My gosh. I spent the first two hours of my day stomping, squelching and gliding through the woods around the cabin. There was the spectre of a fog bank sitting low in the East end of this hanging valley, a phenomenon that only I am privy to, here at the end of the road. Mornings like these are so sacred and pure. I feel the pointer finger of God smoothing the crystal of my heart, gliding around the curving edges, making my spirit rise up from a glowing hum to full song. I am strummed by the Creator, blown into like a flute, resonating and rumbling like a bassoon! Oh! The mornings here are perched so solidly on the rotting foundation of autumn, it’s exquisite. The details. The details are magnificent and minute. They fling themselves at me, one by one, a flickering and prickly barrage of beauty. I catch the beauty as I can. Every moment the sun rises higher and the details change in the hands of the light. I’m going to die too fast, burn out, I’m living too much all at once. I’m living with my eyes wide open and my heart so awfully full that I think I suffer miniature soul implosions multiple times a day. Look at this world! Look at this world we live in! Open your eyes! Hold out your hands. It’s all a gift.
I love it so dearly, so zealously, so creatively.
I love it.
This is going to be an incredible week. I can feel it in my bones, the energy building and unfolding, like there are crystals sprouting in the blunt corners of my joints, diamonds bursting from the striations and bends of my muscles and sinew. I’m a geode. I’m going to look past the grit of my skin, crack myself open and spill a little bright shining, jagged, unrefined beauty into the eyes of every beholder.
:::POST SCRIPTUS:::
Gird your loins, tomato lovers, and prepare to wield your soup spoons! I’ve been meaning to share this soup recipe with you for the better part of a month. I am addicted to it and I’ve been making a couple batches a week, while the fresh tomatoes from the base garden are peaking.
Fresh Tomato Soup
1/4 cup olive oil (or whatever oil you wish)
2 large onions sliced or chopped
2 medium carrots chopped
2 celery stalks chopped
7 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp orange zest (I also squeeze the zested orange juice into the soup)
8 cups chopped tomatoes
1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
2 bay leaves
2-3 tbsp fresh thyme
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
ground pepper to taste
—————————————
Heat oil in sauce pan, add onions, carrots, celery garlic and orange zest — cook until veggies are softened. Add the rest of the ingredients, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove bay leaves, allow soup to cool and then transfer it into a blender. I like to blend it until it’s slightly chunky.
Serve it up! We like it with grilled cheese sandwiches, naturally, on home baked bread. So hot, hearty and delicious! Perfect warm-you-up-from-the-inside food for autumn.
It is an amazing world! These photos are pure magic. Gorgeous!!
Thank you, Laney.
There is nothing like nature, is there, even when it is a simple landscape… good morning j xo
Good morning, friend!
“I’m a geode”. this is perfect .
xx
*twinkle twinkle*
Being so near a large river, I am blessed with foggy mornings more often than not, and it is among my most favorite things about living here. The fog puts such a beautiful quiet on everything, and makes it easy to feel full and calm of heart and mind.
xx
Fog = Magic
It’s like watching the world un-swaddle in the morning…like the sun pushes the blankets off the bed of the planet. Beautiful. Hushed. A little sacred.
This former flute and bassoon player absolutely needed this post today. It brought some brightness into what has been a dark day. And what you said about being a geode? My heart burst. I hope you don’t mind me tucking that little gem away into my journal for a future reminder.
YOU WERE A BASSOONIST???
Awesome.
Yes. Please tuck that gem away in your journal.
X
I was!! (That reaction made my day by the way.) I only played for about 3 years though. The music teacher decided to add one to the high school band and needed a volunteer. I raised my hand and the rest is history.
What a beautiful colours….. i love it!!
THanks Joaquina!
Lately, every time I read you, combined with observing your beautiful pictures, you suddenly make me cry.
I hope I would dominate in a better way my english so I could express more of what I feel. But I still feel what you say and what you mean and for me it’s simply enough, and it’s a lot!
Thank you for sharing yourself.
A virtual hug from a stranger from Argentina!
Oh man.
Music to my ears.
You know, I work really hard to photograph and write and create in original ways — by original I mean that my goal isn’t to create or write or photograph something that has never been seen before in the history of mankind. I don’t really think that’s possible…
By *original* I mean original to me, to myself, wherein the writing, the inspiration for the photograph, the design for the piece of jewelry wells up out of ME and is a honest and accurate representation of my life, emotions and state of being at a precise time in a specific place.
To hear that you are connecting with those efforts so strongly tells me that I am successful lately in honestly conveying myself in an original manner that is rooted in truth.
SO, THANK you. For being here. And for making yourself vulnerable too, and reaching out.
XX
How I love this post and your bright spirit! I feel like I am with you in your dewy, webby world. It is a glorious day.
Hello darlin’!
Wish you could come out with me in the webby mornings.
I know you would be wonderful company and would be touched by it all, in a similar manner.
XXXXX
Hi Jillian!
I am new to jewelry making and found your beautiful blog thru the jewelry making portal. For the past couple of weeks I have been immersed in your life/blog from 2007 on. Jeeze it really had a grip on me!! Love the pics and the words. I also kinda wonder if you have discovered audio books? With those you can ‘read’/clean house/make jewelry/road trip/garden-yard work at the same time. They are expensive to buy, but I get them from the library. I enjoy your comments about the prairie because even tho I live in Seattle now, I am from Michigan, about 30 minutes form Lake Michigan. I always say the Northwest looks like Michigan, except for the mountains! Everybody has a story, I am enjoying yours.
lovely, lovely, a thousand times lovely!!
every image, every word put forth, an intent to claim a beautiful and fulfilling life and to share it completely with anyone willing to receive it!
i love you for that.
xx
I love you for loving me for that.
XX
Thanks for the lovely lines, levity and light! (As usual!)
RIAN!
I want to be friends with you, in real life. Just so you know.
Love it when you are here.
X
Me toooo!
(I do come here often.)
I think we would get on like a happy pair of wild things. PLUS, I love Dawson. Just so you know. 🙂
I agree! I’ll show you my mountains if you show me yours.
Happy day!
that recipe was sure timely….i was looking for something to do with a bunch of ripe tomatoes today, and that was it!! i didn’t have orange or fresh thyme, so i subbed lime and thai basil. amazing. i whizzed it fairly fine and it is dynamite!! hoping to maybe make another batch before tomato season is done at the market. thanks beautiful!
xo
SUPPOSEDLY, it freezes beautifully!!! Make as much as you can! LOVE the lime and basil substitute. I’ll try that next.
ALSO, I owe you a whopper of an email. Forgive the delays.
XX
of COURSE I’ll forgive you. I understand the busy-ness of life, and there was nothing in the one I sent you that can’t wait.
Also, if I get my act together this weekend, i might get a whole bunch more Tomatoes from the market and make a large batch of the soup and can it instead of freezing – since my freezer is already filled to the brim (with leftovers, home-smoked pork chops and ham hocks, etc etc etc). I’ll let you know how that turns out if i get around to it 🙂
xoxo
Beautiful photos….beautiful post. Autumn has a way of bringing out the best in us! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for being here! X
Dear Noisy Plume, (Though from what I read here, you are anything but noisy. I would say your feet land where you send them, silently, surely.) I am thrilled to have found your blog. Your page was sent to me as a gift from one of my readers who knows that I am presently struggling with a series of attacks from another reader who thinks that my life style is appalling. I raise animals for food. In fields of grass. Or as she puts it I raise them to kill them and eat them. Which is completely true. And I raise them well and eat well! I have ignored the attacks not wishing to join in such a display of bad manners. Anyway Veronica Roth sent me an old post of yours when you had been reacting to someones adverse reaction to your hunting. Your words in that post were good, solid and strong. Lovely to read. And heartening for me. And here I find your beautiful photography, and the beautiful photography of those around you and your stunning words. Thank you. I hope to come back as often as I can and read more. have a glorious day. celi
I am actually VERY noisy — I speak exclusively in exclamations, am prone to squawking, I have a very loud laugh and when I cry I really sob. My life is a loud affair. 🙂 About the only time I am remotely quiet is when I am out alone in nature, even then, half the time I am singing aloud or talking to myself. That’s the solid truth!
Celi, I am sorry to hear you are being attacked for your lifestyle. I, for one, have much respect for any omnivore who makes herself responsible for her own food source. It is hard work. I also have respect for anyone who is vegetarian or vegan or a raw-est. How we eat is a very personal choice, right? It sounds like you are doing a wonderful job. You know, it is an uncomfortable topic, FOOD, the idea that something has to die so we can live (be it a carrot or an elk). What I would suggest is this: Keep your dignity, maintain your honor (and the honor of the animals you’ve harvested to feed yourself) and simply refuse to fight about it. It’s simply a difference of opinion! If someone chooses to hate you for yours, that’s THEIR thing. Everyone is going to have an opinion. Your job is to simply live the very best way you can, according to your conscience and the laws you tether your heart to. The rest really isn’t your business. 🙂
I shared the details of my antelope hunt last year because it was an important moment in my life, as a woman, a woodswoman, an omnivore and a hunter. I did not share the story because I wanted to start a riot! 🙂 Some couldn’t handle it, and that’s ok. I didn’t take it personally. Folks can grow careless and callous about the way they share their thoughts and opinions. Just shake it off. You don’t own any of that. Set it down and walk away.
Bottom line: I think the way you live is beautiful and honest and brave. Don’t be made to feel that it’s anything less than that, not by anyone. Believe in your choices.
Thanks for being here.
XX
and thank you very much for your response. I did refuse to engage in this little battle. It was only small after all, especially when it hit during the week that I was shepherding my gently raised and old fashioned fed (for flavour) animals into the abbatoir and back out again. It is never an easy time. But I do maintain that if I cheerfully sent them off without the proper thank yous and last bottle of beer (the pigs get beer.. don’t tell anyone I am sure there is a rule!) if I could be that callous then I would not deserve to eat the meat. There is a curious intimacy when you deal with an animal right down there at ground level. Raising it from birth to the table. Then surrounding the meat in the vegetables you grew as well. A knowledge, if you like, that is precious. I only grow what we can consume. Nothing is wasted. Even the dogs eat my meat here and the pigs eat the cabbages and eggs and drink the cows milk. I would wear the skins too if I could work out how to cure them but I am in the midwest, no-one even wears leather on their feet out here! Lovely to have met you, do take care.. celi
i love me a mean bowl of homemade tomato soup.
so yummy and heart-warming after a long trek through the bog.
plus, it’s kinda like having Almighty Company right there in your own kitchen.
xx
I think God is made of tomato soup.
Well, that, and other good stuff.
🙂
XX
Spellbinding beauty that you’ve captured with your lens. The spiderwebs are my favorites. I must try to make this soup as I love a hearty tomato soup. No garden for me, but we have a luscious farmer’s market I can visit this weekend. Thank you for the recipe and the beauteous visions of your part of the world. Love to see what you see. 🙂