" Almost Heaven "

On Wednesday, September 1st, I arrived home after an 11 hour drive from spending 10 days in one of the most beautiful places in this country! The High Country of North Carolina! I learned that I was actually staying a top the Eastern Continental Divide. I visited Beech Mountain ( a later post) that is the highest incorporated town east of the Rocky Mountains. My FAVORITE visit however was on Friday August 27th! HERE WE GO!!

Wool Branch~~~~~~~~~~~~ A private road...............

Going up, up , up the mountain~~~~~~~~~~~

Yes Indeed! I went to see Vicki Lane @ her GORGEOUS Farm!

My two favorite authors!! Am I blessed or what?? I'm standing on this porch, on this mountain, taking a picture of my two favorite authors and looking out @ one of the most beautiful views in the world! It "don't get no better" than this! Vicki Lane and Peggy Poe Stern !!

I got to see scenes from Vicki's books~~~~~~ like Little Sylvie's Cabin!

Can you imagine sitting on your front porch in a rocker and looking at this?

Vicki can and does !

Looking down the drive~~~~~~~~~``

Vicki served us a fabulous lunch! The salad was outstanding and the cheese bread.......let's just say I wanted both recipes!! You cannot imagine the view from this table! We were viewing the top of a loaded Crab Apple Tree! Doves and Hummers landing all over it!

Cool mountain breeze coming through those windows! Zero humidity!! We had coffee and Ba's Pound Cake for desert, fresh baked!

I got to fraternize with Vicki's dogs after seeing their pictures for so long! As I took Maggie's picture, who by the way didn't want to be bothered ~~~~~~

William was banging his tale against the couch and posing for his ~~~~~~~~~

Sweet Molly was happy to pose for hers too!

What a wonderful day it was and I'm not exaggerating when I say;

It Really Was Almost Heaven !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HAVE A GREAT LABOR DAY WEEKEND EVERYONE !!!!!!!!

" Headed for the Highlands"

Today I'm as antsy as a caged Monkey looking at a banana tree! Come daylight tomorrow, I'm headed to The Highlands of North Carolina!


I'll be spending 10 days in Foscoe ( which is between Boone and Banner Elk) seeing the sites with my friend NC mountain author Peggy Poe Stern!

We are going to Blowing Rock................
Plan to visit all the shops!
We are going to Valle Crucis to the Mast General Store.............
and to see St. Johns Church...........
Can't wait to get to the Blue Ridge Mountains!!!!
Before I go, I want you to see my latest blooms...... Yellow Angel Trumpets
Pink Angel Trumpets
Tropicana Rose............
Holly Hocks..........
Holly Hocks......
Glory Bower.......
I'll be back September 2nd with LOTS of pictures............XOXOXO

" NY TIMES BEST-SELLER"

I am by no means an expert on books, if I was I'd be an editor in New York! However I am pretty good at picking great reads. I think this comes from being a multi-genre reader of 50 years. I will admit there are a few genres I don't read such as sci-fy and certain types of romance. I like a little romance if there is a strong woman involved, such as Elizabeth Goodweather in Vicki Lane's 5 star series. Years ago I worked for a record company in Nashville picking singles. For those who don't know what that is, I'll explain. The artist records an album of say 12 songs. Usually the first single release has already been picked. I would get a copy of the album, listen to it several times and then I picked the song I thought was the best one on the album to be the next single. I had a pretty good track record for picking # 1 songs.

This past week I read 2 really awesome books by NC author Peggy Poe Stern.

Heaven -high Hell-deep and its sequel Above All. Both of the books in my opinion should have occupied the # 1 spot on the NY Times and Indie Bound Best-Seller lists!

I would categorize these books as literary fiction.











In Heaven-High, Laine Elder is a 14 year old (going on 30) mountain girl who knows nothing but hard work, her mother's mental abuse and the tragic heartbreak of her baby brothers death. To save her from her mother, her father forces her to marry a man much older. This book GRABS you from the first page and holds you tight till the end leaving you with an ache for more. With grit and determination reminiscent of Scarlett O'Hara, her love of the land will have you cheering her on

and turning the pages to see if she comes out the victor over the trials and tribulations of mountain life. Its cliff hanger ending made me thankful I had also bought the sequel Above All because I don't think I could have waited to find what happened next with Laine!

Above All is an equally great read that you cannot lay down!! At the end you say NO, I can't believe I have to wait for Peggy Poe Stern to write the rest of Laine's story! Thank goodness there will be 2 more books in Laine's story. These books are some of the best writing in print!

I would say run don't walk to your nearest bookstore but here's a shortcut which is your best bet to get these wonderful books. http://peggypoestern.tripod.com/id14.html

" My Top Ten Favorite Reads "

Yesterday I got a e-mail from a lady in Mobile, Ala named Twila. She ask me if I would tell her my all time favorite top 10 books.......

For someone who has read thousands of books over the last half century,( I started reading at 7 years old) that is not an easy thing to do! So I walked around "the porch" and gazed at my hundreds of books. I was a hundred pages shy of finishing one of the best books I've ever read, so I'm really glad she didn't pose this question to me last week. I thought long and hard about it and unless my memory is in serious trouble and I've forgotten one, here goes Twila...............





1. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell. I was 22 when I read it the first time. I was 24 when I saw the movie and decided if I ever had a daughter she would be named Melanie after the sweet, compassionate and loving Melanie Hamilton Wilkes. I have read the book I believe 4 times!



2. The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Released in March 2009 this book has been on the NY Times best-seller list for 45 weeks and has for the last 3 weeks occupied the No.1 spot.



3. Heaven-high Hell-deep by Peggy Poe Stern. I just discovered this awesome NC author recently and bought five of her 17 books. This is the first book she wrote, I finished it yesterday and I'm 100 pages into the sequel, Above All.
THIS BOOK is awesome and should have been a number 1 best-seller years ago!



4. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I have read this book 8 times and it just gets better!



5. Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers. I first read this book in 1994. I have purchased 4 copies of this book over the years. I loaned out 2 that I never got back, which broke me from loaning my books. I currently have the 3rd and I ordered one for my daughter, it is her all time favorite book! This is a christian romance set in the California Gold Rush days based on the biblical story of when God told Hosea to marry a prostitute. This book is an unforgettable read for anyone!

6. Alex Stewart by John Rice Irwin. This is the non-fiction story of an incredible man. Alex Stewart lived on the Tennessee-Kentucky line in Appalachia in a county(Hawkins) that Irwin describes as 100 years behind times when he met him in the early 1970s. Irwin visited and tape recorded their conversations for 20 years.This book reads like a well written novel and you will cry when it ends and never forget Alex Stewart!

7. Christy by Catherine Marshall. Another book I've read several times. Set in Del Rio, Tennessee on the NC line, this is another unforgettable book about old Appalachia.

8. The Ballad of Frankie Silver by Sharyn McCrumb. Set in Appalachia the story is based on the first woman hanged in the state of North Carolina! An awesome read!

9. The Truest Pleasure by Robert Morgan. Another Appalachian story of the hard fought survival of a mountain woman...........

10. Forty Acres and No Mule by Janice Holt Giles is the personal account of the authors move from the city to the Kentucky backwoods of the Appalachian Mountains in the late 1940s. It too reads like a wonderful novel! I have read this book more than once and love it more each time.

So, there is my top ten favorites. It would take me days to list all the books I consider 5 star reads and all the authors I think are amazing writers. We live in a time when great writers and great books are everywhere!! Just look at a portion of my TBR stack, everyday it seems I hear about another book that I want to add to it! My greatest fear is not living long enough to read ALL the books I WANT to read!

So lets see.... 9 out of 10 are Southern writers, 6 out of 10 are Appalachian Writers , 6 out of 10 are Appalachian Mountain settings. We may not have won the Civil War but the South is the winner hands down when it comes to the Literary War in this readers opinion! :0)

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND EVERYONE and READ A GOOD BOOK !!!