seasons

Solo

April 20, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

I’m just in from a twirl about town.

I traveled by bicyclette and my oh my, the breeze was brisk and the sun was pooling like young amber, musky and musty, light and bright. The wavering flex of spring shift is falling all around like chandelier crystals on white marble — so pretty and smashing and the delicate light spinning through and through.

The daffodils hold their holy rows.

The world is tossing itself about in shades of green…

I went on a solo date. The rules for a solo date usually include food, coffee (green tea, in this case), antique or second hand stores, book stores and a camera.

Regardez:

1. The sushi was delicious (my pot of green tea overflowed=eth),

as was the pillaging of my favorite antique shop, right across the street.

2. Walrus and Carpenter, my favorite used bookstore, held more treasures than usual.

3. Will gave me a start from his century old jade tree (it belonged to his mother and her mother before her, before it became his…). I’ve been begging for a piece of this plant for a year and a half…..most politely. You’ve never seen a jade tree like this. The trunk of it is at least as round as my leg, just above the knee. How lucky am I to own a small piece of such a fantastic chloroplastic dynasty?

4. My trusty steed was heavy with bits and bobs but we cruised the sidewalks and greenbelts with utter grace.

This was my first time out and about in my little community on the South end of town in roughly two months.

How did I get so busy?

How did life get so wild?

Well I’m simmering down now and taking my time. I was supposed to take one day off…but it has turned into three. You’ll have to forgive me that! I thank you in advance!!!

Fact:

I love it here.

And I think here loves me too.

Post Scriptus:
This
This
Lots of This
and
This

Filed Under: pocatello, seasons, solo date, spring, springtime

Meeting December

December 1, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

Things are moving a mile a minute around here.

I’m a long distance runner and the pace doesn’t bother me too much

but let me tell you, I’ve been doing my best to pull on the reins and sit deep in the saddle lately. There are so many beautiful things about the early winter months and I don’t want to miss any of the details! November is gone but I’ve been so busy meeting December that I’ve hardly noticed.

I really believe there must be magic in everything;

I find myself spellbound so often.

This morning I popped outside to give the hens some fresh hot water, spinach leaves and to collect eggs. The ladies are finally slowing down with their laying and I’ve only picked two eggs over the past couple of days. It makes me feel a bit melancholy. One of my great joys, here at The Gables, is collecting ingredients for my meals, by hand, from my property. Eggs are the only thing I can glean lately and to see the the hens slowly turning in for the winter makes me feel a bit glum.

However, let us remember, to everything there is a season:

a time to collect eggs and a time to buy a carton of eggs at the local Co-Op.

This week, for the first time in months, I ate a store bought tomato.

It was tremendously disappointing.

I’m already greedy for lycopene that bursts with flavor. How will I manage the suffering until summer arrives again?!!!

But that’s the thing about living in a climate that boasts four strongly unique seasons, I always know that the next season will come and I find myself living blissfully and fully no matter if it’s winter, spring, summer or fall. I love the season I’m in, miss the season I was in previously and look forward to the season coming.

***

My walks lately have taken me up on top of the West Bench where the snow has been sculpted into deep, sinuous drifts between the sage, juniper and tall grasses. Those walks have been hard won for me and especially so for the wee Penelope. I continuously fall through the drifts which are as deep as my mid-thighs at times. Penelope follows in my footprints, leaping in and out of the holes I leave behind in the pristine winterscape. We both gasp for breath at times as we fight our way through. The sections of trail that have been scrubbed clean by the wind come as welcome breaks from the tough going.

Occasionally, I fall down into an invisible hole or dip in the ground beneath the snow and am jarred when my foot finally connects with terra firma. It’s not nice walking. That’s for sure. But it makes my cheeks ruddy, forces my lungs to push and pull air rapidly and it gives me a new appreciation for the animals that are out there, hunkered down in the coulees and drainage ravines on the sides of the Rocky Mountains. They paw through the snow to find their fodder, and are eventually drawn deeper into the low country in order to successfully forage. I imagine them walking through these snow drifts, on four matchstick legs, heaving their quadruped weight through the season, step by step: winterthick fur pushed and pulled by the down valley drafts.

I’ve been on the backs of horses as they push through snow like this. I know it’s hard work, I’ve felt the effort of a horse with every silent hoof strike, lift and pull of legs through white, the slow movement of my hips absorbing a gait, their animal warmth beneath my legs and the two of us, melded together and acting as a conduit for winter to pass through. We snort our breath at the sun in tall white columns. Beneath four hooves there’s the collected snowfall, there’s that residual build up of flake upon flake until we find ourselves wading through the thickness of solid state water; we press on even when our bodies crave the fuzziness of sleep. We’re blinded by the horizon gleaming in every direction beneath the face of the sun.

Now I’m just writing.

Free rein on my fingertips as I sit here and type.

I guess I just feel like talking with you.

Two days ago, while walking, I was pushing through the snow when the tip of a snow cloud pushed up and over the peaks on the West side of town. The cloud was a few miles away, clinging to the mountain tops and shrouding Kinport Peak in a white lace grace seasonal veil. Though the clouds were relatively distant, the wind grew stronger and pushed large snowflakes down to where I walked. The sun was bright in blue heavens. The sky was full of diamonds. I felt an alleluia rise in my throat.

The older blanket of white on the ground caught the new flakes lightly and held them carefully on the surface of things. There was a quiet tension there between the old and the new. An inability to blend: snow on snow acting like oil on water. I dropped to my knees to further observe perfect crystalline structure in bright sunlight and whipping wind. Penelope whined beside me, deep in the snow, anxious to move, anxious to build body heat. A hawk passed over, racing against shadow and wind. I squinted as I looked West. Stood. And kept walking.

***

I suppose this is all to say I’m kind of busy over here.
December has come to call and I don’t want to miss a moment of it.

Plume

PS

There are new things coming…

Filed Under: chickens, december, seasons

Snowgirl

November 29, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

RW snapped these images of me today while I was out in the snow.

We had taken the dogs for a walk, played with them in the snow drifts in a nearby park, strolled our way back home again where we shoveled all the walks and patios at The Gables. Once the shoveling was done, I just sat down in a snowdrift for a while, held Mister Pinkerton there and tossed snowballs for the dogs to chase. I must had been in that drift for a good hour, cozy and warm; with cheeks stained pink by windburn and snowflakes. I realized, while out there, I’m really at home in the snow. I love playing in it. I adore walking in it. Just to be out in the winter weather feels extremely natural to me.

I hear, rather frequently, that it goes against laws of science for me to enjoy winter the way I do — being a small individual who is often cold when standing fully dressed in a heated house. For some reason, when I’m out and about in the weather, moving around, generating animal heat, I’m unaffected by it (within reason*).

I feel like it’s been snowing here for a week and a half. I welcome it. The past two winters in Idaho have felt so mild and my only complaint about Pocatello has been that the winters aren’t severe enough for my liking! I’m in favor of weather that makes me feel alive!

Here’s hoping we get snowed in!

Nothing could be better for my little soul.

The pantry is stocked. We’ve plenty of quilts on the bed.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

I hope your weekending was wonderful in every way

and if you celebrate the Advent Season, I hope you can feel that first flame holding steady in your heart.

Hope, peace and snowflakes,

Plume

PS Have I told you that I’ve had my Christmas tree up for over a week and a half?!!! The living room smells of douglas fir. Sigh.

*When the temperatures drop below -30C I find it difficult to stay warm, no matter how much I move and no matter how much I wear.

Filed Under: pinkerton, plume gables, seasons, winter

Then came the stormy days of autumn.

October 24, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

Winter comes. I too will build my bed of silk.

I too will love the sun when she rises and miss her when she sets.

These veined, rumpled, multi hued vessels of spentness — newly released from the fingertips of trees — are so delicate and so content to catch the rain instead of the wind.

When I’m old and my mind and hands are clumsy, I hope to be just as full of grace.

All of Nature’s confetti seems resigned to the fates dictated by the seasons; gathered up in a finale of colorful clouds in the tree tops, fistfuls there on the forest floors and clustered in the spring-fed mountain water as it flows. That confetti has spun around, crackling and clanging its overripe, organic rhythms (those mourning songs for the decay and death of chloroplasts) for a short spell. The light has grown too dim to capture. Wary of the hard frosts, it modulated a cyclical song in minor keys, turning teary variations over and over in the thickness of the wind, before the cold began to creep down from the mountaintops. And now everything is settling, yellow, orange and red carpets the floors here, waiting for blankets of white, waiting for the lacy whispers of solid state, the hard winds of dagger and ice from the North and the sleep of the slumber months. I purse my lips and carefully blow my breath in a column towards a heavy grey sky; my eyes can see the white. The white, it comes.

Roots sink deeper, closer to the warmth of the core of Earth and we all hold on, just a bit tighter, as we spin and make our way around the sun.

Filed Under: autumn, idaho, seasons