I know an honest-to-gosh Cowgirl.

I love the Blog-o-sphere.

I've met so many nice people through Blogging.  Some in-person.  Some just virtually.

But I never dreamed that one day I'd be opening a package full of goodies from an honest-to-gosh blogging-Cowgirl.

Autographed CD and matted photos

My benefactor, Jessie Veeder, is a talented singer who lives, and rides into sunsets, on a 3,000 acre  cattle-ranch in North Dakota.  The photographs, words and poetry that fill her blog "Meanwhile back at the ranch",  describe a life that filled my childhood fantasies.  I wanted to be a cowgirl when I grew up.

In a song on her Jessie Veeder: nothing's forever, CD, she expresses her own childhood dream to leave her roots behind:

When I was a young girl

I dreamed of the water

Engulfing these Midwestern plains

I'd be no longer landlocked

No longer grounded

No longer tied to this place.  

But like many before her, she had to go away to realize what she'd left behind.  So after some roving and many music gigs she returned "to the land that had nourished and shaped her".

›  š

As I write this,  I am listening to her CD (for the second time through).  Her words are poetry,

So how did this "Blue-noser" retiree, living near the Atlantic Ocean, come to receive a gift package from a mid-western cowgirl ?

Back in December, Jessie ran a "Winter Photo Contest", which unbelievably, I won.   I think Jessie must have a soft spot for lighthouses.

The package I received with photos and autographed CD, was my prize.  

The larger photo she sent is the same  image that's posted on the masthead of her blog, while the smaller one is of a "snow angel".   The latter will be proudly displayed with my annual Christmas decorations.

So there you have it.  A wonderful gift from a friend I've never met.

Thanks so very much, Jessie.

Gosh, I'm a lucky girl.



To hear the title track of Jessie's album, click here