Meet Baby Lamb.
That's what I call her, anyhow. You can't call her that, though - only I can. It's a marriage thing.
I receive a lot of questions about how Ashley and I met. It’s a good story, and I’ll tell it here as I introduce her to you.
My Sweetie's name was Ashley Bowen until she married me in 2023. Now she's Ashley Gentry - a.k.a., "Baby Lamb," an adorable nickname that I happened to use spontaneously one day, and it stuck. Our nicknames for each other are constantly being updated by way of what we call "squeaky marriage stuff" - cute, giddy exchanges of the sort that occur with no one else - but the two names that have stuck over the long-term are "Baby Lamb" and "Baby Pony."
That's me, by the way - the pony - in case that's not obvious. I became Baby Pony after Ashley had a dream in which she fought to become the new caretaker of a neglected pony; I interpreted the pony to be myself, and so became "Baby Pony." But you can't call me that - only Ashley can. See how this works? These titles are exclusive.
Above: Baby Lamb and Baby Pony are commemorated in this arrangement of objects under a glass dome in our library; we found the tiny figurines online, and Ashley added the pocket-watch that she already owned in reference to an early poem called "Time Traveller" that she had written to me.
Ashley in her element, near a waterfall in North Carolina, 2022.
Ashley has an extraordinary passion for waterfalls, and to date has visited 1,180 of them in several states - by the time that you read this, that number will likely have grown, since we’re always venturing out in search of new ones.
It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that waterfalls have been common subjects of Ashley’s photography. I strongly encourage you to follow the preceding link, to see over 50 examples of her outstanding photographic work.
It was Ashley's waterfall photography that brought us together, really. I first saw her waterfall photos online in 2014. I was very impressed with the shots, and intrigued by some of the cascades in those pictures; they seemed good subjects for my own painting interests, so I sent an e-mail to her to ask how I might find a couple of them. She kindly wrote back to share the requested information. It was immediately apparent that we had many mutual interests, so we just kept writing back and forth after that.
For eight years.
That’s right: nearly a decade passed before we met in person. Actually, we had never even talked by phone during that time. Our first phone call occurred after I asked her to keep me in her prayers during an illness; she called that same day to pray for me directly over the phone. Soon thereafter, she invited me to attend a play with a group of her friends in Asheville, which I readily accepted. Our first, belated meeting took place on June 25th of 2022. It went well, to say the least. We were engaged on December 4th of the same year, and the wedding followed on February 11th of 2023, in Ashley’s hometown of Winston-Salem, NC. You can see photos of the wedding here. And what a wedding it was, too.
Between our first meeting and the wedding, a lot of driving occurred. From my home in Tennessee, Ashley lived over two hours away in North Carolina. I typically travelled there on weekends, and my stays there were facilitated by Ashley’s good friend, Joanna, who lived directly across the street - Joanna would surrender her entire house to me, and would stay in the guest room at Ashley’s house nearby. Since Ashley and I were committed to dating the old-fashioned way, this generosity on Joanna’s part made it possible for us to see each other regularly without running up huge hotel costs.
Ashley at Bullington Gardens in 2022
No discussion of Ashley’s character would be complete without mention of her abiding Christian faith and her ability to minister to people in distress through her gifts of wisdom, empathy, and good counsel that flow from her love for Jesus Christ. She has an ability to shed tears with those in pain, listen to their stories, and offer kind encouragement; for this reason, her support is often sought after by those in need, sometimes even in the case of the most casual acquaintances met in passing.
In addition to her photography work, Ashley is actively, irrepressively creative in other ways. Her creativity may emerge anywhere at any time. Natural objects found on the ground during a hike might be collected into a lovely arrangement, for instance - or similar objects might inspire her to invent an original game with them. She has constructed needle-felt animals, and carved a complete chess set with an Alice in Wonderland theme. She often composes humorous songs or poems at a moment's notice; once, when stuck alone in bumper-to-bumper traffic, she wrote a dozen haiku poems about traffic in order to pass the time more agreeably. Even her cooking skills reveal her creativity - given a handful of ingredients, she can combine them in new and insightful ways, with a sensitivity to taste that carries cooking from domestic task to genuine art. Trust me: I eat very well in the Gentry household.
Ashley produced this needle-felt bunny, among many other similar creatures.
A corsage that Ashley fashioned from natural materials that she collected during a hike.
Ashley is a gifted wordsmith, which was evident very early in her life. Even as a young child, she read books with astonishing speed and advanced ability - a handwritten list compiled by my her mom shows that she read over 200 books in the 2nd grade. She can spontaneously assemble words in new, clever and often hilarious ways, and she writes very good poetry.
As a medium of expression, poetry had never captured my interest, but Ashley’s work won me over and convinced me that I would need to try my hand at this literary craft in order to impress her. By October of 2022, we had exchanged so much poetry to each other that I assembled them all in a book for her birthday. You can read a few examples of these exchanges here.
Ashley's other interests are wide-ranging: art history; graphic design; vintage decor and fashion; Steampunk aesthetics; shopping mall nostalgia; cooking and baking; ancient languages; a wide range of music, from early Big Band to contemporary Hip Hop; old movies, including film noir and Alfred Hitchcock classics. Also Little House on the Prairie. And the Twilight Zone. And Alice in Wonderland. She has a deep love for the autumn season, and for snowy weather and Christmas.
Ashley and I have developed a habit of conjuring fun, fictional characters for our own entertainment. These usually emerge in unexpected ways during vocal exchanges between us, involving voices and accents that we invent in the moment, and these have led to a long-running series of our own improvisational comedy routines, in which one character or another is deployed. We’ve performed photoshoots of ourselves dressed to match some of these roles - two of these were at Halloween, and the other just spontaneously happened while outdoors on a foggy night. It’s been fun to see the characters come to life in this way, and you can enjoy them, too - just click on each of the linked images below:
Above: Ashley as a young girl and in her early 20's.
I think this goes without saying, but I'll say it anyhow: Ashley is a beautiful lady. Her features are uncommonly symmetrical, which renders her very photogenic. Her large, deep-green eyes have been compared to those of Betty Davis since she was a teenager. As you can see in the photos above, her hair was blond when she was a child; it later changed to brown as she grew older and, despite an early effort to retain the blond color artificially, she now carries her natural brown color - which I think suits her very well, indeed. I get to see this lady everyday, folks, and that's my good fortune.
Ashley having fun during the yard sale that we held pior to the selling of my former home in Tennessee.
No, Ashley is not Hindu - but having been given a traditional garment by a friend from India, Ashley completed the look in order to capture the self-portrait above, which I think is lovely.
Ashey doing her thing: capturing video of a waterfall while buffeted by its wind and spray.
Typically, Ashley has no fondness for bugs - except in rare occasions such as this, when a lovely butterfly crawled up to her shoulder and then onto her nose.
Ashley and I at Bullington Gardens in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Throughout 2022, this rustic gazebo became a favorite place to meet during Ashley's lunch break. We enjoyed this location so much that we decided to shoot our engagement photos here; she did the job herself using a remote (examples above and below).
