Les Collines

les collines

The name covers some ground; it is rare because it came to me almost without thinking. It pays homage to my Canadian-born mother, Coline, named for her uncle Colin (see my Facebook post for Memorial Day), and to the beautiful hills where I have, finally, at least for now, come to rest. Les collines are French for hills; I lived in Paris, have a son who carries both passports, and have graduate degrees in French. It just worked.

I’d also thought of beginning a blog before the crabapple harvest to write about life in the country and my growing sense of grace, the concept, and the reality at work. At first, combining homemade jelly with a blog exploring grace and tidbits of my freewheeling, freelance rural life didn’t make sense at first. And then, it made total sense. It’s just who I am.

A name to encompass it all– the jelly, my writing, life in the country, exploring grace….blog or other social media, you’ll find my love of place, people, animals, good stories, and good food locally grown under the life I picked.

Though who’s doing the picking might be anyone’s guess. Such as the cluster of hard-edged major life events that have piled up over the past few years, like some terrible Interstate car crash. The kind that happens in a blizzard, or dense fog, where the cars stack up; news anchors might say there was no way to avoid it. Cumulatively, it has gotten me thinking more deeply about grace, scraping the bottom of the barrel, and still keeping the light in your eyes alive.