Terri lives in Minnesota. She is semi-retired but that does not mean she’s idle, as you’ll see. The highlight of her week is going for gourmet coffee with a friend on Saturdays and hitting a few local shops. If she gets online, it’s usually to look up herbalist guilds and foraging. She’s looking forward to going fishing on her sons’ boat on the lakes in her area soon.
As you can see by the work displayed in this post, Terri’s a wonderful artist and keeps at it. Her subjects tend to feature nature (love that heron, below). She belongs to a Zentangle Facebook group that features different challenges. This is something I hadn’t heard of but have been checking it out! Cool stuff!
Not only does she paint. Terri keeps up fifteen acres south of Brainerd, with the help of her two grown sons. They have two horses, two dogs, six cats, laying chickens, Broad-Breasted Bronze turkeys (just got the chicks) and Flemish Giant rabbits: two litters now, expecting three more soon.
Terri has taken part in eclectic community efforts in the past, such as Master Gardener for a community garden for three years and serving on the board of Community Spiritual Synergy but found she was neglecting her own gardens. She’s now part-time administrative assistant for a church.
In her earlier life, Terri ran a larger farm with her husband and two boys. She had an in-home business making soaps and herbal products. She continues that on a smaller scale on her current farm, mostly making flower essences and herbals, “always finding something new medicinally.” She crafts and makes tinctures and salves. She says about her current “little homestead,” that no one had done anything to it for a long time. “It’s taken us [a long time} to build the gardens up and clear out the brush.” They’ve planted many trees, both indigenous and apple and plum.
In July 2019, Terri wrote a review of my book, Braided Dimensions, “Exactly the book I needed and had been looking for all summer … I literally started 5 books and stopped reading them with disappointment. Looking forward to the next book in the series!” which came out several months later. Now she writes, about her reading habits, “We all go through different phases of what is interesting us. I don’t read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy anymore, mostly historical fiction.” The way Terri finds her next read is “I’ll pick up a book and see if it sounds good. If I like it, sometimes I’ll check and see if the author has other books.” Terri’s mom’s an avid reader and brings me books she’s read. Terri’s not reading that many boos these days and no wonder, with all her other activities on her farm. She’s read two books so far this summer so far and has four started that she can’t seem to finish. But she says she’s looking forward to reading Braided Dimensions Book 3, Strange Alliances!
two goats 
