I know I just did a giveaway and you’re probably give-away-ed to the point of exhaustion but I made this necklace to give away! I’m giving it away to say thank you because without your support (big and small — all of it), I would not have been able to fund the first phase of our Airstream renovations this winter.  If I would not have been able to fund those massive renovations, I would not be on the cusp of spending a summer with my husband which isn’t something we have been able to share for four years because of the nature and location of his job.

I want you to know you have contributed to the actualization of the transition we are making in a few days — whether you claimed a piece of art jewelry from my shop or a little pack of postcards.  Whether you have commented on my blog posts, visited this space daily or simply skimmed through what I have to share from time to time — you have supported me.

If you have followed my stream on Flickr, you have supported me.  If you have followed my Twitter presence, you have supported me.  If you have worn a piece of my work in public or in private, you have supported me.  If you have sent a kind note to my mailbox, you have supported me and shown me such gracious love.  Thank you for taking so many moments out of your busy life to email me and connect with me and hoist a flag in the name of generosity, sincerity and kindness.  Thank you for these soul connections.  Thank you for doing what you are able to do, for giving what you are able to give, and for making me happy when I’m sad, for bolstering my spirits and sharing in my failures and triumphs.  Thank you.

When I give things away, here on my blog, I do it because I want to show my appreciation for you.  It’s simple, I love your support.  It’s heartfelt.  Your support feeds my family and continuously pays the bills around here .  Your support is amazing, no matter how big or small, and it impacts our lives in real and incredible ways.

I wish I could make 5000 of these necklaces and give one to each of you, but you know I cannot.  To enter the drawing for this necklace all you need to do is leave a little comment on this blog post so when I draw a winning name, your name is in the pool.  Your comment can simply say hi, or it can say something more!  It’s up to you.  Know that I cherish anything you choose to share with me and others in this sacred little space.

I’ll leave this giveaway open until we are settled in our new home in Winthrop and I am ready to blog again.

Until then, have a couple of beautiful weeks where you are.  My heart brims with gratitude: I hold you in it always.

xx

The Plume

]]> http://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2012/05/16/summertime/feed/ 0 http://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2012/05/16/in-the-gardens/ http://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2012/05/16/in-the-gardens/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 16:31:26 +0000 The Noisy Plume http://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/?p=4563 This morning, RW and I have been wrangling the gardens and believe me when I say, the wrangling work is long overdue.  Everything here started blooming a couple of weeks early and then it grew hot.  The tulips are all burned up now except for one patch of the beauties in the shade of the great elm tree.  Everything seems so dried up and parched.  Even the trails on the mountain, in certain areas, show an inch of silt powder that poofs up and sticks to my legs when I run through it.  Some of our fire fighter friends have already worked on Idaho fires this year!  Can you believe that?  Yesterday, while running, I dropped down to all fours by the creek to soak my hair and cool off after crossing wide swaths of sagebrush in the full sun.  I thought I would bake to death as I wended my way up the mountain the heat was so broad.  On the South fence line, the grapevines are already bursting onto the scene with their broad leaves and twirling twisps.  It’s really lovely.  This morning, as I was pulling copious amounts of weeds out of our various garden spaces, I felt my soul pinched by melancholy, just knowing that I won’t be here this summer to tend my scrap of earth.  Plenty of gardening space awaits me in Winthrop but it’s not mine, if you know what I mean.  I’m going to miss cutting roses for vases at 6AM every morning in July.  Fortunately, Rob’s base has a plethora of peonies and I’ve already imagined myself into that space, cutting lovely specimens for our home and the Airstream.  It’s hard to love a garden and then leave it.  Well, in all actuality, it’s hard to love anything and leave it — harder for some than others — those are the people who love deeper and let good things take up residence in their souls.

While Rob was turning dirt and I was cutting away the dry garble of last year from the lavender patches I asked Robert, “What if we were to downsize our life to the point where we live in Winthrop in the summer months and then live in our Airstream in the winter months?  What if we were to sell this house and mostly everything in it and simply take to the road like gypsies in the winter months?  Would you like that?  I can hardly bear to watch our gardens dismantle themselves.“

Then I asked myself, “Would I like that?“

How about you?  Would you like that?  Living in an Airstream half of the year and settling in someplace other for the remainder?  I think I could like it, for a time.  Life would have to be whittled down into much less than it is now, specifically in terms of possessions.

But back to the gardens for a moment, our poor yard has suffered so greatly at the paws of two German Shorthaired Pointer puppies in the span of 18 months that I fret it may never recover.  All the perennial beds I have so lovingly tended and expanded since we bought this property are looking ragged and patchy.  They grow weary of resurrecting themselves in the face of such relentless canine antagonism.  Why do dogs love, so much, to lay directly atop the iris beds?  And the alliums…oh the alliums.  Usually I have one hundred of them in their incredibly-slender-lavender-starburst-wavering beneath the ornamental plum trees.  This year they are are a sad and ravaged looking group of twenty.  I can’t even find the courage to tell you of the blue iris patch in the back yard it has been so dismally affected by Tater’s daily stampedes along the fence line.  Such tragedy.

On the bright side, we had such a temperate winter that the roses hardly died back at all and are bursting with health and the promise of a wild froth of twenty three different colors of blossoms later this summer and my columbines are as beguiling as ever.  Let me tell you, the view from the front windows of the house these days is nothing short of glorious with seven to eight thousand foot mountains rolling wild and green in every direction and the savage orange of the poppy bed framing the view.  I can’t help but fall in love with this place every moment of the day.  Tell me what you have blooming in your life at the moment — garden or otherwise.  I’m sure it’s as rich and indefatigable as my green spaces here.  Everyone and everything I know and love has such a tendency to rise and rise again.

Thank you for all the kind, sweet and lovely comments you have posted over on the mix CD giveaway.  I look forward to drawing the names of the winners tonight or tomorrow morning.

Have a beautiful Wednesday!

xx

Hilary

Heidi

Justine

Thanks gals!  I’ll fire you an email in a few moments so you can give me your mailing addresses.

xx

——————————————————————————-
Attention folks:  It’s hot out there.  Technically it’s still springtime but the weather is acting a lot like summer.  I know you need some good summertime music to play in your car while you criss cross town, drive out to your cabins or bike along the river bank with the wind in your long, sun kissed tresses.  I’ve made you a mix CD.  There’s a bit of the oldies and goodies and the newies and boppities on it.  Leave a wee comment at the bottom of this post if you’d like to be entered in the drawing for these mix CDs.  There are three to be won and it will be my pleasure to send them out with a little handful of other goodies.  Once they’ve reached their final destinations I’ll be sure to release this playlist so you can all enjoy it!  I’ll leave the comment section open for a couple of days before I do the drawing.

Just because I love you.

Summer on, sweet things.  Summer on.

:::POST SCRIPTUS:::

Farley says, “Do please hurry and leave your lovely little comment so she’ll take this thing off my darling noggin.”

Lately, while up the mountains running with the dogs, I continually bump into fat little bees questing for the sweetest flowers. I often stop, sit down in the wildflower patches and watch them as they fill their leg baskets with pollens. I get up close enough that we bump noses. Sometimes I talk to them as they work and tell them where I saw nice patches of balsam root. It might seem like a simple critter to watch but a lot can be learned from a little bee.

[sterling, copper, enamel, coral & graphite]

Just a little pink pinecone with a squirrel inside — a squirrel locket!  Each time I look at it I laugh out loud and then I fall in love.  I’ve gone off the deep end of whimsy this week.  It’s so much fun and it keeps my heart light.

Rob and I both have bed head in this photo.  We had dreadful cases of insomnia last night and felt so foggy this morning we could barely dress ourselves.  I do wish you could all come over and lounge around on our new flooring with us.  The Airstream is such a lovely and tranquil space right now with a delicate echo and the shadows of the Austrian pine filtering in through the skylight.  We still have the plexiglass protective sheeting on the lower walls which we’ll strip off once Rob has the floor molding in place.  Even though that white stuff is still on the walls though, this rig really gleams on the inside.

We have five work days remaining before we shut things down to clean the house, move our boxes and bags into our big silver rig and take off down the highway.  Can you believe it?  I can’t believe it.  It’s taken so much hard work to get our lives ready for this transition and it’s been worth every bead of sweat and every consternating moment with a floppy sheet of aluminum.

—————————————

My camera broke yesterday.  Within an hour I had it in a box on the way to the Canon repair center in California.  The funny thing is, I think I’m grieving for it!  I didn’t realize how much my camera has become an extension of my body.  It makes sense, sometimes I take 400 photos in a day, just for the heck of it.  My camera was a real workhorse.  I hope the Canon center can fix it for me, and soon.  I’m borrowing a friend’s camera at the moment (Thank you J+J!), but it feels funny in my hands and I miss what I know.  Don’t you just sometimes miss what you know?

Duty calls, out in the studio!

x

:::EDIT:::

I just read over this post and I must apologize!  It is, by far, the most scatterbrained thing I have ever written and I’m a tad bit embarrassed of it.  What the heck?  Maybe I had the coffee jitters…

I bounced out of bed very early this morning, bundled myself up in layers of clothing and took to the mountain with Tater to watch the sunrise.  It didn’t disappoint.  All this thinking I’ve been doing lately about welcoming the day as a songbird does — with an optimistic heart and the fullness of joy — has me entirely enthralled with the birth of light and the breaking of day.  I’m gripped by the very truth of it.  Sunrise is such a bold thing.  For light to sneak up slowly on the riffled, murky edges of night and to usurp it, inch by inch, until the world knows day, is such tremendous boldness.

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold. [Herbert Spencer]

RW made me breakfast when I came home from my morning hike and we ate side by side in the sunny kitchen with the dogs and cat mewing and mooing at our feet.  I can feel the ricocheting wisps of hope, fruition and energy bouncing about my soulbeams.  My fingertips are live wires.  The studio is on and warming up!  I must delay computer work for the metal beckons!

Toodaloo!

Happy Monday to you, wherever you are.  Go forth and conquer the day!

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