We're putting down roots in Florida...

By reading of other pioneers…
Maria, the first in the Florida Trilogy by Eugenia Price this novel brings us into the life of Mary Fenwick (aka Maria) as she evolves from soldier’s wife to respected citizen in Spanish St. Augustine in the late 18th Century.
Charlotte’s Story, the journal of Charlotte Arpin Niedhauk who lived on a small but not isolated Key 35 miles southeast of Miami during the Great Depression.
Yesteryear I Lived in Paradise, the memoir of Myrtle Scharrer Betz . Published in 1985 on Ms. Betz’s 90th birthday, this memoir contains the history of the West Coast of Florida as experienced by one born on an isolated island (Caladesi Island, two miles west of Dunedin, Florida) when the whole of Southwest Florida was still pioneer country.

I found the cactus in Arizona, the sentiments in prayers said with/for friends over the past year.

A Meditation

A Walk on the Beach in Winter

Grey blue coral
Vast rich solitary

Once I found these
Colors in the desert

Between death
And resurrection

The sea's eternal rhythm
Is silent in this moment

In this empty place
Nothing and everything

If it was all I knew
I would know peace.

Beth February 2008