Inspiring Book - Grandma Gatewood's Walk

Wow. I read this book in less than a week. I really liked it. It surprised me how much I liked it.

It is a wonderful book that I read for a book club/challenge my library is running. A community read event promoted by Longwood Gardens. I have 20 sticky flags in the book marking favorite spots.

Grandma Gatewood has had a rough life and is now 67 and ready to set out to walk the whole Appalachian Trail... 2.050 miles. Months of walking. And, she took very little with her. And did it alone.

It is inspiring me to get off my butt and get walking. If a 67-year-old great grandmother can walk the whole Appalachian Trail then I should be able to walk a couple mile walk with my husband at the park, walk to work (under 1 1/2 miles), or work out on the Wii Fit and Bowflex. I am lazy. I will start today. Here is a quote from the book that I liked.

"...unless we be strong as steel, our lazy and baser natures yield to the temptation of time-saving when a ride is offered us..." (pg 52-53)

I need to walk more. Get out in nature more. I have become to sedentary, lazy and shut in, in the house or at work. I need the exercise... and the time to commune with God... and the vitamin D... and a bunch of other things walking outdoors would bring me.

"Just walking the trail for pleasure
For the love of out of doors,
For the lovely works our Maker
Displays on forest floors."
(pg 208)

"If you'll go with me to the mountains
And sleep on the leaf carpeted floors
And enjoy the bigness of nature
And the beauty of all out-of-doors,
You'll find your troubles all fading
And feel the Creator was not man
That made lovely mountains and forests
Which only a Supreme Power can.

When we trust in the Power above
And with the realm of nature hold fast,
We will have a jewel of great price
To brighten our lives till the last.
For the love of nature is healing,
If we will only give it a try
And our reward will be forthcoming
If we go deeper than what meets the eye."
(pg 216-217)

She was plucky and I want to be like her when I am 67 so I better get started now... I will be 55 this year and have a lot of exercising to do before I could be anywhere near where she was at 67.

"They said I was too old when I tried to get a job," she told a local reporter. "Why, I've done more since I was 'too old' than most young women." ( pg 241)

This woman, this book, was inspiring. I don't have any mountains near me...I live just feet from a 4 lane road....I don't know if I will ever walk any of the Appalachian Trail... but I am going to start where I am today and do better.

Check out this book. It will inspire you too!!


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Think Back Thursday ~ Closeups

Today's Theme

 Closeups

(of anything, I would especially like you to use any closeup features you have on your camera, get to know your camera)

The photos I am going to share today for closeups were all taken at Longwood Gardens. I tried really hard to narrow it down, but I have a lot of closeups that I like.

Most of these were taken with the Macro setting on my camera.

Some of them were also cropped and altered with Picasa. I love Picasa, especially the update they recently did and added all kinds of cool features. I want to do a post about the features of Picasa soon. I should work on that. Anyway, to some of the photos I have added borders, and I have used the soften and/or vignette feature.

Some of the photos I took a closeup of the name of the flower also, so that I could remember it later, a very good thing to do when taking photos of unfamiliar flowers in a setting like Longwood where they have the names of the flowers posted.

Well here goes... enjoy.

 These were just gorgeous the day we visited...

Love how the soft needles grow right out of the branches, God is so creative.

A very large leaf, love the pattern of the wholes

A spiky tree trunk in the jungle section... very interesting.

I have a lot more closeups so I will definitely be doing this theme again. I didn't even share any closeups of things from Winterthur and I have more from Longwood I could have shared.

Future Themes:

Sept. 20 - Back to School 

(this year, some other year, a bunch of years put together; of you, your kids, back to school supplies; whatever you want)

Sept. 27 - Relaxing/Peaceful

(whatever that means to you: a place, people, time of day, vacations, whatever...)

Here are the Rules for participating:
The purpose of Think Back Thursday is to link up a photo post about something from the past. You can reach back all the way to your childhood and bravely post pictures of you in your wild clothes and hair styles or post something from last year and tell us about it. I'm not picky. Hey, even yesterday was the past... LOL My posts will mostly be about events that happened prior to blogging, as a way to share those things with the world.

• It can be about you, about your kids, about your parents, whomever. You can include video, I will not exclude video alone posts, but I prefer them along with photos, as this is a photo meme. I am doing a weekly theme now. That should help narrow it down from the myriad of photos we all have. For ideas check out the other posts in my label Think Back Thursday. 
• Link up below. Please use a permalink that sends readers directly to the correct post. If you are not sure what that is click the word permalink for an explanation. 
• Mention my blog and offer a link back. This is a requirement to take part and a kind gesture to me your hostess as well as your readers--they will know where to join in the fun, too. You can put the Think Back Thursday button on your site and in your post. You will find it on my right sidebar. Please use it to link to my site, to spread the word about my meme. Using the button will help others know how to find me and how to join. Tell others to click on the button in your post to find us here.
• Leave me a comment. First so that you can let me know what you think of my pictures and secondly so that I will know a new post has been linked up and I can come visit your blog and comment on your photos. 

Join me!



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Blast From The Past ~ Longwood Gardens January 7, 2012

I was so excited to be able to get back to Longwood before the Christmas display was taken down. We did not go at night since we had already seen all the outside displays, except for the trains and they were better in the daytime for photos. I mostly wanted to do the Gingerbread "house" and candy displays that we had missed in the Conservatory and the trains. There was not much different with the trains except they added Thomas and Percy trains... which the little ones love. We don't have any little ones in our family, but I enjoyed the trains a lot. I hope you enjoy these end of Christmas seasons photos. I wanted to get them posted before to much of Jan. went by, and thought this week's Blast From The Past was a great opportunity.

Lovely, I like how the shadows of the trees falls on the wall.

More loveliness!

Gorgeous!

I love the grayish blue color of the tree and the lime green ornaments with the gingerbread accents.

Not an original idea... my dd Jessica took one first,

but I though it was so much fun.

Smile!

Such Fun!

Love the satin finish on this.

Love the swirls.

Now for the slideshow of the rest of the photos. If the photos are too small and you are interested you can click on the window and see the slideshow full screen at Picassa.com.

A couple things to look out for in the slideshow...
gingerbread men almost as individual as people... since they were all handmade
lots of candy
and some lovely flowers

Here are some videos I took also.


Make sure you audio is on for this one, but not to loud, so you can hear the train whistles.


Have any photos from last week, last year, or last decade you want to share?

Here are the Rules for participating:

The purpose of Blast From The Past is to link up a post about something from the past. You can reach back all the way to your childhood and bravely post pictures of you in your wild clothes and hair styles or post something from last year and tell us about it. I'm not picky. Hey, even yesterday was the past... LOL My posts will mostly be about events that happened prior to blogging, as a way to share those things with the world.

• It can be about you, about your kids, about your parents, about whatever. For ideas check out the other posts in my label Blast From the Past. 
• Please use a permalink that sends readers directly to the correct post. If you are not sure what that is click the word permalink for an explanation. 
• Mention my blog and offer a link back to the main page of my blog. http://debbiesdigest.blogspot.com/ This is a requirement to take part and a kind gesture to me your hostess as well as your readers--they will know where to join in the fun, too. You can put the Blast From The Past button on your site and in your post. You will find it on my right sidebar. Please use it to link to my site, to spread the word about my meme. Using the button will help others know how to find me and how to join. Tell others to click on the button in your post to find us here.
• Leave me a comment. First so that you can let me know what you think of my pictures and secondly so that I will know a new post has been linked up and I can come visit your blog and comment on your photos. 

Join me!


all content on my blog is ©

Longwood Gardens Christmas Display

On November 25, 2011 we went to see the lights at Longwood.
We are still hoping to make another trip. I don't know if that will happen on not. Things are so busy and we have 3 sick people in the house. At least we got there once. I will not be commenting about individual photos. Some I included are blurry, but the effect the blurring of the lights made those photos look cool, so I included them. Enjoy the photos. There is a video of some fountains also. You can't really tell because we were behind the fountains and my family was talking, but the fountains were set to go with some Christmas music. I took the video that same night and I hope you enjoy it.

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