A Man's Home Is His Castle

 

 

Each weekend throughout the merry month of May, thousands of people flock to Castle Gwynn in Arrington, Tennessee.
It's Renaissance Festival time, complete with jousting events, kissing-wenches, mead-drinking, arts and crafts, music, merriment and mischief galore.
What sets itself apart from all other Renaissance Festivals is it's distinction of being the only Renaissance Fayre held on the grounds of a real castle in North America.

Castle Gwynn is a startling replica of a 12th-century Welsh border castle and the private home of Nashville-native Mike Freeman, a portrait photographer, and his wife, Jackie, a retired schoolteacher.

The complete story of how the castle came to be, can be read here : http://tnhomeandfarm.com/castle-gwynn and is still an ongoing labor of love.

To view the 2023  Festival schedule and directions click here: https://www.tnrenfest.com/events/buy_tickets.php

admission price includes a tour of the castle !

Royalty, nobles, knights and peasants, come one, come all....
'Tis most splendid!

Dragons welcome 

🏰

Wildfires Burn

After enduring weeks of no rainfall, and consequence parched dry land, we finally had rain last night.

A gully-washer of a rain, which helped our state-wide drought, but sadly today I awoke to news about Gatlinburg, our beloved Smoky Mountain get-away is on fire.

 

Mandatory evacuations have taken place, in both Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, buildings have burned and the entire Sevier county is under a wildfire threat.

Please keep these folks and animals in your thoughts and prayers.

 

 

 

 

 Credit: Tracey Stephen Oaks.

Nobody Left To Love Me

 

Someone always leaving
and never coming back.
The wooden houses left too long abandoned
to turn old and gray.

Weeds pushing apart......
Trees gone wild,
Fields taking over.
Shredded curtains blowing in the wind.

Beams of weathered wood......
No longer able to hold in
The soft heartbeat of Home.

Unknown
 

Forgotten

 

And when the winds moan wildly,
When the woods are bare and brown
And when the swallow’s clay-built nest
From the rafter crumbles down;
When all the untrod garden-paths
Are heaped with frozen leaves,
And icicles, like silver spikes,
Are set along the eaves;

Verse from: The Old Homestead by Alice Cary, From Friends’ Intelligencer, Volume XXV, Philadelphia, 1869

The House With Nobody In It

click to enlarge

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track

I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.

I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute

And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;

That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.

I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;

For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,

And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.

It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;

But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid

I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.

I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be

And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,

Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.

But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone

For the lack of something within it that it has never known.

But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,

A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,

Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track

I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,

Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,

For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.

~ The House with Nobody In It : Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

The Gentle Giant

"The tree which moves some to tears of joy, Is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself."

~ William Blake, 1799, The Letters

Photo taken at The Hermitage: Home of President Andrew Jackson, Nashville, Tennessee.
Click image to see the pheasant in the wood.

The House With Nobody In It

click to enlarge

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track

I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.

I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute

And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;

That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.

I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;

For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,

And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.

It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;

But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid

I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.

I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be

And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,

Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.

But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone

For the lack of something within it that it has never known.

But a house that has done what a house should do,a house that has sheltered life,

That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,

A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,

Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track

I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,

Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,

For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.

~The House with Nobody In It Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

Tennessee and Tornados....

On February 5th 2008 an F-4 tornado barreled it's way through the adjoining counties, and left behind in it's wrath, lost lives, lost homes, lost communities..

Today, we are under that dreaded "Tornado Warning" once again.

Straight-line winds gusting up to 74 miles per hour have toppled trees, power lines, and caused destruction and anxiousness once again.

It's almost De Ja Vue.

Be safe, adhere to the warnings, have an emergency plan in place.

Photo credit: Webshots : Lovejoy