This Perfectly Imperfect Life

#READSavannah has come & gone, and I have so much to tell you, but first I have to finish wrapping my mind around it all.  A big shout-out to Marybeth Mayhew Whalen and Ariel Lawhon of SheReads for making it happen! What an amazing and inspiring experience. The people I met - readers and authors alike! If I go on there will just be too many "!!!" right now. (And please send some healing love & prayers out to Marybeth who hit a "bump in the road" so to speak on her way home from Savannah). *I already had Truly Madly Guilty, but since #LianeMoriarty was the keynote and it's her latest, I had to include it here! (She signed The Husband's Secret).

(That photo of me was taken the day after we got back home here to the coast. Traveling kicks my arse!)

The post below is from my Adventures In Gardening column archives and originally appeared elsewhere on January 19, 2013. While it has a gardening theme, it is also about falling in love for the first time, although in a perhaps unconventional sense, and it seems fitting to revisit it with Valentines Day arriving a week from today. It is also one of my favorite posts that I have ever written! I've had a follow-up of sorts in the works, which covers my first brief visit to Charleston in 2012 overall. My longing to return to Charleston arrives every February and March now. One day I will get there. Until then I have my memories and my Camellias. Adventures In Gardening: Love Struck! Filed under  #GARDENWALK ,  ADVENTURES IN GARDENING As gardeners, we fall in love over and over again.  Every time we flip through a catalog, make a trip to the nursery, or take a walk in a new garden.  Often, many of these new loves get pushed out of our minds and onto the “...

On day one I was Thankful for: Love, Autumn, Freedom and Nature. Sent from my iPhone

Louisa May Alcott. Beloved author who created Jo March, my all time favorite character of any book I've ever read, who inspired me to become a writer at the age of 11. I often find myself seeking Louisa out.  Trying to find Louisa.  I'm not entirely sure what that means myself, it's a feeling I can't quite explain, that comes and goes throughout the year, but especially as the seasons change or when I am struggling with my own writing. Recently I began trying to explore this feeling (via writing, privately). I was so excited and overcome the first (and only) time I visited Orchard House, her most famous home, I was on the verge of tears from the moment we pulled up until well after leaving the house and later the cemetery where she is buried. Because I first visited Autumn (of 2008), I find myself wanting to make another pilgrimage north to the stunning Autumn of Concord, MA to visit her again each Autumn. Not possible in the literal sense, unfortunately, so I wil...

Sunset view from I-78 in Pennsylvania earlier this evening. What is your favorite moment from today? Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

This afternoon, we took a "Let's see where this road goes!" ride which lead us about 10 miles south of our place. We had lunch at a cozy, albeit chilly, lakeside tavern where we had corn chowder & fried pierogies with sautéd onions & sour cream. Then we explored a State Park we'd never been to before, which was all but deserted except for one occupied camp site and a few park workers dismantling lake's beach docks for Winter prep. Despite being in the upper 60s to low 70s, the air was raw and we were both cold enough lakeside to put our sweatshirts back on. The peace & quiet was serene, but overall the State Park seemed a lonely place. I imagine 'in season' it's anything but! Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Yesterday we headed over to Millford, PA to visit Grey Towers, the summer home estate of the Pinchot family. Their son Gifford was the first Chief of the US Forrest Service and two time Governor of PA. What an incredible setting! What we saw of the grounds through our tour and just by walking around, along with the outside of the home itself, were spectacular, as were the views which looked out over Milford strait into Northwestern NJ. A little disappointing the tour only takes you into three rooms in the seemingly massive house, before going back outside; even more disappointing (to me because of my well known love of gardening) was coming to find out that the area of original garden for the house (roses, vegetables, etc) lies on a portion of the property that is still within the family (and therefore private) and is no longer in existence. There were pictures of it in one of the albums you could flip through during the tour. Aside from the spectacular Autumn foliage ...

Hello friends! Hope all is well with all of you. We've been away since last week, up at our 'home away from home' in the mountains. We got another property to cover ours so we could be away and not have to worry about the apartment complex at all (which is a very necessary break every so often). It was nice being away even though it POURED Sat night through Tuesday morning! Then the temperature dropped and we had snow & hail showers around dinner time last night. It got down to 32° too! More oddball weather this morning while we were packing up to come home. (Rain, snow & hail all at the same time while it was sunny in one direction and cloudy in the other). Yes, that Is the resident Swan hanging out with us by the fire last night! She's taken quite the liking to us and seems to like to spend time near us even if we don't feed her (which we do often enough) though I know she's just hoping we'll feed her anyway. The res...

I posted larger versions of these over at NewJerseyThroughMyEyes but I wanted to post them here too because I just happen to love them! Up north at 'home away from home' there are random gatherings of abandoned camping trailers and motor homes. We love to go exploring through them! They always leave me wondering why they were left behind. What happened to those who once owned & cared for them?