I like looking back on what I was focused on in the past through old blog posts. Sometimes I feel I am doing the exact same things at the same time of year. I looked back on what I was doing last October. It’s eerily the same as this year.
Ever since my ankle and foot surgeries in the past year and a half, my kids and my husband have been urging me to get back to PT. They say they see a difference in my balance and strength. They are right. I’m weaker and I hesitate when climbing stairs or scrambling over a rocky trail at the beach.
So I did it. I went to PT last week for an evaluation. The physical therapist told me to see my orthopedic surgeon. That’s where we are starting in this quest for balance and strength. I’m having pain in my left foot that then makes my knee hurt. She said that’s why my balance is off. Hopefully, I need new orthotics, different shoes and not another surgery. The therapist said she wasn’t going to push me and make my foot hurt worse until I see my ortho. Appointment made for later this week and I’ll find out what’s up.
This is what I wrote last year from a post October 2025:
I was so excited to capture this photo of Red taking off the Ocotillo!
I’m going to the Bay Area to take care of my daughter post shoulder surgery. She has a repetitive use injury from swimming from kindergarten through college. Her practices in college added up to 12,000 yards of swimming per day.
I’ve been especially nervous and haven’t been sleeping well. There’s a back story to that, besides the anxiety and worry. (Ever since our last thunder and lightning storm our house alarm has been going off at 3 a.m. Now that I figured out how to get it to stop, my body is programmed to get up at 3 a.m.) Once awake, I worry about my upcoming trip and my daughter.
Mrs. giving a side-eye to another bird at the birdseed block.
I had an appointment with my orthopedic surgeon to take a last look at my ankle. I discussed my other foot with the doctor. My first visit to her was about the left foot, but she discovered my “sprain” was a break in the right ankle — and I was scheduled for emergency surgery.
Now we’re back to the original issue and I’ll have surgery after taking care of my daughter!
Back to 2026:
Hopefully my kids won’t need my help in October 2026 because of new ailments or surgeries!
How was your weekend? What are your plans for the upcoming week?
“Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service of our country can never be repaid. They have earned our undying gratitude. America will never forget their sacrifices.” — Harry S. Truman, 33rd U.S. president, 1945
I spent a quiet Memorial weekend with my husband who is now on week three post surgery. I took a few photos that I was pleased with and will share some today.
I read two books this past week by fellow bloggers and enjoyed both immensely. If you haven’t read Cupcakecache’s second book, “Quest for Absence,” you should! I read it within two days and couldn’t put it down. This is Eve Marie’s second book in what will be a trilogy starting with Bayou Heist. Many of the same characters appear in her second book but it’s placed in the home of her youth, Catskills of NY. I enjoyed her setting and getting more details into the story and plot she wrote about in her first book.
The other book is “Perfect” by P.J. Gudka. Pooja’s blog is Lifesfinewhine. I usually go to bed between 8 or 9 p.m. but I read until midnight to finish her book. I fell asleep on the sofa and finished it the next day. The characters and plot kept me enthralled. I learned about “Perfect” by a Heart of the Matter podcast and also on Lauren Scott’s blog Baydreamer Writes for her review on her blog post.
Both books are on Amazon plus Pooja has a link on her website.
Two brand new baby quail. I tried to get photos with their mom, but either the babies or the mom were out of focus. These guys are super tiny!
A House Finch couple on a cactus.
A momma quail with her brood. These are older than the two babies above.
A momma quail trying to scare away a squirrel by fluffing up her feathers. Papa quail is in the background as reinforcement.
Americans began to recognize Memorial Day in 1868, and the country established it as a federal holiday in 1971. Originally known as “Decoration Day,” the holiday started with communities coming together to decorate the graves of those who died during service.
Theories of the first Memorial Day
After the Civil War, Americans across the nation began holding tributes to honor the approximately 620,000 soldiers who lost their lives — about 2% of the population at the time. These early observances typically included decorating graves with flowers, reciting prayers, and paying respect to the fallen. But history records show more than one theory about which event marked the first official Memorial Day.
A discovery by a Yale University professor at a Harvard archive suggests the earliest observance of Memorial Day was held by a group of formerly enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865. Records show that the group transformed a racetrack that had once served as a prison for Union captives into a proper burial site.
On May 1, 1865, thousands gathered for a procession led by 3,000 school children carrying flowers and singing patriotic songs.
In 1966,the federal government declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day when President Johnson signed a presidential proclamation stating Waterloo celebrated the first Memorial Day. That day, in 1866, the city closed all businesses so residents could decorate the gravesites of soldiers with flowers and American flags.
Other records show that the first Memorial Day came after the Civil War, when communities came together at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30, 1868. It remains one of the country’s most notable Memorial Day ceremonies.
But the history doesn’t end there: As recently as the 1990s, historians have found records of earlier celebrations.
Happy Memorial Day!
Here’s a video of a family of quail including 10 babies!
What were some highlights of your Memorial Weekend?
I saw this beautiful blossom at a neighbor’s house on my morning walk yesterday. I had to return home and pick up my camera to capture the beauty of this Argentine Giant Cactus. Having to go home for my camera has been happening every few days. At least photography and the treats of spring are making me take extra steps in my walks.
Another treat is having so many blogging friends who every day give me something new to read and appreciate. Also, the encouraging words from you are such a delight. Just an emoji heart, smile and kind words are uplifting. Thank you. Thank you!
Lastly, a treat was corresponding with a person who is cataloguing a huge cookbook collection. I wrote about how he discovered my great grandmother’s cookbooks and sent me the one missing book in my collection HERE.
He contacted me to let me know his story about my great grandmother was up on Cookbook Collectors and Lovers, a Facebook page. It truly touched my heart to see my great grandmother have such a tribute. HERE is a link to the FB page which includes photos of her, plus scanned images of her cookbook covers and recipes.
If you’re not on FB, here is his story about my great grandmother Ella Leighton Upton Owen:
Cataloging a collection of this size comes with many quiet pleasures, but among the most satisfying is the chance to discover, research, and learn the stories of the men and women who made meaningful contributions to early American culinary history.
I’m sure that names like Marion Harland, Sarah Tyson Rorer, Thomas J. Murrey, Maria Parloa, and Fannie Farmer may come to mind for those of you who collect from and study this era, and rightly so. But for every name we recognize, there are dozens of others who worked just as thoughtfully, just as ambitiously, and left behind something equally worthy of our attention. Today I want to introduce you to one of them.
This is Ella Leighton Upton Owen, or as she is better known through her books, Mrs. Dewitt C. Owen.
Over the better part of a decade, Ella produced what she called the Ripley Series – ten slim, self-published volumes issued out of Dixon, Illinois, beginning in 1898. They are modest little things, unpretentious in appearance and quietly confident in voice, and I cannot help but think that modesty is part of why history largely passed her by. She did not have a publishing house behind her, a cooking school to her name, or a column in a national magazine. What she did have was something harder to come by- a real point of view and the determination to put it out into the world on her own terms.
To self-publish ten volumes at the turn of the century, as a woman, in a small Illinois city, was no small act. It required not just the writing, but the financing, the distribution, and the sheer persistence to see it through again and again, across many years. She did all of it. While Fannie Farmer was being celebrated in Boston and Maria Parloa was filling lecture halls, Ella was quietly doing the same work from a small city, with no institutional backing and no guarantee that anyone beyond her immediate community and the churches she sold her books to would ever read a word she wrote.
She published anyway. Ten times over.
And she did it entirely by hand. The type was set by her own hand. The pages were gathered, aligned, and bound by her own hand, sewn or tied with thread or ribbon, depending on the volume. Every booklet that left her home was, in a very real sense, a handmade treasure. When you hold one today, you are holding something she touched at every stage of its making, from the first word on the page to the final knot in the binding. There is an intimacy to that which no commercial press could replicate, and which no amount of time has diminished.
Mrs. Owen’s books didn’t arrive all at once for me. That’s not how, as I’ve come to find out, this collection works. She surfaced the way the best discoveries do… a few booklets here, another a week later, more found tucked somewhere unexpected. Each time one was discovered I felt that particular pull that collectors will recognize, the sense that you’re holding something that wants to be understood. These weren’t just culinary curiosities. They were small, delicate, and deliberate objects that someone had conceived, written, financed, and sent out into the world with intention. By the time I found five, I knew I was looking for the rest. By the time I found eight, I was fully hooked.
But eight was where the trail went quiet.
I turned to research, hoping the historical record might fill in what these shelves couldn’t, and found almost nothing. For a woman who had produced ten volumes over the better part of a decade, Mrs. Owen had left behind a remarkably faint paper trail. No obituaries of note. No contemporary reviews I could locate. No mention in the culinary histories that line the shelves. It was as though she had done all of that work and then simply slipped beneath the surface of the record. It was a little frustrating, and more than a little intriguing.
Then I found a blog.
That blog belonged to, as I would soon discover, Mrs. Owen’s great-granddaughter. Her name is Elizabeth Wickham.
That changed everything, and it led somewhere that I could never have expected.
I took a chance and reached out, not entirely sure what to expect. When Elizabeth wrote back, I was genuinely delighted! What followed became one of the genuine privileges of this entire cataloging project.
It was through Elizabeth that I first learned Ella was known to her family simply as Nellie, and with that small detail, the woman behind the booklets suddenly felt a great deal closer. The historical record had given me an author. Elizabeth gave me a person. She filled in the contours that no library ever could, telling me who Nellie was within her family, how she moved through the world, and what she cared about beyond the page. I am still turning much of it over.
And then, in the course of our exchange, I learned something that stopped me in my tracks. Elizabeth and her family did not own the complete Ripley Series. One title, Sixteen Studies in White and Gold, had always eluded them and never made it into their personal collection of Ella’s works.
At the time, the owner of this collection had only a single copy in their possession. But I wrote to Elizabeth and told her that if another surfaced, I would send it out, and that if any collection was going to have it, it would be this one.
Can you believe that not even a week later, I found not one, but two additional copies! I don’t necessarily believe in fate, but you can’t tell me this wasn’t meant to be. The very next day, I put one in the mail. I am extremely pleased to say that their collection is now complete.
There’s a beautiful symmetry in it. Nellie produced these little objects as gifts for the world, and a century later, one found its way home.
Mrs. Wickham is currently working on republishing the complete works of Mrs. Owen in the near future. If you would like to follow her blog and learn more about the life of her great-grandmother, you can find that here-
Can you imagine when this magnificent cactus is in full bloom? I’ll be checking each day with my camera in hand! What another spring treat!
Post Script: My mom lived next door to her grandmother Nellie during her childhood. Mom told me that Nellie and her husband DeWitt moved their printing press from Dixon, IL to the west coast of Washington State by covered wagon. I never could get my head around that and thought she was making it up. I looked up the dates last night. It totally fits. The dates of their move to the west coast is when people traveled by covered wagon. Is that wild west stuff of what?
What are your favorite things about blogging and spring?
My great grandmother, author of cookbooks “Nellie.”
I had a welcome surprise the other day. I received an email from a stranger who was cataloguing a huge collection of antique cookbooks. He read my blog posts about my great grandmother’s cook booklets and said he ran into copies. We exchanged a few emails. He said he was impressed and they were a good representation from that era. We’re talking late 1890s to early 1900s.
I mentioned there was one booklet that I didn’t have. “16 Studies in White and Gold,” which are egg recipes. He scanned and emailed it to me. A week later he said he found an extra copy, asked for my address and mailed it to me! I was thrilled. Since he doesn’t have “Sick Room Necessities,” I scanned it for him. Also, I found several letters and photos of Nellie’s as well as her husband’s obituary, scanned those and sent them to him. (FYI, Nellie went by her married name as a cook booklet publisher extraordinaire, Mrs. De Witt C. Owen. Her real name was Ella Upton Leighton Owen.)
Nellie’s husband De Witt was first a printer and then a newspaper publisher. Eventually they left Dixon, Illinois for the “far west” moving to Anacortes, Washington where he was publisher of another newspaper. They settled in Marysville, Wash. when he took over that town’s newspaper. My namesake grandmother Elizabeth Owen was their only child. When my mom Mary Ella (named after her grandmother) grew up in Marysville, Nellie lived next door. She was in my mother’s memory a loving and kind grandmother, the most nurturing person in my mom’s life. Nellie died in 1948, so I unfortunately never met her.
Nellie was a strong woman and set the type herself for her cook booklets that she sold across the nation for 10 cents each. Her market was ladies’ church auxiliaries. The booklets were used as fundraisers, much as our kids sold gift wrap to raise money for their school. My aunt told me that at times, Nellie supported her husband and daughter with her cook book sales.
If you want to read more about Nellie and her cook booklets, I wrote about her HERE.
Here’s an except from “Sick Room Necessities:”
Have a wonderful Easter weekend! Any plans to celebrate Easter, Passover or Spring?
I found a few photos of Ella Leighton Hunter (Hunter was her maiden name, Nellie was her nickname) in an old family photo album. It includes photos of Rose Hunter and A.J. Blethen. Blethen founded The Seattle Times and the family still owns the paper generations later.
I found postcards from Rose Hunter Blethen writing that she was looking forward to seeing Ella at Christmas. Ella was adopted into the Hunter family after her parents died. Dr. Hunter, Rose’s dad, thought Ella was so cute and always thought well of her. She was adopted as a young child. I’m enjoying researching our family heritage and am impressed that as a journalism major, I’ve got lots of newspaper history in my blood!
Here are two in a series of four books by author Charles Martin. The series (so far) includes “The Water Keeper”– which I gave to a friend — “The Letter Keeper” and “The Record Keeper,” which I’ve read and still own. The fourth, “The Keeper,” I’m waiting for it to come out in paperback.
One of my blogging friends suggested these books to me. I wish I remembered who. (If it was you, thanks! Please let me know in the comments.) Because the subject matter is rescuing and helping sex-trafficked children recover, my blogger friend knew that I donate time to a sex-trafficking residential recovery center. If you missed reading about my visit last week to the Phoenix Dream Center — Where Hope Lives, and the ribbon cutting for our Mother’s Kitchen — you can read it HERE.
In the “Murphy Shepherd” series, also known as the “Keeper” books, the protagonist hero has helped develop and support an entire town in the Colorado Rockies dedicated to sex-trafficked victims recovery. Not only that, but he makes the dangerous rescues. There’s also more to his story and what he does, but in the reverse of a spoiler alert, I’m not saying another word.
Here’s a snipped of a review of “The Water Keeper” from Charles Martin’s website, written by one of his son:
I can’t explain to you enough the rollercoaster of emotions I faced while reading this… I laughed. At times I didn’t breathe. Other times I read really fast in anticipation and suspense- and then re-read to make sure I didn’t miss anything important. At times I fist pumped in celebration. I even shouted a couple times in celebration and relief. But then yes, I also shed a tear or two. Then I cussed. Then I cussed at my dad. Then I cussed out my dad because he did the whole “rip-your-heart-in-half-thing” that we all love/hate him for. Then I repented of those because the next scene was usually one where he pulled the whole “blind-side-rug-out-from-under-you” move and I was fist pumping in celebration again.
Here’s a snippet from the description from Amazon:
With Charles Martin’s trademark lyricism and poignant prose, The Water Keeper is at once a tender love story, a heartrending search for freedom, an exploration of the terrible cost of human trafficking, and an anthem to the power of love to create change when it shows up regardless of the cost.
If you’re looking for a fast-paced, well written series of novels with characters you can’t get out of your head, I highly recommend Martin’s Murphy Shepherd series. He’s also written a number of other books. I’ve read a couple including “When Crickets Cry,” which I recommend. Martin writes beautifully and does his research.
If you’ve read Charles Martin’s books, which one did you like best?
What books are you reading now and what can you recommend?
Thanks to the amazing and compassionate Vicki from Victoria Ponders for nominating me along with 10 other bloggers for the “Sunshine Blogger Award.” This award was started by Kimberly Vargas Agnese. I usually avoid such things, but I found the questions intriguing and Vicki’s answers so thoughtful.
So here it goes:
What is your morning routine?
I follow Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” which grounds me for the day. I begin with three pages of journaling. Then I listen to a Bible reading on my phone and pray for an ever increasing list of friends and family members. After that (or before if the weather is too hot) I walk three miles. I’ve been doing this consistently for 10 years. If there’s a day when I can’t do my morning routine, I feel out of sorts.
What is your favorite season? Why?
Definitely summer followed by Spring. I have the best memories growing up in the Pacific Northwest in summer, which is such a beautiful season there. Raising my kids, we’d spend summer in Laguna Beach. Now we go to Santa Barbara for a few weeks up to a month. I love the water, yet live in the desert, so I look forward to being by the ocean all year long.
What is your favorite childhood memory?
Being with family on our boat in the summer. Enjoying fishing, digging clams and catching Dungeness crab with our mom cooking seafood on the boat within minutes of being caught.
Who or what has been your most unlikely teacher?
My kids. They taught me how to appreciate being present in the moment with them. Also, not to worry over things I cannot control.
Who or what are you most proud of?
Again, my kids. They are loving, kind adults and a joy to be with.
What is something that surprises people about you?
How outdoorsy my childhood was thanks to mom and dad. I took a fly tying class and Power Squadron boating safety class with them. I picked Chanterelle mushrooms, fished for salmon, rockfish, and trout, dug razor clams and little necks and caught Dungeness crabs — enjoying Western Washington state’s lifestyle.
What motivated you to start blogging?
A fellow swim mom who read my children’s stories and YA manuscripts. She loved to read blogs when I knew nothing about blogging. She encouraged me to start bleuwater.me, which then opened doors to writing a weekly sports parenting column for SwimSwam, a swimming website with more than 8 million views per month. I wrote that column for more than five years.
What forms of entertainment do you enjoy the most?
I have always been a reader since I was a young child. I enjoy finding a new author. It’s like finding a gem. I’ll know there will be more good books to read. I also enjoy being outdoors, walking, hiking and taking pictures.
If you are a book reader, do you prefer a paper copy or a digital copy?
Paper copies. I prefer paperbacks, because I feel less guilty about turning down the corners. Also, they are less expensive, easier to carry and read than hard bound books. My arms don’t get tired with paperbacks!
What’s your favorite music genre, and who is your favorite singer?
I like rock and roll from the 1970s and 1980s which were my high school and college days. I have Sirius set to 1970s in my car and I love to sing along to old favorites. My favorite singer is Don McLean from “American Pie” because my mom listened to him nonstop in the 1970s. She was a Coloratura Soprano and music major. She loved McLean’s voice and poetic lyrics. Listening to his songs brings me closer to memories of Mom.
What societal causes do you care about the most?
Currently, my focus is helping sex trafficked victims in the Phoenix area. Phoenix is one of the nation’s hubs of sex trafficking — and our country is the first or second purchaser of children for sex in the world. Today, I’m visiting The Phoenix Dream Center, which is a residential facility that provides a safe, secure home complete with medical, mental health, and career training, to help victims return to a “normal” life. They are having a ribbon cutting for a new kitchen which my women’s group fundraised to purchase all the appliances. I’ll also be donating clothes after Spring cleaning my closet. I’ve volunteered in my community for different causes since college.
Don’t worry if you’ve already been tagged or if you’d prefer not to do this. I’m taking a page from Vicki and using most of the questions she asked and have thrown in a few new ones:
Here are the guidelines from Kimberly about the “Sunshine Blogger Award”:
• Display the award’s official logo somewhere on your blog. • Thank the person who nominated you. • Provide a link to your nominator’s blog. • Answer your nominators’ questions:
What is your morning routine?
What is your favorite season? Why?
What is your favorite childhood memory?
Who or what has been your most unlikely teacher?
What is your favorite meal that you would never get tired of and why?
What is something that surprises people about you?
What motivated you to start blogging?
Would you rather spend a quiet evening at home or out with friends or a party? Why?
If you are a book reader, do you prefer a paper copy or a digital copy?
What’s your favorite music genre, and who is your favorite singer?
What societal causes do you care about the most?
• Nominate up to 11 bloggers. • Ask your nominees 11 questions. • Notify your nominees by commenting on at least one of their blog posts.
Have you heard about this trend? You don’t have to be a writer. You don’t have to be an artist or an illustrator. You don’t need technical skills. But you can make money self-publishing children’s books on Amazon!
It’s called a side hustle. I talked to my kids about it and they said it’s a “thing” right now. They said there are numerous books, seminars, podcasts and youtubes that tell you how to make passive income with AI generated children’s books on Amazon. They’re unaware if anyone is making money selling children’s books, or if it’s the people pitching the “how to” deals who are increasing their monthly incomes.
I guess having a degree in journalism, a career in public relations, writing for magazines, newspapers and having a weekly column and blogging isn’t necessary to become a published author. I can toss my dog-eared “Strunk & White” good-bye.
I have written children’s stories and had small successes being published in children’s magazines, the LA Times, and even included in a text book by Houghton Mifflin. I won a couple competitions for children’s stories including children’s fiction for Writer’s Digest. I got a contract from a small book publisher — and biggest mistake in my writing career — I turned it down! Oh my. If I could only turn back time.
Now I understand my years of work is all for naught. Anyone can do it. And apparently they can make a living at it. And guess what else? It only takes minutes to create a book, thanks to ChatGPT and AI.
Check it out for yourself. Google something like “Make money with AI children books on Amazon.” You’ll find too many websites and youtubes to count that will give you all the secrets of success.
I wonder how this new AI trend will effect writers’ careers and book publishing? I know many of my blogger friends are writers and have either self-published, used traditional publishers — or hybrid. With a flood of AI books on the market, how do you think it will affect writing careers? Do you think people are making money at this?
Please share your thoughts on selling AI children’s books on Amazon.
Here’s a shout out to my published author-blogging friends — in no particular order:
