Creative spaces, a pale blue pumpkin, & a giveaway!
November 13, 2011 § 4 Comments
Have you heard of the publication Where Women Create? It’s an entire magazine devoted to exploring the work spaces that women shape around their creative endeavors. Being a woman keenly aware of and influenced by her surroundings, I have found this publication to be at once surprising, unique, and inspiring.
I have yet to attain the dream home with its well-lit studio room or renovated loafing shed. And I rather wish I could be leasing a 100-year-old house or a flat in an old brick building where I might claim unique spots near windows with detailed trim. But I’m currently making the best of yet another cookie-cutter apartment. It’s not perfect, gorgeous, or quaint, but a girl does what she can. Lately I’ve been finding my creative spot on a quilt my sister gave me for Christmas, nestled with cushions in front of the fireplace. Add a cup of coffee and a handful of writing ideas, and I am set.
This is where I create.
Tucked in corners around where I create, I still have pumpkins! My favorite has been one I just had to take home from work, because it’s a very pale baby blue. See?
But, as you might also notice, the pumpkin was starting to get soft and brown near the stem today. This means Cook Me Now. So I cut into my blue pumpkin and set it on a baking sheet. Do you know what I found inside? Lots and lots of seeds. The seed cavity was huge, although there is still a good bit of flesh to eat. And no, the flesh is not blue (that would be weird, right?) but typical pumpkin orange. I can smell it baking right now. And I am feeling generous.
So here’s my giveaway offer this month, which is perhaps more of a trade: I’m curious to know about your creative spaces – even if they are just dreaming-of-creating spaces right now. Men and women are welcome to answer, by the way! So snap a shot or two, and send it to me at birchbark (dot) erica (at) gmail (dot) com. In exchange for your pictures, some of which I will post with credits on this blog, I’ll send you a packet of seeds from my pumpkin . . . until all the seeds are gone. (Be sure to provide me with your mailing address.) The sooner you submit, the more likely you are to have blue pumpkins growing in your garden next year! I’m looking forward to seeing your studios, workshops, wood tables, living rooms, attics, backyards, garages, barns, and wherever else you make things beautiful, make things messy, and make things up.
And this book is just stunning
November 11, 2011 § 1 Comment
La Tartine Gourmande is one of my favorite food blogs. Author and food stylist Béa tells stories of her life in the U.S., her childhood in France, her friends and family – all framed around creative recipes and beautiful photographs. Because she eats gluten-free, her recipes are, too . . . yet the focus is less on being gluten-free and more towards being gorgeous and delicious.
And she just completed a book! While it’s not officially released, it is available for pre-order here.
I would page through it just for the prettiness.
A November poem
November 9, 2011 § Leave a comment
Here’s one I wrote a couple years ago, back home in Iowa.
early november
the corn tilts
in the garden.
the dog bites at
empty shucks,
pulls them toward
her until a light
crack breaks the stalk.
I glance over from
where I am digging
the last of the carrots,
the soil wet as clay,
the snappy orange and
purple roots still smelling
fresh as spring.
.
she tosses her head,
tears open those crisp
tawny husks to find
a crumbling white
core. noses and huffs
at the chaff. only
leftover failures.
all the sweet corn
has been savored.
all the colored popcorn
lines the windowsills.
.
and certainly, this is not
the fat golden field corn
that she and our other
dogs steal from
the neighbors, to sit
down with the bright
yellow between their
paws, to chew off each
dry, dented kernel with
a hunter’s satisfaction.
On a farm in Dordogne
November 8, 2011 § Leave a comment
Any of you who know me well are aware of my love for France. I could go on and on! But rather than do that (again) here, I just wanted to share a France-focused web magazine with you – and my article they just published about one of the places I stayed and worked as a WWOOF volunteer in the spring of 2010.
On the Farm: WWOOFing in Dordogne
I will go back one day!
Something beautiful, indeed
November 5, 2011 § 1 Comment
I’m sitting at the table, making this a long morning, comfy in snowboots and a sweater. Dried flowers stand in a jar. My dog occasionally comes over to look at me with eyes pleading for a walk in the sunny outdoors. My hair is a mess, but I don’t feel like brushing it. I’ve got at least an hour’s worth of edits to make on this novel – dull but necessary changes to make before it can be published, before I can move on to the creative fun of another. As I work, options about the future, and the problems and promises of the present, keep floating in and out of my mind. And it is the perfect time for this song and its video. I don’t know what it is about needtobreathe, but their music tends to mend a little bit of my heart whenever I listen.
It seems like we humans want to have causes. Something to latch onto, to drive us forward, to give us purpose. One of those, for many of us, is to make and share and discover beauty. Here’s one of my routes to finding it:
A concert for the cows
October 27, 2011 § Leave a comment
Silly . . . but amusing! Especially if you happen to like jazz, cows, and France. Which I do.
From reservation to boarding school
October 12, 2011 § Leave a comment
My first new-library-card book checkout has turned out to be a success. (No wanting to throw the book across the room because the writing style is so dreadful or the characters so stereotyped. Hooray!) Linda LeGarde Grover’s short story collection, The Dance Boots keeps me coming back, to be inside the world she creates, to try and know its inhabitants. Grover writes prose with a strong poetic quality, her lines rhythmic and her images rich. The voice changes subtly, but enough, as different characters narrate their stories. And her characters are vulnerable, strong, complex. You want to know them. A few times I did get a little confused as to where we were in time and who happened to be narrating, as the scenes frequently jump, but that’s my only complaint – and may not be an issue for readers with less of a tendency to daydream! If you’re looking for a primarily plot-driven book, this isn’t the one. If you’re looking for a book that explores the human experience – particularly, the influence of Indian schools and white culture on the Ojibwe of Northern Minnesota – this is one you’ll want to be sure to get your hands on.
Here’s an excerpt:
And mother was beautiful – the sum of all she was, was beauty. In her white low-waisted dress with the embroidery down the left side of the skirt. In the dress she wore to powwows, black cotton with red tape trim, cones rolled from snuff can covers sewn on the hem, the pleasant jingle they made as she walked and as she danced next to her dear friend Lisette, off to the side of the powwow circle, swiveling slowly, nine steps left, nine steps right. Lisette, she was called, and Mother was called Shonnud. Lisette was a maple tree, strong and stately, Shonnud an aspen that trembled to the music that moved the still air.
. . . Their dancing was hard work, controlled, disciplined, and prayerful; their calves were trim and very firm from this dancing, their feet muscular. And I watched them and waited for the day that I would be a young lady in a black dress and beaded jacket, waited and watched them dance as they had since they were young ladies, Shonnud and Lisette dancing side by side, dipping gracefully in a rhythm deeper in the hearts and souls of women than the drumbeat. (Grover 93-94)
The book won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, which is placed in such small print on the cover I didn’t even notice until a moment ago. This is encouraging – see, I do have good taste! More seriously, I am just encouraged by happening upon writing that insists upon being art, not just entertainment. Writing that reads naturally, that masks the effort put into the work. Like a ballet.
So long, September
September 30, 2011 § 3 Comments
I will send September out in high style this Friday night, with a long bath and Country Living, re-warmed homemade chicken soup with rice, and an early bedtime.
But first, here is the John Keats poem I feel the need to re-read and remind everyone of this time of year. You may want to put on your literary thinking cap since it’s all old language and meter and rhyme, but it’s a gorgeous piece and worth the time. Can’t you just imagine England in the fall? I was there in the gloomy winter/spring, but I can imagine. And I’m remembering so many pastoral paintings, hanging on the walls of European museums, by artists whose names I wrote down on scraps of paper, and shoved in my pockets, and inevitably lost.
—–
To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Delays & anticipation
September 29, 2011 § Leave a comment
Well. It is the second-to-last day of September and I am a brooding a bit for several reasons:
1. I love September. It’s my favorite month and it’s almost over. A whole year of waiting for it again . . . it feels kind of like finishing a favorite book. Satisfying, except you’re not ready to be done with it yet. (This is of course referring back to the days when I read books.)
2. I set many goals over the last few weeks – and shared them – and have not even come close to reaching them! Such as getting up early to walk the dog, biking to work, and reading through The Vegetable Garden Problem Solver (re-set that goal: if I’m through the book by next February I can be content). Am I lazy? Or am I asking too much of myself? Grr, me.
3. The exciting September News that I hinted at earlier has to be pushed to . . . October, maybe. Stalling on my own part has something to do with this, but there are other factors. Sometimes things have to take on their own life and timeline, and that’s sort of what this is. So – hang in there, me and you.
Still. I can shake myself out of this brood (a little). Because on this second-to-last day of September I also have some very good things to look forward to:
1. We’re having a party at the farm! A potluck-style crawfish bash thanks to my boss and her Southern roots. This Saturday night. (I’d better take a nap between the farmers’ market and the party, come to think of it.) If you’re my friend and you live here and you want to come, let me know – the more the merrier!
2. I am happy to announce that I will be attending and blogging for/about the Carolina Farm Stewardship Associaton’s Sustainable Ag Conference in Durham, NC! It’s taking place November 12-13, but I’ll get there early to check out the area and participate in some pre-conference activities. More details on that later, but if any readers are in the area and/or attending the conference I’d love to know.
3. Change comes with the seasons, when you work on a farm. It scares me but I also need to acknowledge how lucky I am to mix up my schedule and my life; to have new experiences and opportunities for learning; to make new friends and new discoveries. Come November my world is going to shift, and I don’t know how far – it could be very far, or not far at all – but I get to ride out that shift. And write it out. (Thanks for reading!)
4. There will be more time set aside for writing books. I may not be reading about vegetables as I should, but book ideas have been be coming out of my ears lately. So it seems weird to look forward to this, but I am excited about jotting down the thoughts and the plots. I’ve already started, and it’s only going to get better. Winter seems to be more of my writing season, especially poetry and fiction, and I can’t help but feel glad about dark quiet nights by the fireplace, shutting out the buzz and hum of everything else so that the imagination can do its thing.
5. And finally: baby brother is getting married. I love/hate weddings but the love part of them is what I aim to focus on. The event planner in me wants to know all the details. The budding photographer in me can hardly wait to capture all the gorgeous moments that will be had. At first the news came as a surprise but now the idea is getting more and more fun. I am hoping for the utmost of happiness for them.
So then. There are delays and disappointments and the passing of time, and there are joys and excitements in the passing of the time.
It’s life, eh?
And here is a delicious Etsy blog post I wanted to share, to sweeten this slightly moody post of my own: How to Make Chocolates. Check out the deal you can get on the cookbook! Yum. We are moving into the season of decadence.
Flight
September 27, 2011 § Leave a comment
The other night the sky turned so luminously pink it caught my attention from where I had busied myself indoors. I was chatting on the phone with my mother or sister when the sky beckoned me out onto the patio. I walked out onto the cement, maneuvered around the bicycles, the table, and the tomato plants, and looking out over the trees and garages and parking lot and lampposts I saw them: three skydivers, their parachutes pulled, floating down through the sunset.
We see skydivers out here all the time – Longmont seems to be a city of the sky, with numerous small planes, air shows, hot air balloons, and a skydiving outfit – so it wasn’t unusual to see the figures falling. Usually I don’t envy them, as I am happy enough keeping my money and staying on the ground, but this night I did, a little. They weren’t looking at the sky-canvas, as I was – they were in it. They had become a part of that sunset. I imagine they could practically feel its colors.
Yesterday, while we were picking beans, a great flock of small black birds went racing right over us. Their noise caught our attention and we looked up to see their silhouettes against the blue-and-white. There had to be hundreds of them, all flying at the same speed, one body with one purpose. “It’s like a pattern,” I said, and wished I could sew a dress out of the fabric.
At the barn that night, I watched the birds gather on the fences of the runs where the horses eat. They wait for the horses to finish their feed, and once we pull the horses and buckets out of the runs, the birds hop in for the spilled grain. Mostly they are sparrows, but one of the birds was different, bigger than the rest, a kind of brindled brown and black. I don’t know what he was, and I still haven’t found out, but I kept looking back at him, wanting to see if he got the leftovers along with the others, wondering where he lived and how he had come here.
And all these things came together to make me start thinking about wings. That old human desire for flight. An airplane doesn’t quite suffice – it’s so inside, so loud, so mechanical. I’d rather grow wings out of my own back, nice white feathery ones, tinged pink or gold, that I could tuck away and unfold as needed. I’m not an angel of the heavenly variety nor the (rather opposite) Victoria’s Secret variety, but I do envy their gorgeous feathers! I wonder what kinds of things might we see, if we could add that other dimension of space to our daily, usual movement? How would our perspectives change? What beauty might we know?
Adventure isn’t something I can very well afford right now, but I can daydream about hang-gliding, parasailing, boat sailing, ballooning, and galloping bareback across a meadow. Lightness, height, speed . . . we pursue these things for a reason. I want to do it. I want to find out why.
Kinds of Honey 