Roses, Cemeteries & Friendship: A Sunday at Hartwood Roses

This past Sunday, I spent the day surrounded by blooms, history, and some of the best company at Hartwood Roses Open Garden Day. If you’ve never been, you’re seriously missing out—it’s one of those slow, beautiful days where everything smells like roses (literally) and time just feels softer.

This year’s event was on Sunday, May 25, 2025, and as always, Connie’s garden was pure magic. I still can’t believe we have been friends for ten years now. We first connected through our blogs back in 2015, then became social media friends, and cemetery adventurers together. I've attended the Hollywood Cemetery Rose Days that she led. We attended cemetery picnics together, and I've been on a few of her rose rescue missions. She’s a friend and one of the best advocates for preserving historic roses that I know.

Connie’s the reason I started growing cemetery roses in my own yard. She kind of drafted me (in the best way) into the mission to save these historic roses—once lovingly planted in cemeteries, now often neglected or mowed over by well-meaning (I use that phrase loosely) landscapers who don’t realize what treasures they’re cutting down.

There are probably more cemetery roses blooming in Connie’s garden than in most cemeteries. She’s rescued and labeled so many that walking through her garden is like taking a rose history tour. I spotted roses from Congressional Cemetery, tons from Hollywood Cemetery, and even the Emma Trainer rose—the first one I ever worked on reviving during Rose Day. Now it’s a gorgeous velvety red blooming Dr. Huey, thriving and showing off deep red blooms. Not exactly the rose she once was but still loved. 

Connie also introduced me to Anne Spencer’s garden in Lynchburg years ago, and that visit helped me see gardens not just as pretty places, but as living archives of memory and meaning.

After soaking up all the beauty in the garden, I made a stop at Fredericksburg Cemetery to visit the graves of novelist Helen Gordon Beale and her mother, diarist Jane Howison Beale. Sadly, that visit came with a heavy heart. Earlier this month, there was a major vandalism incident at the cemetery—over 15 gravestones were toppled or damaged, including markers belonging to former mayors and others with stunning religious symbolism. Repair costs are estimated at more than $20,000—a big ask for the small non-profit that maintains the space.

It is another reminder of how important it is to care for these tangible pieces of our past, whether that’s gravestones or historic roses. They tell stories. They hold memory. And once they’re gone, they’re gone.

If this kind of thing speaks to your heart, I highly recommend following Connie on Instagram @hartwoodroses to catch next year’s Open Garden Day (and enjoy some seriously gorgeous rose content in the meantime). She’s always sharing updates, and trust me—you’ll want to mark your calendar when the time comes.

Until then, I’ll be tending my little patch of rescued roses and feeling grateful for this community of caretakers, gardeners, and friends.

Haunting the Page – 5 Writing Prompts for World Dracula Day

This morning, I began World Dracula Day with “Dracula in the Morning” on Reedsy — a quiet ritual to honor the birth of one of literature’s most enduring shadows. First published on May 26, 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula gave us more than a vampire. It gave us a myth about desire, decay, and the lengths we go to for connection. 

It’s about the echo of eternity, the slow rot of time, and the haunting legacy we leave behind. But it’s also about machines — the phonograph, typewriter, telegraph — and how we use technology to preserve memory, reach loved ones, and whisper across centuries. We still do that. Through keyboards and screens, through ink and voice memos. We still try to be heard. 

So today, I offer 5 Writing Prompts for World Dracula Day 

• What do I want to leave behind in this world—what mark, what myth? Consider the difference between a memory and a legend. Are you building something to be remembered... or something to haunt? 

• How do I relate to ruins, old books, forgotten things? Why am I drawn to them? Trace the shape of your attraction to decay. Is it nostalgia, beauty, melancholy, or something deeper—something ancestral? 

• Imagine your journal is found in a crypt 200 years from now. What truth do you want a future stranger to read? Write as if you are the ghost in the paper—what message do you leave behind in ink and dust? 

• If my darker self wrote me a letter today, what would it say? Let the voice of your shadow self emerge—honest, unfiltered, possibly immortal. What wisdom or warning would it offer? 

• What parts of me have already died, and what continues to live on through habit, memory, or myth? Decay isn’t just physical—it can be emotional, spiritual, or symbolic. What remnants of your past self still haunt you? 

These prompts aren’t meant for quick answers. They’re meant to linger, to echo, to open crypts within your soul. On this World Dracula Day, let your words be relics, your journal a tomb, and your thoughts a form of haunting. 

Write like you’ll never die. 

New stamps

I've been pretty horrible about handing out cards for my books or even sharing business cards, but now with my new stamp, it feels more like a gift since I'm giving a code SHARON9 for a percentage off-- it's actually 15%, not 10%, but that's hopefully a nice surprise. I'll just write 15% in red.

If Someone Had Told Me This About Meditation, I Would Have Tried It Sooner

Yesterday's webinar, Meditation, Altered States, and After-Death Communication, hosted by the University of Virginia's Lifetime Learning and led by Dr. Jennifer (Kim) Penberthy, was a bit spooky. As someone who’s always been a bit skeptical about meditation (aka, I fall asleep), I left the session thinking: If someone had told me I’d be more likely to have a paranormal experience through meditation, I would have started years ago.

Dr. Penberthy, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies, shared fascinating research into how meditation and other altered states of consciousness can open doors, not just to personal well-being, but potentially to experiences that challenge our very understanding of reality.

The session dove deep into how meditation can enhance mental health, aid in grief, and even foster after-death communication. Yes, you read that right. Scientific investigations are beginning to show that people in deep meditative states sometimes report encounters that feel profoundly real, often with deceased loved ones.

This wasn’t some fringe theory talk. The research is being conducted at a leading university medical school, suggesting we might need to broaden our view of what meditation can actually do. For those coping with loss or seeking meaning, these insights could offer unexpected comfort and connection.

The practical takeaway? Meditation isn’t just about stress relief or mindfulness anymore. It might just be the gateway to deeper human experiences—some that even border on the paranormal.

So if, like me, you’ve been holding off on meditation, maybe it’s time to reconsider. The unknown might just be one breath away.

Perhaps it is time to add a lab component to my Ghost Stories and Haunted History course! 

Writing the Dead-- ONLINE class through the Transformative Language Arts Network (TLAN)

 

Hollywood Cemetery at Night: Full Moon Tours

 

Meandering Among the Markers: Writing & Reflection Workshops

 

Coming August 5, 2025

 

My book now has its own landing page!

Haunted Virginia Cemeteries: Dare to Visit the Restless Dead?

The Richmond Newsletter (September 1936).

   At the corner of East Franklin and 21st Streets in Richmond lies the old Jewish cemetery—quiet by day, but by night, locals say, it stirs with eerie life. According to The Richmond Newsletter (September 1936 edition), neighbors whispered of midnight figures in long black robes slipping through the locked cemetery gate, of strange happenings that chilled the blood. 

   Mary, who lived beside the graveyard, admitted she often lay awake, fearing the ghosts said to roam the streets after dark. 

   Skeptics may scoff, but for those who’ve seen shadows move where no living soul should walk, there’s no doubt: something haunts this forgotten corner of the city. 

A Pilgrimage to Chatham: Mummiforms, Mortuary History, and a Packard Hearse

Last week, I took a deeply meaningful trip—three hours out and three hours back—to Chatham, Virginia, to visit a place that’s long held a top spot on my must-see list: the Simpson Funeral Museum.

 

Nestled in the very heart of town, this remarkable museum sits on the original site of Chatham’s first funeral home, established in the late 1800s. To walk through those doors is to step into the history of a profession that quietly shapes every community, every generation.

 

The centerpiece of this visit? Repository: Mummiforms—an extraordinary exhibit by Funetorium showcasing the largest collection of Fisk metallic burial cases ever brought together in one place. These cast iron, air-tight, anthropoid coffins—also known as “mummiforms” due to their distinctive shape were originally patented in the 1840s by Almond D. Fisk. They were designed to preserve the body longer, prevent the spread of disease, and allow loved ones to view the deceased through a glass plate set over the face. Their elegant, almost sarcophagus-like forms made them both functional and symbolically powerful.

What makes Repository: Mummiforms so significant is that it brought together more Fisk coffins than have been seen together since they were produced at the foundry over 170 years ago. For anyone passionate about early American funeral history, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, utterly surreal to be surrounded by such rare and storied artifacts. 

For context, President Zachary Taylor, who died in 1850, was famously reinterred in a Fisk metallic coffin during a controversial exhumation in the 1990s adding presidential intrigue to an already fascinating legacy.

But the museum offered much more than just the Fisk exhibit. The Simpson Funeral Museum is a trove of mortuary treasures, from award-winning antique hearses (including an immaculate Packard by Henney, which had me beaming—my dad was a devoted Studebaker man, and I’ve always had a soft spot for Packards) to antique coffins, presidential-style caskets, and burial vaults that tell the story of how the American funeral evolved.

The museum also boasts a stunning collection of regalia, including mourning attire, funeral flags, and memorabilia from fraternal orders and funeral directors’ associations.

It was a privilege to witness this tribute in person.

And just when I thought the day couldn’t get any more surreal, someone recognized me—“Hey, you’re one of the writers from American Cemetery & Cremation! You wrote that Poe book, right?” It was a fleeting moment, but in the best way possible, I had my little mortuary nerd celebrity encounter.

For those who live and breathe the history, culture, and craft of funeral service, a visit to the Simpson Funeral Museum isn’t just educational—it’s deeply personal. A pilgrimage, really. One I won’t forget.