Every now and then I remember, “I used to have a blog.” When I looked for it this morning, I noticed the last entry was over three years, February 2018. I wondered why I stopped. Early in the life of the blog, I detailed a trip to Paris with my husband and his children and still love looking at the pictures I posted of French cafes and the flowers in Monet’s garden. Though I only put up a few posts each year, I enjoyed having a place to share some thoughts or experiences.
A few days after that last post in February 2018, I went to NC coast for the annual RCWMS art workshops with Sue Sneddon. On March 1, while I was still there, my 95-year-old mother fell in her kitchen in Tulsa, broke her hip, and died three months later on June 12. While I did write during that period and even published a piece in South of the Garden about losing her, I lost track of the blog.
In the meantime, I’ve continued working at RCWMS, learned to live in a pandemic, finished another memoir (about how I got to be a feminist in religion), and started some new writing projects. I continue to cling to my writing routing: I try not to make appointments in the morning and to stay home and write. I’m slow, and I always get distracted, but as writers like Annie Lamott will tell you, if you write a few words every day, eventually you will have a poem, and article, or a book.
I think I’ll see if I can warm up the blog again and stop by periodically to share some thoughts or images with you. Meanwhile, that’s a picture of the redbud tree outside my living room window wearing it’s yellow fall dress. I’m attached to redbuds, the state tree of my native Oklahoma, and this one was looking particularly beautiful as it caught the morning sunlight a few days ago.
Jeanette Stokes 
Jeanette,
How fun to hear from you. I have missed you as well.
The colors in nature are beautiful these days. thanks for the picture as well.
Marianne Bird
Marianne, thank you!