Ornamental

the quiet and the plundering of rain

it has rained so much, so much this week.  yesterday was one long series of thunderstorms that brewed and toiled and spilled over the mountains one after the other, rumbling and tumbling and cropping up over and over and over again.  walter and i stayed inside, quiet as mice, while i spent a long day of dark and wind tucked away in the studio, listening to the tail end of Thirteen Moons, removing tiny words from a palm-sized antique book of fragile poems that has been resting on my studio shelf, delapidated, for going on 15 years.  i read through pages of miniature text, cut some out with the sharpest of scissors, placed some here, placed some there.  all the while, the wind blew and the rain fell.  at dusk, a fog rolled in, and still the thunder rattled the windowpanes, through all of that muffling white.
by the time i crawled into bed with a book late last night, the rain was gone but the trees were audibly dripping, and a breeze brought the rich, heady smell of wet, black earth and new spring growth through the barely open window just above my head.  this morning, when i walked out onto the porch and down the wooden walkway, i found the remnants of flower petals dotting the wood at my feet.  snowfall, in april, then:  the last of the snow from the snowball tree.  i eat every day from japanese plates with flowers strewn across their surface, like this.  they lace the plates on branches thin and brown, across palest blue-green mistiness:  flowers in a shallow bowl, across a watery sky, poetry on porcelain.  no wonder the fallen petals felt familiar, there at my feet.  i wanted to thank those of you who took advantage of the jewelry sale, and helped me ready the shop for what comes next.  i've spent a good solid couple of weeks mulling over how to fasten, how to adorn, how to manage and rearrange pieces that can be more than just one thing, can be taken off and added again.  that's what sitting in a quiet little studio for hours and hours and hours will do to one who has nowhere else to be, as nature beyond my windows makes her own tender ornaments.  what a lovely muse she continues to be, for me.
new pieces will be making their way into my little shop, within the next few days....xo 

the gift of light, and a little springtime jewelry sale*

  i don't know why i'm always surprised by the way a little light can change one's perspective on so many, many things.  i snapped this photograph of my studio table and chair one morning around 9am, just after the sun had popped up over the eastern mountain ridge; i live in a sheltered cove here on firefly road, tucked up into the valley that is nestled snugly between two steeply pitched mountainsides, where a stream loudly rushes from somewhere up above to somewhere far below, down down down the road and on out into the river, where i suppose that water is carried to the sea.  to wilmington, maybe.  who knows.  but on this morning, just after i had returned from alabama, i was walking past the studio door with cup of coffee in hand, spotted the way that the light was spilling very briefly across the table and seat of my chair.  this direct sunlight does not last for long, through that northeastern corner of the house, and i knew to grab the camera and capture it before it was gone, a short five or ten minutes later.  not soon after this, i discovered that my camera cord had been left in alabama, the photo was forgotten, and weeks passed.  weeks, and another trip.  click, click, click.  time works like that - in increments of still life memories, in the way that light filters, spills, drapes across the things that we do or don't take for granted every day.
  last evening, i prepared dinner and brought it in here to the living room to eat (i have no dining table, there isn't a place for one, so i eat every evening looking out at the very same view that i see now before me, here at the little sea blue/green wooden table).  i was fascinated by the way that the last of yesterday's light was spilling across the old wood, through the old bottles and jar where this spring's flower bounty has been placed, where the petals have fallen and their spent beauty cast little shadows across the table's surface.  so brief, this light, these shadows.  i cleared the laptop from its perch, grabbed the iPhone and captured there in a tiny computerized box a bit of soft, etheral evening enlightenment.  morning northeastern light, evening southwestern glow - so much to be seen, in the way that the petals and the dust and the bottle water came together for me, just so.  and here, plucked from the shining water and sand surface of a walk along wrightsville beach just before evening darkened, a bit of shell that i had spotted and pocketed because i loved the weathered surface.  in the evening light last night, only then did i notice the wing i held in the velvety mountain gloaming glow.
  i have quite a few containers around this house that hold treasures from the places i have roamed; to keep these trinkets sacred as a collected group from my most recent of adventures, i've tied a weathered tag onto the handle of a small local pottery bowl (mud dabber pottery, over in balsam, just below the blue ridge parkway), so that years from now i'll see the seashell hearts and glass and tumbled stones and know why i've kept them for so long.  for now, i love how they mix with the fallen snowball petals on my little table - the sea brought home to mountains, from water to land, to tabletop that came from a tree somewhere, far away, long ago. 

*i started out this post to announce a little springtime jewelry sale, but when i sat down to write, the morning light spoke louder than the need to speak of business things.    i'll end this quiet post by saying, simply, that for the next three days i'm offering a 25%  etsy discount to my readers over in my little jewelry shop.  the sale runs from today until midnight on thursday, when i'll remove the discount again and full prices return.  there is a little box, when checking out with your purchase, where you can place the code - NBSPRING - and you'll see the discount from the original price. 

now, go to a window and see what the light is revealing to you.  let me know.  xo

postcards from wilmington

this is a wonderful old building a few blocks from roy's house in downtown wilmington - a movie was being filmed there the morning we drove past

South of the Border, on the border of nc/sc - a drive by snapshot of americana at its worst/best

sometimes it is a good thing to leave the place with which one is most comfortable, most familiar.  as much as it tugs at the heart to pull out of the driveway and head down the road, it is a lovely thing to pull in to another gravel drive, walk through the house and back out the front door to greet one's son, who is standing out on the sidewalk waiting for his mother to arrive.  i'd never seen roy's "new" house, built in 1930 - his first address after living in college world surrounded by other college students.  sitting on his great big front porch, shaded by enormous trees, looking out to a sweet old church across the street, i was reminded of the neighborhood in To Kill a Mockingbird.  it was neighborly, with cracked sidewalks, an old eucalyptus tree growing in the front yard.  white rockers, on warped boards.  concrete front steps.  flowers growing in random spots from the long-ago owner of the house, now passed on to another place, another time.  roy is so proud of this place, and i enjoyed every minute of being there... enjoyed the fact that he wanted me to come visit, that he mopped and straightened and polished for me, and took an extra day off from work... that he enjoyed playing host to his mother who lives seven hours away, all the way across this grand and beautiful state.

  there were many beautiful moments, all strung into a necklace that i wish i could hold in my hand.  i hold it in my heart.  i hold it in my aching/grateful/loving/beaming mother's heart.
those moments shine like little mirrors.  they shimmer, and twinkle, and glow.

xo

book love

  a few months ago, i finally - finally - finally dove into fiction written by "local" author ron rash.  i've known of his work for ten years, had spotted and passed over short stories in the new yorker, and have placed his fiction on the back burner for that of other writers.  what an arrogant, stupid assumption on my part, to think that his words would not be works of art i'd want to consume.
but when i was down visiting my mother in alabama back sometime last fall, she mentioned that she was reading something called Serena, and thought i'd enjoy reading it as well.  while she finished her copy, i read - voraciously - another of his novels, One Foot in Eden, then quickly ordered and devoured Saints at the River.  serena was next - i was haunted by it - then came The World Made Straight, then a book of his poetry, and finally i began to count down the weeks until his latest book, The Cove, was released on april 10.    what i'm sharing with you here are images from a little "field book" that i made to carry as a gift for ron, who spoke and read from The Cove in the old courthouse of sylva yesterday.  i felt like a giddy little school girl, making a gift for someone i'd never met.  he is a southern gentleman, warm and kind, and received it with grace.

i look at these pages now and hope that what i tried to convey was clear.  his words are like music; he is a poet, after all, with a grand sense of cadence and rhythm; the stories and their delivery will make your heart ache, and finally break.
it was a quiet pleasure on saturday afternoon to put this little book together for an artist of words.  it was a pleasure to work with paper and glue once again, with black ink and pencil and scraps of mica and leather.  a little clip from daddy's office held some bits together in a field book from september of 1912.  goodbye, little book.  i hope it will bring mr. rash a little comfort when his nights and days away from home are long, these coming weeks...

if you have the time, and can find it on your library shelf or have the cash to spend, be sure to read every single one of the books he has ever written.  grand job, mr. rash.  well done.  xo

new listings

  spring color has finally, finally arrived in my little etsy shop around the bend.  go see, here.  and i'm wishing you the loveliest that the weekend has to offer....xo

i meant to do my work today...

  I meant to do my work today,
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,

And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.
And the wind went sighing over the land,
Tossing the grasses to and fro,

And a rainbow held out its shining hand,
So what could I do but laugh and go?

   poem,  by richard legallianne

another poem, within...

i'll be listing another grouping of spring-inspired trinkets, these shown here and others, tomorrow.  today?  i'm off to play with a friend.  xo

warning

  a tussy mussy for you, from the woods behind my house

after what has turned out to be a surprisingly difficult two days, i discovered last night to my utter dismay that my email address had been hacked.  that there are people in this world who thrive on this sort of thing disgusts me to no end.  for the many, many innocent people who received an email with my name on it, inviting you to sign up for this and for that, i offer my profound apologies (and an order to NOT open the link)!  thanks, ever thanks, to my dearest pal julie, who at midnight sat quietly on the other end of the phone and listened to me sob uncontrollably.  she is such a lifeline, at the best and worst of times:  after my wailing slowed down, she simply told me to go on to bed and get some rest, while she stayed up those extra minutes to straighten things out for me, long distance. 
i had a fairly strong case of the easter blues - it was my first in 55 years to be completely on my own, away from family:  since i had just spent 1.5 weeks in alabama less than two weeks ago, and both boys were tied down with work obligations in their far flung places, i was here, with walter, alone.  i am not one to attend church - i believe in surrounding myself with the glories of nature for what someone else might call worship - and was thankfully able to do just that when a friend called to suggest we go on a hike.  it was a lovely afternoon, photographing wildflowers over in the park (that sounds so nonchalant and casual, but it still blows my mind all these years later that within 15 minutes i can be walking a trail in the Great Smoky Mountain Park), and stopping on the way home for a frozen fruit drink.  it wasn't until i walked back into the house and checked the answering machine that i began to fall apart.  cell phones don't work in the park (and barely work here, for that matter).  my mother had prepared an easter meal for my uncle bob, who was visiting from atlanta, and for a couple of sweet neighbors who have become family to us.  after dinner, while still seated at the table, mama simply and quietly fainted, in the middle of a conversation.  she does not remember the ambulance ride to the hospital, doesn't remember anything until a great while later in the emergency room.  two nights and a day later, she is home again, to all of our great relief.  i'm still confused about what could have caused this, and the angst over anything else happening to my mother anytime soon has been taking its toll on me.  and like a great big dark rolling ball, all of the worry and the stress and the sorrow of this time last year, as we began to lose daddy, has come rolling back down out of the woods, where those fractious emotions had been lurking somewhere behind a great big tree.

i'll say what i said in my last post right here:  more and more and more my family matters so greatly, to me.  and "family" includes those friends who have stuck by me, through thick and through thin, through anger and confusion and tears, through all of the bad that comes also with the good, with me.  i just can't adequately express the depth of my love for these chosen family members.  or for my sister.  my mother.  my uncle.  my boys.  life is so precious, and so tender.  and so, so sweet. xo

happiest to you

   card from my beloved uncle bob - family matters more and more and more as each day passes

(the equivalent of an easter bonnet?)

wishing each and every one of you the happiest of spring (and to my beloved family and friends in australia and new zealand, the happiest of deepening autumn)

xo

spring unfolds

good morning, says she through clenched teeth.  typepad is giving me fits again (what else is new?! - so, for now, cut and paste from Word, and hope for the best)

When I finally made it back home towards the end of last week from Alabama, I couldn’t believe the changes that had quietly taken place while I was away.  Funny thing – I always expect things to be different after I’ve been gone for a while, and they never seem to be.  Everything is (usually) just as I left it, a toy of walter’s in the middle of the living room floor, a pair of my shoes still waiting just inside the front door to be worn again.  This time, I pulled up at dusk after a long day’s drive through springtime that had been in full bursting bloom in Alabama, then a softer version of spring in the middle of Georgia, then less and less green as I headed back into the foothills of these treasured mountains.  At home, there were still no leaves on the trees; but oh my, how lovely the magic tree looked in its bridal white lace beside the house.   this was taken the first morning i woke up here at home, from a side road just below the house.  grass still uncut, as you can see...
I missed the whole process of spring here last year; for six weeks I was away, tending to my bedridden father, trying to be there for my mother in any helpful way that I could, teaching out in Washington state in a foggy state of mind, heading straight back down to Alabama the day after I returned east.  It was a long, stretched out time of treading water, now that I look back on it:  we did the best we could with the time that we had, and searched for little pockets of joy in the shadows of looming sorrow.  So, to come home after a lovely two weeks in full-bloom Alabama and to witness first hand the unfolding of green and spring all over again here on firefly road has been a quiet time of gratitude and peace and joy for the beauty of life and all that it brings.  it's lovely, even when it's foggy, which on most mornings it has surely been, and many times at dusk.  soft, quiet, lovely.  good medicine, for this soul.   walks along the river (only a couple this week, as gasoline prices continue to soar) are providing more deep breaths of gratitude - the "preciousness" i discussed this morning on the phone with a friend - and the colors that come with early april nature are pulling strongly at my heart.  there are little star-shaped purple flowers covering the forest ground along the river path, right now - purple stars, and trillium, in pinks and whites, and yellow wildflowers, the names i do not know.    i have watched this tree heart through the barren months of winter, and was touched to see a small cluster of violets growing at its top, yesterday.  i'm listening now, for the woodthrush songs; i listen, and i quietly wait.  at home, i'm working in the memory of colors that i carry home from the river with me.  it's all i seem to want to do, right now.  colors are unfolding; nests are being built in unexpected places.  when i went to look for the camera's cord to connect it to the computer, i was dismayed to realize i had left it back in alabama.  for now, then, only phone photos are available, and they will have to do. 
 

i'm not used to working in a myriad of colors.  it's been a practice in frugality to dig through jewelry drawers hidden for 15 years to find a variety of something other than the blues and greens of turquoise or moss aquamarine and pearl that i am wont to use.

there will be more images of jewelry later this week, once the cord arrives in the post from my sweet mother.  i promise.

 

xo