Our roots ... Because I know you´re dying to know!

It all started 12 years ago when Weezer and I read an article written by Charles Elliott "The Transplanted Gardener" from the January 94 issue in Horticulture Magazine. It was a tale of the strange roots of the English landscape movement including "dead trees" being natural occurrences in natural settings, and "Fake Hermits" for those of us who obsessively tend to our gardens, forsaking all other things… although a bit extreme, most gardeners understand the passion. I also think that dead trees represents the organic matter that returns to the earth to nurture the growth and being of other plants. From this our little gardening business was created and justly named "Dead Trees and Fake Hermits".

Hi, I'm Cilenia. I started my journey as an avid heirloom vegetable and herb gardener focusing on medicinal herbs. As a very busy Mama of 5, I ran my husband’s small construction company from a home office and was determined (or obsessed) with filling 2 acres of farm land with herbs and perennials, and I vented my creative side in the gardens and quilting. I describe myself as: mother of five, grand-mother of seven, adult day care provider for contractors, storybook publisher, digital designer, teacher, friend, 80s rocker, herbalist, creative junkie, storyteller, leader of the pack. I was attempting to fit in time for scrap booking in a paper medium, but then life changed. I lost all my books and photos to a fire and almost gave up. After my grandmother died, I was reminded of the importance of preserving family memories. My grandmother left behind boxes of old photos, but no one knew the stories behind the photos. And worse yet, many photos were damaged by the books they had been kept in and the glues and inks used. I went on a quest from that day forward to preserve them. So began my quest and introduction to digital photo restorations. I have even contributed to local Historical Societies offering my services to restore historical photos.

My ongoing Heritage Project continues today. But all of that got me thinking "What about all the photos I have now?" That's how I started with digital scrapbooking and modern-day storytelling.

So then I grabbed Weezer, my mother, mentor, and best friend, and told her that we needed to do this together. So we did, and started a business as Independent Publishers of Storybooks!  Today, my daughters are involved and you will often find my grand-daughter on my lap helping me work, although she totally considers it play! Shhh, so do I.  She has loved to draw on the computer since the ripe young age of four and I love not having a mess from her paints and brushes. Don't be surprised if you call me and get this small voice answer saying, "Nana's Office, may I help you?" Got to love it!

Hi, I'm Weezer, and Cilenia doesn't call me Mom, just Weezer. (You can call me that too.) I enjoy being creative too, always love moving the furniture around or trying a new look in the scrapbooks I create. I started my journey long ago when I took classes at the Cleveland Institute of Art while still in high school. After high school I went to college for a degree in the Arts for Interior design.  As life would have it, I gave up that dream, got married and started a family, but still dabbled with a constant creative flare showing up in my home and gardens.  Friends and family have come to call this constant motion of creativeness “Weezering”. I have an artistic keen eye for colors, placement, and a clean design style.  It doesn’t much matter what medium I create in, the design principals are the same and I love to share what I have learned over the years.

Hi, I'm Christopher, Cilenia's brother. I started almost 20 years ago side-by-side with Cilenia drawing on the computer in an Engineering firm where we worked together.  I decided to move on and pursue the other side of this technology and dove into the deep technical side of computers and programs.  I began to help Cilenia and Weezer create web pages and they've been online since 1996. Their first mission was to encourage interest in gardening and healthy living, providing a common sense approach and basic information about gardening with links to events and organizations in five countries.   I'm now the IT man and continue to provide hosting for that first domain. I also try to keep them on track and pointing forward, hopefully following the bends in the road, not taking the Y splits along the way!   Thank goodness I have a lot of patience!   I have been a true lover of photography since I was a small boy who would watch my grandfather in his basement dark room and took photography classes during my school years. One of my latest hobbies is astronomy and photographing the night sky and I was recently published in  Astronomy Magazine online.  Photography is my creative outlet, along with being a networking guru and webmaster. Cilenia and Weezer still find my work puzzling but are glad I am here to fit the pieces together.

We are three, (working on four), generations of creative people who love to share our passionate hobbies of photography and story booking. We have been working and playing together forever in one way or another. Whether it's been gardening, sewing, scrap booking, computer aided-design, web design, or running a joint business venture, we're doing it TOGETHER!