Lifescapes

Valley in snow

 

This is the view from the deck of our cabin, looking down toward the little Rio Manuelitas and across to the mountains, the Sangre de Cristos, that embrace the broad valley. Sometimes we can hear the bugle of elk in the forest across the valley, and this morning, walking the dogs, I heard the coyotes’ dawn song filling the air. In the fall, the valley is golden; in the rainy season--June and July--it’s a sea of yellow-spangled green. Now, in the dead of winter, the grass is covered with snow and the rancher feeds his herd of black Angus cattle with hay tossed from his pickup truck, the cattle following in long, snaking black lines across the snow.
 
This valley has a long and vivid history. It was part of the Apache and Ute migratory range, then claimed by Spain when it conquered Mexico in the 1520s. It was a Spanish possession until Mexico declared its independence in 1821, then became part of the United States with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1848. New Mexico became a state in 1912. Three small villages were settled here: Rociada (just out of  this photo, at the far left); tiny Upper Rociada, a few miles higher in the mountains; and even tinier Gascon, another mile farther, still higher.
 
In the 1870s, Jean Pendaries and wife Maria left their native Gascony and came to what is now New Mexico, making part of the long trek by wagon along the Santa Fe Trail. Pendaries helped to build the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas (you can still see it on the north side of Old Town Plaza), then moved his family to this valley and established a ranch along the river. The original ranch house was located near the tip of the wooded ridge, just below Rociada. After Pendaries’ death, the ranch passed to one of his daughters, Marguerite Baca, who (with her husband Don José) built a much larger, two-story adobe ranch house. That house burned in 1962 and was rebuilt by the then-owner of the ranch, the same Texan who developed the village where our house is located, above the valley.
 
I love to watch the shadows of the mountains moving across the valley, and the grazing cows, and the crows and ravens cartwheeling in the clear air. But mostly, I watch the always-changing mountains, glowing red in the dawn, waiting to catch the setting moon in their embrace.
 
Reading note, from Behind the Mountains, stories about this valley written in 1955 by Oliver La Farge, whose wife Consuelo was the granddaughter of Jean and Marie Pendaries and who often visited here: Down the middle of the valley runs a clear, fast, noisy stream in which one may take trout. In the lowland along the stream and its tributaries are the farmlands; beyond them are the pastures reaching to the high-wooded knees of the mountains. Behind the crests of the first rugged walls, shaggy with spruce and fir and pine, are the main peaks, with the brown, domed, pure rock of El Ermitano, snow-powdered until midsummer, as a monument and guardian notching the western sky.
 

Snow scene

The view from my writing loft, in last week's blizzard. The big snowfall came on Tuesday, maybe 18", but it was the wind that did the work, whipping down across the Sangres from the northwest, sculpting the powder into three- and four-foot drifts. By Wednesday, all the roads in our village (Pendaries) were closed, and the main road across the valley and out to the county highway. Here on Goat Mountain, the roads weren't plowed until Thursday afternoon late, and it wasn't until Friday that Bill got the driveway shoveled. We had plenty of food and the power stayed on. The power is a big issue here, in storms, because some of the lines/transformers are remote. When the power goes down, it can stay down for 4-5 days. Brrrr....

The three young Ponderosa pines you see in the photo are our "bird trees"--where we've hung several feeders and scatter seed for the birds. For me, part of the delight of learning this landscape has been learning to recognize the birds that live here. Looking out the window on this sunny Sunday morning, I count three ravens, a quartet of crows, an assortment of juncos, and a pair of Steller’s jays, eagerly cleaning up whatever the redwing blackbirds and nuthatches and smaller birds have flung out of the feeders. Last summer’s abundant crop of grasses and tall forbs—mullein, thistles, fleabane, sunflowers—have all been stripped, and the snow cover is making forage difficult. I especially love to watch the ravens as they ride the winds that rise along the sloping mountain, spiraling high, plunging down, black bobsleds on an invisible, twisting sluice. Raven is sociable, usually hanging out with a gang of buddies, strutting, swaggering, dickering, debating. He's a talker, too: I love his rough cough, his sarcastic croak, the ringing tok! that spreads the news of danger or fresh food: insects, small animals, roadkill, promising kitchen trash. And a new supply of seeds under the bird trees.

This week, making progress on MOURNING GLORIA, into Chapter Four. In this book, I'm developing a couple of characters from previous books: Hark Hibler, the newspaper editor; and Caitlin, China's niece, now a permanent member of the family. Also did some research on psychoactive herbs (found a couple of exciting sources and am following up on them) and pushed the mystery (the crime and China's involvement with it) a little further. That's always the challenge in amateur sleuth mysteries: setting it up so that the involvement of the protagonist/amateur detective in the crime is motivated. This isn't as easy as it is in a P.I. novel, where the client walks into the P.I.'s office and lays out the case. It's also why the China books always get off to what seems like a slow start. I want to make sure China's involvement feels natural--feels as if she just has to start digging into the situation, whatever it is.

Also this week, worked with Peggy to set up Story Circle's online classes for the Winter term--our best term yet, seems to me. Strong teachers, interesting classes, and students already registering. Enrollments are strictly limited, so if you've been wanting to take an online writing class, check the site out now. Peggy also set up a new Facebook page for our book review site and I worked on it. Oh, and China's Facebook fan page is now up, and I'm trying to post something new there every day. I have an idea for a series of postings there after the first of the year. Drop in and see what's going on.

Currently reading: U IS FOR UNDERTOW, Sue Grafton's latest and a wonderful, wonderful book called LIFE IS LIKE A TORTILLA, by Carole Counihan--reviewing this for Story Circle. Last night on DVD, watched JULIE AND JULIA, a must-see film. Looking forward to watching Nora Ephram's director's commentary on it tonight. Knitting socks, keeping warm, enjoying the winter break. Bill goes back to Texas tomorrow (weather permitting). The dogs and I will have another three or four weeks here. Quiet, lovely solitude in a lovely place.

Reading note: I read the landscape to help me through, to know what’s come before me there, to find my footing in time. The land can speak us back to ourselves, a kind of autobiography. To see it as mere scenery is like looking at the closed cover of a book.—Deborah Tall, From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place

Cabin in the snow

 
This is where I am for the next month or so. A small log house perched on a mountain slope at 7500 feet, thirty miles northeast of Santa Fe (over the mountains, as the crows fly, much farther by car). Twenty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas, forty miles south of Taos, on the eastern flank of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, at the southern end of the Rockies.

Through the windows at the front of the house, we look north and west across the valley to a snow-covered ridge that rises to nearly ten thousand feet. We can look down-valley, east and south, to Cerro Pelón, bald, burly, white-caped. Distances are deceptive. This extinct volcano--once an inferno of fiery, liquid rock, now cold, solid stone, immovable--may look close, but it’s thirty miles away and millions of years old. I feel some astonishment at this: at what seems to be an unchangeable landscape, but is constantly changing and being changed. In the life of the earth, it’s fire one day, rock the next.

Nearer by is a famous mountain. Earlier people in this region called it El Cerro del Tecolote, Owl Mountain; now it’s called Hermit’s Peak, in honor of an Italian recluse named Giovanni Maria Agostiani, who came there to live in 1863, in a shallow cave below the bristlecone pines that rim the eastern, dawn-facing cliff, incandescent in the morning sun. I often try to imagine the solitude of that cave in the cool blessedness of the summers, the frigid, ice-clad fury of the winters. I can’t.

My view of Agostiani’s mountain--Hermit's Peak--is blocked by that ridge behind our house. When I look out the window of my writing loft at the back, all I can see are the snow-laden pines rises against the blue oh so blue New Mexico sky. But whether I can see it or not, Hermit’s Peak is still there, far beyond what is safe and imaginable. Who was the hermit, really, beyond the tales that are told about him?  Whatever his story, Agostiani took it with him when he left the mountain in 1867. Two years later, his body was found beyond another mountain to the south of here, near Las Cruces. There was a dagger in his back.

Sadly (at least for all the wishful thinkers), there was almost no snow in our part of Texas last week. Cold, though, below freezing, so I imagine there isn't much left of the garden but the kale and maybe some chard. Here, we had one bitterly cold morning, but it's been warm in my loft and the writing is coming along well. Moving along fairly steadily on Mourning Gloria and am into the third chapter (about 11,000 words). I worked out a back story but it's already been turned upside-down. I like it when the characters have minds of their own and want to go off on their own directions. Makes my work a lot easier. If they're making it up as they go along, I don't have to. This book has morning glories as the "signature" herb, but I'm more broadly interested in the many psychoactive plants used for ritual purposes in the Southwest, Mexico, and Central America. I haven't written about them before, and the research is fascinating. 

Nothing much happening here besides the writing. Dinner one night with friends, a bachelor neighbor over for supper, another couple for drinks. Community potluck coming up at the end of the week. Walks with the dogs, knitting, reading: right now, John Opie's book on the Ogallala aquifer, just finished Heller's biography of Ayn Rand and the new bio of Molly Ivins. Watched a couple of old movies, Anatomy of a Murder and Advice and Consent. Lovely quiet time.

Reading note: We humans have fallen far from the grace we once had, when we could look on every mountain with fear and reverence, but we have also crept slowly back from the depths, when we needed to have our names carved on every mountain top and a passenger pigeon in every pot. We seem mostly to be moving in some kind of right direction, if only we aren't too late.--Barbara Kingsolver

Afterword: I'm having a devil of a time with replies to your comments. I've been reporting the problem since summer. Sometimes the Typepad techs come up with a fix (new browser, upgraded browser, change the reply settings, etc). I even deleted my blogrolls, thinking that the stuff in the sidebars might be interacting with the reply function. I try to reply to every comment, but most of the time I'm frustrated by a problem Typepad can't seem to fix. Sorry.

Snow in the mountains

We woke up this morning to eigh inches of fresh powder snow, a skier's dream--and still snowing. Ten degrees, so we bundled up in our heavy coats and ski masks and mittens to take the dog for their morning walk. They were were in a fury of playfulness, tussling and tumbling in the snow, burrowing under it for imagined voles (or perhaps real--what do I know?). I can't see the mountains, but I know they're there, behind the snow curtain.

The forecast is for more snow through the day, so I'm glad we got the shopping done yesterday. We drove down to Las Vegas (NM, not NV, population about 16,000) under an overcast sky. Hermit's Peak was cloud-shrouded, and there were antelope grazing with the cattle in the valley. A little further along, there's a tiny huddle of houses called Manualitas, and another five miles further, where the valley road intersects the highway to Taos: that's Sapello: a gas station, a post office, a small church. Still further, Storrie Lake, ice crinkling around the edges, flocks of ducks and Canada geese on the water. This area is a migration flyway, and there's an 8600-acre wildlife refuge nearby, with ponds, marshes, wetlands. In the fall and spring, it's a busy place, huge flocks of migratory birds coming and going. I've seen eagles there, and sandhill cranes, and many geese.

But no driving today. I've fed the birds and shoveled some of the snow off the deck so the dogs can get out a little. My writing loft is cozy and warm and there's breakfast at my elbow--a cup of hot spiced tea and a toasted bagel with cream cheese. Settling down to work on Mourning Gloria today: about 6600 words so far, the first chapter drafted, the second begun, and a rich stew of ideas in my head. This evening, we're walking up the mountain to have dinner with neighbors. Our community (Pendaries) is good about plowing the roads, but our friends live on a steep slope, so it'll be easier to walk than drive. 

When we bought this house, the previous owner left a handpainted slate plaque in the kitchen: a log house, trees with snow, and this legend: When you live in the mountains, you're lucky enough.

Lucky, lucky. Lucky enough.

Reading note: There are outer mountains and inner mountains. Their very presence beckons to us, calls us to ascend. Perhaps the full teaching of a mountain is that you carry the whole mountain inside yourself, the outer one as well as the inner.—John Kabat-Zinn
 

Sunrise in the Sangres

Sunrise in the Sangres, always an astonishment in the morning, no matter how often I see it. Outdoors, it is crisp, chilly, with a light dusting of frost on the trees and grasses,air so clean you want to breathe it in and hold it forever, sky so blue it makes me want to shout. I remember a line from Barbara Kingsolver's essay, "Seeing Scarlet," about her journey to Costa Rico to see the endangered scarlet macaw: "El que quiera azul celeste, que le cueste," the Costa Ricans say--"If you want the blue sky, the price is high." Yes. Watching the polarized, politicized dithery debate over cap/trade and noticing that there won't be a formal agreement in Copenhagen next month, I've reached the conclusion that the price for blue sky--for lessening the impacts of global warming, for preserving the planet for future generations--is too high for policy-makers and corporations. So I breathe deeply, shout out at the blue sky, and treasure this day.

The dogs and I arrived on Thursday, after a comfortable 11-hour drive. This pair, Toro and Molly Mcquire, are easy travelers and sleep the whole trip, except for three pre-planned doggie breaks for leg-stretching and necessary business. Friday was a day of getting reacquainted with the house, a little more challenging because I skipped my summer break in favor of getting a book done and trying to keep the garden alive during our drought. Bill was here last summer, though, and things have been moved around. But those are little problem, easily solved. Checked the fridge, pantry, and made a grocery list for Bill, who had an errand in Las Vegas (25 mi) and had to go anyway. Set up the computer, got online (dialup, and very slow). Ordinary chores, but beyond every window, the vividness of the bluest sky I've ever seen.

Last night: a potluck dinner in the community center, large crowd, lots of good food prepared by good cooks. Nice to see everyone again, mostly old friends who live here year-round, since the summer people have already left. Not many come for the winter, but snow is a huge enticement for me. Hoping for lots of it while I'm here.

Next Week: Peggy and I are working via email on lots of Stories From the Heart conference details. (A reminder: early registration closes Dec. 15.) I'm also starting on the first chapters of Mourning Gloria, the next writing project (China #19), and working out the backstory, which wants to get complicated, in spite of my KISS efforts. Reading Ann Heller's new biography of Ayn Rand (utterly fascinating), layered with chapters of the new biography of Molly Ivins. (Thanks, Trilla, for the tip.) So interesting to read these two biographies together: two strong-willed, brilliant women writers, very different but with some unexpectedly similar views about the power of the individual in society. Both biographies very well done. Oh, yes, I'm happily knitting. Socks. Of course. And contemplating doing a quilt while I'm here.

Reading note, from Kingsolver's "Seeing Scarlet" in Small Wonder. Kingsolver and her husband have reached the remote tropical coast where the endangered macaws live in the freedom of their endangered jungle habitat. "All afternoon we walked crook-necked and openmouthed with awe. If these creatures are doomed, they don't act that way: El que quiera azul celeste, que le cueste, but who could buy or possess such avian magnificence against the blue sky? We stopped counting at fifty. We'd have settled for just one--that was what we thought we had come for--but we stayed through the change of tide and nearly till sunset because of the way they perched and foraged and spoke among themselves, without a care for a human's expectations. What held us ther was the show of pure, defiant survival: this audacious thing with feathers, this hope.
 

Lantana: In bloom this week

One of our prettiest natives: Lantana horrida. "Horrid"because of its strong scent, the toxicity of its blue-black berries, the thorny prickles on its stems, and the rash it can produce on your bare arms.

But no matter. The blossoms are so beautiful, the bees love them so, and the plants are so bravely defiant of drought that I grow it anyway. The domesticated, "improved" varieties sold in nurseries are calmer and less authoritative than the natives, and that's what most people grow. But I have mostly the wild ones, descended from a wild mama plant I dug up in the pasture a decade ago, to keep the sheep safe. I love these plants and respect and admire them for their toughness and tenacity. They survived the drought better than anything else here at Meadow Knoll.

Somebody wrote to ask about pecans. None this year, I'm sorry to say. The trees produce in an on-off cycle, every other year. In 2007, we had a huge crop, over 200 pounds. If 2009 had been a "normal" rainfall year, we would be harvesting nuts right now. It wasn't, and we're not. We're hoping that 2011 will bring enough rain to produce a crop. In the meantime, we're still eating pecans from the 2007 harvest, saved in the freezer. We had a pecan pie a few days ago--delicious. (Scroll down to the bottom for the recipe, if it doesn't pop up for you.) While I ate it, I thought about the trees and the work Bill put into watering and caring for them and the big job of harvesting the nuts. All well worth it.

Early last week, I finished up the copyedited MS of An Extraordinary Year and delivered it to Lynne, the managing editor at UTexPress. The rest of the week: living like an ordinary person, cleaning house, doing laundry, picking the last of the beans and peas and digging the potatoes in the garden, running a few errands, baking a pie. Felt good to get away from the writing work for a while.

But not for long. Next project on the desk: Mourning Gloria, the title of the 19th China Bayles book, which I need to start in the next few weeks. This title has been on my possible-titles list since about 1996 or so, but it went to the bottom of the list when Joyce Christmas used it in 1999. Joyce's book is out of print now, and after getting my editor's approval, I've decided it's my turn to use the title. (Book titles can't be copyrighted, in case you're wondering about that.) I'm at the point now of thinking about characters and plot, just letting a lot of stuff mix and mingle, wondering what it would happen if China and Ruby opened a farmers' market on their block, if Sheila and Blackie got married, if the shops got broken into--well, anyway. There's room for you in the book, but you'll need to enter our Cameo Characters raffle. Do it now, okay? before you forget. Proceeds go to the Story Circle Network.

Winter break. I'm taking a few weeks off and heading for New Mexico with the dogs--hoping to get away on Wednesday or Thursday. Bill and the cat will join me there for a couple of weeks, then he'll be back here. We don't like to leave the livestock alone very long without adult supervision. :) I'll be back after the new year, with Mourning Gloria already begun, I hope. It's due at the end of March. Maybe the next blog post will feature a photo of the mountains!

Reading note. Be careless, reckless! Be a lion! Be a pirate! when you write.--Brenda Ueland

Copper canyon daisy: In bloom this week

Delightful Tagetes lemmonii, or Copper canyon daisy--a tumble of bright marigold-like blossoms in the fall, a strong scent that's unforgettable but hard to describe: fruity, woodsey, minty, lemony. This southwestern native perennial bravely endured the drought without a drop of extra water and is heaped with blossoms this week. I love it. Want more of it, so will dig and divide early next spring.

More El Nino news from the climate-change folks: the current mild event is strengthening, the water temperatures in the central tropical Pacific are soaring much faster than expected. Which means hotter temperatures around the globe but (paradoxically) a cooler, wetter winter for us. So far, our autumn has been simply splendid. Next spring's wildflowers are putting up their leaves and pushing down their roots, so if you were thinking of making a wildflower trip to Texas next April, do put it on your calendar. 2010 is likely to be a make-up year, when the ungerminated seed that's been in the ground during the drought wakes up and blooms like crazy. But El Nino also fosters exaggerated weather events in Texas: tornadoes in November, torrential rainfalls, winter icestorms. Cool and wet is good. Wild and stormy, not so much.

This weekend, I'm reading the copyedited manuscript of An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days, the journal/book I wrote in 2008, which will be published next year by the University of Texas Press. Feeling deeply grateful to Sally, a very fine copyeditor, who reads with careful attention, checks the facts, corrects the errors. And this, on top of the readings and comments by Theresa and Lynne, as well as two anonymous jurors who offered extensive comments. Truly: takes a village--and lots of time--to make a book. And a book, thoroughly vetted and checked and re-checked, is truly different from much of the stuff that's thrown up so quickly on the Web.

Reading note: When writers die, they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.--Jorge Luis Borges

Ripple Run: Drought notes 10

 
 The rain is returning, at last--over eight inches for September, five for October. This is a photo of Ripple Run, which in previous years has been lined with ferns and bog-loving plants. The plants are gone now (maybe they'll be back in the spring?) but Ripple Run is flowing again, happily and musically. The water is still brown with oak-leaf tannins but the silt and mud have settled out. Sheer delight. It's been cool but not chilly and no frost predicted: the grass is spring-green and lush. We moved the cows onto the pasture we've been saving for their winter feed, and they're eating full-time, delighted with a green menu, after lean rations this summer. Amazing to me: the quick recovery of the native grasses. The turkey-foot bluestem is fruiting just now, and the seed heads are heavy and ripe. A beautiful sight--and if there are decent rains this winter, a promise of future bounty.

A hugely busy week last week, beginning with a talk to the University of Texas Press Advisory Council, then book talks with author/naturalist Susan Tweit at Texas State University in San Marcos and Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, the Texas Book Festival on Sunday, and a Story Circle Be Our Guest program with Susan last night. Saw so many old friends, met some ones, and enjoyed every minute of it. All of these author appearances are connected with the publication of Together, Alone, my new memoir. There are two more events in the next two weeks: Wimberley library on Saturday 11/7 and Mason library on Sunday 11/15. After that, I'm taking some time off. Bill and I are going to New Mexico, and to Colorado for Thanksgiving with daughter Robin and her family (including, of course, the newest member, Jasper!).

This week, I've written a guest post at womensmemoirs.com, about using your journal as a means of documenting your life and as a "research document" for a memoir. Please check it out and leave your questions in the comment section. The questions will be the basis of an interview that will take place on Friday. It'll be available via the magic of podcast. Thanks to Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler for inviting me to participate. They do a wonderful job with that website, and offer a very helpful service to women who are writing about their lives.

And here's something new for you: the Darling Dahlias website! Peggy and I have been working on it in our spare time (what's that??) with help from accomplished flower artist Peggy Turchette. It's still early days yet, but people have been asking about the series (not due to be published for another nine months), and I wanted you to have something to look at in the meantime. Over the next few months, we'll be posting some additional material, so bookmark it and drop back in from time to time to see what we've been up to.

Reading note. I think with a kind of awe that no human being has ever made a permanent home on this particular spot on the globe--Bill and I are the first. But that doesn't mean that this place has no history, or that the land has not been used and changed by humans. Its unimaginably long past is written in layers of limestone rock, in tree rings, in th e arrow points chipped by Indians passing through, in rusty cowbells and the marks of wagon wheels on rock. Everything has a tongue. Everything speaks. To hear it, I have to be patient, and still, and silent.--Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place. 

High Water: Drought Notes 9

The drought may not be broken, but it's certainly been bent. We got 5" of rain in 24 hours--very welcome. Our little lake (about 20 acres) is full, and so is the creek. The photo here was taken about 8 hours after high tide on Pecan Creek. The water roared over the bridge in the foreground. You're looking downstream in this photo. Pecan Creek flows into the North Fork of the San Gabriel, into Lake Georgetown, and finally into the Brazos River and the Gulf. We're close (in miles) to the Highland Lakes, but on the north side of a ridge that divides the Brazos and the Lower Colorado watersheds. (Do you know your watershed? It might be important some day!)

The water levels in the lakes are coming up--I understand that the rise in Travis just from this one rain could supply Austin for a full year! But even with this amount of rain, Buchanan is only 44% full, Travis only 49% full. The water levels in the aquifer (especially in our Upper Trinity) are always a mystery, but the situation has to be somewhat improved.

This week, I've been reading galleys of Holly Blues, and take back all the nasty things I said about Word Track Changes, which my publisher now uses for copyedited manuscripts. I still don't like using it (much prefer paper/pencil) but the result is a much cleaner final product. Less work for editorial/production, and eliminates the cost of mailing (substantial, these days). Peggy posted the first chapter of the book on the website. We've also posted an interesting video that describes the brewing of yerba mate, a tea made from the holly plant.

Also this week, an interesting interview with the editor of The Herb Companion, with Vicky Uhland. We talked about the importance of knowing the herbs and food plants that are native to the places in which we live--which can also introduce us to the histories of our places. One of my favorite things to do: walk around our fields and woodlot and name, silently, to myself, the plants I recognize, honoring them, considering the many ways they've been used by humans. It's an important meditation, reminding me that we use plants so unwisely these days. We exploit their habitats (and the habitats of other species that share the space) to the point where the natives are destroyed. Caring people need to do all we can to preserve them and use them with thoughtful consideration.

As well, this week, an interview with Susan Tweit about memoir and place, especially about Together, Alone. Susan and I will be spending some time together over the next week or two. We'll be at Texas State University, the Texas Book Festival, and at a very special program hosted by Story Circle Network and open to all (yes, guys, that includes you!) The events are posted here. Come and say hi!

Reading note. We can lie to ourselves about many things; but if we lie about our relationship to the land [or to the sea, or the wetlands, or the Arctic wilderness, or global warming] the land will suffer, and soon we and all other creatures that share the land will suffer. If we persist in our ignarance or dishonesty, we will die. . . . Seeing the danger of ignorance, we may be moved to invent or recover some of the lore that connects us to the land, that tells us how to live in our place.--Scott Russell Sanders

Drought Notes #8: Resurrection

 
  
I've never before seen this clematis bloom in the fall. In fact, I thought I'd lost the whole vine in the drought--until two weeks ago, when it suddenly greened up, put out tendrils, then a tentative blossom or two, and now it's covered with these lovely purple blooms. We're still in what the weather folks call a "severe" drought (28" deficit for the past 24 months), but we've had enough rain to make some of the plants think that spring has come around again. The cypress trees along the creek are putting out new green leaves, roses are blooming, and the meadow is bright with blackfoot daisy and even a few out-of-season penstemmon. There's some water in the lake, a little in the creek (it's not flowing yet). I saw a heron fishing in Turtle Pool, so the crayfish must be reappearing. And a few days ago, I spotted this guy (or gal, as the case may be):

 
The perfect picture of a self-satisifed toad in a hole in a delightfully dampish place, enjoying a bit of rain for the first time in months.

I don't know which I like better: starting a new book or finishing one. This week, I finished The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree. If you've been following along on this one, you might remember that I started it at the end of July and have worked pretty steadily ever since, with 4-5 days out here and there for book travel and the other ordinary business of life. Starting a book, I'm always nearly overwhelmed by the immensity of choices to be made; ending one, I'm struck by the apparent inevitability of the book's events--which says something about the miracle of plotting, I suppose. Monday, this one goes to NY via the magic of cyber-travel.

Snap beans, snow peas, carrots, zuchinni--fresh from the fall garden to the table. We're also eating kale, collards, chard, spinach, and a few sweet potatoes. Looking forward to various squash, and I'll dig the rest of the sweet potato crop next week. The tomatoes I direct-seeded in the garden are beginning to bloom: don't think they'll have time to set fruit. But those I cut back in July are producing nicely, so I count that a success. Next year, I need to put the fall garden in a little earlier: I was so daunted and disheartened by the drought this year that I waited a little too long.

Now that the book is done: housecleaning (especially my office, which is a horrible mess), catching up on the mail and the email, reading/reviewing a couple of new books, knitting, checking the page proofs for Holly Blues (due to arrive on Monday) and pondering China #19, which is the next book on the schedule. Also, working with Peggy on the upcoming Story Circle memoir conference, which she and I are co-chairing. I'm sure I won't be bored.

Reading note. The only reward I look forward to is seeing the finished piece of writing in hand. And if I should find myself in a lazy spell, all I have to do to get active again is to remember how miserable life was for me when I was trying to get published.--Erskine Caldwell