Wednesday letters: Silver Spruce Inn wins yard of the month, beating the heat, Jason Aldean’s song is wrong

Opinion Opinion | Jul 25, 2023

The Glenwood Springs Garden Club began our Yard of the Month idea in July of 2018 to recognize homes and businesses which are beautifying our community. We recently placed our sign at the Silver Spruce Inn located at 162 West 6th Street.

This family-owned inn each year has beautiful eye-catching floral displays and will celebrate 30 years in September. Stanley and Alexsandra Barthlomiejczuk, with the assistance of many family members, pleasantly welcome guests to their ninety-four rooms throughout the year. They are originally from Poland, lived in Chicago briefly, were enamored with Glenwood Springs on their first visit, and it soon became their home. Four children and many relatives with their spouses have been involved with the Silver Spruce Inn working in various capacities.

When asked about the plethora of flowers, Alexsandra shared, “In the beginning we had a few flower boxes like in Europe.” Now there are too-many-to-count flower boxes overflowing with wave petunias hanging from the second floor walkways. These are started by Alpine Gardens, but with giggles in their voices the two ladies I met said, “It is Stanley’s job to water them sometimes twice a day.” The main entrance area and front of the office plus the long sidewalk flower areas are all tended by Irene Wisniewska, sister-in-law of the owners. “It’s a hobby for me,” said Irene, who considers herself a baker first. But for several weeks in the springtime she spends many hours daily working in these gardens and throughout the season keeps the areas picture perfect. Gardeners will appreciate Irene’s gardening skills and knowledge, as do Inn guests and people walking by.

Under the Silver Spruce sign there are many huge pots of geraniums in every color–pink, red, white, violet and rose! These pots are not refilled with newly purchased geraniums but spend the winter in the Inn’s breakfast room under Irene’s diligent care. She makes cuttings and re-roots in jars. In the spring these are planted creating more gorgeous geraniums outside. Accents are large pots of flowing asparagus ferns.

The entrance garden beds as well as the very long and large planter, built by Stanley and family, along the sidewalk display an amazing variety of plants. Blooming now or soon are tall daylilies, purple clematis, phlox, hollyhocks, roses, columbine, dianthus, snapdragons of many hues, dahlias and marigolds started from seeds. Mums, autumn colehipum, asters and winter crocus will bloom late fall. Shade loving greenery has been interspersed to create gardens like a work of art by Irene.

Both ladies called to my attention the Queen Elizabeth Climbing Rose bushes on each side of the Inn’s entrance door. These were planted by Irene’s late husband Darian 25 years ago, and Irene is training them to grow horizontally instead of so much up the walls. Also, they showed me their caster bean plants with large colorful leaves. I learned they have red cluster flowers, can grow up to 8 feet, and two are planted yearly from seed in a small grassy area.

Many people driving and walking by often stop with admiration of these floral gardens and ask Irene gardening questions. She and Alexsandra and all the extended family welcome visits and questions.

Ann English, Glenwood Springs

Being as I am an “all over the road moderate” (with a technical environmental background) I offer the following alternate response to the questionnaire in your online poll as to how to “deal with the heat.”

On a long-term basis, it involves combatting climatic heating by making a gradual transition worldwide from fossil fuels to nuclear energy and renewables. And, no, that does not require the global government violating the rights of Americans to self-government.

But while there always have been and will continue to be very hot days throughout the United States, we in the mountain West have a climatic characteristic for dealing with it. That is our generally low humidity, as measured by the low temperature at which dew will form, known as the “dew point.”

Based on principles of the science of thermodynamics, our low dew point causes the summer air temperature to routinely swing by 40 degrees or more between its high in late afternoon and its low just before sunrise. As a practical matter, the way to take advantage of that temperature swing is to ventilate a building with cool outside air at night, and then to close its windows and doors before the outside air temperature increases as the sun rises. With the level of insulation in walls and ceilings required by standard building codes, and a reasonable limitation on the area of windows (even the best of which are poor insulators) it will usually be possible to keep the temperature in a building comfortably below the upper 70s.

The quickest and most reliable way to ventilate a building is with a large exhaust fan in an upstairs ceiling or window. A fan of this type can typically cool a building by running for a few hours at night, while using a fraction of the electricity required to run an air conditioner for many hours per day. It is a shame that so few of the alleged “experts” on “green energy” understand how to apply a principle that is so simple, inexpensive, and effective — particularly in our mountain climate.

Carl Ted Stude, Carbondale

Jason Aldean’s song represents the guns in society where children are getting killed instead of promoting resolutions to better gun laws. Small towns, big cities, shootings happen everywhere and he’s basically saying in his song to arm yourself and shoot whoever frightens you.

Nobody should take the law into their own hands. It’s one thing to want to protect yourself or your loved ones, but the irresponsible owners of guns outweigh the responsible ones, that’s why we need stricter gun laws, thorough background checks (like so many felons still being able to buy a gun), psychological tests (anger management) especially for people who have so much hatred inside them or have short tempers and kill their neighbor’s dog for barking, or some nut shooting a kid for playing “ding dong ditch!”

Stop promoting taking the law into your own hands and support better laws (and hire more law enforcement with better training).

Kathy Grunska, Parachute

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