gardens

It's great to be back home, but a bit of my heart and a large portion of my imagination
are lingering behind in Virginia. For the middle-part of our big summer
vacation, we drove south from D.C. to Colonial Williamsburg, with a stop
at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello on the way.

If I could live my dream life, I would garden and keep animals on a
lush green farm at the edge of a big city. I would spin yarn and churn
butter, cultivate the perfect cabbage, and make cheese. However, I would
also wear glamorous dresses to the theater, learn portraiture at an art
atelier in the city, take the light rail to business meetings, and type
away on my top-of-the-line computer. All with my kids in tow.

My life isn't too far off of this dream in spirit. I grow fruit trees
and make art. And my kids are here with me. But the lush trees and
rolling hills are missing.

This is where Virginia comes in. My. Freakin'. Word. Pardon the language. Virginia is gorgeous.
I almost had to close my eyes on the way to Monticello in order to
survive the view: white fences, electric green grass, trees as big as
buildings.

Perhaps Providence will plop the perfect excuse in my lap to move somewhere lush and lovely and near a fun city. How about a Kickstarter
campaign to build a blogger's getaway paradise with fully-teched-out
guest cabins. Or a reality tv show about trying to make such a
disjointed reality work. Have it all. Be it all.

But I need a town to pin this fantasy to. What are the best little
beautiful places to raise children, with great schools, strong, moral
families and exciting things an arm's length away. And don't forget the
large plots of land, big trees and cute houses. Give my dream new
breath.

If you relate, then you'd love Colonial Williamsburg.
They run the town like it never left the 1700s, wigmakers, shoemakers,
blacksmiths, cabinet-makers and all. I can't say enough about the place.
There's' nothing like it out west, that's for sure.

The gardens are immaculate and the buildings are charming—and I'm all
about the workshops. I don't blog about them much, but I have a
spinning wheel and a jeweler's bench of my own. I've built shoes,
churned butter, made yogurt, turned pottery, made lampwork glass beads,
and worked on a horse ranch. My inner pilgrim.

I feel so disloyal to Arizona right now. Sorry, Arizona. I still love
you—and your sun-bleached cow skulls and scorpions—but where are your
towering trees and brick buildings? Where are your moss-covered walls
and magnolias? Tell me it was a hallucination. Virginia is not real.

Virginia is not real…

Virginia is not real…