This morning, here near the Great Smoky Mountains in Western North Carolina, we all woke up to temperatures in the 40s!  We are almost at the end of June...and the temperature in Balsam was 49.  A friend on facebook was at Clingman's Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the temperature was 39.  Weather is so interesting in that a tropical storm a 1000 miles away in the Gulf of Mexico can affect our weather here.  The birds outside are going nuts and that reminded me of the Joni Mitchell song "Chelsea Morning". The song always reminds me that every morning is a new chance to do or experience something wonderful...and an opportunity to reflect on the last several mornings that have also produced wonderful things. Everyday, someone on facebook posts about how much they love ... 06/26/2017

What a great community!  I've gotten many messages of concern from so many of you over the clean up of the fallen trees and getting our property back in order...thank you so much! After I posted the photos to fb, one of my former buyers...now friend, of course...reached out and volunteered to come help me take care of the debris!  I've seen in other posts of his similar acts of generosity in his hometown when neighbors have been in this same kind of predicament. Lucky, lucky, lucky for me...this kind fellow loves the chainsaw! Have a great day...I'm headed off to try and cram three days of work into one and a half days so I can take half a day and Friday off to do yard clean up. 05/31/2017

Yes, for bonafide real estate customers I will definitely work on the weekends.  However, if I'm not booked by Friday morning then I really look forward to the weekends.This weekend started with a little tomato harvest.  These are tiny little cherry tomatoes and we still have a number of green ones on the vine but I fear the yield will be limited since we are headed into fall.In just a few minutes, I'll head out to the raised beds armed with my therm-a-rest kneeling pad, a dish to put weeds in, a small spade to dig up the spent squash and my camera.Some gardeners just elect to leave all the dead plants in the garden and then they'll turn that debris into the dirt in the spring.  That's up to them though.  I don't want to take a chance that there might be some blight or non-beneficial in... 09/04/2015

I'm thankful to be in a profession that with the exception of actually showing properties, can be handled anywhere there is a cell signal or an internet connection.  That is a real plus for Realtors.Most of the "business hour" time, I AM in our office but occasionally there will be a weekday that I'll handle other things.  Our friend of almost 30 years (and our current MoonDancer Realty office landlord) told me that one of our neighbors in Dillsboro noticed we weren't in the office on Tuesday and hoped everything was okay.  He told them, "they're probably just bringing their garden in".He was right.We've worked, in Robin William's words "full tilt Bozo" on a good number of contracts all year and managed to get six 4x12 raised beds in and a garden planted.  As it just so happened, one of... 08/19/2015

We had an extraordinary light show in the mountains of Western North Carolina last night into the wee hours of the morning.  Facebook was crazy with local people reporting in with the storm locations. This morning the world looks like it was photoshopped in green, everything is so lush and the garden looks very happy.  Some areas had terribly high winds but here in Balsam I believe we were spared that frightening occurences. So here we are...ready to start a new week.  This song was hugely popular when I was a teenager, some younger people may think of it only as the Windex theme song but it isn't. Have a great week filled with all things positive and wonderful! 07/27/2014

It is a good feeling to spend a lot of money and feel that you got a ton of value for it.  Home owning can sometimes be expensive...there, I said it!  It's called general maintenance and sometimes to protect your asset you've got to spend money.  It isn't always something to do with plumbing, roofing or electrical...in our case, we needed to have a several towering trees removed.  We asked around and were continually directed to Western Carolina Tree Care. From the very first conversation it was evident that we would be dealing with someone extremely professional and knowledgeable.  Jeff Polson is the owner of Western Carolina Tree Care and when we called his phone number 828-226-2822 he actually answered!  We'd called several other companies and only got recorders.  Jeff agreed to meet... 07/14/2014

Funny how it takes careful planning to do what you want to do, when you want to do it when we work in real estate.  We careen from appointment to appointment but we do have the luxury of scheduling in "appointments" to take advantage of fun or necessary private time. Oh yeah sure...the cell phone still rings and the emails still come in but that's okay.  We are so fortunate to live in a time when we can keep up with what we've pledged to do for our clients and still attend to our own needs. We'll be working from Command Central at home today instead of in the office.  For years we've had very old and huge trees begging us to be released from where they stand before they simply fall down.  Finally, today is the day we'll deal with that and personally, I'd rather not have tons of tree fal... 07/13/2014