Where does “Maywood Living” come from?  Maywood is the property on which we live, bought by John’s grandfather in 1940.  The name is derived from his grandfather’s name, Maynard, and his father’s name, Markwood, but captures the beauty of this place in the spring when dogwoods and tulip poplars bloom and fragrance the air with an aroma I’ve found nowhere else.  It is the family homestead.  John spent his boyhood summers here (often sent off with his sister by his grandmother to locate the non-existent Indian caves!).  He proposed to me here.  Two of our three daughters had summer weddings here.  And now our grandsons zip along on a little John Deere tractor just like PopPop.

I’m a “pioneer wife” by default–I married the ultimate do-it-yourselfer.  John built the log home we live in and likes living off the land.  I credit (and blame) Thoreau for that. We are into herb gardening, beekeeping, making honey and beeswax products, sawmilling (ok, sawyering), cooking, and keeping the Ferguson tractor running.   Maywood offers us wild cherries and berries, nuts, venison, an occasional mushroom, and other things that John says are not toxic but I am not willing to trust him on.  Lest anyone think we are hermits in the woods, I have a 30 mile commute to my teaching job and John drives regularly to the D.C. area for his work as a data service technician.

And as for “slightly off the grid”…  MapQuest will get you almost to our house.  It drops you off in the woods where our mailbox is.  But as I sit at my  computer in winter when the leaves have dropped, my view overlooks the interstate that borders our property.  The highway  is both Main Street and the worst possible way to get to work.  I am the Queen of Alternate Routes.  Literally and figuratively, I suppose.  I think everyone is weird except me.  So that makes me the weird one, slightly “off.”