What's in a name?

Folks have asked us how we came up with the name of our place – Fleur Creek Farm.  Try as you might, you won’t find Fleur Creek on any map of the area, no matter how detailed.  For those of you who took French in high school and still remember any of it, “fleur” is the French word for flower.  That’s your first clue.

It didn’t take long after seeing this place for the first time to discover some of the wonderful native plants that exist here. Armed with field guides each investigation would turn up another special discovery, some we had seen elsewhere and some we had never seen before. Our first surprise was the identification of the wood lily – a blazing red flower standing nearly a foot above all the surrounding green. The following year we found the beautiful yellow lady slipper, a delicate orchid. Both the “lilies” and the “ladies” along with numerous other rare or endangered plants are located in the spruce bog areas of the wetlands.

 

The “lilies” and the “ladies” bog found on the eastern edge of the wetlands is fed by numerous springs and seeps that flow into a main spring fed creek we’ve named Fleur Creek. The headwaters of Fleur Creek were nothing more than a bog itself before a previous owner tried to turn it into a pond. Long story shortened – surface water rights in Colorado are strictly regulated and the pond had to be breached. While there is only a small pool left there, the pond construction served a new purpose – to concentrate all the waters that originally created the headwaters bog and channel them into a small creek. And so was born Fleur Creek which continues through the lower bog area of the “lilies and the ladies”, gathering up other spring and seep fed creeks finally leaving the place at the north end as a pretty nice little creek.  

It seemed only natural to name this special little creek which winds its way through an amazing collection of native flowers as Fleur Creek and the place where it is found as Fleur Creek Farm.

And now you know the rest of the story. Future blog postings will feature the incredible diversity of this special place including photos of the "lilies and the ladies".

From Fleur Creek Farm