Tomorrow, my novel Tributary is one year old. Cake, candles and Doo Wops? Nope, we're going to float sunflowers down Boulder Creek just as we did to launch her.

She won the WILLA Finalist Award for 2013 in historical fiction, so thanks are in order. I'm feeling grateful she's out on bookstore shelves, and relieved that a new book's in the oven. 

What new book? It's a dirty secret. I'm cooking up mud pies. Planting little cupcake flags in the soul of soil. I did love taking a break from blogging to get this new book begun. But here's the real dirt on what else happened this summer . . .


A fuzzy browed baby house finch took up residence in the newly dug garden patch, to recover from a nest fall. Four days of friendship, shared watermelon, mashed up dog kibble and sharp peeps of hello, and that bird flew off across the neighbor's long backyard once we'd all assembled to marvel and wish her well. We nicknamed her Brandi after Ms. Carlile.

I feel like I should save this book for winter, read it like a seed catalog to warm my imagination. But that ain't happening! It's inspiring. We all do grassroots activism, yes? Well, Kayann takes you to its source: "a vast web of fibrous grass roots" that anchor her farm's soil with tentacles ten feet deep! Even though this particular prairie grass would swallow up her whole farm in a heartbeat if they stopped cultivating, and even though Smooth Brome Grass is a thuggish Eurasian invader, she finds it comforting. This grass that "thumbs its nose at all things human." (A fine metaphor, as some environmental activists have been know to do that, too.)

So I am celebrating the toddlerhood of my novel with great reading . . .

suburban gardening, and trips to the neighborhood Oz on my old five speed Schwinn.

I hope your end of summer blooms as abundantly!

It all started with a head cold. And nine inches of new snow. And the desire to make a birthday present for my favorite one-year-old friend Maddie.

I found this adorable dog online.

Rummaged through my fabric scraps.

Cut out rectangle pattern pieces on tracing paper, cut out all the fabric bits, and started sewing things together.

Thank heavens my resident college student on spring break knew how to zigzag for the facial features! No button eyes for a one year old. This face had to stand up to the toddler test.

I must say the aqua colored thread adds personality to Nutmeg's blue eye patch.

I sewed the little arm and leg tubes, turned them inside out with no swearing whatsoever, and stuffed them with a little fiberfill batting. The blunt end of a pencil and the pokey end of a pen helped convince the batting to enter such small spaces.

Then I sewed the ears and arms and legs on the back of Nutmeg's body, and folded them all inward for the final big sew.

Put front and back body pieces together, right sides in, stitching carefully to leave the ears and appendages free of my seaming.

Turned the whole thing inside out, stuffed Nutmeg's box-shaped body with fiberfill, and hand stitched the opening at the bottom.

Since my head cold prevented me from delivering Nutmeg on Maddie's birthday, my crew and I
made a video for her.

Maddie watches it often! Like her own Sesame Street routine. And when I delivered Nutmeg to Maddie, she was watching the video right then. In a doctor's office, with a bad case of stomach flu. She finished the happy birthday song, took the real Nutmeg in her hands and pressed her new pal into her face in sad greeting. Maddie held on tight to Nutmeg through the ear and eye exams, the throat exam. She even watched the video again when the doc tested for strep throat. Then Maddie slept with Nutmeg guarding her from the overhead florescent lights.

I hope they are pals forever. The "M" is for Maddie, superstar.

I avoided it for years, the gluten issue. How many allergies can a gal dial into? How could I give up wheat when at times the only things I dared to eat were plain bagels and Saltine crackers? It's so very difficult knowing what keeps a digestive system steady when it's topsy turvy much of the time.

But here's the scoop. Having just spent six days gluten-free, I'm beginning to listen to the gluten free call. I feel so steady. I don't crave sweets. My digestion is quiet and calm. I rounded up every item with gluten in it—crackers, breads, pastas, soups, soy sauce, cereals, tortellini, ravioli—and gave them to our neighbors. I didn't give them the six packs of Stella Artois. But I did banish our beer to the garage.

Courage comes in handy-pack sizes. I'll offload the beer when I'm sure about this new way of eating. And being.

Ringing in freedom meant a fairly thorough kitchen cleaning. Along with glutinous items, I tossed out high-sugar fruits, too. Bye-bye beloved bananas and mangos. Now, it's berries only, and unsweetened applesauce. These two fairly simple changes—eating a no gluten, and low-sugar fruit diet—seem to mean freedom. From pesky exhaustion, from energy swings, and from my formerly tender digestion.

That does not mean I'm eating poorly. On the contrary, it's an adventure finding delicious new eats.

First stop: Great Harvest Bread Company, who make outrageously tasty gluten free bread on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It's called Gluten Gone Buckwheat. The loaf is so dense Jeff cuts it with an electric carving knife, and so delicious we're glad we switched.

Purists will say if the label does not say GLUTEN FREE, it's not. Sometimes corn and oats have gluten, so the GF label ensures they're 100% gluten free. But if you don't live in a town high on gluten free eating (Boulder, Colorado is the capital of no-glue food), just eat other grains instead of wheat for awhile, and see if it makes a difference.

Why claim gluten freedom? Joint pain and digestive woes decrease. Alertness and steadiness increase. Naps have almost vanished. The money I save on dark chocolate alone could almost pay the rent!

If you need more enticement, it is called gluten BECAUSE IT'S GLUE. Or it functions like glue. That's why breads stick together. Think elastic pizza dough.

Did you ever make paste out of white flour and water as a kid? GLUE.

And human digestive systems don't know what to make of it. They either let it pass harmlessly out of the body, if you're lucky, or get all funkified when gluten visits. Fermentation and distress. The list of physical woes includes gas, indigestion, diarrhea, achy joints...

Are you eating glue, Andy? I remember a kid in my first grade class who ate glue paste straight from the jar. Like, forget the lunch sack, just pass the glue paste. (The lids had those cool stick/paddles with a brush on the end for swiping too much glue onto construction paper. Which got all over your hands. And yes, I did a bit of licking to see what Andy was grooving on. Yetch.)


So when you sit down to a plate of linguini, you are opening the paste jar.

On to tastier pastures! Because you needn't sacrifice flavor in this new gluten free world. Cutting out breads and pastas means you make more room for other great foods.

Here is an outlandishly tasty recipe that no one would ever guess is lacking in anything! Adapted from Emeril Lagasse's Smoked Salmon Quiche with Crispy Potato Crust, I lowered the fat content and went with fresh potatoes and acorn squash, and ditched nearly all the dairy. Yum.

Ingredients:

3 1/4 cups coarsely mashed potatoes & acorn squash (partway peel, chop and boil till tender)

1 T butter

2 T olive oil

1/4 c finely grated Parmesan cheese

2 medium leeks or one small onion, halved and thinly sliced (1/2-2/3 c)

1/2 t minced garlic

4-6 oz fake sour cream, at room temperature (soy/Tofu sour cream)

2 t fresh lemon juice

3 eggs (eggwhites from a carton are fine; I used one whole egg and the rest eggwhites)


1/3 c rice milk

1/4 c shredded fake mozzarella (almond cheese)

4-6 oz smoked salmon, diced (4 seems like plenty to me)

2 T chopped fresh dill (I used 2 t dried dill)

1/2 t freshly ground black pepper

Creole Essence Ingredients:

1 t paprika                              sprinkle of cayenne

1/2 t salt                                  1/2 t dried oregano

1 t garlic powder                     1/2 t dried thyme

1/2 t black pepper                   1/2 t onion powder  (I didn't have onion or garlic, still great!)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Oil a 9" glass pie plate.

In a bowl, toss and combine the potatoes and squash with butter and the Creole Essence (recipe below). Add Parmesan and combine. Press the potato mixture into the pie plate, spreading evenly to cover the bottom and up the sides. Bake until golden, 25-30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

Reduce the oven to 350 degrees.

Saute the leeks/onions in olive oil over medium heat. When they're soft, about four minutes, add the garlic and cook for one minute. Remove from the heat.

Put "sour cream" and leeks/onions and lemon juice in a large bowl and stir everything together. Add the eggs, one at a time, stirring just until combined. Add the rice milk, salmon, dill and pepper. Mix well.

Pour the salmon mixture into the cooled potato crust and bake for 40-45 minutes, until golden and the batter is set. Cool quiche awhile before serving. Fight over the spatula.

Only serves four. It's that great.

Go to Gluten Free Goddess for a great sampling of recipes and advice.

Kent Nerburn's Neither Wolf nor Dog is a great read with checkered origins. I enjoyed the book immensely. Nerburn's writing can be both simple as dirt and poetic as hell when it needs to be. His description of a massive storm in the Badlands towards the end of the book — gorgeous.

I started out loving this book. It was exactly what I'd been hoping to find since reading Lisa Jones' Broken: A Love Story, an exploration of Native American spirituality that was gritty and real. Nerburn can certainly write. But reading his last pages, I felt a slight suspicion and did a bit of research. The book is not non-fiction; Nerburn carefully chose and constructed this tale, populating it with people and events to suit his aim: to inspire in Anglo hearts a real understanding of Native points of view. He could have written this story of Dan and Grover, the Lakota road warriors, and their seemingly humble white amanuensis as a novel. It could have been a smashing novel. Apparently, it's being made into a movie soon. I have no comment on that.


Nerburn has defended the authenticity of the book as a work of art, a carrier of spiritual truths. But his defense showed no humility. And his fabrications have undercut the trust of this reader.

All authors are liars. Novelists lie blatantly, it's our trade. We lie to get at truth. Writers of non-fiction... well, I hope they still have standards of truthfulness. Neither Wolf nor Dog is a hybrid, it's spiritual road fiction, certainly not the first of its kind. But because the long haul tale was told and sold as truth, I stopped hitching. I'm actually kind of angry, the book was that good. I don't know which parts to trust.

Is Neither Wolf nor Dog worth reading? I think so. Fools gold shines like gold, just don't bite it.

Make baby bibs.

I took one to my dear pal Maddie last week, and her mom said, "I want a dozen more!" Her dad said, "We need a million of 'em." Maddie is one enthusiastic eater.

The monkeys started the whole project. I couldn't leave them all alone at JoAnn's among their flannel buddies.

I chose a handsome houndstooth check for the ties. You can use Velcro or ties at the neck, but Maddie is so strong Velcro is no match for her.

I could not resist the yellow rick rack, which actually catches spills!

I think the designer knocked it out of the park with her great fabric choices, including a soft chenille back. I just used good old flannel front and back. And muslin instead of interfacing.

When the literary world seems like a jungle, there's no better business than makin' monkey bibs.

I used to be a tireless worker. 

Tirelessly creative. 

Tirelessly inventive. 

Is it any wonder, then, that now I am just tired? 

Here’s the good news: 

my body has been telling me this for years, 
and now that I literally pace myself like a 
majestic elephant, all things stay in balance.

The majestic elephant took over about two months ago when I started seeing an acupuncturist. She simply refused to let my yang energy run amok. 

Running amok creates suffering and personal havoc. While I thought I was busy moving mountains, I was actually driving my body wild. Shrieking monkey wild. Breakdown in the desert without water wild. Again and again and again. I am now 56, and I've laid down my arms.

I want to be that woman.

If I can only get this majestic elephant to learn yoga!

Slow is Beautiful

I remember a Rilke quote, an insight from that wise and sensitive poet, suggesting life is a closed envelope and nearly all of us just pass the envelope along to the next generation. Few open it. Few even try. Almost no one realizes the envelope is addressed to them. To us. To you.

That letter from the universe waits in your hands. You are the recipient. The mystery, of course, is how to open the envelope. Every day. Every minute of every day.

I know one thing that will raise your odds: slow down . . . (click slow down to read the rest)

Nothing says fall like fallen apples.

They certainly make great cider, 
but much easier for the interested 
and lazy cook, windfall apples make wonderful homemade applesauce. 

All you need is a forgotten apple tree, 
a few simple ingredients and a little
home time.



My novel's heroine Clair Martin, 19th century maverick and Brigham City, Utah gardener, herewith gives her recipe for the best applesauce you ever tasted. Use windfall apples, or any apples just getting pink cheeks on the reachable branches. Store bought will not do. Go meet a tree.

Appletastic! And your kitchen will smell divine!

Adapted from Sarah's Applesauce.

I am going to stick my neck out here in a not very stick-your-neck-out way. I’m going to ask this question: what if are we here to appreciate? what if our place in the natural order is as appreciators? And I am going to say that the answer is yes.

I have been sick for a week, so the simplest things feel miraculous—walking upright, getting muddy feet, scrubbing the kitchen sink, eating chicken soup, everything feels new. I appreciate overcast skies and the vigor of weeds and the hair coming off of my dog’s body in danderous blizzards. She’s losing her summer coat. All the signs out in the world say autumn’s coming. Nothing more poignant than autumn. No better time to step up and appreciate.


The challenge is to save your own life by shifting from consumption to appreciation. If you don’t, you’ve missed your real calling. The human tool we tend to hold dearest, our chatty judgemental greedy mind, is only a servant of other greater tools we rarely use: observation, intuition, awareness, clear seeing, spontanteous generosity and appreciation of the whole.

Since you are here now, why not be here now?

There are thousands of practical ways to be the world’s appreciator. Most are highly pleasant. The world welcomes every one.

Watch birds

Touch flowers

Draw light and shadow

Investigate open fields

Nap inside a really old barn

Harvest the windfall apples of a forgotten tree

Go homemade, anything

Follow a dog’s meandering trail

See that dog take interest in every scent

Laugh when that dog cavorts with joy

Put your belly on the ground and just relax

Do it again

Send anguish into the earth where it belongs

Gather fresh ingredients for a meal

Smile as cottonwood leaves flap in the wind

Steep tea from wild peppermint

Get bug-level, let go of your agendas and observe

Your life has one request of you: please spend twenty minutes every day interacting with nature. Pleasurable appreciation is the only requirement. Give your monstrously overworked ego a break.