When it hasn’t been centered on work or family, most of my writing over the years has been inspired by travel abroad and the experience of returning home from those journeys. I fantasize about someday having the time to do nothing but write, preferably in a deck chair on a ship or in a cozy seat by the fire at home. But the reality is I steal moments for writing from the scores of things I love to work on just about all the time. It turns out that it was a great gift to learn to love to work from the earliest age and in all kinds of places—one I was loathe to learn at the time.

In 2010 I wrote a journal when I stepped off the work carousel on my home turf to travel around the world on a Semester at Sea voyage. I sent each logged entry to friends and family, took a lot of photos (my first attempt to use a camera on a trip), and then my talented friend Carolyn Rice Dean helped me put the account on a website, complete with a beautiful logo on the name Blue Note Garden that derived from what the Irish fancifully call “long” or “bent” notes of blue. The 2010 account begins with a picture of a blue and white beach chair and it ends with a photo of touches of blue in our garden, hence the name Blue Note Garden. Since then, I’ve added categories for other journeys, some of which I’ve not yet finished writing. I must and I will. But in the meantime, we’ve had to turn our attention to more practical uses of the website.

As my husband and I grow older, we realize we will not always be able to scurry around on task at all hours of the day and night, and seasons of the year. After building and renovating several homes and gardens through long hours of effort and limited funding, we are now the stewards of an exceptional property in a town we have grown immensely fond of. Knoxville is a community we feel privileged to be a part of. But how will we be able to afford help to sustain our home when we can no longer do the work all by ourselves?

Not to draw too heavily upon the plight of Downton Abbey, but we can well understand the erstwhile search of its earls for income to support its continued existence when servants were no longer an option!

Lucky for us, the first floor of our large home here in Blue Note Garden was perfect for two guest suites. Kenneth and I both come from large families and it has been par for the course for us to have family members and friends stay with us for varying amounts of time nearly all of our 40 years of married life. Not long ago we updated both of those suites into the apartments you see offered on these pages. Just like our quarters “upstairs” these ground floor accommodations look out to spectacular garden views on all sides.

Thomas Wolfe says “you can’t go home again” but I think the likelier story is that we can only really travel well if we do go home, again and again. What I mean by that is that the best journeys are ones where we get to know people in the places where they are most at home. We hope you will travel here to stay with us and enjoy our home in a unique setting in one of the most beautiful parts of the world.