life of pie

So, there's this fairly amazing community garden next to my kids' school. It was started by my neighbor, who is a Master Gardener and has a contagious, almost palpable enthusiasm for growing herbs and vegetables in our notoriously difficult climate with its notoriously short, unpredictable growing season (snow in late June, anyone?). As I understand it, the garden started as a 4-H project but then took on a life of its own.

The adjoining herb path, for example, became a memorial to a dear friend of mine and many others in our community who passed away a few years ago. Now the garden is a place where the Garden Girls - an unofficial gathering of local women from all walks of life, many of us with kids at the school - meet and toil and water and laugh and share things that men are absolutely NOT allowed to hear. (And that's just the garden chit-chat. Don't even get me started on the stories exchanged during our dinner gatherings.)  Also, I use the term "us" loosely, since I have not been able to attend the GG gatherings nearly as much as I'd like to. But just rest assured; these are the kind of women books should be written about. And maybe someday they will.

Anyway, back to the whole point of this post which is that a bunch of us headed down to Sedona last weekend to pick blackberries. This being August it was hotter than blazes down there, but one gal brought homemade cake pops anyway. Good Lord, they were good (and it's never too hot for ooey-gooey chocolate, right? Right.):

Fortunately, shade was plentiful along Beaver Creek, and this was appreciated by adults, kids and dog alike:

After about a half-hour of berry picking (and getting the bejeezus scratched out of my arms and legs), I came upon what I can only describe as a WALL OF SMELL so heavenly I had to just stop and sniff it deep into my lungs. It was wild mint growing right there around the boulders of the creek. A friend harvested some for me to take home, and though it was promptly planted in a comfy little herb bed here in the high country, I'm sorry to say things don't look good for my little transplant. Who knows though - maybe by this time next year I'll be trying to beat the minty ground cover off with a stick. A girl can dream.

The more intrepid among us stopped mid-pick for a dip in the local swimming hole with Sedona's characteristic red rocks rising up behind it. It's a special kind of summer Paradise, I tell ya:

Anyway, this is all to say that what started out as this on a hot August morning:

In fairly short order ended up as this:

And you know what they say about the journey being the best part?

Well, that's a dang lie, because that pie was mostly gone before it even had a chance to cool properly.

(Kidding, of course. The journey, thanks to amazing women and the amazing blessing of this place I call home, completely rocked.)Follow @nicole_mcinnes

hey y'all and yee haw

Wake up and it's the last day of school for the younguns. Drag my tired butt out of bed and head toward the kitchen for some tar black coffee the consistency of river mud - just how I like it. Hand the kids their lunches, drive them to the bus and head back home to feed the foster dogs I recently took in. (Anybody need one or two sweet, smart and cool ranch-type dogs?)

I throw hay for the horses, eat a little breakfast myself and then batch some soap for the Cowpunchers Reunion Rodeo coming up in a few weeks (I'm a vendor this year, so come on out, y'all), fielding phone calls and emails the whole time. After a while I hear a major clang from outside; it's Butthead (the gelding who shall otherwise remain nameless) knocking over the big steel water tub to let me know it's empty. I go outside, water the one tree I planted last fall that actually survived the winter, fill the horses' water, turn butthead out into the arena and then head back inside to check on the soap.

Not a minute later there's a ruckus outside, and l look out the window to see the other gelding (Zzari) wandering willy nilly around the back yard, munching on weeds I haven't quite gotten around to whacking yet. Apparently, I didn't close the arena gate all the way. I go outside to round him up, but the dogs are all riled because of the seasonal cattle that came visiting on the Forest Service side of my fence a little earlier.

Dogs start chasing the horse who trots away from me, alarmed. Meanwhile, Butthead's having a meltdown in the arena because his buddy broke out, and now he wants to be free, too. As I finally catch up to Zzari and reach under his mane to lead him back into captivity, I look up and see what appears to be a forest fire starting up east of us on this dry, windy afternoon.

And it's here that I want to say this: even though I wasn't raised country, I've spent half my life doing the rural living thang. So I think I've earned the right to say that, at least for today, I totally fit this profile.

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pre-spring free verse-y blog post

Wake up to a quiet house, temporarily kidless, and itching to clean and organize - not unlike pregnancy nesting, but a spring thing this time. Start in the kitchen, then add other rooms until there's a harmony and a rhythm working. But what am I doing, I think. It's gorgeous outside! And so Lizzie the Cowdog and I take the show out there where the horses watch, needing their own spring cleaning (shelter mucked, winter coats stripped, water tank scoured, and on and on). The Pink Trailer calls, and so I answer. Throw open the door and behold an eternity's worth of stuff needing to be dealt with, some of it hard - the rocking pony from daughter's toddler years, boxes of old divorce documents and lots of stuff probably best Goodwilled, but I have a hard time letting go sometimes. (The rocking horse stays. Period.) Hours pass, and they looked like this: me hauling the Rubbermaided (Rubbermaidened?) evidence of years already lived from the trailer to the woodshed; me going through the drawers and cupboards and closet of the trailer, seeing what's there (old coffee perkpot, old laundry clips, old flatware, all of it charming) and dreaming of camping trips at nearby lakes this summer, checking out the tires, eyeballing the ancient suspension, more formless pondering. Scrub the trailer's innards then stand back, pleased. Trees need attention next (from whence this energy?) - the liquidambar and the quaking aspen planted last fall, plus the live spruce from Christmas, still babies all. Settle the spruce into its new hole (chicken wire-lined against our looky-loo prairie dog neighbors). The hose is dragged out next so all can get a deep, late-winter watering, even though it doesn't feel like winter anymore the way I'm sweating. Aiming the hose at new roots I look up startled by sound of an eagle's cry overhead. Turns out there are two of them - adult bald eagles - swooping and swirling in the sky above my house, either courting or battling in a falling spiral, but whatever it is it's extraordinary, an extraordinary gift. Even Lizzie the Cowdog stares up at them, head cocked, ears up. We're frozen at the sight, and as I stand there with sweat on my back and my hands covered in water and dirt I realize that a) we're done for the day, and b) we're just getting started.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

mixed blessings

The man brought home a big bag of takeout food from Flagstaff’s yummy Pato Thai last night, and that's what I had for breakfast. Seriously, the Tom Ka coconut milk soup is something of a wonder, though I was skeptical the first time I had it.

In other news:

My son’s dog was attacked by two big bully dogs while we were out for a run the other day. Bums me out that the owners a) didn’t even bother to walk three doors down to see how she was doing afterward, and b) don’t bother to address the problem and properly restrain their dogs even after several other incidents involving said dogs in the neighborhood. People suck sometimes. Lizzie’s okay, by the way.

A neighbor came by this weekend with a carton of 18 nummy eggs from her fat hens. Traded 'em for soap. There’s nothing like the taste of farm-fresh eggs, and I’ll use these for everything from breakfast to dessert.

Oh, and even though the pow pow’s extremely cool for skiing and snowboarding, I am officially tired of being cold. So, here’s a special note to Winter: I’m breaking up with you. Everything you own in the box to the left.

And it’s not me – it’s you.

:-p   pttthhhhhtFollow @nicole_mcinnes

down side

At some point during the night last night a neighbor’s yearling filly was mauled by a mountain lion.

At least, we think it was a mountain lion. Walking over there this morning I checked out the tracks, and though I don’t have the most trained eye, it seems pretty clear that’s what they are – big pads, no nail marks, prints disappearing into the forest next to my house. The filly’s going to be put down, and the thought made part of me not even want to go over there to see if the owners needed anything from a fellow horse person. Too many long-buried memories there, memories I didn’t want dredged up. But that’s what you do in our community (in any decent community, I guess). You stop by, and you acknowledge. You ask if there’s anything you can do. I was pretty sure they’d say no (they did), because I’ve been in a very similar situation with a doomed horse, and, really, what the hell can anyone do?

This is the worst – the absolute worst – part of living in the country.

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was gonna sell it

Found it this past spring at Goodwill, tossed into a bin with the random castoffs of various lives.

Figure it's from the 40's or 50's - even got the card of a quilt appraiser so I could get an idea of what it might fetch on eBay.

I'm gonna keep it, though.

Clearly, it has important work to do here.

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mayday 2010 - sycamore rim trail

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the twin fire & friday soap giveaway

Last weekend, parts of the city of Williams (aka "Gateway to the Grand Canyon") were evacuated due to a prescribed forest burn that got out of control. The Twin Fire was finally contained when it reached about 1,000 acres, but it was a little dicey there for a while. Part of the price of being surrounded by National Forest is the possibility of fire danger. On the way to son's soccer game in the Old Route 66 town of Seligman, we drove through this:

...and on the way home we drove through this:

I wish I'd had my camera with me when we were in town and saw the slurry bombers flying overhead and the helicopters sucking up water from the nearby reservoir to drop on the flames. The local Williams/Grand Canyon News had some good pictures of the choppers, though. At night, the smoke was thick and heavy in the air. This was the view from my front door:

...and this was the view from the back:

Those dastardly forest fires sure do pretty up the sky.

So, on to the Friday Soap Giveaway. Fall is here in all its glory, and I don't know about you, but around here at Writer/Rider central, preparations for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and various fall birthdays are in full swing. Seems like pumpkins, cranberries, warm spices and all things orange, black and purple are constantly on my mind lately. So, here's one of my top sellers being offered for the giveaway - Cranberry Fig:

Wanna join the ranks of previous soap winners whose mail smelled reeeeeealllly good the day their bars arrived? Simply leave a comment telling me what kinds of things you'd like to see more of here on the AWAAR blog. Remember, there need to be at least six comments from different readers in order for the bar to get sent.

Happy Friday!

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at last (or, tying up the ends of a dream)

Okay, where to start. I've got a lot to say today, and I guess I finally have the time and space to say it.

So, I've mentioned before on this blog that a lot has happened in my life and in the lives of my kids in the past year-and-a-half. Big, life-changing stuff that started off feeling like everything that mattered inside and outside myself was dying and ended up being sort of that, but also something completely opposite. Yes, there have been many endings, but there have also been many beginnings - all part of Life's bigger picture, I suppose. But even as things got better in general, there were still lots of loose ends to tie up. Legal loose ends, financial loose ends, practical loose ends, emotional loose ends.

And to top it all off, my horse wasn't with me.

Doesn't sound like a big deal to most people, probably, but I've had Zzari for going on 21 years, and he's been through more good, bad and ugly with me than anyone else outside of my family and closest friends.

Then, I bought a house in the country with enough room for a horse or two. But then this little, PMS-ey tornado decided to pay us a visit after we'd only been here for about a month, taking out the horse shelter and nothing else (thankfully).

So, I decided to cowgirl up, put on my big girl panties, take the bull by the horns...I think you're following me. I decided to rebuild (well, I actually decided to have someone else rebuild for me - minor details). So, I found a contractor with a nice horse shelter portfolio and started the convo. And the morning I looked out my window just after daybreak and saw this...


...was a good morning indeed. But that wasn't the best part, not yet. It wasn't too long before the materials showed up...

...and then things really started rolling along. It still wasn't the best part, though.

Sigh. I love the sound of drills and hammers in the morning. Especially when I'm not the one trying to use them. I have been known to throw together a fairly mean chicken coop, however. Not pretty, perhaps, but mean - definitely mean.

By the way, if you live anywhere between Phoenix and Flagstaff and are in need of a horse shelter, I'll give you this guy's name along with a hearty recommendation. Anyway, the day finally came when I walked out into the horse pasture and found this waiting for me:

And it was good. But it still wasn't the best part, and it still wasn't finished. I mean, according to the county inspector it was finished, but not according to me. It still needed to have corral panels attached, which meant I had to get to work with some heavy gauge wire I had in the shed, some t-posts and a heavy t-post driver borrowed from a friend. I used my grandpa's tools during this process, because they're old, tough and American made. He even etched his name on them back in the day.

And that was almost the best part, because I loved my grandpa in a way I'll probably never love another human being. I loved the fact that he got to be a part of bringing Zzari home in some small way. He died when I was sixteen, but here he is a few years before that, spoiling my first horse, an old Appy girl named Sugar, after I'd ridden her in the local 4th of July parade:

So, I got the corral panels put up as a temporary home for Zzari until I could get some more permanent fencing put up (hopefully before winter). And not too long after that, I stepped out onto the front steps with my camera and captured this coming down the road toward home:

You know how some unemployed folks say they're "between jobs?" Well, I'm between horse trailers, so a local cowboy/farrier/all around good guy brought Zzari back to me.

And seeing that trailer coming down the road? It was sweetness itself, but it still wasn't the best part.

The next morning, just after sunrise, I opened up the back door and heard my boy whinny to me for the first time in well over a year: Mom! I'm hungry!


And that, my friends, was the best part of all.

P.S. Here's what played on the radio while I was working on this post. I borrowed the parenthetical part of the title from one of the great lines from this song.

P.P.S. I want to thank a very dear friend for welcoming Zzari into her herd and her exclusive horse spa for the past year-plus. Maiden, you're the best.

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small things

Noting the crumpled state of her homework after school lately, I offered Daughter a deal: Come home with your homework nice and neat in its folder, and you'll get a special treat. I don't care if she's supposed to do this without being asked; I'm a huge fan of bribery. Alas, she proudly opened her backpack as soon as she got off the bus to show me how tidy everything was. So, she got her treat:

Wish I could say these peanut butter cookies were homemade, but no - store bought and pre-cut. All I had to do was bake 'em. My mom used to make the most AMAZING peanut butter cookies from scratch, and she'd always add a little design on each one with the tines of a fork. I'll have to get the recipe from her.

Today I paid a visit to my favorite local thrift store, where I found a cat carrier that would have come in very handy week-before-last when Rosa developed a post-spay UTI and had to go back to the vet. Now we have one just in case, and it only cost a few bucks! I picked up the chairs, too. We've been needing some extras for when company comes over, and the kids are looking forward to customizing these with some bright acrylic paints. That way, they can each have one for sitting and putting on their shoes in the morning, setting their backpacks on in the afternoon, etc. Plus, I think the chairs will make the foyer look very homey and folksy. I'll post a picture when they're done.

Let's see. I recently traded soap for some hollyhock seeds, so those will go in the ground this weekend. The neighbor who has the seeds is a master gardener, so I've also been hitting her up for advice on what kinds of trees to plant in front of the house and how to stop the local prairie dogs from feasting on the roots. I'll post a picture of the hollyhock experiment results next year. (I did mention that I have a black thumb, right?)

The new horse shelter is coming along, though there have been a few hold-ups between my contractor dealing with the county, footer cement that doesn't want to dry quickly enough, etc. I'm hoping most if not all of it will go up tomorrow.

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calgon, take me away

This weekend, in a fit of winterizing, The Boy and I took this:


...and turned it into this:

I know, I know. You're terribly impressed. You're thinking, Oooooooooooo.

That's a heat lamp and a sled on the back wall, so you know we were serious. I even built a mini-stack, mainly because I was too plum tuckered to carry the last of the wood into the shed:

It was not an easy task peeling myself from the bed this morning, let me tell you. But, after a mug full of bracing "cowboy strength" coffee and a little Mary J on the radio (don't need no hateration, yo) while driving the kids to the bus stop, I was good to go.

Oh, be sure to go comment on the soap giveaway post (the one under this one), so I can get that bar in the mail!

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our crazy, crafty, creative labor day weekend

Like a horse moved to a new barn, or a dog rescued from a shelter and taken to a strange house, I think I've been in the process of realizing that this little, postage-stamp-sized farmstead on the mountain is Home. I'm pretty sure this process started happening back at the end of June, when it looked like escrow was actually going to close without too much of a hitch. And I'm pretty sure that a new part of this process - maybe the final part - happened during this long Labor Day weekend, which we kicked off by going to the Fair - an inevitably and creatively sensual experience that must have dislodged something that's been stuck for a while way down in my psyche. Friday night we were all exhausted, but on Saturday we decided to bake a double batch of Tollhouse cookies:

Why, yes, that IS a Siamese cat sleeping in the background, completely unimpressed by our culinary endeavors. Want proof?

On Sunday, one of the kids started talking about what kinds of plants we might enter in the Fair next year, so "Come with me," I said. I told them that I'd been eyeballing the property, trying to come up with the best place to plant a garden. The spot I tentatively chose has southern and eastern exposure, but it's blocked on the west and the north. It's where the entrance to the crawlspace is located, and our big, steel water cistern is buried nearby, too, so there's no chance we'll put a deck or other addition there. Plus, the previous owners left some heavy duty steel "planters" buried in the ground, and I figure those could come in handy for growing herbs. Right now, the spot is weedy and untended, but give us the winter to dream up our garden wish list and the spring to build raised beds, and there's no telling what kind of life we might breathe into that patch of ground:

I told the kids we could actually get started on the garden now, despite the fact that we'll soon be heading into fall and the already short northern Arizona growing season is getting close to being over. They were all excited, until I told son to grab the wheelbarrow and follow me and daughter while we walked the property and tossed as many old, dried out cow pies in as we could find (our land is on open range, and apparently, the last owners didn't close the front gate. Bovine visitors were clearly abundant). Actually, it didn't take the kids long to get excited even about that. It's amazing how fun it can be to collect petrified cow crap. Try it sometime. Afterward, we dumped the patties on the space I'd built for our compost pile. I used a bunch of cinderblocks that were left over after the little horse barn blew away in that rogue tornado:

Throughout the day, daughter would ask if I had anything that she could throw on the pile. Such a little Earth Girl. Go figure.

Today, we'd hardly gotten up and eaten breakfast before the creative urges struck again. It started with a big bag of apples that's been sitting on my counter all week, threatening to become compost fodder if I didn't do something quick. So, with the kids' help in the mashing phase, I batched up a quick pot of homemade apple sauce to serve with chicken sausage and my favorite Trader Joe's Basmati rice blend topped with mushroom sauce for dinner:

Have you ever done this? It's the easiest thing in the world! Four ingredients: Apples, water, sugar and cinnamon. Take a few minutes to peel and core the apples, cut them into quarters, boil all the ingredients together for a while, cool 'em down and mash 'em. Voila! Warm, homemade applesauce with an amazing taste and texture that will leave you feeling a little bummed out the next time you have to use storebought.

We even held back the peels and rings to dry for this year's Homemade Christmas:

I did mention that I was basically Martha on roids this weekend, right? Lizzie was as unimpressed as the cat. That's daughter's abandoned apron and son's abandoned artwork on the floor:

I was willing to overlook the increasingly daunting mess, though, since just about every time I checked on the kids, both of them were feverishly working on stories and pictures and even paper sculpture creations like this cat/kitten/bird/egg/watermelon/garden combo created by daughter:

I don't know what the heck was in the water around here for the past few days, but whatever it was...give me more.Follow @nicole_mcinnes