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About the author and artist
Cynthia Moyer grew up in a tiny brick cottage in the middle of her mother’s rose garden in southern Illinois where her imagination was her best friend. A child of the 1970s, she spent all of her time reading, drawing, sewing clothes and quilts for her dolls, and playing with her little brother while their mother was at work.
At the age of 16, she spent a year in the Philippines as an exchange student, eating lumpia and pancit and hanging out with her barkada. She once ate lunch in a volcano, walked through rice paddies on her way to school every morning, and fell asleep every night to the sound of rustling bamboo outside her second-story windows and the scent of gardenias wafting up from the garden below.
After high school, she headed to Seattle for college, majoring in English literature and conservation of wildland resources. She worked at the Center for Urban Horticulture when she wasn’t filling in at her favorite coffee shop as a cook, doing promotional marketing for local bands, cleaning houses, or babysitting children of all ages.
She’s lived on the Makah Indian Nation above a bay filled with otters and whales, in a blue cottage with a pink sewing room, a purple cottage with a backyard overflowing with flowers, on an acre under a misty mountain, in a haunted yellow mansion overlooking the Columbia River, and in the Buttercup Cottage near the Goonies house before moving to Rosemary Hill in the Umpqua Valley of SW Oregon.
Rosemary Hill was supposed to be her forever home, where she had beehives, chickens, farm kitties, wonderful neighbors, and a deer named James. She was a Douglas County Master Gardener and treasurer of the Umpqua Valley Beekeepers Association, and was working toward opening a lavender farm, cutting garden, and building Rosemary Hill Gardens into a thriving home-based business.
In 2023, she lost everything when her husband’s company decided he would be perfect to manage their East Coast timberlands, and after months of trying NOT to move, she ran out of options. Now, with their 12th move in 26 years, Cynthia is now living in a very small town in eastern North Carolina, nowhere near anything, where the weather is atrocious and the bugs are ginormous. She is still recovering from losing everything, but part of the healing involves writing novels that will keep the spirit of Rosemary Hill alive forever.
And making Thai food at home, apparently.
At the age of 16, she spent a year in the Philippines as an exchange student, eating lumpia and pancit and hanging out with her barkada. She once ate lunch in a volcano, walked through rice paddies on her way to school every morning, and fell asleep every night to the sound of rustling bamboo outside her second-story windows and the scent of gardenias wafting up from the garden below.
After high school, she headed to Seattle for college, majoring in English literature and conservation of wildland resources. She worked at the Center for Urban Horticulture when she wasn’t filling in at her favorite coffee shop as a cook, doing promotional marketing for local bands, cleaning houses, or babysitting children of all ages.
She’s lived on the Makah Indian Nation above a bay filled with otters and whales, in a blue cottage with a pink sewing room, a purple cottage with a backyard overflowing with flowers, on an acre under a misty mountain, in a haunted yellow mansion overlooking the Columbia River, and in the Buttercup Cottage near the Goonies house before moving to Rosemary Hill in the Umpqua Valley of SW Oregon.
Rosemary Hill was supposed to be her forever home, where she had beehives, chickens, farm kitties, wonderful neighbors, and a deer named James. She was a Douglas County Master Gardener and treasurer of the Umpqua Valley Beekeepers Association, and was working toward opening a lavender farm, cutting garden, and building Rosemary Hill Gardens into a thriving home-based business.
In 2023, she lost everything when her husband’s company decided he would be perfect to manage their East Coast timberlands, and after months of trying NOT to move, she ran out of options. Now, with their 12th move in 26 years, Cynthia is now living in a very small town in eastern North Carolina, nowhere near anything, where the weather is atrocious and the bugs are ginormous. She is still recovering from losing everything, but part of the healing involves writing novels that will keep the spirit of Rosemary Hill alive forever.
And making Thai food at home, apparently.
Goal: The Real Forsythia Cottage
Cynthia's long-term goal is to spend the next few years building her online company so that in the future, she will be able to buy the real-life Forsythia Cottage... as soon as she figures out which mountain range she wants to live in, because she really needs to get away from these bugs!
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Clockwise: Cynthia caught her inner child in the dahlias (Swan Island Dahlias, Canby, Oregon); a perfect Lavender Dream latte at Gathering Grounds in Roseburg, Oregon; baby Buddha during happier times in the garden at Rosemary Hill, Umpqua Valley, Oregon; and a wonderful sign seen in an antique store near Canby, Oregon.
