Violet Aandres was a work of art.
When she walked into a room, an aura of wildflowers moved around her. Typically she was clad in sunny-day colors accented by jewelry and scarves, shawls and a subtle aroma of essential oils. Violet loved her world to be beautiful.
She painted beauty and built beauty from discarded objects. She grew beauty in her gardens and shared her enjoyment of what the world had to offer with others. As she greeted people she expressed surprise and then delight at seeing them, as if she had been anticipating the meeting for months.
Violet Roberta Jean Aandres Schrock Deubel let go of her three-year struggle with bone cancer last Sunday, March 27, with her husband Rich and members of her family with her. On Saturday she had told Nederland Community Presbyterian Church Pastor Hansen Wendlandt that she was ready for her next adventure, graciously accepting her passage.
On Sunday, an amaryllis that had been promising to bloom for the past week, in Violet's living room, pushed forth deep purple petals.
Born in Vancouver, Washington on July 14, 1943, Violet and her four siblings came from a humble background where each of the children learned the necessity of becoming competent gardeners and the never ending chore of canning and preserving the harvest. Learning to grow things was mandatory.
Her sister Tracey says that Violet, being the oldest, was the most powerful and ran the household. She rode her pony and at an early age, she played the violin. She had a desire to travel and see the world. She entered Washington State University with the intent of studying animal husbandry. While in college, during the summer, she was a choker setter, the person who wrapped the chain around a log after it had been felled and limbed to be hauled away. She also gathered night crawlers after dark to sell to fishermen.
When she graduated from college she considered becoming an anthropologist, but she married a man who was in the Air Force and ended up going with him to Quebec where she taught Kindergarten at the Air Force School.
In the late 60s, Violet studied art in Taos and watercolor became her passion. She took art focus classes and taught watercolor.
In 1974, she came to Nederland to be closer to what she loved to paint, flowers, birds, wolves, coyotes and bears. She bought a salvaged house and had it hauled from Boulder to Nederland, paying for it with her paintings. And then she proceeded to live an artist's life.
While she lived in that house, on the highway, across from Doc Joe's, she began to build her Blue on Blue garden, bringing in truckloads of mushroom compost and building up beds of native blue Columbines, Penstemon, mixed in with an abundance of day lilies. She loved to invite people over to see her garden. When she outside to plant and dig and weed, she wore her baggy jeans and a large sunbonnet. At this point she had a quest in her life and that was to succeed in raising a blue poppy. She would buy the plants but they usually died before returning a second season.
Her husband Rich says she probably spent $600 on attempting to bring up a thriving blue poppy, but they always died.
And then Violet found her dream house, the former Blue Danube Restaurant along South Boulder Creek along Hwy. 72. She wanted to develop the land along the creek and have a commercial garden and a place to sell her paintings. But when the restaurant expired, so did the commercial zoning and she was content to build a garden and invite her friends over.
She worked with the Denver Botanical Garden, volunteering in their Alpine section and created a test garden for them to see what would grow up here and what wouldn't. At one point they delivered a whole truckload of plants and they all died except for the ice plants which are still thriving.
She invited Wild Bear students to fish in her trout ponds and hosted NCPC picnics in her garden as well as cookouts for the Boulder Garden Club and church services in the summer.
The garden grew. A five foot tall flowering kale was one of her favorites. Rich put up a fence to contain the spread, but she just planted beyond it. A friend of hers began saving items he found on his recycle route for her and blue bottles began growing off the branches of a dead tree. And they spread into other tree. People who met Violet were infected with her enthusiasm for beautiful objects and soon became her friend.
At one of her recent art displays she presented her newest art form, the building of towers made of tossed away items, many of them from Emril's in Central City. She couldn't pass a thrift shop without stopping in to add stained glass dragon flies, ceramic fish, hanging hummingbirds, seashells and agate slices to her collection indoors.
She and Rich were married in 2003 after meeting online and have enjoyed creating a network marketing essential oils and a body work salon, developing a healthy life style and a healing outlet for friends and neighbors in the mountains.
On Feb. 13, 2013, she was diagnosed with bone cancer. She underwent treatments that worked for awhile, knocked the disease down a couple of times, but it kept coming back. She maintained her positive outlook, continued being a cheerleader for others and a week ago Monday went to the hospital for the last time. She always had a smile for her doctor and nurses and gave them all an art card while she could.
Rich says he can't quit her garden and offers sections to people who might want to come and work with the perennial plants that Violet started. Her ashes will be offered to the wind at Brainard Lake, one of her favorite places.
On Monday, Rich received a text from Violet's nephew saying, "She was goofy as hell, but happy. I doubt she had any regrets about her life. She always had a smile and was a happy person who was positive about everything and tried to instill that in others."
Violet was preceded in death by parents: Liscomb E. Schrock of Burley Idaho and Helen A. Swanson of McBridge, South Dakota.
She left behind her husband Richard Deubel, brother Edward J. Schrock and his wife Cindy of Longview, Washington; Sister Bette L. Marsh, of Longview, Washington; brother Monte D. Schrock and his wife Donna of Longview, Washington and sister Tracey E. Schrock and her husband Allen of Kelso, Washington; her aunt, Eva E. Johnson, of Longview, Washington; and many nieces and nephews and two sets of twin, great nephews.
There will be a memorial on Monday, April 4 at 5 p.m. at the Nederland Community Presbyterian Church, where she happily helped with the Guyer Garden. Donations made can be made to the church.
