Well, let’s see if I can come up with something for this…

After years of having sites for school information, I finally decided that it was time to have one just for me.  I’ve threatened to do this for a long time, but kept putting it off.  Now that my life is so full of good things, I felt like it was time to share. So let me introduce Heart’s Keep…

In my little crew, there’s Scott and me and four kids.  Zak is 25 at the time I’m writing this and living in Bloomington, Indiana, while he works on his master’s in trumpet performance.  Elijah is 21 and working at Wal-Mart until he’s ready to go back to college.  Elaina, my step-daughter, is 12 and attends the county middle school.  And Donovan will be 4 in December.  He’s lucky enough that he gets to stay with his dad during the day since Scott works from home.

All of my life, I fought leaving the city limits.  I really felt like I didn’t belong outside of town.  My ex-husband and I had a garden at my grandmother’s but after the divorce, that got to be more than she and I could do together with me being roughly 20 minutes away.  So I let that go for a while.  Even when I remarried, Scott and I still didn’t pick up the hobby again.

I had said that once the boys were grown, I’d sell the house we were in and move.  Scott was very patient, understanding that the house was really about the boys, and was willing to wait.  Donovan coming along when Elijah was a senior in high school put a hold on things once again.  But the summer before he turned two, we sold the house and moved just outside of town.

It’s just an acre, really, and we’re truly just outside of the city limits.  There’s a subdivision behind us that was once part of the farm which went with this house.  We knew the minute we walked in this was where we belonged.  We were even more positive when everything just fell into place for us to be here.

A friend of mine has called it our little garden of Eden.  When we moved in there were chestnut, pecan, black walnut, hazelnut, black cherry, fig, apple, persimmon, and pear trees.  We’ve added several more.  There were blackberries and grapes.  We’ve added blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, and choke berry.  We have a garden every summer and now have chickens in order to have our own eggs. We make our own jellies, perserves, and jams.  We can and freeze whatever we grow.

Day lilies are everywhere and there are daisies, mallows, and who knows what else.  Animals abound – chickens, dogs, parakeets, fish, cats, rabbits, and a cockatiel.  Frogs moved into the decorative pond we put in by the door.

Life is crazy and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.  Trying to juggle teaching and all of this chaos can get trying, but it’s definitely worth the effort.  I’m lucky to have a husband who puts up with me and older sons who might at times shake their heads, but basically think their mom is okay.

Oh, and why Heart’s Keep?  Scott and I were talking about creating labels to for the jars of jelly we give away every year.  You see we have to give some away. It was part of the deal when God put us out here.  We do more than we need and we share.  And we enjoy it so that works really well.  But we spent alot of time trying to come up with a name for our little peace of heaven so we could an original label.  The thing that kept coming into my mind was this is truly where my heart is.  And a keep is an old term, the strongest part of a castle, in some cases, the most well defended, since that’s where the supplies and possibly the main dwelling may be.

For me…this place holds my life and my heart.  It’s the center of my world and where all good things spring from.  So when naming a blog about our life and home…there was no other choice.

Welcome to Heart’s Keep…