A Blog Visit to Mexico and A Special Place on the Farm

We're traveling down to Mexico today for another visit to Itzel Library. Yel has been an amazing support and proponent for my books. She organized a gigantic tour of hispanic blogs all around the world. Itzel Library is an amazing blog, and I'm honored to visit it again. Please stop in and see how great I sound in Spanish. Thanks, Yel, for translating me once again. 

Today's Michael/Leesie scrapbook goes back to Tekoa and a unique site on our old farm. Remember in UNBROKEN CONNECTION when Michael takes Leesie home for Thanksgiving, and Michael and Leesie, Kim and Mark, and Phil and Krystal all walk down to the old cemetery together? I didn't make that up. There really is a Lone Pine Cemetery carved out of one of the farm's fields. It was my favorite place on the farm. In the spring, it filled with daffodils, paper whites, and lilacs. A concerned group has been cleaning it up, so these days it doesn't look as wild as it used to be, but the graves are still there, and it is still and reverent, beautiful place. I visited Tekoa last summer for my high school reunion and took pictures of the cemetery. This scene is a scene I had to cut from TAKEN BY STORM, so I saved it, revised it, and used it in UNBROKEN CONNECTION. When I visited, I copied the words Michael and Leesie read from an actual baby's headstone--"Planted on earth to bloom in heaven."

This is the headstone I used in the scene. If you look closely, you'll see it says, "Budded on earth to bloom in heaven." Shoot. I like that better than "planted." I must have remembered it wrong.

This thicket gives you a taste of what the whole cemetery was like when I was growing up.

Tekoa Mountain in the distance.

Here's the field that neighbors the cemetery. This was June--not golden yet, but beautifully green.