Bower Corner’s Birthday Launch

August 9, 2018

Welcome to Bower Corner! I launch this blog on my birthday, excited about a new beginning. People are one of my favorite passions. We’ve entertained guests in our home for over 34 years. I’ve enjoyed six years of writing columns and blogging seems the next natural step to sharing and caring as we add richness to each other’s lives via the vast worldwide web. I invite you to feel homemade hospitality and share your thoughts and insights as this blog site takes shape.

Bower Corner is my favorite place, atop a rocky hill in Casper, Wyoming.  From our corner-lot home, we watch majestic sunrises and sunsets year round. This vantage point offers birds-eye views of freezing blizzards and sparkling snow, the miracle of spring unfolding, summer thunderheads and rainbows, followed by autumn colors in the city and on our mountain.

I was blessed enough to grow up in an exceptional family, in the nearby small close-knit town of Douglas, in the state of lowest population, Wyoming, in the great melting pot of the United States of America. Actually, even my DNA is quite the melting pot, which I will speak of at times.

My early life seemed as common as could be growing up, before I realized each person’s uniqueness is informed by a multitude of one-of-a-kind childhood experiences. Those memories continue to inspire me as I seek to garner and share uplifting, humorous, and slice-of-life stories. I love Paul’s counsel in Philippians 4:8 – “Finally brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” This counsel has brought abundance into my life. I can’t help wanting to share such thought provoking ideas everywhere I can, with everyone I can.

Bower Corner is my place of peace now, but it wasn’t always that way. Our arrival here came in the bleakest of times for our family. If ever there was a realtor’s nightmare, the building of this house would rate at the top. Every possible delay and stressful problem came our way during construction that record low, frigid blizzardy winter.

A sharp and sudden downturn in the economy brought shocking pay and benefit cuts on our day of closing. Grampa died and Gramma was living a thousand miles away. I missed her desperately and truly didn’t know if I could even afford a stamp to send her a letter.

I soon learned that life would go on amid the craziness. Darkness broke. We were having new beginnings as we moved into our nearly finished home with a precocious two-year old, and her newborn sister. Describing that lonely house on a hill amid dirty snowdrifts on a barren windblown lot sounds a little dramatic, but it was just that. With only a little wooden stoop connected to the street by a temporary pathway of wobbly boards, we literally had to walk the plank to our vehicles until a spring thaw allowed concrete to be poured.

Bower Corner became the home to Baby #3, Baby #4, Baby #5, and yes, baby #6. As the family grew, so did our vegetation. Little by little, we hopefully and lovingly planted grass, trees, fruits, berries, flowers, and a large vegetable garden on our special place. My husband’s ornamental iron adds character to it all. We’ve been blessed to host family, friends, exchange students, and guests from around the world as they have come our way. Bower Corner is a gathering place of the nicest kind.

We now have previously undreamed of ways to communicate through the web. A perfect thing for this people-loving person. My bold step into a world of blogging is with an intention of sharing some of the fun and flavor of Bower Corner to those who might never actually visit here in person. I’ll feature some of my favorite things as I encounter people, places, and ideas that make me smile, or cry, or think, or improve.  Please join me in the journey!