summer — Page 3

Breaking The Fast

August 19, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

For breakfast this morning, the fridge was looking barren, so I stepped outside and picked tomatoes, warm off the vine, and collected eggs, warm from the coop:

I medium boiled the eggs (as in not hard, not soft), cut the tomatoes in two and added a side of avocado.

A dash of salt!

A dash of pepper!

A perfectly fresh and awfully gorgeous little meal!

I washed it down with a cafe au lait and a glass of carrot juice.

Yum. Yum. Yum.

What did you have for breakfast?

If yours wasn’t quite this delicious, you’re welcome to join me tomorrow!

I’ll be doing this again except I think I’ll add some basil, for good measure!

Tra la la!

Filed Under: garden, plume gables, summer

McCall, Idaho

August 17, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

I made my way over and up to McCall this weekend.

I had a handful of reasons for going:

1. I had a delivery to make to Heidi.

2. I wanted to meet the McCall jumper base dispatch women (Oy vey, such amazing gals! More on them later!).

3. I wanted to check out this little mountain town because I’m trying to decide where I’d like to live next summer and this is a town RW can transfer into if he (we) decides he’d (we’d) like to transfer.

4. I really felt like swimming in a proper lake.

I departed for McCall on Saturday around noon. I had a South Dakotan house guest who left for the prairies on Saturday so when I finally hit the road I had a lot of summer in my hair and eventually a bunch of dust since the combines were ripping it up in the Snake River Valley between here and Boise.

Things started cooling off as soon as I started up into the mountains along the Payette River. The heat was filtered out first by clusters of ponderosa pines and then fir trees and the spray of whitewater on the rushing bends of that sweet mountain stream. I rolled into McCall exhausted and just in time for a glass of cold wine and some sushi at the local brew pub with a handful of lovely people.

The fire community in McCall is a tight one and it has me tied up in envious knots. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a tough little woman who gets to see her smokejumper man so often. It made me want to cry to watch them all dancing, holding hands, tasting each others beer, talking face to face, finding out who was working when; for this reason, my trip was horribly bittersweet. It was so wonderful to be with fire families and so sad to be without RW.

I want to live in the town where RW is based, so badly.

So badly do I want this that it really does honestly hurt.

A bit.

I didn’t realize it until a half hour ago when I ran out to the local grocery store for avocados but I’m a bit sad, I’m really quite a bit sad tonight.

I knew what I was getting myself into when I married that mountain man of mine. The fact is, life would be half the adventure it is if it was only half as torturous as it is! HA!

Anyway, Sunday was a full day. Heidi and I blitzed out to a meadow where the McCall boys were doing a practice jump and I nabbed a few shots for you just to solidify the fact, in your minds, that smokejumping really is the dead sexiest job a fellow (or a lady) could ever have (besides being a fire dispatcher or a lion tamer…). The sun was strong on my face while I watched the boys, one by one, appear magically into thin air, spit out by their orange and white plane, and then drift down like Kevlar suited dandelion seeds into the meadow below:

*round of applause*

Heidi and I spent the rest of the day driving about in the Landcruiser, hiking (she’s preggers, but she’s tough as nails and fit as a fiddle — former smokejumper you know), eating ice cream, swimming in the lake, talking and laughing.

The dogs frolicked about like wild things in the mountain streams and in the lake.

The sun felt so good.

The company was fantastic.

I don’t want to jinx my friendship with this girl but boy oh boy, it

would take a lot of something strange for me to grow weary of her presence.

This morning, after a tasty breakfast with Heidi, I popped over to the jumper base to say toodaloo to the dispatch gals and here’s where I’m going to talk about them for a second:

THOSE GIRLS!

Yeesh. I took a glimpse at some of their desks and it was so brilliant to see pieces of me pinned to their workstations. Photos of mine. Jewelry write ups! Bits of my heart and soul already mingling with theirs. I think this is one of the brightest reasons why I feel like I fit in so well in McCall. These beautiful, funny, talented, strong, independent girls are part of my life already and I can’t help but feel drawn, even more strongly, to the area because of them! Oh you dispatch ladies, you fire talkers, you tough cookies, you feisty huckleberries, you’re quite the bunch and you won my heart over. I’ll see you again, and soon, I’m sure of it.

Before leaving McCall today, I drove around the lake, swam at three different locations, squinted in the sun, splashed about with my dog and dreamed about living in McCall next summer. Then I drove down out of the mountains and swam in four different sections of the Payette River before descending into the heat of Boise and beyond.

Oh McCall.
McCall, I have a crush on you,

for serious,

and someday I’m going to make you mine, all mine.

In case you were wondering, I officially love this state more than I did the day before. It’s so diverse. It’s so sweepingly grand.

I hope your weekend was stuffed full of adventures!

…and watermelon.

The Noisy Plume

PS If you want to enlarge any of the photos in this post, just click on them!

Filed Under: idaho, mccall, mountains, payette river, smokejumping, summer

Give ‘Em The Beets

August 12, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

First off, let me tell you, my kitchen smells delicious right now.

I just finished roasting some beets.

It’s a complete garden dinner tonight: baby carrots, spaghetti squash and beets are on the menu. I’m taking the carrots raw. I baked the spaghetti squash in halves with butter and brown sugar and the beets, of course, I roasted!

Beets are very easy to deal with and they’re about one of the very most beautiful things a garden can grow, in my humble opinion.

Here’s how to roast these gems:

1. Remove the tip of the root and the greens from the body of the beets.

2. Pop them in a lidded casserole dish with a drizzle of olive oil and bake at 350F. Smaller beets will roast completely in about 25 minutes and the fresher the beet the quicker it will cook. If you’re roasting biggies, check them as you go with a fork POKE POKE.

3. When your beets are finished, pull them from the oven. When they have cooled enough to handle, pick them up, one at a time, run them under cold water and rub them with your hands. The skin will peel right off leaving a delicious, smooth beet meat behind.

4. Dice these babies up or chop them into chunks and enjoy them alone, on a salad, or juggle with them. Just kidding about the juggling.

I prefer to take mine with a side of plain old goat cheese.

It’s pure deliciosity.

Seriously people. Seriously.

Best summer dinner. Ever.

Garden fresh.

Cultivated with love!

Tell me, how do you like your beets?

And if you are already a lover of beets, gimmie a yee haw!

Happy eating, you skinny birds.

Filed Under: garden, plume gables, summer

Summer is………….

July 25, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

1. Mosquitoes (there were plenty when I took this photo).

2. Watermelon juice sliding down my arm and into my elbow-pit.

3. Fishing Rainey Creek.

4. My favorite fishing cover up shirt buttoned to the neck to keep the aforementioned mosquitoes out!

5. Being at the lake, taking a dip in cold water, watching the pollens rise up off the conifers and take to the wind.

What is summer to you?

PS Did I mention fishing?????……….

Filed Under: fishing, idaho, summer

How does your garden grow?

July 2, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

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.

PLUME

Post Script:

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

Filed Under: chickens, garden, plume gables, summer