Beaming

Me and My husband Jeff, along with our 11-year-old grandson Joe travel to a piece of property with two homes and gardeners house on it, the two-hour drive is filled with beautiful sites along the Umpqua River, on some occasions, we have been graced with the presence of Elk in the area, after all the town we are traveling to is named Elkton.

While in Elkton we stay in one of the empty houses on the property which has fondly become known as our vacation house. Jeff will stay busy with trimming trees, rake up leaves and build fires to burn the brush, while Joe mows the lawn. I am usually the one who cares for the dogs and I also do the cooking, I keep everyone fed and watered, and in some cases walked teehee! It's nice to get away from our usual surroundings to relax, I am sure you are thinking how can maintaining a property be relaxing, well, let me give you some history on my hubby, he has been working since he was 12, when I met him at age 18 he had three paper routes and one part-time job when we got married he enlisted in the Army, we have run an auto shop together and both done various kinds of jobs. He is now a military veteran with disabilities and when we go to our friends place Jeff is able to work at his own pace, a job that should only take about a couple of hours will most likely take both days we are staying there. I am usually on the computer writing so for me to get away from the computer for a couple of days clears my head enough to finish a writing task.

Elkton was one of the hardest-hit towns during snowmageddon 2019, there are still so many people cleaning up trees that had fallen, our friend's maintenance guy disappeared without a phone call to say he was done! Cindie (our friend) was a caregiver for 10 years to the guy whose family owns the property, well he passed away recently, leaving her with a lot to clean up and go through until his family can get there to take care of his belongings. It was an odd situation and the fact that he was hospitalized during this pandemic made it harder for her to get things done. While we stay there I like to walk and take pictures of nature, but this particular day I was inside when my friend called and said: “Suzanne you should come out here to take pictures with your nifty phone camera!” I rushed out because I didn’t want to miss the opportunity and I’m so glad I went out, this picture is of the smoke from the burn pile they had to burn the brush and at the same time the sun is shining through the trees giving us this beautiful picture.

What an amazing shot, I try to find the most beautiful shots in nature, and sometimes it will just jump out and say "See me, I am here!"

That's the other nice thing about traveling somewhere else, the view changes and I get to take photos of something different. I haven't been into photography all my life, it's just been these last 6 years actually since my first book got published in 2015, which was a book of pictures I had taken over a couple of years and it grew into a story. Photos really do say a lot and I hope that with my photos that they would be able to help tell you a story.