Hiking, friends, music

Those 3 words describe my 3-day weekend pretty well.

I had a day off from work on Saturday, so I got some friends together that can't hike with me and Sherrie on Mondays and did a Saturday hike. Almost everyone could only hike in the morning, so we decided to hike in Palmer Park in Colorado Springs. Though it's in the middle of the city, this is a large, bluff-filled park with miles of trails. Gil, Ani, Sherrie, Alison (& Sadie)& I ended up hiking about 6 miles on a perfect morning. Here's a group shot of us where we stopped for a snack and a picture of a bumblebee on some wild iris:



On Sunday afternoon, our new associate pastor, David Hall was installed at church. It was a wonderful festival service full of music. Our choir sang 4 different pieces, handbells played several, and brass as well.

Today, Sherrie and I headed to the Mt. Herman area near Monument, CO for more hiking and geocaching. We hiked about seven miles and found 8 caches. Here are a few pictures from today - baby pinecones, a white-breasted nuthatch and an assassin bug:

Gardening on a small scale

My townhouse includes a very small (~10'x10') backyard. About a third of that is cement and the rest is covered in pea gravel. I've been wanting to do something with it for some time and did some pricing of cement pavers, stones, etc. I decided I wanted to make a small garden at one end and then make a 7'x7' patio with the rest. The pavers were a bit pricey for me right now, but I decided with a little work, I could at least get the garden in before summer. That was my project for this weekend. Here's a before shot of the backyard:


I went to Home Depot yesterday and got some edging stones, a shovel and 2 40lb bags of garden soil. The first step when I got home was to mark out the edges of the garden and then remove about 2-3 inches of gravel from that spot. I decided to just put the gravel on the remaining part of the yard for now. Later, when I get to the patio part, I'll have to come up with another place to move it. Under the gravel was some old landscaping plastic, which I cut out. I turned over and broke up about 6-8" of soil that was under that and removed a bunch of roots, which I think were from the pine bush outside my fence. Here's a pic of the partly done garden:


I installed the edging stones and added the new soil on top and mixed it in with the current dirt. This is what it looked like when I finished last night:


I discovered when I took Logan (my dog) out, that the little edge stones did not mean, "stay out" to him, so I added some decorative fencing to my shopping list for today. This afternoon I went to Walmart and Home Depot and got plants, more soil, decorative fencing, seeds and bamboo poles.
When I got home, I added the two bags of dirt and then started planting. I planted 4tomato plants of 2 varieties. I may have to remove a couple if they all do well, just because of space. I planted two salvia plants in front of the tomatoes and a clematis vine behind them. The clematis has a nice bamboo rod to climb up. I also planted some larkspur and columbine seeds around the edges. We'll see what comes up! The last step was to install the decorative fencing. Here's the final result:




I'll post pictures later in the year - hopefully everything will be doing great.

First mountain hike of the season

With temperatures predicted to be in the mid- to upper-80s, Sherrie and I decided to do a little mountain hiking today. I looked up a few caches up in the Old Stage/Gold Camp Rd area. The first one we went for was near the top of St. Peter's Dome. The trail starts off easy enough, although we could feel the altitude (> 9000ft), since we haven't hiked up that high since last fall. We did some scrambling and took some wrong turns while trying to figure out how to get to the top. The views were spectacular once we made it up. Here's a picture of Sherrie climbing up one of the many slabs of granite on the way:


Here is a fence lizard sunning itself on top:


Pic of me with the view in the background:


After returning from St. Pete's, we drove a little ways back toward town and then hiked about a mile down the closed section of Gold Camp Rd to look for another cache. We found part of the cache, but most of it was gone, probably lost to the elements, since it hadn't been found since last fall. This giant slab of granite was along the way to the cache site:

No excuses

I won't even try to make excuses for why I didn't even get one post in April. I thought about it several times, but never sat down and did it.

Rather than trying to cover lost ground, I'll just start with current stuff. Sherrie and I did some caching and hiking along Fountain Creek Regional Trail last Monday afternoon. We hadn't been on this part of the trail before. It had lots of varied habitat, and there was plenty of wildlife to be seen, including coyote, prairie dogs, and many birds. I identified what was a new species of bird for me, a Lewis' woodpecker. Here are some of my pics:
Coyote

Blue-winged teal

Killdeer

Lewis' woodpecker

Easter with family

Wow, it's been more than a month! Sorry 'bout that!

Mom and Dad were able to come out for a visit over Easter weekend. They drove out on Thursday, getting to my house shortly before I got home from work. They picked up a pizza on their way into town, so we could eat a quick dinner before getting to church for Maundy Thursday service.

I had to work on Friday, so Mom & Dad came to the zoo and then did some other sight-seeing on their own in some gorgeous Colorado spring weather. I took off early from work so I could make it to church by 5pm for the first of our 2 services. Our choir director wrote choral meditations for our 2005-2007 Good Fridays and this year we repeated the one from 2005 - based on the seven words from the Cross. Mom made lasagna for dinner, and I hoped to get home quick between services to eat some, but time didn't allow it, so I had dinner around 9pm.

Saturday brought much colder weather and with gas prices what they are, we decided not to do the drive in the mountains, which usually happens when Mom & Dad are here. It was really nice to spend time relaxing together. In the evening Mom & I wanted to take Dad to experience The Golden Bee, an English Pub at the Broadmoor Hotel. When we left my house, there was snow flying and by the time we got to the Broadmoor (much higher in elevation), the snow was sticking to the streets. We got to the pub around 7:50, put our names on the list and waited...and waited. The thing about The Bee is, they have a ragtime piano player that starts at 8:30pm playing for a sing-a-long. They can only guess at how many people might leave or when, so you never know how long the wait will be. It ended up being 9:30 (at the piano player's first break) before we got seated. We got a great table, though, right behind Bud, who is the best of their two pianists. We had a good crowd, some good drinks (Mom said it's the only time she can remember going out drinking the night before Easter), and lots of good singing. We stayed through 2 sets and left at 11:30. When we got out to the car, there was about 4 inches of snow on the ground.

Easter Sunday dawned with snow on the ground. Choir sang (and brass and bells played) for 8, 9:30 and beginning of the 11:00 services. By the third time through the Hallelujah chorus, my voice was cracking quite a bit! Mom and Dad came to all the services and sang along with the Hallelujah Chorus. My friend, Julie and Laurie came over to my house in the afternoon for an Easter dinner of pot roast with all the fixings.
Here's our Easter photo taken outside to show the snow.

Mom & Dad had to leave Monday morning. We had a great visit, over too soon, as always.

An experience of a lifetime

Before I get into the main reason I went back to Kansas last week, here's a great sunset picture from my drive back to Leavenworth. Kansas has much better sunsets than Colorado. I loved this one, because it looks like the trees are on fire.


The reason I went back to Kansas when I did, besides to visit Mom & Dad, was to participate in an honor choir. Kansas City was the site of the SWACDA (Southwest division of the American Choral Directors Association) convention. As part of these conventions, they have honor choirs usually chosen by audition tape. Children's, High School and Collegiate choirs are the norm, but for the first time, they had a Community/Church Honor Choir. Rather than auditions, they had an evaluation form which directors could submit for members of their choirs. My awesome director, Gregg, offered to "endorse" anyone interested, so I decided to apply and was selected. This was to be an 150-member choir under the direction of Dr. Mack Wilberg, who is the associate director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

For our part of the convention, we showed up Thursday afternoon to register and then had our first rehearsal in one of the hotel ballrooms. Music had been sent out a couple months previously, and we were to have it well learned, so rehearsal times could be focused on becoming a choir. The first rehearsal went quite well, and Dr. Wilberg was grateful that we knew the notes well. After the rehearsal, those of us that had purchased tickets went to a great concert by the King's Singers. They did a wonderful show and signed autographs afterward. There were additional concerts by a high-school show choir and the Kansas City Sweet Adelines after that, but since I had to get back to Leavenworth and it was already, 10:30pm, I headed home.

Friday morning, we had to be back for rehearsal at 9am. The weather was nasty with snow and freezing moisture of various types. Most of the KC area schools were closed. I left Mom & Dad's at 6:30 to make sure I got there on time. I got there at 7:30, so no problem there! Friday's rehearsals were in Founder's Hall at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral (the site of the evening concert). Here's a picture of the rehearsal set-up:


Morning rehearsal was from 9-noon. This rehearsal was probably the most intense of the 3, with lots of work on dynamics, diction, rhythm and VOWELS ;-)! Dr. Wilberg was still careful to not tire us too much or use up all our voice before the concert. We had a break from noon until 2 for lunch.

At 2pm we reconvened for the afternoon rehearsal, scheduled from 2pm-5pm. We again started out in Founder's Hall. This rehearsal, Dr. Wilberg was even more careful about not wearing out our voices, so he talked us through most of the pieces before we sang them, to make sure we remembered notations he'd had us make. At 4pm, we moved into the sanctuary to practice in our concert set-up and with the brass and organ. We were pretty crowded on risers, steps, floor, even the pulpit area, but finally found a workable set-up. Here's a picture of the front of the sanctuary, taken while Dr. Wilberg was working with the brass (Dr. Wilberg is the one in the white shirt on the left):

The traditional cathedral, with its stone wall, was acoustically perfect for choral music. Hearing ourselves sing in this venue for the first time, along with a beautiful pipe organ, talented accompanists and instrumentalists, was really cool! After this rehearsal, we had another 2-hour break before coming back for the concert.

At 7pm, we met back at the cathedral, in another room, for warm-up, during which we ran through parts of most of the pieces. The concert started at 8pm. Words really cannot describe how it felt to be a part of something like this. We performed 10 pieces, and it was just a totally wonderful experience (see, I told you words can't do it justice). Afterward, as we walked back to the warm-up room, Dr. Wilberg was waiting to shake everybody's hand and thank us each personally. Mom and Dad were able to come down to KC for the concert, and were in awe (I think!). They did professional recordings, both audio and video, which I have ordered and can't wait to get.

After our concert, I walked over to the Music Hall for the collegiate honor choir. It was nice to bask in choral music for a little longer, before heading home. My brain continued to bask, as all of the pieces continued to run through my head and my dreams! I would love to do something like this again, but if I don't, I'll certainly never forget this one!

Better late than never!

As I was reminded at church yesterday, it's been a long time since I've updated this blog. I'm on vacation this week, so I'll try to get a few new posts up.

Mahal left for the Milwaukee Zoo about a week and a half ago. His new adoptive mom really likes him and he seems to be adapting well to his new home and new mom. I don't have any pictures of him at Milwaukee, but here's a picture of him from his "Going Away" party at our zoo:

A preschool class painted the banner with handprints and then Mahal got to play with it while the paint was still quite wet!

The following sunset was shot about 2 weeks ago from my spare bedroom window. My view is not quite that perfect. I had to open the window, remove the screen and lean out a bit, but still not too bad.

Well, that's all for now, but I promise to post more soon about why I'm on vacation in Kansas right now.