The World of Rosemary Hill

Married since 1997, we have lived in 11 homes since, but this one is our last for a looooong time. While living in Tillamook, Oregon, our family grew by two daughters, both born in China, both amazing and together we're navigating life in the Pacific Northwest. When the girls were in grade school, we lived on a flowery acre under a misty mountain, and it was so amazing, that we always wanted to get back to that -- having property, space, support ourselves as much as we can on our own land. We'd put in veggie gardens and a berry garden and had ten hens. It was just like the Shire. Back then, though, shifts in Charley's job situation meant we moved around a bit -- but this is it, man. I saw this property in September 2018, and knew it was home. And it definitely is! Rosemary Hill is our new Shire. 

Charley and I both have forestry degrees from the University of Washington in Seattle, but his was in forest management and mine was in conservation of wildland resources, and also English literature. While he started working for forestry companies, first in GIS and then moving quickly to reforestation -- where he's stayed for over 20 years -- my experience was in the continuing education program at the Center for Urban Horticulture, weekend building manager for the visitor's center at the Washington Park Arboretum, and following college, I flipped my writing background into journalism and set off as first a proofreader, then reporter for weekly local papers in several cities in Washington and Oregon. In my spare time, I studied to become a Master Gardener which helped satisfy my gardening bug when we lived in various homes that had *tiny* yards. When the kids came along, I stayed home and kept gardening, wrote some books, and volunteered a lot, seemingly everywhere. But now the girls are teenagers and we're talking about cars and college and what they want to explore in this life -- and I'm back to the land and gardening, taking it up a notch to full-on homesteading, market gardening, and striving for self-sufficiency.