Southern Virginia will be featured on a new reality TV series Friday night, "Who Do You Think You Are?" (8pm, NBC).  Emmitt Smith, the NFL's all-time leading rusher, was in the area last spring  to film the show, which traces his ancestry back to a horse and slave breeder in Mecklenburg County.  During filming Smith stayed at Berry Hill and a number of the interviews that will appear in the show were filmed at there.  For more information, read the article on the News & Record's website.

Though you wouldn't know it from looking at my yard recently, I'm a Master Gardener.  Each month Bill McCaleb, Halifax County's Master Gardener Coordinator, puts out a list of gardening tips for the month and I'll share them on here.

I've been living back in Halifax County long enough now to start taking things for granted again, and sometimes it's refreshing to remind myself how nice life is here in Southern Virginia.  I was born and raised in South Boston but lived in Jacksonville, Florida for about 15 years - from the time I got married, until 2001.

When we first moved to J'ville we lived in a suburban area that had very recently been farmland; we had one movie theater, a couple of shopping centers, and a few restaurants - even though we lived within the city limits of a million-person city.  By the time we moved up here, our area had exploded; what used to be a 10 minute drive had turned into a 30-minute drive. Traffic was unpredictable, roads were constantly being worked on for expansion, and it just didn't have that friendly neighborhood feel anymore.  On the positive side, though, we had a 20-screen megaplex and a large mall about 10 minutes from our house, season tickets to the Jacksonville Jaguars, and lived close to the beach and the intracoastal waterway.

If you're interested in blogging about life in Southern Virginia, we're interested in talking to you.  SoVaLife.com was started to provide a place for people to get more information about life in the area, things to do, places to go, etc.  and we'd like to have people from various backgrounds as contributors.

Whether your interests are  in sports, gardening, dining, the arts - pretty much anything! - and you have ideas for short articles you could contribute, just let us know.