I purchased the domain name, SunshineAndVine.com, in 2015 through GoDaddy, the big daddy of Internet domain registrars, and began developing, only in my mind, the possibilities of its purpose. All I knew, for sure, was that I liked the name. It suited me.
Five years later I received an email reminding me that it was time to renew the rights to the domain name. I could sell the rights as well. There was no real plan for an online business or blog, but Sunshine and Vine had grown roots in my mind and heart.
Sunshine and Vine representations are ever-present in my favorite memories. I liked the feel of the sun warming my father-in-law’s greenhouses where I helped him tend to his infamous ferns and Christmas poinsettias while my first-born waddled around beside me. I liked the sun rays streaming down through the groves of aspen trees and the chime-like musical sounds of their leaves when shaken by the wind in the mountains around Park City, my happy place for the 3 years I lived in Utah. I discovered the true healing powers of sun rays the spring I moved to East Texas, reflecting, recuperating, and reading poolside while my young son napped.
Sunshine and Vine representations are found in ancient beliefs, rituals, and mythology as depicted in the Greek literature I read to my boys as well as in Christian writings such as, “I am the Vine and you are the branches…” Both religions of which I had come to more fully understand and appreciate through the instruction of a few dedicated and talented educators.
The most tangible representation of sun on vines for me is anything in nature using the process of photosynthesis to survive and thrive, a process I more fully recognized from a weekend horticulture class held in the recently revived 1880’s Stanford Family cactus garden where unique cacti, succulents, and a Joshua Tree continue to thrive in Northern California. Northern California, where there are on average 360 days of sunshine per year and often Mediterranean-like temperatures, felt to me like a paradise. It was heaven on earth.
Northern California wine country, where weather forecasts are accompanied by grape forecasts to predict that season’s best wine varietals, and where wine producers are passionate about making their favorite fruit of the vine from Pino Noir grapes.
Northern California where Pino Noir grapes are known as “the heartbreak grape” due to the difficulty in their cultivation and transforming into wine and where one cannot live without learning to, at the least, admire the wine and the dedication of its producers, and where I was living at the time I purchased the domain name, SunshineAndVine.
So here I am today, SunshineAndVine.com, the dedicated producer of my one and only precious life, cultivating the lovely and sometimes hard “heart-break” experiences, and forever transforming.
“Strength and dignity are her clothing and she laughs at the days to come.”
– Proverbs 31:25 NSV
