by Scot Zimmerman
Often in the Wasatch back, the terms fastest growing, biggest, best, most luxurious, recently constructed, most popular, exclusive and similar superlatives prevail in conversations and print about the area.
It’s easy to get caught up and see the place as an ideal through others’ eyes. This week I am looking at it just as the place we call home, and it’s a beautiful place to call home.
I’m thinking now of the beauty and fragrance of spring in the Heber Valley, and with that, how homes become special because they so personally reflect the lives of the people who live there.
It’s difficult to picture this beautiful Provincial French garden and home restoration as the work of just one small-but-mighty woman who found a neglected pioneer home surrounded by fields in a rural corner of Midway in the 1970s on an outing with her dog.
But, that’s the case. She worked for a long while at Adolph’s as a chef and for a time at Jan’s in women’s clothing. Jobs, not a career, supported what was really important, creating her home.
Eventually she built a small studio in the midst of the garden where she sold her dried floral wreaths, original oils, and the occasional antique.
Her art won awards and helped to support her. But it wasn’t easy to buy her creations. If you called the studio, a recorded phone message answered, “We’re here by chance.”
Beautiful things should be shared, and she opened the doors of her art and book filled home to friends for Thanksgiving, New Years, and famously for Easter. Every meal was appropriately artful.
This year, there will be no traditional Easter celebration. Shosho (Suzanne) Zipprich sadly passed away last month. This week was her birthday, so I am thinking of her. I think I will often think of her and how beautifully she lived. Perhaps that’s her greatest legacy as an artist.
See more: #photofriday
