Sharon's Ramblings... Sept 1, 2017

So... for those of you new on the scene, a little bit about me, us/my husband and myself. :-) for there can't be a me without him after 47 years of marriage. We are both from what was small country towns in the south, raised by poor, hardworking farmers and sharecroppers. This is a familiar story when you get to talking to people in the south, but after our marriage, our lives took some interesting turns and twist not common among most of our family.

We married young, really young. I was 16, "almost 17", I'd say proudly when someone asked, and he was 18, almost 19. No, it wasn't a shotgun wedding, although there were many that thought it was. Our son, Mike was born 11 months later. We just met, fell in love and wanted to be together, always, and couldn't think of a single reason we should wait. That's just how it was back then. He'd already been working out of the home at the aircraft plant a couple years, and I, having pretty much raised my much younger siblings, already felt grown. What more can I say.

The night he proposed we decided we wanted two boys and a girl, because boys needed two to play ball and a girl could play with her dolls. Our daughter, Amy, never forgave us for that. And so it happened; We married Feb 6 of 1970, I had Mike, Jan 1, of 1971, then, 16 months later, Amy, a little over 2 years later, Dan.  We wanted kids young so we'd be able to enjoy our grand-kids and so it is, with us now in our mid 60s, 7 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. We are blessed.

We've had a wild and varied life that if I tried to tell it all in one sitting, you'd get lockjaw just from your Ohs of surprise, so I'll give you the short version; in 1976, against family wishes, at least against his mama, we decided to take our small kids to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where we lived for ten years, frequently traveling to foreign countries. In 1987 we moved to Alaska, where we fell in love with the state and lived for over 25 years. I had several businesses there, which I just sold my last one and we have moved back to where we started from, Lake City, Florida, back to the forest, to Sharon's Cabin the Woods.

Here, we live below the towering pines with our two dogs, Pewee and Sugar, our Cat, Melli, and 7 chickens and 2 ducks.

We love to travel and typically take the pups with us, but always miss the rest of our crew when we're gone.

We love our cabin in the woods and spend most of our time coming up with projects to do here, be it a new duck pond (LOVE MY DUCKS) or chicken coop, a screened in porch for our little rental down the road, Deer Cottage, or an arbor for my Cherokee Rose, which we're working on now.

We keep busy for sure. My poor husband gets more exercise now than when he worked. As for me, for the last 12 years I owned a vacation rental business in Sitka, Alaska, and was pretty much glued to the phone and the desk 24/7, so now I revel in being in the yard early morning till the sun gets up, which quickly runs me back inside.

Once inside, after I have my nap and an episode of Columbo, I am typically on the computer facebooking, Pinteresting, or, now, I'll be blogging. "What do I blog about," you ask? Anything that comes to mind as I love to share. My flowers, did I mention I LOVE GARDENING? My ducks, love my ducks, the birds. Country recipes I try. Whatever

Check back this week to see how I come up with a house for my ducks so I can separate them from the chicks as the gander keeps attacking the chickens, plus I"m hoping for baby ducks, and, if you'd like to learn how to make jelly from Beautyberry, I'm gonna give that a try, too and I'll share with you how it came out. Did I mention, I hate cooking.. but, this will be fun!

Thanks Everyone, Let's get it  on! Sharon