[Sketching Spring Necklace :: sterling silver]

You’ve done it again.  Your support has helped us over the hump of winter, fed us, clothed us, paid our mortgage, put fuel in our trucks, fed our dogs their kibbles, the cat his tuna and our chickens their grub.  The best way I know how to say thanks is to do a giveaway and to say, thank you, until you know I really, deeply, truly mean it.

Thank you.

So much.

For all you do.

Thank you for reading this blog, for claiming my work (big pieces or small), for the encouraging notes you send me by mail, email, Etsy convo (sorry it takes me so long to respond, I really am the worlds worst emailer).  Thanks for telling me to write a book or to publish a collection of prose and poetry.  Gosh.  Thanks for that.  This is one of my main goals this summer, hold me to it.  Most of all, thanks for being just who you are because there are times when I think of you, or I read your comments on a blog post, and I really feel warm inside and understood and received and like my views and my lifestyle and the very who of me is respected and cherished — whether you live your life similarly or not — and that’s the sort of thing that makes me want to continue in this work and continue sharing my life with you in all the ways that I can.  You are courageously openhearted and open minded.  I’m proud of you for that.  You are part of a beloved community here and having you in my world, in our world, is a blessing.  All day long.  Every day.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR GIVEAWAY ENTRY:

If you would like to enter your name in the drawing for this Sketching Spring Necklace, please simply leave a comment on this blog post.  You can say anything you would like to say.  I would love to know the title of the best book you have read recently or the name of the album you are playing on repeat lately.  If you are shy, just say “Hi!”  There aren’t any rules.

 I’ll randomly draw a winning name as soon as I am settled in the Methow Valley, at our summering grounds.  As always, my giveaway packages are little care packages so be prepared for the arrival of a bevy of love in your mailbox if you are the winner.  PLEASE NOTE:  If your comment does not appear in the comment section immediately it’s because it’s sitting in my behind-the-scenes comment moderation area and I’ll publish it as soon as I have an internet connection up and running once more.

Until then, with abiding affection,

The Noisy Plume

XX

Here’s what happened.  I was running around town all morning long, like a mad hatter, and once I arrived home, I got to cleaning the Airstream in preparation for loading the studio into its summer space.  Halfway between then and now, I found myself working on three of my canvasses in the studio (to my great delight, they’re coming along beautifully).  After painting, I felt a touch hungry so I wandered towards the house, only to stop to hang the wet laundry on the line before making my way to the kitchen.  By the time I finally arrived at the refrigerator and looked inside that cool contraption, I couldn’t imagine what to make myself to eat.  I shut the fridge, turned around, and there was my jar of garbanzo beans I’ve been sprouting the past three days.  Voila!  Fresh hummus.  Here’s how I did it.  You’re going to thank me for a hundred years for this extremely simple recipe.

The Hummus To Rule Them All

1 clove of garlic chopped

1 can of garbanzo beans (half the liquid reserved)

4 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp tahini

1 tsp salt

black pepper to taste

2 tbsp olive oil

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Throw it all in the blender and whip it until it’s smooth-ish, light and fluffy.  Once it has reached a consistency you like, scoop/pour it into your serving container and devour with the aid of fresh veggies, a slab of toasted bread, or tortilla chips.

So easy, it really is criminal.

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Because I am rebellious by nature, I never directly follow a recipe so here are the changes I made:

*I used 3 cloves of garlic instead of 1 (love the stuff, always use more than a recipe calls for).

*I sprouted my own garbanzos instead of using canned garbanzos which is, yes, good for you.  Here is what my sprouter set up looks like.  Very simple.  It’s a mesh screw on lid attached to a mason jar.  Get one as soon as you can.  You can sprout all kinds of stuff:  beans for bean salads, clover, mustard, wheat grass, lentils, chia, ALL types of seeds…broccoli…the list goes on and on.

*I also squeezed two large lemons into my blender instead of using four measly tablespoons of the stuff.  Again.  I really really like lemon, and lime.  My hummus has a very zesty flavor.  If you don’t love the zest, don’t use this much lemon.

*Once I have my garden going in Winthrop, I’ll be adding fresh herbs to this recipe for a little extra zing.

I can’t wait to make this for RW when he gets home from Spokane tomorrow.  He’s going to take one bite and then run out to buy me a brown and white spotted pony.  Yup.  It’s just that good.

Speaking of buying things, this morning I splurged on what is going to really elevate our cooking efforts this summer.  As some of you know, the little cabin in the woods is equipped with only a two burner electric hot plate.  I HATED it last summer.  I hated it with the fire of a thousand burning suns.  This year, I’m going to be baking and doing all kinds of crazy stuff with my new, beautiful, toaster oven.  Oh man.  Just thinking about it puts my turquoise soul in some kind of fuzzy little heaven.  Hit that link and just look at that thing!  I’m going to bake bread, muffins, pizzas…holy coyote!

Holy coyote.

Oh, one last thing, have you seen the Airstream bed?  Robbie finished it!  It’s amazing.  As we all knew it would be.  Yay!

Everything is coming together now and when we go, I’ll go gladly.

[Ruth Necklace & Rings :: sterling silver & 23 karat gold]

I married a man.  Or, I thought I married a man.  It’s more complex than that.  I married fire.  I married the smoke of burning forests and grasslands, the hiss of singed deer as they drop down into lakes and streams, the billowing black that stains lungs and stings eyes, the rasping cough of tall flame.  I married lightning strikes, the violent explosions of tree trunks,  yellow shirts and green pants filthy with ash and sweat, the buzz of chainsaws, the danger of hovering helicopters, the maniacal purr of bulldozers and the crimson stripes of retardant turning mountain slopes to checkerboards.  I married the long, hot kisses of homecoming.  I  married cooking for one.  I married the blown out knees, the compressed vertebrae, the broken bones that come with too many hard landings.  I married the whispering silk of parachutes and the hum of industrial sewing machines.  I married a new lexicon; now I speak Canadian, American and fire.  I married childbearing in my late thirties, or early forties, or not at all.  Maybe I married lonesomeness in old age.  Maybe I married freedom and adventure for all my life.  I married the eternal wait for permanent positions, the bureaucratic crap that comes with federal employment, the tangle of job applications, the hope for interviews, the joy of reunions with our fire family at the start of the season and throughout winter.  I married missing Idaho and all her wild lands and all her dizzy skies.  For now, I am married to the Methow Valley.  I married summers alone but thank God for those short nights and long lasting sunsets and my little cabin in the woods.  I married winters of leisure, with just him and I.  I love winter.  I married the bros.  Then I married all their wives.  I married the last minute work details, the wilderness areas without cell service, the breakdown in communication after too many weeks apart.  I married trying not to cry on the phone.  After all, what can he do about it when he is so far away?  I married the black soot that rims the shower after he washes up.  I married stinky boots.  I married Pendleton whisky in a little green flask — his, not mine.   I married chewing tobacco — not his, theirs.  I married all of these things, but there are things I did not marry.  I did not marry fear, too stillness, evaporation of dreams.  I did not marry resentment.  I did not marry charcoaled wastelands, only clean slates and bald openness which green will velvet and the fuzz of fireweed blossoms will paint magenta.  There is the blessing and curse of opposites, bumping and whirling like magnets at play: I did not marry water, I married flame, though water I may be.  Perhaps this is pure spring creek flowing through me, water siphoned through steady bedrock, filtered with diamonds; a cool, melodic laugh rising up as I trip my way down mountain slopes and cascade in clouds from the razor edges of slate.  Perhaps I am the thing to soften, the thing to wear away the weary skin of tired things, the thing to make room for newness, the thing to quench all of these flames, the thing to unlock the trap of heat, to weight the power of the wind.  Perhaps I am the thing to calm and gently quell, to put out the smoulder of red where it licks against the black of night.  Perhaps, in the end, the true job of a fire wife is to provide for the ache of thirst, to be the small rain when it’s wild flame as far as a man can see.  If so, it’s a good thing I married fire.  I think I’m just what it needs.

[soon the plums will come]

It’s a morning of pure, springtime glory here.  I’m telling you, it’s simply exquisite outside.  When I stepped out the back door of the house this morning, the sunshine came on like thunder, I reached a hand up and shielded my eyes from the light as I scanned the tree tops for the source of bird songs.  Then, oh holy of holies, I took a deep breath in through my nose and smelled the perfumes of the fruit trees in the yard.  Such sweetness.  Such promise.  And oh, the color of the peach blossoms!  I wandered around the yard, yanked at random weeds, rearranged the clematis vines on the trellis of the front porch, and wished I could spend the entire afternoon engineering my succulent garden under the big kitchen window.

We’ve officially tipped off the edge of sanity and into the depths of chaos here, as we seem to do before we make our summer move.  There’s so much to do.  Appointments to make and keep, random errand running, a truck to send into the shop…I’m stalling.  I’m hiding out in the studio most hours of the day.  When I go running on the mountain or hiking with the dogs, I go further and higher than usual, because coming home means working towards something I’m not keen to work on: moving.  Blah.  I’m writing postcards to friends when I should be making lists of all the things that need doing, cleaning, buying, selling, collecting, cleaning, gleaning…lists schmists.  Blah.

It’s overwhelming.  I’m overwhelmed.

What do you do when you are overwhelmed?  I shouldn’t be so avoidant about the packing and moving work.  I should grab the bull by the horns and really give it all heck.  Maybe I will.  Later.  Maybe.  Maybe tomorrow.

Because I am not thankful about having to pour energy into packing and moving, I think it would be a good idea to make a list of all the things I am thankful for today.

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-this very fine morning, the quality and strength of springtime light

-the fresh garlic I am going to pick and roast this afternoon

-how hard Robert is working to make this as smooth a transition as possible, I’m thankful I don’t have to do it alone

-your incredible support over at the Etsy shop this week (amazing amazing amazing)

-the Airstream (which is sort of like a mythical beast, a true griffin in this life of ours) and the way it makes so much possible for us

-my job

-Robert’s job

-the always good company of the dogs

-the stability of my usually terribly wobbly thyroid

-the 400 black tulips I have blooming in the front yard

-this excellent cup of coffee

-the elk steak we have defrosting for dinner (food, in general)

-the robins on the front lawn

-the view of the mountains from my office window

-the neighbor’s flowering quince

-the blue egg my hen laid me this morning (each one is a perfect little miracle)

-the rabbit skull I found yesterday

-these polka dot socks

-the freedom I feel, every single day, to simply develop and grow and learn and worship and work and express and be and live (not everyone has all these kinds of freedoms)

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I feel better now.  Less like a spoilt brat.  More like myself.  Brighter.  Fuller.  More grateful.  More aware.  More focused.  Ready to work.

What are you thankful for today?

[Nomad Rings :: sterling silver]

[belugas at the Shed Aquarium of Chicago, IL]

Robbie just walked into the office, looked over my shoulder at the computer monitor and said, “You are a beluga-aholic.”

I reckon there are worse things to be!

I could have sat and watched these whales for the rest of my life. They are so beautiful, their faces so innocent and their eyes so kind.  I have to be honest though, I can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to bump into one of these mystical beauties while drifting about in a canoe in Arctic waters.

[images taken in Chicago and up on the North Shore of Lake Michigan]

We have been here, there and everywhere and it’s been magnificent.  RW came home from his six week long work detail in the southeast and we took a whirlwind trip to the Chicago area to be with family, our favorite little niece and one of our best friends in the whole wide world.  It’s been a while since we took a trip together and it was my great delight to lay my head down on Rob’s shoulder, while zooming through the sky in our rinky tinky airplane, and take a little nap that way.  Just marvelous.  Lake Michigan is beautiful.  I always forget that the great lakes of North America are essentially inland, fresh water seas.  And that city on the lake…that city…I have always loved Chicago, it’s my favorite big American city that I have visited to date.  Everyone is relatively friendly there and the downtown sector feels like Gotham City to me — tall, cold and perhaps slightly theatrical.  We spent an afternoon at the aquarium (falling in love with the belugas), strolling, laughing aloud at our reflections in The Bean and generally wandering without a care.  I never know what to photograph when I am in urban areas, it’s good to get my camera out of its comfort zone from time to time.  I’m always surprised by how the hubbub of humanity is so similar, in so many ways, to the swirl of nature, when I look at it through a camera lens.

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Now that we are home and life has slid into working order again, we are about to survive two crazy weeks of life!  It all begins tonight with another art walk for me in Old Town Pocatello.  I know!  I have gone art walk crazy!  Guess what, I have yet another one scheduled for the month of June in the Methow Valley.  That’s crazy talk.  Three art walks in three months?  I’ve lost my mind.  No.  I really have.  Ok.  But here’s the thing, one of my goals for this new year was to be more present in my local art communities, to come down off my hermit’s mountain and poke my head out from time to time and really connect with my local people.  I think I failed to write about it in the month of April but my last art walk appearance was SO.  MUCH.  FUN.  I loved every moment of it and did such great work leading up to it and wonderful work afterwards.  It was a perfect kick in the pants.  Additionally, it was so nice to stand beside my work, my bevy of offerings, and say, “Hi!  I am Jillian!  Here’s what I do.”  Over and over again to really lovely strangers and friends.  I met some cool people.  Oh, I met a biologist who is studying the effects of wind farms on bat populations, she was fascinating!  For me, getting ready for these shows is a dizzy-tizzy-studio-freak-show but it’s been more fulfilling than I imagined it would be and I’m going to keep doing them as the dates present themselves.  Tonight I am going to be set up beside a delightful friend who is a painter and leather worker — I can’t wait to share the crowds with her.

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I have a thousand other things to tell you but, it’s art walk day and there is much to do.  I really need to get breakfast cooking and a pot of coffee brewing.  I should have new work listed in the Etsy shop this weekend and I’ll be working on catching up on, well, just about everything in the next couple of days before I begin to taper off my online work and pack for our move to the summering grounds in Washington.  I am not ready for the transition into this fire season and deeply resisting, most ferociously, in my heart of hearts, letting go of my house and the land here.  This move is so hard for me, that’s the simple truth.  I hope you’ve all been well.  I think of you always.

X

There was that good night on that fine day when the wind was warmer than it had been in a long while and I watched the sun down from shallow grass on the edge of the mountain.  The clouds spooled yellow, pink, dust purple and there was the emergence of all the tiny beginnings of new things.

Six weeks have almost passed now.  It’s hard to believe that much time has trickled by.  Robert has been away working in South Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee…those southern states where people drawl out their words like hammocks between two trees and eat lots of fried stuff.  Time has crept past, time has flown, I don’t remember all of it or how being alone unfolded for me, since he left so long ago.  Days were eternal and short, elastic and snapping, yawning and sluggish.  Oh!  There was a terrible ten day period when I had an awful cold!  I remember that.  I was in Seattle for a bit.  I worked.  A lot.  The weather turned nice, then ugly, then nice again.  Now it’s been raining and squalling for a few days in a row and the wind, my friends, has been righteous and bitter.  When I come down off the mountain at night with the dogs I can hardly feel my hands, though they are bundled in mittens and shoved in the pockets of my down vest.

So yes.  Time has passed, slow or quick, or both at times.  It has passed.

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This week I reached a point of deep weariness.  I took a day off.  Then I worked a couple of days in a row.  I failed to answer your emails (still working on it).  My phone broke.  Again.  Then a friend of mine, one of my favorite Wyoming girls, came to visit.  Last night, she and I went to the Don Williams concert at the Pocatello performing arts center.  It was sold out.  We were like sardines in there.  Do you remember how Robbie bought two tickets for my birthday?  Well.  Obviously my fella’s early season work detail in the glorious South of the USA prevented him from being my date (for so many things in the past six weeks) so I took my Wyoming girlfriend with me instead and she was marvelous company.  Let me tell you, Don Williams is 73 years old now, a true country music legend, a Prince of Nashville, and when he opens his mouth to sing these days, he still sounds exactly like he did thirty years ago, just like his recordings.  He sounds like warm, liquid velvet pouring over a stack of haybales where a pair of country folk are kissing in the light of a harvest moon.  He sounded SO good.  And when he stopped singing, his voice was the deepest, growliest voice I have ever heard in my life and he kept slowly exclaiming, because he does all things slowly, “You guys…you guys are somethin’ else…oh mercy…”  While he strummed his guitar and sang, he rocked one of his snake-skin cowboy boots back and forth, back and forth.  For upbeat songs, he added a sort of wiggle to his rocking boot.  I couldn’t stop looking at that boot.  I know it was snake-skin because we were five rows back from the stage and I could see such details.  He has silver hair that really glimmers in the spotlight and covers most of it up with a funny old hillbilly hat.

He is dearly beloved by Idahoans.  This became very apparent to me last night.  We stomped our boots.  We hooted.  We hollered.  We clapped our hands until they turned to stumps in the cuffs of our plaid shirts.  We sang along to all his songs and a few times, he sat back from his microphone and simply played his guitar while we carried the song for him, gladly and merrily, like an enormous church choir, and he looked so pleased, like his tall, narrow frame was fat on our love and appreciation.  I wish Robbie could have been there.  I’d have kissed him hard during a couple of those songs and I’d not have cared if the people in the row behind us gawked.

Hearing Don sing some of his songs live made the lyrics seem that much richer and I was reminded of why I love country music, country people, small towns, horses in pastures, wheat stubble, pick-up trucks, worn in boots, flocks of wild turkeys and combines taking up both lanes on the highway.  I remembered it all.  Then I thought about how many beautiful people have fallen for each other while two-stepping to his songs, or while laying in the back of a truck with nothing but the radio on, under the stars and owls and quiet blinks of the jack rabbits.  I thought about how his music carries us to times and places, over and over again, like the scent of spruce in winter or the feel of sun on skin.  I keep thanking him for that, today, over and over again.  His music is honest and at times, purely a manifesto of his very is-ness.  What a man.  His songs take me back to New Zealand, when I was 19 and Robbie was 21,  and we used to drive around and listen to Don’s greatest hits album.  Robbie and Brady would throw back their heads and fairly howl along to his music while the ocean wind blew in the windows and sand of Raglan Beach burned black under the sun.

So hey.  Thanks for a great night, Don.  You’re going to live forever in our hearts and on our radios.

And thanks to my Robert.  Baby, those concert tickets are one of the best birthday presents you’ve ever given me.  I wish you could have been here for it, but I know that sometimes a man has got to work — and I’m so thankful for your hard work.  Get home soon, so I can treat you right.

X