It’s been years ago now since my husband found the plans and built us one of these, but it has returned its worth in materials several times over. One of the first years we were married, the spring rains

This is the one thing I’ll never miss or take for granted about living where I do. When I lived in the city for four years going to college, I yearned for the wild spaces, the sunrises, the sunsets, the

I swim upstream leaving behind my origins... Better waters await. It’s been an emotionally trying week for this songwriter-poet. Everything conspired to put me in a mental space of questioning. I’ve felt

This week’s ukulele lesson is an introduction to reading tablature, and a little history on it for those of you who think it’s a “new” development in musical notation (it’s older than your grandma! 🤪).

I remember you When the sunflowers bloom. All I knew was A lady deserved flowers And yellow was your favorite. Once, I lived for your smile. Once, I wanted to see Your cracked-open heart Mended. (Poem

It has been too long, Steemit!! Seasons changed fast around here. 😳 Last week felt like we were scrambling to cross Ts and dot Is in terms of getting everything done before summer ended and then... Boom!

This week’s ukulele lesson (and really, this will work for many fretted instruments) is a discussion on notation of Barre chords in sheet music. Any questions? Drop them below! 🙂

Remember that poem I posted a couple weeks ago?? It decided it wanted to be a song. I watched an amazing Ted talk (performance, really) by Natalie Merchant on poems and how she turned them into songs and

2011 outdoor winery performance, I forget where... It’s been an emotionally heavy week. I agreed to play a free gig for a Christian Women’s group earlier this week, and then had my performance cut short

Hello everyone! 🙃 This is one of my longer videos, but I’m covering some involved topics about how “chord theory” works on fretted stringed instruments (yes, the principles will apply for all you guitarists

This was one of my early forays into Celtic/Arthurian-inspired music. I listen to a lot of New Age and Celtic, as well as some Heroic Metal, and wanted to try my hand at something similar. I remain insatiably

Hazy twilight scent Of smoke drifts with worries Next day, uncertain... (Poem & photo by Heather Stearns, 2018. Enjoy this? Toss some coin at the Bard: )

Perfect All cool 5:30 mornings Home-made bread and cup of tea Laughing after Little boy toes that couldn’t wait Ran outside in their skivvies To greet the summer light Get a jump on Front porch mornings

It has been a rough week. The bills have rolled in from haying/baling/etc and it feels like a repeat of this spring, when all the planting costs came in and it was only by the grace of God Almighty that

It has been a HOT week here, and thus, good for catching up on ukulele lessons. 🙃 Today’s lesson is on how to spice up your strumming with a rhythm trick called “damping” or “muting.” I also provide a

We ended up with a massive heat wave here in the Pacific NW, they’re predicting 106* F for my area today, and yesterday (when I recorded this) it was 101* in the shade. 😳 Too hot for my taste, but the

(“The Twa Corbies", Illustration by Arthur Rackham) This is a repost of one of my research papers from my old website, that was one of the first posts I made on Steemit. Now that I have a bigger audience,

This week we spent getting our first crop of hay in the barn. It went far smoother than we could have even hoped for, and I am grateful for the blessing of it. Because our flatbed truck is busy hauling

This is one of the very first songs I ever learned when I first picked up the guitar. As I mention in the video, I began learning the guitar (all the way back in Junior High! gasp!), and picked up the

I have to brag a little. Tonight I looked out and saw our crop of peach-plums were ready. This is a variety of plum I have never found anywhere, it’s flavor is delicate, and the skins are this lovely shade