Skip to main content

Tag: legal marijuana colorado

Best Bud of the Month: Tiffany – Budtender

Posted on April 5, 2021 - 9:44 pm

If you haven’t heard, our Durango dispensary’s 6th Anniversary is this month (read about all our specials HERE), which makes us the oldest recreational-only dispensary in Durango. But somewhat ironically, we’ve chosen our newest team member, Tiffany, to be your Best Bud for April, because she’s simply awesome despite her short tenure here at The Greenery.

You see, our company is expanding like crazy thanks to all the opportunities in this burgeoning industry of ours, so a couple of our veteran employees have moved on to greener pastures, including Zach, who’s now over at our Grow. This left a gaping hole in our staff with the insanity of summer looming, so we posted a help-wanted ad. And then, like a serendipitous blessing from above, Tiffany sent us an email, we responded, and the rest will someday be history.

But since Tiffany is so new—she’s been with us for only three weeks, which is doubly odd because she already feels like part of the family—you probably haven’t met her, and you surely haven’t seen her face thanks to the masks that’ve become part of everyone’s daily attire (I knew her for two weeks before seeing her face, which is just another weird curveball caused by Covid). So, here’s your chance to check both boxes:

About your Best Bud:

Q. When did you start working for The Greenery?

Tiffany. March 15th, 2021

Q. What’s your favorite way to enjoy marijuana?

Tiffany. I really enjoy smoking it, but my favorite is definitely dabbing. A straw or dab rig is my go-to for a great smoking session.

Q. What’s your favorite outdoor activity?

Tiffany. I love hiking, fishing, playing with my dogs, and finding really cool places to explore.

Q. Tell us about your pet.

Tiffany. I have a Rat Terrier named Charlie, and a Pitbull Border Collie mix named Milo. They love playing outside and going on long hikes. I also have a ton of other fur babies that I love deeply.

Q. Which station do you stream while you’re working at The Greenery?

Tiffany. I like a little bit of everything: rock, alternative, and country.

Q. What do you like most about working at The Greenery?

Tiffany. I’m a huge pot nerd! This is the best company to learn and grow in. It’s a really chill place to work, and my coworkers are amazing!

Fun fact: all her coworkers would say the same thing about Tiffany, and she’s a huge part of the reason this new team of ours has so many warm and fuzzy feelings for each other. She’s worked hard since day one, and she spends her time here with a calm, confident demeaner that’s helping our team as a whole reach the next level.

And Tiffany is one of the many Texas transplants who live among us here in Durango, but that’s not something we hold against her because she moved here intentionally to join the cannabis industry, and her passion for the plant is plainly obvious. She’s a true pot nerd, just like she said, and we couldn’t be happier that our lap was the one she finally fell into during her mission to land a job slanging legal weed.

Tiffany, thank you for coming into the fold here at The Greenery so effortlessly. We look forward to seeing your career progress, we’re in your debt for swooping in to help when we needed it most, and you’ve definitely earned your spot as the Best Bud of the Month for April!

The Greenery 6.0

Posted on April 3, 2021 - 3:52 pm

As it turns out, all the platitudes are true: “if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life,” “time flies when you’re having fun,” and etcetera. I mean honestly, can you believe that The Greenery turns six-years-old this month?

Here’s another cliché: “it seems like just yesterday” that we opened our doors and put the first $20 bill we earned on the wall, but that was six years ago, back in the day when “Jurassic World” was in the theaters and “Uptown Funk” was #1 on the pop charts. Since then, we’ve grown into one of the state’s most well-known companies with wholesale products from our Hash Factory available at over 230 dispensaries across Colorado (click HERE for the list). It’s humbling to see how far we’ve come, and it’s exciting to think about where we’re going.

But here’s one last quotidian quote from (I promise): “Be like a tree. Stay grounded and connect with your roots.” Here at The Greenery, we remember our roots. We remember that we started small and locally, just like all Cinderella stories, and we owe our success completely to you, our steadfast supporters who’ve kept our doors open for the past six years; you are our roots. So, every year on our April 10th Anniversary, we blow the doors off our flagship dispensary with deals meant to honor the most important part of our business: our customers. And this year is no different, so as a sneak peek, here’re the deals that’ll be waiting for you on 4/10:

Dispensary Deals: 

  • All full-priced items in the store will be 20% off. Boom.
  • All full-priced items in the store will be 30% off for Veterans, because they get 20% off every day, and we didn’t want them to miss out on something special during our anniversary given that they’ve helped us immensely throughout the years.
  • We’ll have select grams of both Moroccan and Lebanese Hash on sale for $20 after tax, which works out to more than 40% off.
  • All members of our Loyalty Program will receive Double Points from their purchases on 4/10, and if you’re a member, you know how huge this is (and if you’re not a member, click HERE to join).

See what I mean? We owe you for our success, because your loyalty is the root giving our tree strength, so these incredible deals are for you.

And it’s a bit too soon to talk about them, but we have some big changes—a few more branches on our tree—coming in 2021, so stay tuned. Our company will continue to grow by expanding into new arenas, but we’ll always do so with you in mind because we’ll never forget who got us here. So, thank you. Thank you for the six years’ worth of support, thank you for you for making The Greenery Durango’s top-rated dispensary, and thank you for the love you show us every time you stop by. I usually end these blogs with our slogan, “We’re Your Best Buds,” but this week, I’ll say it plainly: You’re Our Best Buds!!!

“Marijuana Near Me”

Posted on March 26, 2021 - 3:18 pm

It’s right here at 208 Parker Avenue in Durango, Colorado! I mean honestly, why would location matter when we have the best pot on earth? But still, I’m sure plenty of people out there pull out their phones, Google “marijuana near me” not knowing what’s up, and then get led astray to the pot that’s closest to them geographically as opposed to finding the best pot in town, so I’m setting things straight this week. After all, it’s better to go farther to find good pot than it is to swing by the closest place with schwag weed.

But let’s back up. The Greenery is the best recreational marijuana dispensary in Durango, hands down, and I should probably tell you why we’re the best before we get to why our pot is the best. So, for one, we were the first recreational-only dispensary in Durango (our 6th Anniversary is coming up on 4/10, and we’ll have all sorts of deals that day), so we’ve had plenty of time to get things perfected. Secondly, we’ve used all that time to dial our customer service, and I promise you it’s the best in town: we just broke 1,000 reviews on Google, and we have a 4.9-star rating, which isn’t something any of the other Durango dispensaries can say. And thirdly, we’re 100% locally owned and operated, so we’re not part of a soulless corporate chain, and this sets us apart from most of the other shops selling recreational marijuana in Durango. Now, let’s get into why our marijuana products are the best…

Best Recreational Marijuana in Durango:

We grow all our top shelf marijuana inhouse, and we don’t wholesale or mass-produce it (unlike many of the other places), so all the plants in our boutique grow facility are given individual love and care. We talk to them and prune them and water them by hand while they’re babies, and we use natural pesticides only, because besides selling it, we also smoke it (and only it). We’d never try to sell you something that we wouldn’t consume ourselves, so you can trust the flower that comes out of our grow. In fact, we even have a live feed of our cultivation playing on a TV in our dispensary just so you can see the magic for yourself.

And thanks to all the love and attention our small, craft cultivation gets, the flower that comes out of it really is the best in southwest Colorado, and I’m not just saying that because of my bias. Our buds are big and beautiful, their structure is dense, they’re covered with sparkling crystals, and the smell is simply euphoric given the insane amounts of terpenes well-grown flower can contain. All you’d have to do is set a gram of our flower next to a gram of someone else’s, and then you’d understand what I mean. And if you ever want to know exactly which strains we have available on any given day, just click HERE to see our flower menu.

Marijuana Edibles:

When was the last time you perused our marijuana edibles lineup? If it’s been a while, please click HERE to see our new marijuana edibles menu, because it’s way too long to list in a blog. We have fast-acting water-soluble edibles; we have long-lasting lipid-soluble edibles; we have infused baked goods and gummies and lozenges and mints; we have infused drinks and THC powder you can use to infuse your own drinks; we have distillate infused edibles and we have solventless edibles; we have everything. Honestly, our edible offerings are curated with you—the mature consumer type, with a refined taste—in mind, so I promise we have in stock the type of edibles you love (as a pro tip, all our edibles are 15% off on Tuesdays).

Cannabis Concentrates in Durango:

Seriously, we have them all, and we’re the only dispensary in Durango that can make this claim. The reason for this is that we have our very own Hash Factory, and it’s the only company in Colorado making traditional, kief-based concentrates such as Moroccan and Lebanese Hash, and our dispensary is the only one in town that sells them (but they’re also available at over 200 dispensaries in other cities all across Colorado, and for a list, click HERE).

But if you’re not a fan of old-school hashish, we also have all the new stuff, too. You can click HERE to see our concentrate lineup, or you can click HERE to see our cartridge offerings, but I wasn’t exaggerating when I said we had “all” the concentrates. We have THCa Diamonds, two different tiers of Live Resin, the best Live Rosin available, CRC BHO, three different kinds of wax, and four different kinds of shatter. For carts, we have half-gram, and full-gram, we have CO2, BHO, PHO, Live Resin, Live Rosin, and even ethanol-distilled oil carts. We have Pax Pods and Airo Pro Pods and standard 510-thread carts. For real, if you can’t find a dab or a cart here that you like, it probably doesn’t exist.

So, instead of googling “marijuana near me” and ending up somewhere you shouldn’t go, simply put 208 Parker Avenue, Durango, Colorado into google maps, and come to The Greenery where the service and products are unbeatable, because We’re Your Best Buds!

Best Bud of the Month: Ryley – Budtender

Posted on March 2, 2021 - 8:07 pm

Ryley is the goofy one; the one always laughing and enjoying her time here at The Greenery. And really, we love her for it. Meetings are more fun with Ryley in them; the retail floor is livelier when Ryley is there; our company as a whole is a happier place now that Ryley is on the team. She’s quick with a smile and a joke, and the organic excitement she feels while working in Durango’s best dispensary is palpable. Just like the rest of us, she LOVES marijuana, so if you’re looking for an enthusiastic budtender who knows her stuff, just ask for her when you come in; you won’t be disappointed.

But Ryley is one of our newest staff members, so you might not have had the chance to meet her. Well, here it is:

About your Best Bud:

Q. When did you start working for The Greenery?

Ryley. September 9th, 2020!

Q. What’s your favorite way to enjoy marijuana?

Ryley. My favorite way to consume Marijuana would definitely be smoking it, out of a bong preferably! Although I do use edibles every now and then.

Q. What’s your favorite outdoor activity?

Ryley. Long boarding, snowboarding, and anything to do with my dogs.

Q. Tell us about your pet.

Ryley. I have three pets. Two dogs and one cat! Bean is my Border Collie and Mia is my pit bull, and Berlioz is my blue Russian kitty. My dogs love being outdoors, and messing with my cat, they like snuggling, and just being a part of anything they can be.

Q. Which station do you stream while you’re working at The Greenery?

Ryley. Rock, underground rap, old school hip hop, indie. Just depends on whatever I’m feeling that day!

Q. What do you like most about working at The Greenery?

Ryley. I like my co-workers and the environment we’ve created here with one another. I like that we can all be ourselves!

And we love that Ryley feels comfortable enough here at The Greenery to be herself, because it brightens everyone’s day. Honestly, did you notice that Ryley used four exclamation points to answer five questions? That level of excitement is why Ryley has done so well here. Outside of work, Ryley is a new mom, a young wife, and an animal lover. Here at work, she’s a lovely team member, a fan favorite to our customers, and she’s Your Best Bud for March. Thank you, Ryley!

King of Diamonds in Durango

Posted on February 23, 2021 - 8:15 pm

No, the “King of Diamonds” isn’t a playing card: it’s the most potent cannabis concentrate you can buy, but we’ll get to that in a second. The real reason I’m writing this is to tell you about all the new and exciting products we’re adding to our shelves for the spring season.

I mean, variety is important, right? It’s been a while since we revamped our lineup, and since I shop only at The Greenery, I noticed recently that our edible and concentrate selections in particular hadn’t changed in a while, so we put our heads together and freshened our offerings with all sorts of stuff, the first of which was the King of Diamonds from Empire.

Look… if you call yourself a dab connoisseur, but you’ve never tried pure diamonds, you need to get in here ASAP before you lose your title. Technically speaking, The King of Diamonds dab is pure THCa crystalline, and since it usually tests at 99.98%, it’s the purest, most potent concentrate on earth. From a distance, this stuff looks exactly like quartz crystal, and it’s difficult to believe that it came from a marijuana plant, but I’ll explain. What they do to make this stuff is to first produce Live Resin: fresh-frozen flower is blasted with butane, and then the resulting oil is cured, which causes THCa crystals to start growing. At this point, the concentrate is simple Live resin, or “diamonds and terp sauce,” but the diamonds themselves still contain some of the yellow terpenes from the plant. So, the geniuses over at Empire take the Live Resin a step further through a process called “recrystallization.” Basically, they take the yellow diamonds out of the Live Resin, melt them down with acetic acid and hexane, and then they let the solution form new crystals, which end up being nearly 100% pure THCa. Crazy, right? And since the THC is left in its acid form, THCa, eating this stuff won’t get you high in the slightest. It’s an inert compound that won’t affect you in a psychotropic manner until you apply heat in your dab rig, which decarboxylates the cannabinoids; science is fun when it pertains to marijuana. And to dab this stuff is to experience something truly unique: the taste is almost nonexistent, and the high is wonderfully bright and clean. We simply love this stuff.

But if you’re a fan of the terp-rich taste that comes from standard Live Resin, we’ve still got you covered. We’ve always sold the best Live Resin on earth from Green Dot, but it’s a tad costly, so we just brought on the Live Resin from West Edison. This stuff is super saucy and potent, and if you get it on Waxy Wednesday, it’s barely over $33 per gram, which is a screaming deal for a concentrate of this quality.

Now, on to edibles! This category is near and dear to my heart because I love the convenience and long-lasting high provided by edibles, and I can say honestly that The Greenery now sells the best edible on earth: Dialed In Gummies. You see, most gummies are infused with hydrocarbon extracts made with butane or other chemical solvents. But Dialed In is made with solventless rosin: they press ice-water-extracted bubble hash in a steam press to squeeze out the cannabinoids. So, this new edible was made without any chemicals whatsoever, and since solventless rosin was used, the gummies retain the terpenes, and the high you get from these is as close to a smoked flower high as you can get without smoking flower. Simply put, Dialed In gummies are a game changer.

But just like all gummies, these can melt in the high heat of summer, so we also brought on one of Colorado’s most popular gummy brands, Green Hornet. These gummies are always consistent, but more importantly, they’re individually packaged. So, if you make the rookie mistake of leaving these in your car and they melt, they’ll still stay separate thanks to the packaging, and all you have to do is throw them in the fridge to make them solid again. This makes them perfect for camping and transporting, which is exactly the type of forethought that makes The Greenery Durango’s best dispensary.

And we also brought on the Quiq Chocolates from Incredibles. They’re also packaged individually, so they’re the best chocolate product for summer months, but more importantly, they’re fast acting. With most edibles, the THC is lipid-soluble, so it needs to bind with fats and be processed in your liver before you feel it. But with these new Quiq Chocolates (and with quite a few of the other edibles we sell, such as Wana), the THC has been nano-encapsulated to make it water-soluble. This means the THC permeates the semi-permeable cell walls in your body, and you can start to feel the high in as little as 15 minutes, which is perfect for impatient stoners.

Finally, we brought on the S’mores Bar from Incredibles for obvious reasons. This 100mg THC bar is made with mini marshmallows and chunks of graham crackers… can you imagine what it would taste like to make an actual s’more with this bar instead of boring non-infused chocolate? Well, we can, and that’s way we started selling it. You’re welcome.

Since you made it this far, I’m going to do something we’ve never done before and give you a sneak peek at the products “coming soon to a dispensary near you” (that would be us). Usually, we keep this stuff quiet because we don’t want the lesser dispensaries in town to get wind of what the best one is doing, but I love our customers, so I’ll divulge a few secrets and tell you what we’re bringing on in the coming months.

First, we’re also going to bring on The Jack of Diamonds from Empire to go right alongside their King. With the Jack version, they grind their large diamonds down into a fine powder that looks like ground table salt. I know that sounds a bit weird at first, but when you figure out that you can roll some of the pure THCa powder into a joint, or sprinkle it into a recipe for a homemade edible, the lightbulb above your head should start blinking.

Secondly, we’re about to order Live Sauce Carts from Harmony for our shelves. The Live Sauce (which is just terpene-rich Live Resin) from Harmony represents the pinnacle of cannabis vapes, and you wouldn’t believe the price if I told you, so I’ll save that surprise for when you arrive.

And lastly, if you’re a fan of edibles like I am, the future is bright for you here at The Greenery. Soon, we’ll have the cannabutter-infused cookies and brownies from Sweet Grass available for sale, and these things taste just like the treats grandma used to make, but they get you high. For hard lozenges, up until now, we’ve sold only the Sweet Pieces from Mountain High, but we’re about to have the Suck It from Canyon available, and I love these things because they contain only 2.5mg per piece (with 40 pieces per package), meaning you can eat quite a few of them if you have a high tolerance instead of having just one, which isn’t the case with most edibles.

We’re also bringing on Mr. Moxey’s Mints, which are the best mints ever in my opinion, and they originated on the west coast, so you know this edible is vetted and awesome. And finally, for all you shoppers who just need a quick and easy single-serving edible, we’re bringing on both Ganjalas and Pressies. The Ganjalas are delectable single-serving taffies made with solventless cannabutter, and they’re a local favorite produced next door in Telluride, so they have one heck of a cult following. And the pressies are quick and easy tablets that deliver 10mg THC per serving, and each one will cost you $4, which makes this the cheapest high you can find in our shop, period.

Boom! You made it to the end. I’m sorry this one was so long, but the list of new marijuana products we’re adding this summer deserves the attention. And as always, if we didn’t add to our lineup something you’d like to see, please just shoot a message to info@durangogreenery.com, and I’ll look into it. It’s very important to us as Durango’s highest-rated dispensary to offer all the things you want, and to always come fresh with a new variety of products to keep you excited every year, because We’re Your Best Buds!

Solventless Hash Oil in Durango

Posted on February 5, 2021 - 5:32 pm

Technically, “solventless” isn’t a word, but we’ll pretend like it is just like everyone else in the cannabis industry. Anyway, this post is overdue because quite a few of you have been coming and asking for vape cartridges that aren’t filled with BHO or anything else that’s extracted with hydrocarbons, and until recently, CO2 was the best we could do, but that’s over now because we recently put the Live Rosin carts from Dab Logic on our shelves.

But first, I should back up just in case you have no clue what I’m talking about. When most cannabis vape oil is made, they start with dried flower. Then they grind it up finely, bake it to decarboxylate the cannabinoids, and then they put it in an extraction vessel (which looks like a big metal tube). And then they “blast” some sort of solvent through that tube, which separates the cannabis oil from the plant material, and then that oil is put into a vape cartridge. If a hydrocarbon such as butane was used instead of CO2—which is often the case, because butane is a more caustic solvent that removes more from the plant material—they must remove the solvent from the oil thanks to Colorado’s regulations. So, the oil must go into a purge oven before being put into cartridges: the purge oven heats the oil and creates a vacuum, which pulls from the oil all the residual solvents.

This is why BHO (butane hash oil) has never scared me—I trust the manufacturers we use for vendors, and I know their product has been tested for residual solvents to make sure it’s below Colorado’s permissible level. Frankly, I’m more worried about the butane that gets into my system by using a butane lighter to smoke regular pot (we sell hemp wick in our Durango dispensary if it bothers you as well), so the tested, butane-derived concentrates we sell don’t bother me in the slightest.

That being said, there are still plenty of people out there who avoid hydrocarbon-extracted concentrates for one of two reasons: one, they’re worried about the residual butane, and two, they like the taste and high of solventless extracts. The former isn’t a big deal thanks to the testing, but I get the latter preference completely. Solvents such as CO2 and butane work well to remove cannabis oil from the plant, but they leave quite a bit behind, meaning the high you get from BHO will never be as complex as a flower high, and even though the butane has been removed, hydrocarbon extracts have a certain taste to them that some people simply don’t like, which is valid. And that’s where solventless hash oil, or “SHO” comes in, bringing us full circle back to where this blog started.

Rosin and Bubble Hash are two examples of solventless hashes because both products are made with only water, heat, and pressure, but both products are solids, so they don’t do you any good when it comes to vape pens; you need SHO for that. But this stuff hasn’t been around for long, which makes sense: you don’t need to be a scientist to figure out that it’s extraordinarily difficult to turn a plant into vape liquid, so it took this burgeoning industry of ours quite some time to figure it out. But we finally got it done, and here’s how:

First, instead of starting with dried, cured flower, to make SHO, producers start with “fresh-frozen flower,” which is frozen with dry ice immediately after harvest. They do this because when you let flower dry, many of the terpenes evaporate, which means flavor is lost. The next step is to take that fresh-frozen flower and give it a bath in Bubble Hash (which is separated from the flower with ice water and mechanical agitation), and this is done to bump up the potency in the final product. Then, the bubble-hash bathed, fresh-frozen flower is wrapped in a mesh bag before being put in a press, which applies gentle heat and pressure to squeeze out from the plant matter all the hash oil contained within. After this step, you have something called “Live Rosin,” which we also sell in our Durango dispensary, but it’s still a solid, so one more step is required. Next, the Live Rosin is put in a large, deep tray to be baked. This denatures the Live Rosin and makes all the solids float, which are scraped off the liquid below, which is then gathered and put into cartridges as finalized SHO.

Crazy, right? And if you think about it, even though SHO carts look like other carts, this complicated process is why you end up paying more for solventless vapes, but the price is worth it. The flavor from these things is as good as it gets, and since everything was removed from the flower mechanically, and since the flower was fresh-frozen, the high from a SHO cart mimics the complex one you get from flower, which is awesome. So, if you’ve never tried an SHO cart, I recommend running here to get one, because they really are that wonderful.

And if you’re just now realizing that most concentrates are made with hydrocarbons, and you’d like to try something that isn’t besides the new Dab Logic carts, we’ve got you covered. When it comes to solventless, full-melt concentrates, we always have Live Rosin from Kush Masters on our shelves. This is the solid form of SHO that didn’t undergo the denaturing process to make it a liquid, so it looks a lot like wax, but it’s as true to the plant as any concentrate out there, meaning it’s the best solventless dab on earth.

Or, if you’re old-school like me and you don’t dab, but you’d still like a solventless hash experience, The Greenery is Durango’s only dispensary that sells traditional, kief-based hashish. We have our own Hash Factory that produces Moroccan and Lebanese hash, both of which are completely solventless, and all you need to do to step things up a notch is sprinkle some of either on top of you bowl (or roll some into your joint).

But what about all you edible fans? Did you guys know that most gummies are infused with CO2 oil, or that some of them contain butane-extracted cannabinoids just like hydrocarbon dabs? Well, for you, we’ve always sold Love’s Oven edibles such as their Turtle Brownies and Chocolate Chip Cookies, both of which are made with canna-butter, which is technically solventless. With edibles such as theses, cannabis flower is mixed into butter and then heated, which causes the cannabinoids to infuse the butter solventlessly (which definitely isn’t a word). But in the coming weeks, we’re going to expand our solventless edible selection by introducing “Dialed In” gummies, which are made with the same SHO you’d find in a Dab Logic vape cart, which is very exciting, because it means you’ll be able to get a flower-like high from an edible (and because these things are delicious).

And that’s that! SHO carts are the newest “it” thing in the cannabis industry, and we have the best ones in town, so come see us. And for that matter, we always strive to bring in the newest and greatest innovations such as SHO carts before everyone else in Durango, because We’re Your Best Buds!

Best Bud of the Month: Jewel – Bud Tender

Posted on January 21, 2021 - 9:54 pm

About your Best Bud:

Jewel is part of a younger generation, one that simply doesn’t understand the struggle that came from being a stoner twenty-something years ago, because way back then, Jewel was still in diapers instead of waiting in dark parking lots for pot like the rest of us. And as soon as she became of age and moved to Colorado, she walked into a brave new world where marijuana is legal, and oddly enough, the first job she landed was with us, right here in Durango’s best dispensary.

But she has a true love and sense of appreciation for the cannabis plant, despite never knowing the struggle, and her level of professionalism is far beyond her years. She stands behind our bud counter day after day selling weed with a comfort that might come from not knowing a time when this was illegal, and she does her best to research marijuana deeply so she can educate our customers right along with their purchases. Frankly, we love Jewel, but you don’t know her as well as we do, so here’s your chance to meet her:

About your Best Bud:

1.) When did you start working for The Greenery?

Jewel. I started on September 30th, 2019.

2.) What’s your favorite way to enjoy marijuana?

Jewel. I like just about any form of cannabis, but I really enjoy rolling my own joints and dabs, too. Fun fact: my first lesson on rolling came from an old German woman in Dakotas. For dabs, I think half of the fun is hunting around for different strains and consistencies of wax.

3.) What’s your favorite outdoor activity?

Jewel. I’m on the lazy side so I love hikes and yoga.

4.) Tell us about your pet.

Jewel. I don’t have any myself, but I do adore my sister’s pets, a pit-bull as sweet as her name, Daisy, and two cats, Pearl and Spot.

5.) Which station do you stream while you’re working at The Greenery?

Jewel. It usually has something to do with the Revivalists, Unlike Pluto, or Panic! At The Disco.

6.) What do you like most about working at The Greenery?

Jewel. It’s pretty cool I can chat with my managers/coworkers about their experiences with cannabis and it’s just a regular workplace conversation.

Isn’t that exactly how it should be? There are still quite a few people out there who see cannabis as something salacious, when really, it’s just a plant that causes far fewer problems than other legal intoxicants such as alcohol, so shouldn’t all conversations about marijuana be “just a regular workplace conversation”?

And that’s another reason Jewel is a Rockstar, even though she might not know it: by being a young professional in the cannabis industry, she’s helping our culture to normalize this Coloradan experiment of legal, regulated weed. Jewel’s dedication to education and professionalism is helping us all turn a new leaf, pun intended, and for that, she’s Your Best Bud for January. Thank you, Jewel!

Marijuana Terpene Profiles

Posted on January 16, 2021 - 4:20 am

I hate to break it to you, but the old “sativa or indica” choice that’s always been put in front of you is dying slowly, and soon, the choice will disappear completely in most dispensaries. Consider yourself forewarned. But frankly, this is a good thing, something that’s overdue, and I’ll tell you why, but first, we need to back up a bit.

For the record, Sativa cannabis and Indica cannabis constitute one species of plant—the two designations simply look different, much in the same way a Pug and a Great Dane are the same species of dog, even though it’s difficult to imagine the two breeds making puppies. With indica and sativa, the former is short and squat with fat, dark green leaves, and the latter is tall and lanky, with bright green leaves. The two forms of the same species simply look different because they evolved in different regions of the globe, so they took on different physical traits (but the THC remained chemically identical between the two categories).

Now, there are some physical traits that you can see, and some you cannot, such as the terpene content within a plant. To back up once more, terpenes are aromatic compounds that exist in almost every plant I can think of, not just cannabis, but smoking different terpenes may elicit different effects. For example, myrcene can be deeply relaxing as where limonene can be bright and uplifting, according to most smokers. This is where we get into the whole “indica vs. sativa” thing, because usually, the Indica strains contain the relaxing terpenes as where the sativa strains contain terpenes that fall on the other side of the spectrum. However, cannabis growers have been cross breeding all the strains out there for decades, and as such, it’s exceedingly difficult these days to find a true indica or sativa; just about everything out there is a hybrid.

And, hold on to your seats, it gets worse. If you’re a diehard cannabis connoisseur who’s reading this and saying to yourself, “this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about because all indica strains are relaxing and all sativa strains are energetic,” I have news for you. When it comes to plants, Sean Miles knows more than both you and I put together. He’s a researcher at Dalhousie University who specializes in agricultural diversity, and he considers the present-day designation between indica and sativa to be completely fictitious because there’s no meaningful difference between the two at all per genetics. In fact, he published a peer-reviewed study on the topic you can read HERE that proves scientifically that it’s mostly nonsense.

So, can you see what I’m getting at? Everything started with the sativa and indica designation, but then everything was muddled due to the crossbreeding. But since the market started with the two indica/sativa categories, growers have been choosing one or the other designation to slap on their plants as a label, even though it’s not entirely accurate. The way they’ve been doing this is by looks: if the plant ends up short and dark, they call it an indica even though it might contain sativa terpenes, and if it’s tall and bright, they call it a sativa, even though it might be relaxing to smoke. It’s all very illogical and it doesn’t do you a bit of good as a shopper.

To be clear, here in our Durango dispensary, we’ve always classified our flower by effect, not by appearance, and we’ve paid extra for terpene tests at the lab in the past to take out the guesswork. If we grew something that looked like an indica but contained terpenes associated with sativa strains, we called it “sativa” because we wanted to make sure our customers got their desired effect. Yes, we smoke our flower often (VERY often), and besides the testing, we follow our noses and smell for specific terpenes before choosing a designation. Granted, this takes a bit of practice and experience, but it also takes knowledge, and that’s something I can give you. The next time you’re in our Durango dispensary, take some time up at the flower counter and ask what the strain smells like, and after you buy it, sniff it heartedly in an attempt to identify these terpenes:

Myrcene: This terpene is herbal, and at times, skunky (and hops also contains this terpene, which is why beer can smell skunky as well). If you smell this scent in one of our jars, expect a smoke that might be relaxing.

Pinene: Yes, this terpene is also found in pine trees, and it smells much like you’d expect. If you smell this, you might experience a medium-relaxing smoke that won’t glue you to the couch.

Caryophyllene: This terpene is difficult to pronounce, but easy to smell: it’ll remind you of spice or pepper, and it’s right in the middle of the road per effect.

Limonene: this is the citrus terpene that smells like lemon rinds, and it’s moderately energetic according to some smokers.

Terpinolene: This terpene is my favorite because it’s the fruity one. It can smell like many things depending on your pallet (anything from a strawberry to a lilac bush), and if you detect it, plan on a possibly energetic high with tons of euphoria.

Fun, right? When buying flower, if you let your nose decide rather that relying on your budtender, you can get an idea for what the high will be like (but you should still trust our budtenders because we do this for a living). And if you’ve ever visited one of the newer, swankier dispensaries in Denver, you already know that a few shops up there are abandoning the terms “indica” and “sativa” completely; you won’t find them anywhere in the newer places because it’s all been replaced by accurate terpene profiles.

But again, please don’t feel like you need to do all the work yourself. If you’d like to come in and make us do the sniffing for you by simply asking for a cultivar that we find to be relaxing, that’s good enough for us, and we’ll do our best to give you exactly what you want, because We’re Your Best Buds!

Cannabis Terms

Posted on January 9, 2021 - 4:51 pm

I love writing about words, and hopefully, you love reading about them because that’s what you’re about to do. But before that, you need to know that there are two paradigms when it comes to words: “prescriptivist” and “descriptivist”—people in the former camp believe that words shouldn’t change because we should “prescribe” to existing grammatical rules; people with the latter paradigm believe we should let language evolve and simply “describe” the changes that occur.

Frankly, people in the descriptivist camp usually win because language is a fluid thing, always evolving, and there’s no way to stop it, so we might as well embrace and describe the changes. But that’s annoying. For instance, did you know that the word “irregardless” was added to the dictionary not too long ago? It’s not a real word, but people used it often enough to make it one in the descriptivist eyes of the Oxford English Dictionary (but they threw some shade at it because the listed definition is “regardless”).

Anyway, my point in all of this is that the exact same thing is happening in the cannabis industry; there are a few words we’ve been using erroneously for so long that they’ve become “real” words we use every day. But in an odd twist, I’ve noticed that the cannabis industry is full of purists, so instead of simply adopting these not-so-real words, there’s a push out there to correct things. And that’s what I wanted to talk about this week just so you could get your lingo dialed if you’re a pot prescriptivist.

For instance, let’s take a look at the word “strain.” Speaking from a botanical point of view, a strain is any plant that’s a descendant from a genetically modified organism. And since the different “strains” of cannabis that you can find on our shelves were produced by crossbreeding non-modified plants, they’re not really “strains” at all, but rather, they’re “varietals” or “cultivars.” Both of those words are a bit more cumbersome than “strain,” but they’re both more accurate, so I’ve noticed that our industry is abandoning “strain” (but please feel free to say whatever you want when you walk into our Durango dispensary, because we’re not sticklers).

Another example would be the word “edible.” If you think about it, we call the infused drinks we sell “edibles” even though they’re really “drinkables,” and other edibles are even trickier, such as tinctures or submucosal strips. So, true to form, our purist industry is starting to call edibles “ingestibles” (even though it’s not a word, technically), and this is something I heard directly from the editor of High Times Magazine. So, if you want to come across as a true connoisseur the next time you walk into a dispensary, ask for an ingestible instead of an edible, but be prepared for eye rolls.

Actually, just so you know, not even the word “marijuana” is safe, even though it’s important, and people are starting to say “cannabis” instead, because unlike marijuana, it’s not rooted in racism (click HERE for an explanation). However, presently, the word “marijuana” is used to describe cannabis with more than 0.3% THC by dry weight, and the term “hemp” is used to describe cannabis with a lower percentage, so we don’t currently have a word besides marijuana that fits, ergo, we’re sticking with it for now (for a much deeper explanation, click HERE).

And then there’re the nebulous words “Indica” and “Sativa,” which, as it turns out, don’t mean much of anything. I’ve written about this time and time again, but not all Indica varietals are relaxing and not all Sativa cultivars are stimulating. The plants just look a bit different, which doesn’t always translate into the smoke, so now, we’re coming close to abandoning the two words entirely and focusing on terpene profiles. So, the pros that come into our shop usually ask for a “relaxing terpene profile” as opposed to an “Indica strain,” given that the term is doubly inaccurate, but again, we won’t judge you either way.

But the weirdest one of all is “flower,” which is the term you’ll hear everyone use nowadays to describe good ol’ ganja. If you’re as old as I am, you referred to smokable marijuana as “bud” or “weed” or “pot” for all your life, but if you think about it, the “buds” we sell are in fact flower buds (in my opinion), so switching to calling it all “flower” like we do today isn’t much of a stretch. However, of course, that has given way to a whole new argument as to whether or not cannabis is a fruit or a vegetable, and now, some people are calling it “fruit,” which is something I simply cannot get behind. For real, if you walked into a dispensary and asked to buy some “fruit,” you’d end up with blank stares as opposed to actually getting weed (click HERE if you’d like to jump into the vegetable/fruit debacle).

Wasn’t that fun? If you’re into extra credit and you want to learn more about the terms associated with cannabis that we use in our industry, click HERE. Or, if you don’t care about semantics and you just want to get high, come see us at 208 Parker Avenue and use whatever word you’d like when you get here, because no matter what you call a “strain” of “marijuana,” We’re Your Best Buds!

Best Bud of the Month: Lis McLaughlin – Manufacturing Facility Operations Manager (Hash Queen)

Posted on December 30, 2020 - 9:50 pm

About your Best Bud:

Lis is the Best Bud you’ll never meet because she spends her days hunkered down in our Hash Factory. She’s the boss lady over there, meaning she manages every aspect of our Factory like a ninja, and she makes 100% of the concentrates we sell, so if you’ve ever smoked any of our Moroccan or Lebanese Hash, Lis got you high without ever meeting you. Isn’t that insane? And if you think about it, it goes even deeper because we wholesale our hashish to over 200 dispensaries across Colorado, so really, how many people has Lis gotten high? It’s mindboggling to crunch numbers like that, but it’s safe to say that Lis’ work has had an impact both right here in Durango, and across the state. So, since you’ll never get to meet Lis, here’s a little more about her so you can get to know December’s Best Bud of the Month:

Q. When did you start working for The Greenery?

Lis. August 14th, 2019. Yes, I do remember the exact date.

Q. What’s your favorite way to enjoy marijuana?

Lis.  While I enjoy a healthy amount of flower, edibles, and hash, my absolute favorite is thick, sticky Moroccan hash smoked out of a chillum (and I’m not just saying that because I make it). I prefer a strain conducive to creativity while surrounded by books with a notebook at my disposal and a pen in hand.

Q. What’s your favorite outdoor activity?

Lis. Anything in the mountains, be it on foot or on my bike.

Q. Tell us about your pet.

Lis. Wally is a derpy, 75lbs, three-year-old Olde English Bulldogge whom I rescued in May. He’s the Hash Factory’s resident “guard dog.” His favorite activities include, tug-o-war, gobbling snow, loving on his friends (i.e. the MIP employees), playing the lap dog with his dad, blessing everyone with his farts, and ferociously barking at anyone who knocks on any door anywhere near him. I also have a cat, Lil’ Weezy. He enjoys harassing things, cleaning himself, and playing fetch (but only when he’s run out of things to harass).

Q. Which station do you stream while you’re working at The Greenery?

Lis. Typically, I’m either jamming stoner rock, underground hip-hop, old school punk rock, or listening to a scientific presentation of some kind.

Q. What do you like most about working at The Greenery?

Lis. The Hash Factory is a great place to work for numerous reasons. Much of it is due to the cohesive, enjoyable work environment, which results from the efforts of our amazing team. My absolute favorite time spent at work, however, is in the cook room with my headphones on crafting quality hashish. I never knew I could make a career out of my love of science, artistic creation, and cannabis. The satisfaction I get from handmaking something that people appreciate is unparalleled.

***

See what I mean? She loves making hash just for you, and not just because that’s what we pay her to do. It’s a latent passion of hers that she discovered way back in the day when she first started here—at one point, she was the only employee over at our Hash Factory, and she started out as a Production Assistant. But in the year and a half that followed, Lis truly came into her own, and now she runs a five-person team that pumps out Colorado’s only authentic hash, which you can find across the state in THESE friendly dispensaries. She’s helped us make a name for ourselves as a purveyor of the highest-quality, solventless hash, and we wouldn’t be where we are today without her, nor would we be able to reach the heights for which we’re aiming.

So, Lis, thank you for everything you do. You’re an integral part of our company and family, you’ve made our success possible by focusing on quality and compliance, and you’ve earned your place here time and time again, which is why you’re January’s Best Bud of the Month!

Store Hours:

7 Days a Week:
8am - 10pm

Contact Us:

(970) 424-5888

762 Horizon Drive
Grand Junction, CO 81506

We’re conveniently located right off I-70 on Horizon Drive.

Your opinion matters to us

Whether you think we’re awesome, or have suggestions on how we can do better, we’d love to hear about your experience with us online or in-person at our store.

RV Parking Available • Accessible Parking & ADA Compliant • Debit Cards Accepted

© The Grand Junction Greenery 2025