 1914 to Berne Hopkins, who added the ballroom/music room for his wife, who was an opera singer, in 1918. The room has wonderful acoustics, not surprisingly, as it was custom designed to enhance the aforementioned Choralcelo.
• In 1925 the home was acquired by E.W. Sinsheimer, and in 1930 it was purchased by the Alexanders.

The Alexanders had a movie making company that produced mainly advertising films -- you know, like the ads you see when you go to the movies, before the feature film starts. Those ads were a big deal in decades past, and they made the Alexanders a fortune. If you've lived here for long enough, the name is familiar to you. The last I remember of Alexander Film, they were operating in a much smaller and more modern capacity and occupying a groovy, mid-modern, flying saucer-esque building on about Palmer Park and Academy. I believe they closed their doors for good in around 2011 or 2012, sadly.

At any rate, the Alexander House endures and is most definitely a local gem. The owner proudly showed me around. Almost all of the beautiful old details are intact, including the woodwork, molding, light fixtures and Van Briggle tiles. One bathroom downstairs hadn't been operational in decades and was basically just used as storage; the new owners found a cool old sink tucked away in the recesses of the basement and brought that bathroom back to life. The rather grand bathroom adjacent to the master suite hadn't been functional since the pipes froze in the 1950s! Again, the new homeowners repaired and replaced -- you should see it now! The entire kitchen was redone in the last year, but it's very tastefully appointed to blend in with the gracious old mansion's existing architecture. The front porch is wide and shady, and there are a couple of beautiful sitting rooms, parlors, and a grand staircase (of course!). Such a wonderful old home to wander around and explore! The grounds are lovely, too. I can't wait for this wedding. I appreciate having such a beautiful and historic backdrop to use for the getting ready photos! 

The 2018 State Fair (Part 6)

I'll close out my State Fair series with pictures of the little museum that they have on the grounds. It's stacked to the rafters with the most amazing collection of Fair flotsam going back decades, even a century or more. There's everything from flyers to banners to saddles to fascinating photographs to commemorative mugs... I could spend hours in there! Pat and I are both a little obsessed with old cowboy/western stuff from the 1930s through '60s, so we love this little museum. I probably took too many pictures but I couldn't stop myself. Enjoy!

I'm not necessarily a big fan of John Wayne but I have to admit he's right.

This is Jim Cook and the Colorado State Fair Museum is his baby. He admits to being completely obsessed with collecting, and he will happily talk your ear off about everything in the museum. And you should definitely chat with him, because he has many, many great stories. He's a treasure!

A few tantalizing factoids compiled by Mr. Cook. Fascinating!