How does your garden grow?

July 2, 2010 by

I try to sleep in a bit this morning but can hear Rhonda, around 6AM, cackling like a banshee.  I stay deep under the covers for a moment before I realize that she could very well be laying an egg so I run out there, into the quiet cascade of yawning blue morning light, to check on the ladies.  They look stir crazy so I put the sprinkler on in the garden and open the ark so they can have a good range about the yard without eating the last of my radish patch.
I am tempted to get back into bed but the hoop of dawn and the promises of morning are so wide and thick that I cannot help but grab my camera instead and take you on a garden tour.
Things are growing here.
The early summer rains seem to be finished; the flowers, vines and vegetables are bolting for the sky.  It’s a small space that I tend, compared to the ranch I hope to have one day, but it’s impressive when it peaks.
We planted twelve new roses in the rose garden this year after removing some diseased plants from the patch.  They’re coming on now in hues that please the chromaphile in me.  White, yellow, neon salmon, hot pink, blue…
I tuck into a new book.  Well it’s sort of a book.  Kind of.  It’s perfect for mornings like these when the whole wide world is a distraction and I can only take a page at a time.
I pull weeds.  I take my coffee so slow that it goes cold in the cup and simmers softly like a spinning bowl of silk under the sun.
Winona and Judith clean up the raspberry patch, near the back gate, near that secret and magical door RW installed in this section of fence.  The compost is on the other side and I see that darn weenie dog from down the street is in there eating my future dirt.  Darn him.  Darn that fat little dog with an appetite for moldy avocado skins and mango pits.
The ladies see him too.  I command them to go peck him on his bottom until he runs away, but they ignore me; they ignore the queen of the chickens and go back to their bugs and weeds.  Good work ladies!  Get all the earwigs please!
I check on the grapes, all 6 or 7 of them — the concords and the whites.  They reach for me as I stroll by and I carefully tuck their arms and legs back into the fence.  It’s like there are too many kids in the bed and the jumble of limbs look like spaghetti in a colander.  The wind will blow them free again this afternoon and tomorrow morning I’ll tuck them back into place.  I love those grapes.  The fruit is young and tiny now, the clusters look like dainty deposits of minute, curled and sleeping babies.

I love tending my gardens.
I really do.
Especially this early in the morning when my feet are bathed by the dew in the grass and the neighborhood is still quiet and sleepy.  
How does your garden grow?
Please, do tell!

Happy Friday to you all.
Wind yourselves down for the weekend.  
Roll up your pant legs and step into a spring creek for a stint.
Lay on your backs and watch the clouds roll by.
It’s summer.
xx
PLUME

Post Script:
While we’re talking about summer and magic….watch this (thanks Dorothy):

Filed Under: chickens, garden, plume gables, summer

Lemon Verbena

June 24, 2010 by
Today, between a visit to the chiropractor (same old problem of displaced ribs…yes…feeling better now thank you), an excursion for a bundle of packing tape, watching the dogs race around the dog park, photographing and listing new pieces, washing the dishes, seeing a house guest off and weeding the rose garden,
I stopped over at the nursery to pick up a new mint plant.

I already have a mint plant.  It’s Moroccan mint and it’s only half as potent as I’d like it to be.  In point of fact, I like it less than the wild mint that grows around beaver ponds or Northern bogs.  It’s good stuff but it’s somewhat less robust than a good and gangly chocolate mint plant growing in the back yard.  So I snaggled one of those for myself and while strolling away from the herb section at the nursery, I keeled over when I caught a whiff of something divine and when I figured out what it was that smelled so luscious, I brought it home as well:
It’s lemon verbena.
It smells like the wings of angels.
And I love it.
I will name it Millicent and concoct teas and potions with it
and together we will be two very happy things that belong to the green
and bow down to the ether.  Gladly.
I’ve been thinking, quite a lot, about why on earth I enjoy gardening so well.  Let’s face it, it’s hard work.  There’s always something to be thinned, weeded, watered, hoed, staked or harvested.  There are pests, deer, rock chucks, rabbits, bugs, Penelope and the chickens who will want to eat it first.  The sun tries to burn it up.  The wind tries to blow it all down.  The hail tries to bruise it to bits and pulverize it to smithereens.  Once you start a garden, it doesn’t end until it’s finished producing or the frosts come and slay it stealthily and quietly with icy fingers in the night under the light of the Big Dipper.  
Unless you live somewhere tropical, it all seems rather futile (excluding perennials).  Doesn’t it?
But then this evening, whilst sitting in the rose garden, watching the sun drop down, and moving with the motion of a quiet summer breeze I realized I garden because it feels good to be part of the growth of plants.  They need me and I need what they produce whether it’s food or beauty.  I crave it.  There’s a healthy and symbiotic relationship between my garden and I.  A give and take, for certain.

Plus, when things are really bolting and looking brilliant, here at The Gables, it’s so satisfying to sit on the front porch with a book and a cold drink in the dawdling evening light while listening to strangers comment on the beautiful and darling little home of mine as they walk past with their dogs.

Satisfying indeed.

So I guess what I’m saying is,
if you can,
whenever you want,
do come on by for lemon verbena, raspberry leaf and mint tea
in the evening sometime.
Penelope will delight in keeping your lap warm 
and we’ll delight in watching the sun swing West
before the sky opens up and the stars rain down.

xx
Filed Under: garden, plume gables, summer

Fragments of a Summer Afternoon:

June 21, 2010 by
Summer has arrived at The Gables!  I love the in between months, spring and fall.  Their titles are apt and in those seasons when the world is rolling into the living and the dead I feel so energized by the changing everything.  This said, one of the loveliest things about spring is the way it feels like we’re all waiting for summer.  Gauging the advance of hot weather by the height of the tulips and the greenness of the growth that surrounds us.  There is the slow watch of unfolding spring bulbs into tulip, crocus, hyacinth, amaryllis and then eventually poppy, iris and allium.  
The slow pace of spring is gradually and fiercely gorgeous .

Then one morning we wake up and those spring beauties have faded away like macarons in a French patisserie window and the curtains of our worlds pull back to reveal summer standing in full glory with hair to her waist and sandals on her feet.  She is hot, bare armed and about to toss lightning bolts and singing rains from her fingertips.  
How sudden.
How sharp.
How simple. 
She hit the switch and the world is made of 
the fragrance of clematis, the taste of popsicles and the swing of croquet mallets.  
God bless that summertime.
She always arrives just in the nick of time.
This afternoon I have spread a blanket out on the lawn, beneath the plum trees, in the cool of dappled shade.  It’s windy.  I’m listening to the voice of air as it speaks through the trees.  Air is nothing without a vessel with which to make itself known.  I know it is because I hear it combing through the stature of the blue spruce, elm, catalpa and plum trees.  I know it is because I hear it moving bird song with it’s muscle.  I know it is because I can watch it push at the world around me, symphonic, as though it has the hands of a conductor and the music is for the making.  I know it is because I feel it passing over my skin and smoothing running fingers through my hair.  

I cannot taste it unless it carries dust into my open mouth 
nor can I smell it until pushes the scent of lilacs up against my ol factory senses.  
I cannot see it unless it’s controlling the world 
around me (for all things must bend to the wishes of the wind).  
I cannot understand it unless I watch it manipulate my environment.

This is what I’m busy with today.
I’m understanding the wind.
A beautiful Sabbath to you all.
I hope you found rest for your souls.

xx
The Plume

PS  I know there have been plenty of creature photos lately so if you loathe creatures, my apologies, certainly!  I’ve been photographing the beasts a plenty for RW namely.  He reads this blog by phone in his smokejumper bunk house.  I know he misses our beasties and am trying to help take the edge off with the odd handful of images of our fur and feather babies as often as possible.  If you’re fit to be tied by all the fur and feathers just do slow blinks while you’re scrolling through my blog and I promise you’ll nearly miss it all!

PSS  

The new neighbor is moving in.  I was taking out the compost while he was unloading his truck.  I’d have stopped to say hello but he had a phone growing out of his head.  On the seat of his truck was a taxidermied duck in a glass box.  Now read my tea leaves please — what on earth could it mean?!!
Filed Under: idaho, plume gables, summer

For the Love of Summer Light

June 8, 2010 by
There ain’t no light like summer light.
And wowweee!  Look at those poppies!
Filed Under: farley and penelope, plume gables

All in a Good Sunday

June 7, 2010 by
My dear friend Karen woke me up this morning.
Actually, I had been laying in bed, dozing on and off, for a couple of hours; cast in and out of sleep by birdsong and dappled sunlight.  Karen knocked on the front door and told me to come to her house for coffee and cake.  I agreed and then promptly gave her a garden tour whilst in my nightgown.
She has a lovely front veranda for sitting and sipping.  The coffee went down slow and easy and we made breakfast out of blueberry cheesecake while our dogs romped about in her backyard.  We discussed the weather, our perennials, our men and our dogs, among other things.
I spent the afternoon toiling in my yard.  It was sunny!  I cut flowers for vases.  I reacquainted myself with the lawnmower and whippersnipper.  I weeded, irrigated, watered, weeded again, moved the chicken ark, planted seeds and sniffed every single iris blossom I could find.  I stretched out in the grass with Penelope and Mister Pinkerton and took the time to feel the sun on my back.
After baking a loaf of banana bread, while waiting out a blustery storm, I walked the dogs through my side of town.  I picked more lilacs.  I watched the sky.
And when I returned home, I finished unpacking my bags and boxes from my recent whirlwind trip.  I dusted a bookshelf or two, arranged my pretty things on shelves and sat down to write this:


Journal Entry: June 6, 2010
The good news is there is no such thing as failure in art.  That is, there is no such thing as failure when I sit down to create as long as my work is truly an outpouring of what is inside me.  The goal is self expression.  The goal is the interpretation and translation of my personality, my emotions and the world around me.  Of course.  Of course I want the outcome to be aesthetically lovely but not all parts of me ARE lovely.  I am fallible.  I am human.  There is darkness here.  Some of my attempts will fall flat or be classified as ugly and there’s a truth to be found even in those attempts.  So why do I fear them?
Why do I fear the truth of them?
Why do I fear the darkness when there is so much sureness in the light and when I give voice to those voids, those terrors, those fears, are not they flooded with grace and understanding and light?  To even attempt to convey them in metal and stone is to take them out of their hiding places and turn them slowly in my hands, in the pureness of light.

The thing is, it’s ok.
It’s ok to fail, if failure means I make something that represents ugliness and brokenness.  Those are real things and if they pour out of me in a moment of despair, giving structure to THAT moment and those emotions is a very real thing.  The beauty in this creation is the illumination of fear.  The dissolution of fear. 
The courage it takes when facing my demons, calling those demons out by name, and watching them dismantle under the power of grace and truth.
There is only rejoicing here:
The thick and thin of exploration, self awareness, inspiration.
The process.
Those two loves I must give: for my neighbor, for my God.
The dissection of everything in between.
And the growth that comes with all of these things.
Always reaching.

I’ve been so comfortable these past few months.  
It’s time to push harder, to carve deeper, to break barriers and include 
past fragments in new forms, structures and concepts.  I’m up for the task, even if I’m down for the count.
_________________________________________________________ 

I’ve been so afraid, this week past.
Afraid to begin again.
Afraid of my studio space.
Afraid of my ideas.
But I’m not frightened anymore.
Even the darkness can amount to light.
If you’ve been afraid, call it by name, bring it forth, understand it and fling it into the light where it can be no more.

I hope you had beautiful weekends.
Thank you for your sweet congratulations for my darling smokejumper!
See you tomorrow.

xx
The Noisy Plume
Filed Under: garden, journal entry, plume gables
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