my roots...

This is where I come from.

The weeks spent at my grandparent's farm

over the first 18 years of my life are some of the best

memories I keep and treasure. Always a solace. Playing in

this barn until Gramps discovered us and

sent us out of there. He was always one to forget I

was a girl and let me play and get dirty just like the boys.

There were always horses,

later followed by ponies. Now, barren, as gramps

no longer can safely get outside in the winter

to feed. He sold the last of the ponies

last year. The thought of it made me choke up.

It came full circle when I discovered these photos

on the camera taken by my 14 year old

The farm is not the same, but yet, it is.

Tony, my brother, and I used to push each other

around in this old wheelbarrow. It always had a

flat tire, but it only slowed us down a little. That was

back when Luke and Daisy Duke were

the coolest people in the world. We became

Luke and Daisy (me minus the shorts...I wasn't

allowed to wear them!), that wheelbarrow was our

good old General Lee. Of course it's still gracing the

farm waiting for someone to jump in it and get their

shorts ruined from it's weathering...

just like many years ago.

The memories flood back

from this little John Deere...

...to the summer it rained so much

the creek, pronounced "crick" in Ohio, between

my grandparents and great grandmother's

house flooded. My brother and I swam in it and

pretended we were actually in the ocean.

California is so far from home.

In many, many ways.

But, I keep a piece of my heart there...

amongst the fields and barns.