Vignettes from the New Dovely Estates, Part One

This is lunch. 

(plus a handful of the ugliest but sweetest strawberries that have ever existed - the kind you would describe as having a "great personality")

And this is the view. 

(right now, as I type, I can hear the downy woodpecker bapping away just down the hillside.  I've been sighting him the last few days, quick flashes of a red crown and a bold white chest).

The house is coming together, the pile of flattened boxes is nearly epic, finally yesterday, I hung the first painting.  

I like to feel out a house before slapping up decor.  I like to know which windows let in the morning breeze, where the richest puddles of afternoon sunlight fall, and which walls I will touch as I pass, every time.  In short I need to live in a place fully, deeply, in order to make it home.  I like to know the rhythm of steps it takes to travel from the bedroom to the fridge in the middle of the night.  I like to shift the house plants around until they settle in like brooding hens.  I like my paintings to tell me where they want to hang.

I'm working on it.

Steady.

* * *

About a quarter mile down the street is a little market, the local corner type.  They may be small, but they cater to both the organic milk drinkers (when home, I am a staunch milk-with-my-coffee gal) and the "dinner out of the fry case which happens to be the thing my nightmares are made of" eaters, but best of all, they have a well stocked plant selection out front.  Two days ago I bought a new begonia along with my laundry detergent.  Today I'm trying to think of something, anything I might need just for the excuse to walk down there and buy another plant.  Maybe bananas.  Or dish soap, do I have enough dish soap? Probably not.

* * *

This place is alive with humming birds.  Yesterday I stared into the blue sky until my eyes watered and cried as a brilliant blue fellow hovered just feet above my head.  The entire backyard is a wild playground, thick and tangled as the hill slopes down to the river.  One might call it an experiment in invasive plants gone terribly wrong, this quest for the jungle crown between bamboo, stinging nettle, ivy,  horse tail and blackberry (my neighbor is a shirtless man who swings a machete while wearing a Coors ball-cap.  We've only waved from a distance).  Along the fence the blackberries have won, but this serves me well: Every morning thus far I have trotted out my laundry room door, colander in hand, to pluck fat berries, two for me, four for the basket, one for Sancho.  We stand outside in the weak sunlight of early morning, mouths watering, a new ritual.

I think it's time to go and buy that dish soap.
~ Umber ~

It's beginning to feel down right cozy in here.

We're here, still in the throws of unpacking but the good news is this:

I might already love this house.  I've been walking around, running fingers along miles of knotty pine, just telling her how much I already appreciate her.

I think she likes it.
* * *
See you in a couple days birdie-o's!

A Brief Hiatus

Happy Friday to you!

Well it's really, truly happening.  

I've turned into a packing machine.
A packing machine who takes her chinese take-out sitting on the floor next to a healthy glass of rosé.

The new house is calling our names and it's time to respond.  This weekend is reserved for an extensive cleaning with the official up and out move scheduled for sometime next week.  In my ideal-dream-vision, I'll have my new studio set up within a week from that time.  fingers crossed people!
But all of that to say,
I'll be taking a short break from the bloggy world (but will still be answering emails and convos...), say for about two weeks while I feather my nest and find my flow in a new home.

(yes. that does say goat jaw.  i need the specifics when i pack)
See you all in just a few short ones!
~ Umber ~

* * *
HOLY MOLY!  I ALMOST FORGOT ABOUT THE MOST IMPORTANT PART!
Because you bring SO much joy into my life, I am offering a little secret sale for you, my bloggy friends, valid until I have my new studio set up!  Just enter the coupon code MovingAndGrooving on any item in the shop and received %20 off!  Whootin'McWhooterkins!

I'd Like To Introduce You To...

The Hoff.

As in the Hasselhoff.
Because we have reached that all-important stage in the hair growing out process wherein I can fluff that baby out enough to compete with any 80's beach body coif.

Be afraid.
Don't make me bring the Hoff to your house.
(and seriously.  do yourself a favor and click on that link above.  you're so welcome)

Sketchbook Writings

First and very foremost, let me tell you this:

As of July 9th, I am an Aunt, for the very first time.

Gemma Grace Gibson is now part of my life and flesh and blood.

I already love her.

And I have never wanted to buy baby clothes so badly in my whole life.

* * * * *

~ From my Sketchbook Writings, Tuesday July 12th -

The world seems bursting with life, fresh eyed and tender footed, and in far greater profusion than last year.  Last summer all my preparations, my energy, my preoccupations were focused on the swift approaching winter of my heart.  The winter of my body, the time when death in small doses would claim bits of my flesh.  I could not see the glory of the sun for my fear of the snow.  And while I harvested summer's bounty, put up stores and made note of blooms, my thoughts were filled with winter and I shivered in the light.

But this season, this time around, the stakes have changed.  New life surrounds me.  

Just yesterday I sat in focused stillness watching a starling teach her young to forage.  In the suburban expanse of the front lawn, she was iridescently black, sleek, and hopped on two stiff legs through the unmown dandelions.  Her single remaining offspring, a fluffy mushroom colored thing, squawked incessantly.  His gapping pink tongue would be a dead giveaway in dry grasses or squatting with the awkwardness of youth in the cedars, but here in the bounty of green fescue he was ready for every morsel she dropped into his waiting mouth.  She would pop, pop, he was squeak, she would produce a small mystery the color of cherries, he would flap messily to her side and she would neatly place the treasure right down his gullet.  This carried on as long as I could stay still.  I lost count of the minutes in my adoration and childlike amusement.  As an outsider, it seemed a silly teenage ploy for freebies, but deeper down I knew he was learning to survive.  But aren't we all?  Silly things, learning to survive?

Then last week, standing in the lingering heat of the valley as crickets sang, I watched the deer.  A leggy doe, large-eared as any I've seen ambled just on the far side of fence.  Her fawn, spotted brightly, spooked at leaves drifting down from the oaks, at fat and lazy bumblebees, at the sound of tires on asphalt from the road down the hill.  I watched them with purposeful intent, trying to etch their forms in my mind, the tilt of an ear, the light in an eye in order to later record them.  They picked along through the field, the doe leading the fawn towards the greenest shoots hidden alongside embankments and circling the trunks of trees.  I tried to follow silently, but placed a heel right into a crackling mound of dry leaves.  The fawn startled and tucked but the doe snapped her gaze right into mine.  She raised her neck to full height without breaking her focus and pulled in long, slow breaths, testing the wind and my very human scent.  Halting, the fawn followed suit, before they both turned tail and disappeared into the brush.
* * * * *

A slight confession:

I've been home since Monday night.

I've spent a total of 23 minutes on the computer since then.

It's so funny; a week away from the 'webs and I feel so lost on your lives!  What have you done?  What have you seen?  What did you eat to celebrate your independence? 

(I ate approximately one pound of road-side-purchased cherries completely by myself and, in case you were wondering, felt fantastic)

This week we drove inland to a tiny mountain town with rivers rushing and temperatures nearing triple digits.

I remembered how much I love the scent of heat.  How it varies as the thermometer climbs and a bouquet of clay dust, oak leaves, snow melt, blooming blackberries and pastured horses swirls through one's hair.  How the scent lands on one's skin like wild perfume and how driving around in a bikini top makes all the sense in the world.

In other news, as many have asked, the official answer is no, no I have STILL not packed a single box.  And no, the contractor is STILL not finished in our new home.  Blerg.  I'm impatient.  I've measured and remeasured every room, every stick of furniture, I've mentally arranged paintings and house plants and books and wine glasses.  I've sketched out the plans for the yard and it's future raised beds at least four times now.  But more than anything else I'm DESPERATELY ITCHING to set up my new studio.  Did I mention the light pours in the windows like a whole heavenly host belting out Bohemian Rhapsody?  Or that the view East looks out over the river and the low lying mountains beyond?
It's magical.
I'm desperate to be there.

I could use every pair of fingers out there crossed in the hopes that the house really and truly will be ready for us to move in next weekend and that Mr. Contrator will continue to show up every day until then (ehem.  We have learned some valuable life lessons on this one).  It's going to happen but like Veruca Salt, "I want it NOOOOOOW!"

Whew.
Patience.
I'm trying.

In the meantime:

Here's to a weekend full of wind in the jowlies!
~ Umber ~

A Day in the Life of the Dove: My Extrovert Cup is Filling Up

[A photographic account of a single day in my life - albeit a very, very long day - of reconnecting with old friends, staying with great friends and preparing for the wedding of an dear friend]

- June 30th 2011 -

5:33 am

7:23 am

8:51 am

10:36 am
(yes friends, that IS the golden gate bridge.  my heart swells every time I drive it)

11:09 am

11:40ish am
(photo credit to the bride-to-be, Miss AvenueFog)

12:23 pm

1:14 pm

3:17 pm

4:01 pm

5:02 pm

6:45 pm

9:11 pm

10:23 pm
(photo credit to Mr. Sunny Rising)

10:38 pm


And that, my friends, was a Day and a half.  I am BLESSED with brilliant women in my life.  I'll be staying down in the general San Francisco area until next week, submersed in friends, a wedding, puppies and lots of travel.  See You Laters!