Clover and Creeping

It's actually Oxalis, but we always just called it clover growing up. It's blooming now, here in the piney woods of east Texas. I picked a fist full yesterday from the farthest corner of the third-acre, back where the ivy is creeping over everything, and near where the tiny pink roses are, finally, taking a rest from blooming. 

The clover is actually for a small lookbook I'm putting together for Balm and Honey. I've found the most incredible yarns that sing, softly, of spring, and I'm knitting them now into cloths to sell. I have plans of setting up at the local farmer's market after the spring honey comes in and my herbs and flowers are ready. Looking forward to that, definitely.

When I was working in Colorado and living in that tiny cabin (remember those days?), I would drive into Cortez every week for the farmer's market. It was a glorious one. There was a girl who ran a vegetable booth there who probably came to think of me as a creeper before the summer was over. Oh man. She was the coolest. Her clothes were handmade and colorful and imaginative and messy and perfection. She cut her own hair, I heard her say once, and it was the best, most beautifully styled hair I've seen on a person outside of the theater. In the winter, this girl worked as a ski instructor, but in the summer she was an organic farmer and grew her own food and made her own trail mixes and tea blends. She drove this rusted Jeep and had these two spotted dogs that sat at her feet and only moved at her command. She was impossibly awesome. I think of all the people I've met and would like to have lunch with, she is among the top on my list. See? Creeper. I told you.

Speaking of cool people and creeping, I'm heading to the Mother Earth Fair in Texas on Friday with hopes of meeting up with the likes of Joel Salatin and Wranglerstar and Claudia Lucero. Heck yes. If you'll be there, too, please drop me a line at brin@brinwisdom.com and let's meet up!

Spring is on its way, friends. It is, it is. Take heart. -Brin

Paradoxes, Part One

I have said that Texas is a state of mind,

but I think it is more than that....

-John Steinbeck

I wore boots yesterday and went to a ranch. The community's raising money for a local young woman, an avid equestrian, who has cancer. She's a beautiful girl from a beautiful family, and folks turned out to buy nachos, sing karaoke, bid on auction items, and take selfies with horses named Rio and Blackjack and Pongo.

Have you ever been to Texas? It's a confounding place. It's the land of paradoxes- it's steamy and it's dusty. It's the plains and the ocean. It's palm trees and snow. It's liberal hipster and skeevy redneck. It's loud, it's serene, it's bustling, it's remote. 

It's impossible to be bored in Texas. I think that's why I stay. That, and it's where my family is- both sides. They all sailed from England, landed in Virginia, wagon-trained to Georgia, and settled in Texas. The men had names like Bird and Tavner and Abner. And William. Always, William. They worked hard and fought harder and preached, some. I've been putting together a family tree on Ancestry and got word that I could apply to be a DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) gal, just like Emily Gilmore on Gilmore Girls. That revelation hit like a smack to the funny bone- hilarious, yet sharp/deep at the same time. Paradox, again.

Lately it's been on my mind how important it must be: the where we come from and who we are. Is it something you ever think about? Is it something you believe matters? I mean, I was raised to understand that Texas isn't just a place, it's in your blood. It's your birthright. But I have always felt like I belonged in a windy, gray, salted-air ocean place, too... like I know something I don't and am carrying a secret no one's ever told me. Crazy paradox, I know.

So I'm about to tell some stories... I'm about to string words together and make a chain from William to Brin, from history to present. It feels necessary, somehow. Necessary, and yet a completely frivolous way to spend these precious days. Could be a present state of mind, but I think it's more than that....

More to come on this.

The Unwritten Rule of Summer

It's the unwritten rule of summer: when it's warm and you're driving under a sky filled with lazy, puffy clouds, you must pull over at the country roadside stands. You must.

 

Especially when they sell strawberries you can pick yourself. And peaches they just picked themselves.

And especially when they have red new potatoes, still dusty from the soil. And jams they canned right there. And cold, bottled fizzy drinks from yesteryear. Then you really must stop. It's the rule.

If you're ever in Pittsburg, Texas, stop at Efurd Orchards. And when they offer you a free peach still warm from the tree, think of me.

Wildseed Farms

It is cold today. Cold and drizzly. In Texas. In May. It's crazy. I love it.

The weather is reminding me of a visit to Wildseed Farms. Last fall, I took a Texas tour and drove wherever I felt like. So much fun. We found this cafe that served the most amazing breakfast ever and went there three days in a row. We floated the River Walk in San Antonio and drank Dr. Pepper from the original bottling plant in Dublin and ate killer pizza in Dallas and stayed at The House of the Seasons in Jefferson, among many other things. Not bad for November, we thought.

One of the places I was hoping to visit- but really didn't think we'd have time- was Wildseed Farms outside of Fredericksburg, Texas. In my mind, we could load up on pumpkins for Thanksgiving... but most importantly, flower seeds. Seeds I could plant and then save so one day my grandkids could be picking flowers alongside an old farmhouse and tell stories about how Granny Brin planted the seeds and would you believe the flowers still bloom today... (and so on, etc.). At least, that's how I explained my two buggies full of seeds and pumpkins. Ahem.

If you're ever around Fredericksburg, make a trip out to this farm. It's gorgeous. Their seed store is so inspiring! 

If you can't make it down to the farm, you can always order online and plant a little piece of Texas no matter where you are.

I think I may go and plant some of my Wildseed seeds now while it isn't too hot. I promised myself a legacy garden, after all...

Happy Wednesday!

Post Pilgrimage: Slow, Gathered, and Grown

As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, 

a certain sense of beautiful mystery

seems to gather and grow. 

- A.C. Benson

I went out to the garden, picked basil, and came in and made pesto last night. 

It was a hot, tiring week in Houston. I was sent there Sunday for a 4-day conference in a giant glass building with fast elevators. The pace was all wrong- too fast and frantic, then boring and blah. The hotel (didn't I used to enjoy them?) was impersonal and loud. The presentations were slick but slow. The traffic set me on edge. I felt out of place all week, and when I got in the rental car to make the drive home, I nearly cried out with relief.

I got home, went out to the garden, picked basil, and made pesto. Then I smeared it over chicken, potatoes, peppers... whatever, didn't matter... and set the table. Then I lit candles and opened a bottle of wine for friends and we filled our plates and everything was okay again.

Pilgrimages around the world are great, but I like them slow with gathered and grown dinners and flickering candles at the end. 

 Beautiful mystery optional. 

How Long...?

How long has it been since you awoke before sun-up on a cold fall morning and headed to a country pasture? How long has it been since you walked - with your hands shoved deep into your pockets - through a dew-wet meadow, watching your own breath billow and hang in puffs about you?

Has it been awhile since you sat on an old fallen log and watched your morning coffee brew on a campfire?


How long you reckon it's been since a real cowboy - the quiet type, with spurs and everything - poured you a cup of hot coffee? Real coffee. Black coffee. None of the half-fat, venti, whipped, mocha business. Just an honest cup of coffee. No menu board. No lines. Just you, a cowboy, a styrofoam cup and a coffee pot. How long's that been?


Think back. When's the last time you sat on a bench made of a tree stump and listened to someone play the guitar as the sun came up and warmed your backs?

And if you had to, when's the last time you'd say you had a steaming bowl of real Texas Beef Stew? Not something from a can. Not something from a restaurant. I'm talking about cast iron seared beef stew that's simmered for hours over an open flame. I'm talking stew manned by a boot-wearing fella who quarters onions and dices carrots with the same knife his Daddy probably used 50 years ago...

I knew it. That's too long.

You should come on down to Texas. I think you could probably use the open air and some real coffee and guitar-strumming at sunrise and a bowl of chuckwagon beef stew. I can't imagine who wouldn't. (Unless you're one of those city slicker types with ragweed allergies, caffeine issues, an iPod and an "I'm a Vegan... Are You?" shirts. If that's you, please consider staying home. You'd hate it here. And, as impossibly friendly as we genuine Texans are, we do tend to be suspicious of folks who can't handle their red meat.)

No offense to anyone. Just sayin'.

The day was such a success. It had been too long since I'd done all that. And the henrybella's table (seen above about half-way through the morning), sold out as it does every year. I actually forgot my camera today, but remembered to snap a few pictures with my Blackberry. How long has it been since I neglected to take my camera with me to an event like this one? Forever.

It's also been forever since I settled into the couch with a little company and had a movie night. Excuse me while I go wash a few dishes and prepare to settle in for a quiet Texas night at home.

Happy weekend. -Brin

(PS. The cooking today was done by a guy named Garland Hays. He owns Big G's Chuckwagon & Dutch Oven Catering Company (903-335-3028), and he's the one pouring the coffee and stirring the stew (but not playing the guitar) in the above pictures. I highly recommend him and his beef stew.)

Dreaming, Living and Stomping

Dream as if you'll live forever.

Live as if you'll die today.

-James Dean

One of my dreams: to go grape stomping before I turned thirty. Grape stomping was the thing, Delaney Vineyards was the place, and today was the day.

It was a perfect day. I loved the colors best. The sky sat a heavy, muted shade of gray. The vines unfurled an emerald green. And the grapes? They blushed a blueberry blue. Piles and piles of blueberry blue.

I wanted to take them all home and spill them from baskets and just look at them.

You couldn't, of course. It was harvest day at the vineyards and buckets and bins of grapes sat around waiting for their turn in the tumbler, a machine that separated the grapes from their stems. Men with large plastic shovels stood on top of the machine and scooped grapes into the hopper. I thought of those two scoops of raisins commercials and laughed.

I'm not sure what kind of grapes they use for raisins, but these weren't them. The grapes my friend and I saw today were headed for Delaney's wooden barrels, to ferment and age and become Merlot and Chardonnay wines.

After they were stomped, of course.

Stepping into a vat of mushed grapes is unlike any other feeling I've ever felt. Slushy and gritty, the mixture also ran fluid and slippery. Feeling that purple soup churn around my ankles reminded me of something one would experience in a spa. It was comforting, somehow. Almost therapeutic. I could have squished and stirred those grapes all day.

But I didn't. I lifted one foot out, then the other, and breathed a happy sigh. I did it. Under a stormy gray sky alongside twisting, emerald vines, I stomped grapes. Before I turned thirty. And it was as wonderful as I'd envisioned.

I'll drink (a wine sample) to that.

So here's to us. Here's to dreaming a little and living even more. -Brin

Headlights and Highways

It's been a blur of headlights and highways the past several days. Driving from Monticello, Utah, to Ft. Worth, Texas, affords a lot of scenery and time for reflection.

Colorado was one of the most memorable months of my life. I'm sorry to see it done with. If you're ever handed a chance to spend several weeks in the mountains, take it. Don't think, just do it.


If, however, you are ever handed a chance to spend several weeks in New Mexico, um... think about it first. (My sincerest apologies to all New Mexico readers, but the drive on I-40 between Albuquerque and Amarillo nearly killed me. Never doing that again.)

So I'm not home, but I'm headed there soon. Not for long... just for a pit stop. I understand I have big gardening news to share, so we'll get to that before the fourth.

Until then, my best. -Brin

Help.

Explored Mesa Verde ruins over the weekend, in addition to railing and rafting. More on that later. For now, I have only this to say: I ain't coming home and you can't make me.

Oh. And help. Help! Someone please stop me before I do this.

(By the way, my summer reading list has been updated with notes and a few new reading suggestions. Enjoy!)

The Raft of the Rail/Raft Adventure

It all begins so calmly. Beautiful afternoon... sun at your back... still, placid river... laughing life-jacket wearers beaming with anticipation.

Then it all goes crazy.

Soon after we hopped off the train, we snapped on our life preservers and tripped our way onto a raft, ready to ride back down the same river we viewed from our rail car. I had never been rafting before. I was ready. Really ready. I wanted big waves and harrowing rock misses and a tale of river adventure and survival.

For the most part, I got it.

I would have been happy to show you more, but here's the thing: you can't hold on for dear life and take pictures with your disposable, underwater camera at the same time. You want to, but you can't. The only pictures you come up with are right before the wave smashes you in the face... before you're gasping from the 41 F degree water... and while you're bracing for another hit.

Or during those precious moments you're trying to admire the scenery before you get to those splashes and rocks ahead.

I joked with the guy in front of me, promising him that all 27 of the rafting pictures I took were of his elbow. "But it's tan and looks fine from this angle," I assured him. He was a Texan, too. During the ride I took great comfort in that, and the fact that I wasn't the only one clinging to the "chicken line" on the side of the raft.

Told you. Even here, when it finally calmed down to a smooth sail to the shore - just beyond the bridge - I was still clinging to the chicken line.

Truly one of my Most Fun Days Ever. I could rail and raft every single day of my life. Or... you know... most of them. Some of them. Okay, on those days I wouldn't mind getting into the shower with a bra full of coal specks and shorts full of sand. Those days would be great.

The Rail/Raft Adventure. Won't soon forget it. Not sure I want to, either....

The Rail of the Rail/Raft Adventure

The Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.... the D&SNG. I boarded, sleepily, on Saturday morning for a coal-powered ride up the mountains.

Three words for you. No, four: time of my life.

It wasn't a stretch to feel like a character in an Agatha Christie mystery, what with the old, coal-fed chugchugchug... the depot and the tickets... the mishmash of passengers... the smoking, black engine... the shrill, familiar whistle. We stopped four times on the way up the mountains: once to pick up hikers, twice for water, and once for riduculous passengers who hopped off at a water stop. They braked the train - mid tracks - so the people could catch up and all aboard! again. Then we were off.

I adored the scenery. God's brilliant, gorgeous scenery:

The nature landscape wasn't half bad, either.

[Grin]

The snow-dusted mountain tops were my favorite. I blinked as snow melted and merged with waterfalls that splashed into streams tucked deep inside the valleys of the rock. It was too much beauty for words.

I would loved to have thrown the brake - at least once - and just stopped it all and stared. I could have stared until my eyes burned holes through my head. Why hadn't I been here before? Surely God passes through here each day, if only to stop and shake His head and say, "Wow, it is good."

I'm going back another Saturday with a book and an iced coffee; I just want to sit and ride and look and quietly absorb.

Unless Conductor Jared is aboard. Then I'll have to plan a third rail ride.

Oh well. [wink]

A Welcome and Unwelcome Visitor

Millie's helping prepare the camp fire. Such a good pup. I have a friend flying up from Texas later today and we have a full weekend of sight seeing and adventure planned. Can't wait.

We saw a snake yesterday, Millie and I. She almost hopped right onto it before it began slithering and I began shrieking like a... like a... like a woman who's just seen a slithering snake. That was it. It's been down in the 20s here at night and I've been freezing and tired of walking to the outdoor facilities on the bear look-out. I marched immediately down to the lodge yesterday and told Carole, the proprietor here, "I've seen a snake. I want a different cabin, please."

I got one. It has a loft and a stove and a bathroom! and a heater. Hardly know what to do with myself with all these amenities.

Laugh

I suspect Millie will miss the old cabin. She'll have to be a bit more supervised here in civilization. But she'll be fine.

You'll be fine, Millie. You'll see.

(By the way, I had so much fun reading about all the cravings! Seemed most agreed that chocolate, caffeine, salt and grease rule "the day". Thanks for your input! And special thanks to the gals who googled Turkish restaurants for me, or invited me to theirs...)

Cravings (For Girls Only)

Men: this post is really for women, as most guys can't possibly understand the intensely physical/emotional food cravings that go along with being a girl. I'd thank you to come back and read another day. -Brin

There. That got rid of the lot of them. Mostly nothing but ex's and former co-workers and no-do-gooders anyway. (Smile) Glad it's just us girls now.

So here's a very different post for me. For you. For you and me. But it's a tricky time of the month craving/calorie/cramping wise. You know how it goes. I woke up this morning incredibly hungry for... for... what? What was I hungry for? Not the usual french fries and mayonnaise, as is typically the only thing I want to eat 12 days out of the year. Nope, this time I was hungry for something exotic and spicy and warm and tender and...

... oh no. I'm hungry for Istanbul.

I've been a lot of places in the past year, but none captured my heart so completely as Istanbul. I was so surprised to find that I enjoyed - no, adored - the food there. (Americans are always so snobby about our food, aren't we... so particular and demanding and scared to death that a mouthful of something not regulated by the FDA will surely, without fail, kill us dead.) And of course, we know that Americans can cook. Can we ever. But there sure is some delicious cuisine to be had across those wide oceans.

My two favorite foods from Turkey turned out to be pide and iskender. Hands down. Peter Cherches explains pide best, I think: a flat bread topped with cheeses and/or meat... a Turkish version of pizza. But oh, it's so much more than that. Today I would give my left foot and both my ears for a slice of pide. Just one. Quick. Does anyone have a Turkish restaurant near you? I'll hop a plane tonight.

This is iskender. The lamb ones I had are... sinful. Spicy, tomatoey meat piled on warm, freshly-baked flat bread with butter sauce and yogurt, or something akin, served on the side. Sounds unappealing, I know, but... I dream of it even now. Why does Istanbul have to be so far away?

So. Funny question today, but I'm looking for something to get my mind off pide. Tell me: what do you crave? What do you go reaching for in the middle of the night? What chases away your crampy blues? What food from your past would you like to see on your plate (bowl) again? What recipe has gotten away from you that you'd give anything to find?

Hmm. There. Feel better already. Interested to see what you all crave, and am glad us girls could have this chat. *wink*

Dishes, National Geographic, and Jimmy Hoffa

Simplicity is an acquired taste.

Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.

-Katharine Fullerton Gerould

If simplicity is an acquired taste, I'm afraid I'm acquiring it.

After an early trip to the Farmer's Market this morning, it was time for chores. I swept the cabin and put fresh water in the flower vases and wiped the oil lamps clean. Then I did dishes. As my cabin has no running water, it required bringing up a bucket of cool, clean water from the well just a few yards away. Millie helped... hanging her nose over the bucket as it filled. We trotted back down the dirt road, sunshine and cool mountain air and dandelions all blowing and bowing on their way down to the river.

Have you ever done dishes in a bucket on the side of a mountain? I hadn't. At the Farmer's Market I was careful to buy organic, non-toxic, biodegradable soap so that everything that ran back to the river would be safe. It's really made me think - even more than usual - about how closely tied we are to this beautiful place. The deer Millie watches drink out of the same river that we raft in and catch our trout from. We all live here and have such an enormous responsibility caring for this beautiful, old earth. I thought these things as I watched the river and washed dishes.

We're making strawberry shortcake and hazelnut coffee tonight and having new friends over... photographers with National Geographic who are camping nearby. They've promised me camera and photog tips, which we all know I desperately need. The guy, Curt, loves Millie, so I could hardly mind when I saw him on our Wishing Island yesterday. He called Millie over and together they found the butt of a rifle pressed into the cakey mud. Last night I dreamed the authorities excavated our island and found Jimmy Hoffa and National Geographic ran a story titled "Millie Finds Jimmy"....

Did I mention? I slipped on the rocks late Thursday and gashed my head pretty badly. It was late and I wasn't about to try to walk to the lodge, and I was bleeding too much to get in the car, so I wrapped a whiskey-soaked towel around my head and curled up on the floor next to Millie and cried to her. I went to the rural clinic yesterday and they said I did a good job. So no wonder I'm having Jimmy Hoffa dreams. They almost could have dug me up on that island...

Anyhow. Dishes are done and there are books to read out in the sunshine. Hope your weekend is beautiful. -Brin