Our Visit to Amish Country by J.Q. Rose #travel #Amishcountry

 

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose
a perfect read for the scary month of October
Click here to download this paranormal mystery
and more mysteries by J.Q. from BWL Publishing

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Our Visit to Amish Country  by J.Q. Rose

Ohio towns we visited plus Berlin, Ohio engraved in this brick wall.

Hello and welcome! My husband and I took a break in September to visit friends in Ohio and tour Amish Country, Holmes County, to be exact.  I never realized Ohio was so hilly. The hills and valleys add adventure and eyepopping beauty. With the mild fall weather, the landscape was green and gorgeous. When traveling the country roads, we appreciated the fields of crops raised on pristine Amish farms and watching the farmers work their fields with the powerful draft horses pulling their vintage equipment. The homes featured colorful flowers planted in yards and large vegetable gardens harvested by the children and moms wearing their bonnets, aprons and long dresses.  *An Amish broom maker. He showed us how he puts the broom together. The sweeper is so thick with broom corn, the craftsman could stand the broom straight up on the floor and it never fell down! Yes, we bought one. It sits next to my iRobot vacuum. Talk about a contrast in ways to clean floors! *I wish you could see how huge this pumpkin at Hershberger's Farm really is. The area is populated with Amish grocery stores, produce markets, bakeries, cheese factories, restaurants specializing in fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and noodles.  You can stuff yourself so easily. But so tasty! *I fell in love with these pups riding in the cage attached to the back of the buggy. Adorable. No, we did not bring one home with us, but oh so tempting. *This life-like art installation of the old women visiting on the bench was in front of the courthouse in Newark, OH. I just had to join them. Of course, I suggested they begin telling their life stories!! *Horse and buggies carrying families are on the roads along with 21st-century vehicles. In the last 2 years, some groups allow traveling on electric bicycles with pedal assist. I think the bikes outnumber the buggies.  *We witnessed the hard-working Amish farmer cutting hay on a warm sunny day. Hardy mums at Harshberger Farms. Thanks for touring Amish country with me. I hope you have the opportunity to visit Ohio and enjoy even more of the lifestyle of these industrious people of faith. Connect online with JQ Rose: Author J.Q. Rose J.Q. Rose blog  Facebook

Recipes for Cooking Over the Campfire by J.Q. Rose

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard
Paranormal Mystery
Click here to find more mysteries by JQ Rose
from BWL Publishing

Hello and welcome to the BWL Publishing Insiders Blog!

Cooking over the campfire.

Recipes for Cooking Over the Campfire by J.Q. Rose

A few years ago we camped with our daughter Lee Ann and family over the Memorial Day holiday weekend near Stony Lake in West Michigan. Always the "event" planner, she invited our other daughter, Sara, (who is not a camper) and family to join us on Sunday for a fun dinner with Dump Soup as the main entree.

I bet you've heard the folk tale Stone Soup, the story of hungry strangers who convince the townspeople to share a small amount of their food in order to feed everyone. We weren't exactly hungry strangers, and we didn't ask fellow campers to contribute to the soup pot.

Lee Ann coined the term "Dump Soup" because we all brought ingredients to dump into the soup pot. There is NO recipe. That's the fun part. Just whatever is offered is added to the pot. Lee Ann poured in beef broth, beef consomme, and I added mushroom soup as a base for all the other stuff e.g. beans, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, onions, cans of veggies, etc.

All ready to cook over the campfire.

Lee Ann stirred it all together and placed the pot over the campfire for the men to watch while the ladies took a walk. Of course, we came back to check on the progress of the soup. After an hour and one half over the fire, we gobbled down the soup. It was delicious. The soup must have been good because the kids loved it too, especially with lots of crackers.

Another of our family faves for dinner over the fire is "hobo dinner." I've heard it called foil packet dinner too. We spray the foil with vegetable oil, place bacon on the first layer, hamburger or chicken next, and then add whatever fresh veggies you like to the foil e.g. potatoes, carrots, green pepper, onion, butter, and celery.

Ingredients ready to wrap.

Be sure to wrap the packet tightly so the grease doesn't run out. Then place the foil dinners in the coals or on a grate over the fire. Depending on how you cut the veggies and how hot the fire is, the packets need to cook 30--45 minutes. Chicken may take longer. 
PS--This dinner can be cooked on your grill at home too.

Dinner wrapped in foil packets.

Clean-up is easy. Just wrap up the foil and throw it away. THEN it'll be time to roast the marshmallows to make S'mores! But first, you may want to go for a swim or a hike!

What are your easy go-to recipes when having a crowd over to your house or when camping?

Click here to connect online with J.Q. Rose

Earth Day Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary by J.Q.Rose

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard
Paranormal Mystery
Click here to find more mysteries by JQ Rose
from BWL Publishing

Earth Day Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary

by J.Q.Rose

Earth Day April 22
Image courtesy of pixabay.com by PrettySleepy

Since 1970, April 22 has been designated as Earth Day. This year, Earth Day celebrates its 50th anniversary with the ongoing goals to stop the destruction of our environment and to preserve our world for future generations. 

The movement brought awareness to saving our climate by stopping factories belching black, toxic smoke into the air, factories dumping toxic waste into our water systems, the unlimited use of pesticides and the destruction of the wilderness and loss of wildlife.

According to the Earth Day site, "Earth Day led to the passage of landmark environmental laws in the United States, including the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts. Many countries soon adopted similar laws."

In 2020, citizens from around the world focus on the dire need for us all to take care of our planet.

People today are more environmentally conscious. Schools and families make an effort on this day but also throughout the year to educate children to care for our earth. Even the simplest thing like not littering makes a big difference and is an easy lesson for our kids and for us to learn and choose to do.

Being good examples to kids by turning off lights in a room when not in use, not letting the water faucet run and separating recyclables from trash reinforce the importance of saving our environment from destruction.

Reading eBooks is environmentally friendly. Thousands of books can be stored digitally on e-readers and reading devices, saving trees that otherwise would be cut down for making paper.

What are some ways you can help our environment, not only on Earth Day but every day? Please leave a comment below. Thank you.

About J.Q.Rose

J.Q. offers readers chills, giggles and quirky characters woven within the pages of her mystery books. She and her husband live the snowbird life, traveling to Florida in the winter and to Michigan for the summer where she spends time with her family including four grandsons and one granddaughter. Travel, photography, reading and playing pegs and jokers help to keep her out of trouble when she isn't writing fiction and non-fiction.

Click here to connect online with JQ.

Halloween's Scary Creatures

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard
Available at major online booksellers
Caution: Do not read before bedtime, especially during Halloween!

Hello and welcome to the BWL Authors Insiders Blog.

Are you ready for Halloween? I never think of all the candy and parties that happen around Halloween. After being scared to death by a movie when I was a child, I only focus on staying away from scary monsters and ghosts this time of year. Zombies, vampires, witches, skeletons are not for me. 

Last year I participated in the A-Z Blog Challenge coming up with a blog post for 26 days in April. It truly was a challenge but oh so much fun for this word nerd. I chose to highlight words that I had learned in my reading. For the letter G, my word was gorgon. A gorgon is definitely another creature you might find on Halloween night. 

Dictionary.com defines gorgon as a fierce, frightening, or repulsive woman.

Medusa--a scary woman perfect for Halloween
Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Just to give you an idea how fierce and repulsive this woman is, the second definition of gorgon is “in classical mythology, each of three sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, with snakes for hair, who had the power to turn anyone who looked at them to stone.”  Does that give you an idea for your next Halloween costume? 

If you are a follower of Greek mythology, you'll know the story of Medusa. She was the only sister who was immortal and was slain by the demigod and hero Perseus. If you do attend the Halloween costume parties dressed as Medusa, I would suggest not to take Perseus with you.!!

If you take part in Halloween festivities, I hope you have a safe and fun time!

Are you attending a costume party? What costume are you wearing? Leave a comment below and let us know. Thanks.

Armchair Travelogue: Touring England--The Cotswolds with J.Q. Rose

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose
Paranormal mystery
Click here to find more mysteries by J.Q.
at BWL Publishing Authors Page 

Hello and welcome to the Books We Love Insiders Blog!

Many readers are experiencing a very tough winter in their part of the world. Books and movies are a great way to escape the reality of freezing weather, ice, rain, floods.

Today, I'd like you to sit back and relax in your favorite chair and escape with my husband, Gardener Ted, and me for an armchair travelogue of the Cotswolds when we visited England in June 2018.
Watch the video below. If you have more to add about the Cotswolds or want to ask a question, please leave a comment below.

VIDEO: Touring England--The Cotswolds

Video: Touring England The Cotswolds

Thank you for joining us. I'll be sharing more videos about our trip in upcoming blog posts.

Toodle pip!

About J.Q.

Author J.Q. Rose

Whether the story is fiction or non-fiction, J.Q. Rose is focused on the story. She offers readers chills, giggles and quirky characters woven within the pages of her mystery novels. Her published mysteries are Deadly Undertaking, Terror on Sunshine Boulevard and Dangerous Sanctuary released by Books We Love Publishing.  Blogging, photography, Pegs and Jokers board games, and travel are the things that keep her out of trouble. 

Click here to connect online with J.Q. at her blog, Focused on Story.

I Did Something Stupid by J.Q. Rose

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose

Mystery, paranormal

Click here to find mysteries by JQ Rose at BWL Publishing

Hello and welcome to the Books We Love Insiders blog. My name is J.Q. Rose and today I am confessing to doing something "stoopid" (stupid). I'm embarrassed to tell you. But I'll it share with you in the hope you will learn the lesson along with me. My piano teacher always told me it's okay to make a mistake, (like hitting the wrong key on the piano), but it's really a mistake to do the same thing over and over again. I hope I've learned my lesson and I will not repeat this blunder again.

<Taking a deep breath.> 
Last summer I focused on getting my book manuscript for Terror on Sunshine Boulevard ready for my publisher, BWL Publishing. Needless to say, I spent countless hours on the novel writing, re-writing, and editing.

I worked hard on it and saved the entire manuscript file to my laptop, feeling very good about how I tied up the loose ends of the story. The next morning, I opened my laptop only to find I could not sign in to the old computer. I entered my password for this computer three times, but my programs didn't open. I shut it down, then tried again. Shut it down. Tried again. I couldn't believe the crazy thing wouldn't open. I remembered I had received several notices for an update and I had postponed them for the last couple of days, so last night I allowed the program to update.

Evidently, during the download, some glitch messed up the opening user program. No, I didn't know that, but that's what my brilliant computer geek guy, Luke, surmised when I dropped off the laptop to see if he could fix it. He told me sometimes this problem is a symptom of a hard drive crash. The hard drive is the place where EVERYTHING is stored.

J.Q.Rose cartoon designed by Miss Mae

I gasped for breath knowing I hadn't backed up all of my files to another storage device for months. I hadn't saved a story I had worked on all summer? Well, not completely. I had a few chapters in Dropbox and on a flash drive, but they had all been revised in the recent months.

I left the laptop at his shop. My mind whirled with the possibilities of losing the entire manuscript. Dread swamped me when I thought about losing all the files for my published books and scribblings of other books and stories. Then the reality of losing all my photos hit me. I never back them up. Heat flashes took over my brain and it wasn't because it was 90 degrees outside. Worry. Worry that I would lose everything. I honestly thought my writing days were over. I couldn't sleep that night.

Later the next morning, my hubby Gardener Ted stopped at Luke's shop to check on the computer. He came bursting in the back door and announced. "Luke thinks he can get the files back!" 

I shouted "hooray" and did a happy dance right there in the middle of the kitchen at that news. Sure enough, the next day, when I picked up the laptop, Luke told me he had restored all the files. 

I feared to ask him how much I owed him. He said, "$35." What? Only $35.00? I could have given him a big hug and a kiss. (No, I didn't. I didn't want to embarrass him.) I practically skipped out of his shop with my darling laptop.

You can be sure my hubby Ted and I dug out our external storage drive and backed up ALL of our files on both laptops that same afternoon.

I think I'm doing well when I remember to hit save while working on a document. But I need to go to the next step and back up the document to another storage method. 

Easy to save files to a flash drive/thumb drive.

It's so easy to pop in a flash drive (thumb drive), save it to Dropbox, email it to myself. So many ways to keep a copy. Learn from my carelessness. Save your stuff!

Do you save your files and pictures to another storage area other than your computer hard drive? Have you lost files forever? 

Please leave a comment below and let us know. Thank you.

###

Mystery author J.Q. Rose

About J.Q.

When J.Q.  isn’t writing, she enjoys photography, playing Pegs and Jokers board games, and traveling with her husband. They spend winters in Florida and summers up north camping and hunting toads, frogs, and salamanders with her four grandsons and granddaughter.

Click here to connect online with J.Q. Rose.

Learning to Grow Lettuce Plants in Water by J.Q. Rose

Hello and welcome to the BWL Publishing Insiders Blog!

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose

Mystery, paranormal

Click here to find mysteries by JQ Rose at BWL Publishing

Learning to Grow Lettuce Plants in Water by J.Q. Rose

My husband and I were in the floral and greenhouse business for nearly twenty years, so I was familiar with the term, hydroponics. According to Dictionary.com, hydroponics is "the cultivation of plants by placing the roots in liquid nutrient solutions rather than in soil." 
In the spring of 2017, hydroponics became very real to me when Gardener Ted decided to try growing lettuce and a few other plants by building a system of pipes to grow plants in water. 

He has grown lots of vegetable and annual plants as well as foliage plants, mums, glads, and Easter lilies in our commercial greenhouses, and he plants a vegetable garden which produces delicious food all summer for our family in Michigan and a small garden in winter in Florida for us. Yes, he gardens twelve months out of the year. A dream come true for him.

Lettuce and other plants growing in Gardener Ted's  hydroponic system
Photo by J.Q. Rose

He's always experimenting with new plants and new ways of raising them. But learning how to grow healthy plants in water is definitely not like raising plants in soil! Figuring out how to move the water through the pipes, adding nutrients to the water, and keeping the pH at the right level led to huge challenges for him. He soon learned the weather conditions affected the nutrients in the water. Warm, cold, wind, humidity, etc.affected the growth of the plants. Gardener Ted knew how to deal with weather conditions when plants grew in soil, but figuring out what to do to keep his plants healthy when their roots were only in water was a puzzle, at times frustrating. But he triumphed over the unknown and developed a working growing chamber which produced healthy plants.

Delicious speckled lettuce grown using the hydroponics system
Photo by J.Q. Rose

He followed through on producing lots of lettuce grown hydroponically, but the garden lettuce seemed to grow faster. I liked the hydro lettuce because it was clean when he cut it, whereas the garden lettuce had sand and soil on the leaves. 

This spring of 2018 he made improvements to his system and his plants are growing beautifully. We are enjoying a delicious, as well as, a pretty salad every day. And one other perk when gardening, he enjoys sharing his harvest with neighbors, friends and family.

Are you a gardener? Do you have experience with hydroponic growing? 

Click here to connect online with J.Q. Rose

Spring IS Coming! by J.Q. Rose

Welcome to the BWL Publishing Insiders Blog!

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose

Mystery, paranormal

Click here to find mysteries by JQ Rose at BWL Publishing

Shocking. That's what it was. Snow! A thick, six-inch layer of snow covered the lawns, heaped up in piles along the cleared (thank goodness) roads, and blanketed the tender leaves of spring flowers tentatively breaking through the unfrozen soil to face this wintry spring weather. We drove from Florida back to Michigan last week through rain, wind, snow showers and black ice only to discover our part of the world was still smothered with that white fluffy stuff!! 

So, for all of you (including me) still dealing with winter in the middle of April, I'll share some of my spring photos from years before to give you a taste of what surely WILL come. Don't give up. Spring is on its way.

Hyacinths

Forsythia bush

Pink tulips

Flowering crab

Tulips and creeping phlox

Let's party!!

One good thing I can find about this extended winter weather is the fabulous opportunity to stay in and read a book! Then, this summer, you can read a book at the beach. Anytime, anyplace is perfect for reading.

Wishing you a wonderful spring!

Click here to connect online with mystery author J.Q. Rose.

Have You Played Pickleball? by J.Q. Rose

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose

Mystery, paranormal

Click here to find mysteries by JQ Rose at BWL Publishing

Hello and welcome to the Books We Love Insiders Blog. My name is J.Q.Rose.

BWL Publishing released my latest mystery,Terror on Sunshine Boulevard, in December. I've been hopping around cyberspace introducing the book on my Blog Tour this winter. I enjoy visiting other bloggers and meeting their readers. The most-asked question I have received on this journey is,"What is pickleball?"

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard Winter Warm-Up
2018 Blog tour

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard takes place in Florida at a senior retirement community and golf resort. My main characters, Jim and Gloria Hart, participate in the fun winter activities that take place at the community like golfing, swimming, dancing, game-playing such as horseshoes, shuffleboard, tennis, and pickleball.

Several readers were not familiar with the game, Pickleball. It's similar to tennis, but played on a smaller court usually laid out within a tennis court. Pickleball can also be played indoors, but there are different balls for indoor and outdoor. Both are plastic balls with holes in them like a “nerf” ball.The rackets are basically ping pong paddles on steroids.

The game caught on with seniors because it’s a bit slower than playing tennis and less area to cover. But now, even young folks are playing and enjoying the game.

Take a peek at the video below to see how the game is played. 


Youtube VIDEO: Pickleball Rules | The Definitive Beginner's Resource to How to Play Pickleball from Playpickleball.com

How to Play Pickleball Video

Have you heard of Pickleball? Have you tried your hand at playing the game?  Let us know about your experience with Pickleball in a comment below.

BWL Author J.Q. Rose

Click here to connect online with J.Q. Rose at her blog, Focused on Story.