Oh, I just can't help myself...

Here's more photos and video of Blackwater in the spring.

Here's some close-ups of individual flowers and bushes.

A new sort of 'flower'.

And one more, a close-up of the azaleas.

photos and footage courtesy of dkminnick.

rjm

I know I'm probably going on and on and on...

but I just can't help it. This place is beautiful!

I wish I could count just the number of different flowers/flowering shrubs we have in bloom right now. If I were to count the actual flowers, it would be in the thousands (( well, ever take a close look at an azalea or rhododendren?) I look out at our backyard, and right now it is a fairyland!

I've always loved flowers -- who doesn't? -- and I always was especially envious of those people lucky enough to have flowering shrubs and trees around their houses. From hanging around the elementary school on Memorial Day waiting for the parade to start to driving through the suburbs around Washington DC on my way to work, the houses with flowers always seemed a little more attractive, a little more special to me than houses where only green grew.

And now we are at Blackwater, with flowers on steroids, totally unplanned, totally by surprise -- honestly, I don't think I'll ever get over it. So, I'll just post a few pictures and try not to bore you with more raves.












and these are only the SMALL azaleas! We have at least 6 colors:
white, pink, raspberry, red, variegated pink, and salmon

across all kinds of flowers out, we have those colors listed above, plus yellow, purple, crimson, and blue. and many of them are very fragrant, too.




pictures courtesy dkminnick












We've met some very nice people here. I hadn't realized how snobbish I'd become about Nashville. The people there are very special, and of course, some of them we've known for years now. But I hadn't meant to reach the point where I couldn't imagine people somewhere else not being AS nice as Nashvillians. Especially when I had my husband and my daughters telling me how nice people were in Boston or Hawaii or Oregon. I think it comes from being afraid of change -- and I'm as afraid of change as the next person. Of course, if it's change I control, well, that's a different story.

As for those nice people -- there's the lady in church who encouraged us to sing along with the choir's Hallelujah chorus, by singing along herself! When I thanked her for it, she said that if you couldn't sing the Hallelujah chorus in church, what could you sing? and then she gave me a big hug.

There's the mom of our daughters' classmate who also stays at home (and also has a large family) while her husband serves overseas. We shared stories of teenagers and projects and new schools in the school parking lot at night.

There's the people in the local Lowe's and WalMart who are getting to know me WAY too well as I pick up stuff to work on our house and yard. They seem to love to help me load my car -- or even my cart (and I really hope it's not because of how old I look). But they are so sweet about it!

And our neighbors who talk to the kids, wave across the way, and even offer to help keep an eye on things when we're not around.

I am tentatively putting down roots. I'm not ready to be like the army families, some of whom have moved about so much they don't feel like they have a home state. I'm trying to get into the frame of mind that I need to BE HERE for as long as we are here, be it short or long. Home is wherever our family is. And just as my heart expanded to include each of our children as they came along, my personal world must expand to encompass all the places our family members live. I have to try to copy my mother who, when talking about how far-flung her own children had become, would smile broadly and say, "Isn't it wonderful!"

rjm

Great Gatsby!

As a final project to reading the Great Gatsby, Kacey and Kelsey's class held a 1920's Gala or Speakeasy. Dave took pictures for the group. Here's a few.


Youse can come in.

Nobody touch nothin' 'til da cops get here!

Looks like da usual suspects. Maybe we better close dis joint down!

2 molls!
( Say, which is which?)

da dame in black

















dese images was all courtesy of dkminnick, a regular joe.



rjm

Spring is Springing, and so are Traps

IT’S SPRING and the ducks are nesting, the owls are hooting, the frogs are leaping, the lizards are scurrying, the turtles are swimming--- but I haven’t seen the heron lately.

Anyway, spring has come to Blackwater, bringing beauty and trials and tribulations, and it’s really hard to appreciate the first fully when the latter keeps interrupting. On the other hand, it’s hard to find the solutions for the latter when the former keeps distracting. Oh well.

We brought the last truckload from Nashville to Fayetteville last month. Unfortunately, the people who were interested in the house no longer are. Not their fault; their own plans sort of fell through. Anyway, now we must go back not only to clean, but to finish fixing up the house.

We have rather a long list of things to do, but we try to draw comfort from the fact that this means we’ll get more money out of it as well. But, the work is daunting, if only because first we have to get there.

It’s still weird, living with one foot back in Nashville. I had figured that by now we ‘d be settled in and savoring the new experiences and new friends. Instead, we are in a jumble of trying to keep up with all the things going on around us, moving forward yet harkening back to what is still behind. We call old friends; we make trips back. We – or rather the kids – get involved in activities here, inevitably to compare them to old events. Sometimes the comparison is favorable, sometimes not.

Funny how, no matter how many different places you live, you forget that people live a little differently elsewhere. Those differences loom large when you are afraid, afraid the way you are when you are pushed into doing something new. That fear can be a trap that prevents you from growing in your life.

An old maxim urges, “bloom where you are planted”.

Blackwater is so nurturing to the plants and wildlife around here; will it be so for our family too?

rjm

Here and There

It has been w – a – y too long since I’ve written here. Way too long. We’ve packed up from Christmas, installed new attic stairs, begun putting in an attic floor and a window between the girls’ rooms, and now we find ourselves on the road again.

Okay, that sums it up, bye now.

All right, let me do better.




You may have noticed that I didn't mention our final moving trip. Well, that's because we didn't make the trip due to Mack's getting sick. We have rescheduled everything for February. We should be going over on February 15th. If nothing else happens.

The fact it is, now that we are establishing our new retreat here in the interior of Fayetteville, North Carolina -- our family together, able to enjoy one another’s company, trying new hobbies, getting into new routines, -- now that we are finally back together, the US government is seeing fit to take us apart AGAIN.

Not that we didn’t see it coming. You see, Dave’s assignment is to Fort Bragg only primarily. He is actually considered to be Army-wide. That means world-wide. He can be sent anyplace. Now there’s new software coming out that people will need to be trained on. So, he is getting his training now, and then he will be sent to train others. The only difference from the situation when we were in Nashville is that when he is home he has a job at Bragg to go to, and he probably won’t be gone so much or for so long. Okay, definitely an advantage over being a soldier, so we won’t gripe, too much.

Speaking of soldiers, when they are practicing what used to be called maneuvers (I don’t know what they call them today) we get a lot of mortar-fire around here. Not actually shelling, of course, but we can hear what they’re doing on base. Lots of big booms and an occasional rat-a-tat-tat. Typical for an Army town, I guess.

In Nashville it was honky-tonk music out in front of Legends on Broadway, here it’s boom-booms in our back yard.

Comparisons are funny things.

In Nashville they cut – no, desecrate trees to keep them from hitting power lines. In Fayetteville they vacuum up leaves that you rake to the curb to help keep the city beautiful.

In Nashville you might find traffic re-routed so that NBC’s Today Show can broadcast from Broadway in front of the arena (whatever flavor it’s named after this month). In Fayetteville you might find traffic backed up for an Army convoy.

In Nashville you might find roadblocks set up so they can film a country music video. In Fayetteville you might find streets closed for the Dickens Festival in November, or one of the many other festivals they hold other months.

In Nashville you find people manning the phone banks to raise money for NPT. In Fayetteville you find people quilting all year long to donate lap quilts to veterans who are inpatients in the Veterans Medical Center.

In Nashville you have the Red Cross holding events and taking care of disasters. In Fayetteville you have the Red Cross taking care of disasters and holding events.

Hmm.

rjm

Whew.

Yes, whew!

that quaking picture of the penguin 'singing' on our balcony just about describes things! -->

Christmas is done; Michael has just been taken to the airport by his dad. Katelyn returned to Webster last week. I finally have to take down our decorations.

And next weekend, next weekend we make what should be the last truck-move from Nashville. We will also meet with a potential buyer for the property. I hope they like it, partly because then it would be sold, but also because it seems like a good 'fit' -- they know our neighbors already.

So, our move is nearly complete, and everyone has -- hopefully -- learned that life did not end after Nashville. We're all making plans, and I think that helps. Mack will go on to high school -- we hope he'll be in the same IB program as the older girls. They will be college hunting. Michael is making big plans for the summer. Katelyn will be graduating college and continuing working on the video from this summer. And Meaghan and Jared will soon be celebrating their first anniversary. And I will be working on Blackwater and on my writing projects.

Returning to my work is exciting. I find one story is playing harder in my mind, asking to be finished. I don't know if I could say the characters are clamoring, but the story itself wants out. I have to plan my time, though. Besides the family needing me, the house will need both routine upkeep and our new building projects. And, we have company coming in the spring.

We actually had extra people here for a whole month. It's been fun, too. Something that hasn't happened in my life since before I was a teenager. It stirs things up, makes things happen.

So we'll get things in order, then comes the final push to .... move on. Next blog... the FINAL push.

rjm

A Little More Info, Please

It has occurred to me that I need to clear something up. Our choosing the name Blackwater for our home has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the security group, which is also from North Carolina. In fact, if that were relevant, we'd be smarter to call our place something else.

No, David picked out the name because of the color of the water in the creek and lagoon. And, it seemed to fit. We could have called it after the creek itself, which is named Little Cross Creek. That would have been amusing, since I'm a fan of the soap opera Guiding Light, and Cross Creek is (or at least, was) their special place in Oklahoma. But Blackwater seemed more romantic, a little medieval, and just, well, ours.

Plants love it here. The previous owners were devoted gardeners, and we inherited quite a collection of flora with the place. I've never seen gardenia bushes 8 feet around before! And we have magnolia, pine, and holly trees, so I'm set for Christmas. But the houseplants we brought over and placed outside have just eaten this place up! Even with drought, the humidity is so high that they thrive! And our weather is just beginning to cool. It's November 3rd, at 11:30 pm our temperature is 44 degrees F with a humidity of 84%.

Sorry, you'll have to excuse me. Born in New York state and having just spent 24 years in Tennessee, North Carolina is very new to me. I may never get over the weather here.

As well as the different perspective. There's a different emphasis from region to region, depending on geography, economy, philosophy. Here in Fayetteville, with Fort Bragg so close, attitude about the military is vastly different from Nashville, where the emphasis is on music and trying to become a 'great' city. In Nashville, you might ask a 10-year-old if they are going to be a musician, or a pro sports player, or a doctor. In Fayetteville, I overheard someone ask a 10-year-old if she was going to be in the Army when she grew up. And she answered 'Yes.' Matter-of-factly, too. Nashville has a church who always announces when it sends relief to national disaster victims; Fayetteville has set up a support system for military families with deployed members.

We had to fill out special school forms because Dave works on the military base. And when the school medical forms asked where we wanted our students taken in an emergency, the base hospital was the second of two choices.

It's a different perspective, all right.

rjm

Faith in All Things

Faith in all things?
You may well wonder, what is she talking about?

When we first decided to move to Fayetteville -- a decision made in 5 days around last Thanksgiving -- we did it solely on faith and the evidence that this was the only option God was showing us. In the near-year we've been working on this, we've had plenty of opportunities to wonder about the wisdom of this move.

Each time we came back to the same stubborn answer. God had shown us this path, and ONLY this path. God had promised us that everything would be all right. He would make it so.

Now, I realize that there are those among you who react negatively to such blatant assertions. I am not trying to evangelize. This is just how it happened for us, and you'll have to ride along to see how it all turns out.

Each time we reminded ourselves of His promise and pushed forward in our plans, we made progress. Obstacles allowed themselves to be overcome, things worked out, and we got closer to North Carolina.

Right up to the day we arrived. Nine-plus very long hours driving from Nashville in a 1-truck, 2-car extended caravan. Actually, Dave and Kelsey went first in the truck. Michael drove Katelyn's car with Kacey. Mack and I took the vanful of animals (2 dogs, 7 cats). In a year with record heat and no air conditioning in either of the cars, this was a spectacularly memorable journey. We stopped frequently to hydrate human and critter alike. Mike had never made this trip, and Mack and I needed help with the animals at stops, so we stayed close together. Dave and Kelsey arrived at the house first, Monday evening, August 20th.

Everyone needed to stretch out, and we planned to unload the next day, so naturally everyone went exploring. Kelsey went down by Little Cross Creek, which meanders alongside and then through our heavily wooded yard. At the opposite edge of the property it cascades down a small falls and through our neighbor's yard on its way to meet up with Cross Creek. Dave and I met this neighbor -- named Dana -- one time when we were looking at the house. She and her husband make a very nice couple, with children a little younger than ours. They'd been very welcoming to us and given us some insight into our new home.

As everyone was roaming around that first evening and checking out the features of the new house -- 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, 3 fireplaces, a 2-car garage -- the likes of which we'd never had before -- dark was descending. A quick head count revealed 1 missing: Kelsey.

Kacey, her twin, was pretty nonchalant about her whereabouts. "Kelsey went down to the creek a while ago," she said.

Now, beyond the creek is a small but full woods that traces the stream from its source at Clark's Pond to where the road crosses over it. We didn't know exactly what lies on the other side of the woods, or what all the neighborhood is like.

"Kelsey?" I called from the back porch. "Kelsey?"

"I'll go get her," Mack volunteered, his own excuse to go down to the water. He jogged toward the causeway where the water drops about four feet before heading through our neighbor's yard. Across the causeway is the woods.

I went down the steps into the yard, calling Kelsey's name occasionally, just in case she'd wandered to the other side of the property.

"Kelsey!" I heard Mackenzie shout. "Kelsey!" There was the sound of someone moving through brush, and then a strangled cry, "Kelsey!"

"Mack? What is it?"

He called his sister's name again as he turned toward me, his face white, his hand holding something in front of his chest.

"Mom! She's not there! She's not there! I found these -- Kelsey!" he cried again .

I trotted towards him. He was holding her sneakers.

"Oh no," I thought. "Not now, not here. We did not come all this way for this!"

I spoke out loud, "Mack, where were those?" He looked so panic-stricken.

"Down there, on the landing." He pointed toward the bottom of the causeway where the water spilled out. Two streams shot out of two pipes and flowed over a stone platform. With the drought, the space between them was dry, and that was where he'd found the shoes.

We continued to shout for her. Around my head went the litany, 'We did not come here for this; God you promised! ' I had to keep coming back to that: He'd promised us this would be all right.

As Mack and I started back for the house, still shouting, one of Dana's children walked up from their yard. She watched us intently, and when she was close enough, she called out, "She's over here!"

Which she was, strolling along the yard with Dana who said she'd 'kidnapped' her and shown her her roses. We walked back towards our yard, Mack and me teasing Kelsey, discussing the new house with Dana, smiling in the dusk at her children. God was keeping His promise.

As we left Dana and her children and walked up toward the house, a cacophony broke loose from behind the Witch's Woods, the 50 or so trees behind the A-frame we dubbed the Witch's House. Something like 4 or 6 owls hooted amongst themselves, probably complaining over the noise we made seeking Kelsey. A dramatic welcome to Fayetteville.

God often asks us to do strange things, things we are not comfortable with or that we don't understand. It's easy to doubt His hand is involved. But, once we have put our lives in His hands, and especially when we have been assured that He will make everything right, we must cling to His promise. If we doubt, we must rebuff that doubt by reminding ourselves of His promise to us. And, for everyday circumstances, for every circumstance, we must remind ourselves of His overall Promise: abundant, eternal life.

God keeps His promises. We must have Faith, in all things.


rjm

100 Trees

I tried counting our trees the other day. There are 11 in the front yard, about 25 in the back, nearly 50 in the Witch's Forest, and I-have-no-idea-how-many in the forest past the creek. So there are over 100 trees at Blackwater (which consists of only 2 acres).

The Witch's House and Forest are a tale for another time.

But I must express my awe at our trees. Many of them are over 60 feet tall, with some rising to 110 feet. My husband, David, is concerned about what might happen during a hurricane. And, who knows?

I was settling myself in the hammock the other day. We'd been exploring the creek and walking the dogs. Dave and Alex (our bigger dog) and Kacey, one of our twins were stil climbing around. I laid back and wondered all over again at how we came to buy this place. And at the trees. They are so tall!

But, I mused, they've been here long enough to grow that high. They must be pretty strong. A little breeze was blowing through the treetops; I followed its path as it streamed from tree to tree.

There was a snap, and like a giant rustling weed, one of the treetops shook itself, and slowly fell over, crashing through the woods parallel to the creek and landing with its upper branches in the creek itself.

I jumped -- well, struggled -- out of the hammock screaming for David and Kacey, not knowing which direction they'd taken, trusting in the fact that there'd been no screams to prove they were okay.

They were. Nothing was taken out by the tree, except maybe other trees and plants. We examined the tree where it lay. Kacey, concerned that it was blocking the stream on that side of the island, pulled some of the broken branches out to one side. It had apparently snapped off about 2 feet up the trunk and simply toppled. It had looked a little like an ent starting to walk.

While Kacey moved the tree and Dave examined it, I stood watching the tree's 2 'sisters', wondering if -- or when -- they were going to go.

We looked more closely at the woods. Thick as they are, there are several fallen trees among them, most of them propped by their fellows where they were caught as they fell. The creek makes it easy for trees to uproot; hurricanes and storms knock out the taller ones.

I don't think we'll ever know why this particular one fell -- on a cloudless day with only a little breeze dancing through the woods. Maybe as a warning to us that it can happen. Maybe, as a reminder, that anything can happen.

rjm

pictures courtesy Kacey M.

The Beginning of Blackwater

We moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina about a month ago. A beautiful home has become ours. We have named it 'Blackwater', and these are our - new - stories.

We've spent a month trying to settle in, but with family busy and scattered and everyone trying to do everything, it hasn't completely worked yet. We still have another truckload of stuff to move here, and we have to sell our other house. We all have projects underway, that we are trying to complete amongst snake sightings, lizard watching, and owl searching -- did I mention that Blackwater is comprised of about 2 acres in the city of Fayetteville? Yet we have all this wildlife, including a heron, and well over a hundred trees, and a 'lagoon' where Little Cross Creek traverses our property. Amazing.

As is normal for me, I have to break off this post before I get to the big stories, because I have to go work on a project one of our 6 kids has me assisting with. I will add more soon, and you're invited to see my slightly more professional blog at http://dreamweaver6.rjmdreamweaver.com/leavings.

rjm

Blackwater photo courtesy of Dave Minnick