At Home with Clydean

The Sun

It is my theory that people who choose to live in the Southwest like sunshine. In Las Vegas, rain doesn’t come often enough to ruin a picnic. Perhaps the 117 degree days in summer drive us to remain in our air conditioned homes, cars and offices, but generally we like sunshine.

My dogs make certain I am an early riser. More often than not I watch the sun come up through my front windows. As I sat drinking coffee looking out windows that need washing, I marvel at how the sun moves from north to south. Today, the sun came through my glass entry way doors to illuminate the fireplace and mantel which are currently decorated for fall. The sun cast a golden glow over stacked stone and a mantel my brother created from a fallen tree on his property in Arizona, which is about 60 miles from the Grand Canyon so he has a lot of big cedar trees on his land.

I am including the photo of my favorite entry way décor piece, my dog named Loki. The name is appropriate. He is a mixed breed of Poodle, Husky, and Corgi. He got the hairy gene from all three breeds and the attitude of a Husky. This is his favorite spot in the house because he is the warning siren which bring the other two dogs running to be his wing men in defense of the castle.

Celebrating the Joy of Memories

For one reason or another, over the past few years I’ve collected a wide assortment of small picture frames. They were sitting in a drawer alongside a large manila envelope filled with family snapshots. These pictures celebrated memories from the very best time of my life–when my grandchildren were two to four years old. They were such fun and we had many adventures as a family.

As I reviewed the photos they made me chuckle, smile and sometimes turn misty eyed as I remembered the fun we had together. Then I looked at all those frames and decided I was going to create a wall of memories celebrating the joy we shared as a family. The memory wall may look cluttered, and it certainly is, but it makes me smile every time I walk down the hall and pause to look at one or two pictures and relive the joy that time brought into my life.

How can celebrating the joyous experiences of your life seem cluttered? I say celebrate whatever gives you joy with exuberance and enthusiasm. The blue wall in my office is an expression of the exuberance I am working to bring into all aspects of my life. I want to celebrate every single day as a joyous occasion and feel it is great to be alive.

His Name Is Takla Makan

Rottweilers have been a part of my life since the early 80s. I’ve lived with four males, and they were all sweet, loveable, gentle dogs. Then into my life came Takla Makan, terror of the Mojave Desert. He is named after the Takla Makan desert in China. In the days when traders traveled the Silk Road in search of new and unusual trade goods, the Takla Makan Desert was the most feared place on earth. Folk wisdom warned “you may go in but you will never come out.”

Takla was only six months old when he jumped from a chair in the family room to the top of the kitchen counter to eat one of my other dogs breakfast. He is now one year old and he’s a rough and tumble ball of energy who regularly mixes it up with the three other male dogs in my house.

He’s a real watch dog, meaning he “watches” everything that goes on in the house. Here he is in his favorite chair taking a well-deserved nap. He’d been out chasing the feral cats I feed. It is obviously great fun to watch them scatter.

Peacock Fascination

I’ve had a lifelong fascination with peacocks. I found this enormous abstract painting of a peacock several years ago. It has traveled from place to place but my office is its final destination. As I started painting the peacock blue wall I doubted my sanity. But once the paint dried and I got the artwork hung up I decided the color was just what I wanted for this special room. The Indian War Ponies are by Mariah Baldwin. The paintings are colorful, and the horses are majestic. The black and white photography is mine and those pictures serve as a counterpoint to the jewel tone colors. The metal peacocks below the painting were gifts from my daughter who feeds my obsession.

Acceptance

Acceptance is a hard concept for me. I don’t want to accept not a lot of plants will grow in ‘soil’ left behind by the retreat of the Great Salt Lake that bakes to the consistency of brick beneath a harsh desert sun. Nature and I have been engaged in a battle of wills and, not surprisingly, nature won. I’ve accepted defeat and learned to embrace plants that will survive me and the climate. Globe Mallow, Texas Mountain Laurel, Salvia and Red Mexican Bird of Paradise are my new friends. I mourned the loss of the Hosta and Lilac I nursed with loving care. Nature won every round. So, I adapted to fallen cedar branches and sandstone boulders to fill in gaps where flowers died a painful death. Youth and determination were the blinders which kept me from embracing gardening in the desert.

Unrealistic Dream

I developed a love for an English style cottage garden and Victorian architecture. Las Vegas is not exactly the perfect environment to achieve what I‘ve been forced to accept is an unrealistic dream. But I’ve soldiered on replacing plants which could not withstand our summer sun and experimenting with plants I hoped would survive. No grass in my garden, is my concession to living in an arid environment. I discovered plants from Australia work well. Beautiful English Iris last through spring but look like a flame thrower destroyed their leaves in summer. I do question my sanity as I spend so much time deadheading blossoms and cutting back dry, crispy leaves. I realize, now, after spending forty years in advertising arranging photoshoots, my psyche wants everything to look perfect. Every time there is a breath of a breeze, Crepe Myrtle blossoms fall in profusion, dry leaves, and dust litter the landscape. My brother just laughs and says, “there goes the photoshoot!”

Egyptian in a Past Life

The business philosophy of MGM was any property with a theme made a resort seem old and dated. Renovation to remove all Egyptian features from Luxor stripped away murals, statues, and hieroglyphic panels copied from temple walls in Egypt were replaced with modern elements. The King Tut Museum, which was a replica of the actual tomb discovered by Howard Carter in 1921, was donated to the Las Vegas Museum of Natural History, where it resides today.

An area slated for renovation was a quaint shopping area with fluted columns decorated with lotus flowers giving the courtyard an Egyptian flair. Tall columns were slated to be removed and headed for the landfill. I asked if I could rescue them and given permission to rescue them. These were fiberglass, so removing caused internal stress cracks. The columns spent a year in my garage layering Bondo to repair the cracks. A concrete base was poured as a foundation. The columns came in two halves so joining them was quite a feat. It took a full year, but the columns were restored structurally, cemented in place, and painted. It was certainly worth the effort to have a little bit of Egypt in my garden.

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