I have spent the past 5 weeks in a small town in the North Carolina Mountains. To me summer in North Carolina always means quality time with family and friends, lifelong friends and new friends as well. It’s a re-connection with Southern hospitality that is so unique to our country. Not that other places aren’t hospitable, there’s just something special about the South and Southerners in particular.

Summer in North Carolina brings tremendous thunderstorms and rain pounding on the tin roof. It’s mountain streams and sliding rocks. It’s firefly’s and katydids. It’s gem mining with my son and his cousins and then glorying over our treasures. It’s cousins and chaos!

Then there are the fresh local produce stands with tomatoes that I dream about all year long. Of course followed by sit down family dinners on the big back porch.

It’s funky folk art and big beautiful hydrangeas that grown in my mom’s yard.

I am grateful, so grateful to be able to come back to this special place every summer and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. To me it’s home, comfort, safety, love and family.

Thank-you magical Appalachian mountains.