About Me

Making announcement before a concert

Am I a photographer who loves to write? or a writer who loves to take pictures? Perhaps I am neither, but merely a woman who enjoys the world and being part of creation I love to create whether by painting, poetry, prose or by creating a digital image.  While I get my biggest kick out of life by arranging for people to enjoy themselves, right up there next to it is being alone in creation, learning about it and about human's in it.

There are usualy two or three books around my house marked where I stopped reading.  I always have a couple books going at once, sometimes three.  I enjoy nonfiction books about language history, books about how our brain and genetics work and books about the formation and downfall of cultures.  For fiction, my first choice is Appalachian stories with happy endings.  I like my fiction to have beautiful, descriptive prose with well-developed characters. I love picturesque descriptions of everyday people doing everyday things.

My garden and I are in the Mid-Ohio Valley of West Virginia where I live on a hill top in a log home in a small field surrounded by woods.  My husband, Jeff built the first part of our home by first taking down an old log home then rebuilding that home right here were we now live.  Together, then we have took down a couple more and put them up around our home. The newest part of our house is made up of a log cabin that Jeff re-notched, parts of what was the oldest house in our area, and pieces that he found in an old barn that he tore down.  The ceiling in the "new" section still has the blue paint on it from that old house.

Over thirty years ago Jeff and his friend, Jim tore down and brought here the old blacksmith shop from my mother's home place, an apple orchard in Franklin County, Virginia.  She told stories of how her father had the shop build during the time of the Chestnut blight.  He had the blighted trees cut down and hewed for the blacksmith shop as well as other buildings on the farm. Every morning, some of the men who lived and worked on the farm would gather at the blacksmith shop. Dr. Sam (her dad) would ride down  on his big horse and sit atop it while he gave the day's orders to the men.  Jeff has set up his own blacksmith shop in the old chestnut cabin.

We' added other buildings around our hill top. I'l add a description of them later as I add to this page.
To read about some of the plants and design of  MY GARDEN  click on the link just given.

This page is under construction, as am I.