The urban thoroughfare of north Main Avenue is an odd place to sprout a garden. But resident Harry Browne managed to turn his corner of the concrete jungle into a personal green space.
Sunflowers and Hopi blue corn are the accouterments of Browne’s garden at the Brookside Motel across the street from Durango High School on north Main Avenue.
Behind a tall, practically living fence of vines, leaves and flowers that surround his porch, he grows marshmallow, chocolate mint, dahlias, zinnias, Greek oregano and other green specimens.
He said he does most of his gardening in the nighttime and early hours of morning, when north Main Avenue (U.S. Highway 550) is silent.
Browne’s sunflowers towered above him, easily stretching more than 6 feet tall, as he peered down the narrow row of vegetation.
He reminisced about the 12-foot Russian mammoth sunflowers grown and harvested for their seeds in New England, including Maine and his home state of Vermont, and said his sunflowers are hybrids.
“Leave them in the ground as long as you can,” he said on growing sunflowers.
Browne works the night shift at the Applebee’s in Durango, but he also runs his own weekly YouTube show, “The Ragu Guru,” on which he treats viewers to short, to-the-point videos about how to prepare delectable dishes.
Bellini, Sicilian spaghetti and Teppanyaki surf n’ turf are the latest featured eats and drinks in his videos.
Last week, he was preparing to make focaccia.
“The Ragu Guru” YouTube show has been active about a year and a half, but Browne said he isn’t particularly interested in expanding to other social media platforms or increasing his rate of content from more than once a week.
He said his show is very “nuts and bolts about the cooking,” and he’s satisfied with that.
“Just eat well,” he said about his approach to cooking.
He cooks at home, makes his own bread and jams, and fasts at least one day a week.
Browne grew up in rural Vermont among farmers, ranchers and gardeners. He spent plenty of time in Colorado and the Four Corners, and “Durango just kept winning,” he said.
He moved to Moab, Utah, in 2009, and decided to move after a devastating flood.
“When you see the results of it, it’s impossible,” he said. “I start doing the math, like, how many metric tons of water have to flow in order for it to back up while there’s a gigantic waterfall sucking it all down.”
He said he remembers working at a Pizza Hut one evening during “one of those nights” when the clouded sky had turned green – a bad sign, he said.
He and other employees had taken a moment to appreciate the pretty skies when a tourist asked, “Is that supposed to be happening?”
Browne said he looked out the door and saw flooding.
“No, that’s not supposed (to happen),” he said, reminiscing.
He reminisced a lot, and said he’s doing his cooking show on YouTube to “keep my chops up.”
“My retirement, whatever fantasy plan – you’ve got to have something in sight. Hole in the wall bakery that does dinners, something manageable,” he said.
A small eatery was once his plan in Moab. But that idea washed away with the floods. Durango was the place to resettle, with skiing, river recreation and other outdoor opportunities all around it, he said.
“Everybody should be growing flowers,” he said. “Or something. Play music. Grow flowers. Rebuild motorcycles.”
Hinting at current political polarization, he said every era is political, and people should go on their own crusades – not anyone else’s.
“Crusade for yourself and your family and your friends and, you know, do what you can for the environment,” he said. “… It’s a good community here, and I just like it.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
