Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

Friday, March 2, 2012

Rainy day... Sunny day. Rainy day... Sunny day. Welcome to our Winter.

I had a great day with a friend yesterday. We even went "out" to lunch. This is what she wanted to do. I don't blame her. She has been cooped up for a few long months and when the doctor told her to start walking... lunch was of the first order.
 "J" has a temporary handicap sign to hang on the rear-view mirror and so we were able to park in a "handicap" zone, really close to the restaurant. This has its advantages in the rain.
So I took "J" to lunch. She WALKED.... no wheelchair, no walker... nothing but her willpower and a big black Velcro boot. I held on to her but she did really well.
When we got back to her house I know she was tired, but she took me upstairs.
This is her beautiful staircase.
 "J" has been sleeping downstairs since the accident because this beautiful staircase was not wheelchair accessable, as you can see.  But she climbed it, slowly, yesterday.
This is the upstairs landing...
This is a beautiful antique buffet at the top of the landing.
 In front of it is a very cute cat abode for one of "J"s four cats.
 To the right of this cat house is the door leading to the balcony where she slipped on some ice and broke her ankle last November. The door is locked for the winter now.
One of the cats was watching us from under a table.
This is the upstairs guard cat?
 Oh my! Scary isn't he?
 We  worked on some Ancestry.com relatives that "J" has been helping me find. She loves to research family history and she called me one day asking for some information about my family. She wanted something to do while she was in that wheel chair.
Thanks to "J", I now have found relatives, on my father's side that were born in Ireland in 1736. I find this fascinating. I have a lot of family that came from Kentucky, Virginia and Maryland. Amazing information.
 Of course there wasn't a lot of territory for folks to spread out into at the time, with safety, so I guess a lot of people came from these areas .
I also found out that a great, great grandmother was born in Ontario, Canada. I'm so excited about this. Her name was Matilda Ann Beckwith (A name I had never heard of before.) Her son, Daruis Henry Williams (born in Illinois) moved to Kansas and married Annie E. Cottingham (from Kansas) in 1880. They had a child named Arthur Deloise Williams (my grandfather). My grandfather married Maude Ethel Herald, moved to Southern California from Oklahoma, and my father was born in Eaglerock, CA.
Have you ever traced your ancestry? It's so exciting and interesting. You have to check each person to see if the tree is valid, if the information is true, but so far we have had very little trouble finding these relatives.
I can't wait to find out about John McKinney and Elizabeth Jane who came here to Virginia from Ireland. Now, I want to find the European connections. It's like a gift that you find after years of wondering who these people were and where they came from. "J" has found a relative that came over on the Mayflower. How amazing is that.
 I would especially like to know about  the women... who chose to marry, move to different places, leave their parent families, start their own families in a new environment and die far from their place of birth... the questions of how they lived, what their lives were like, how many child they had, which children died young and why. It's all there in the census, at least back to the 1850's or so, when the census started. But there are other places to discover information, like death records, enlistment records, genealogy libraries etc. There are lots of ways to find out about your family. It's like meeting these people for the first time and having a conversation with them. You want to know more. I'm hoping for some surprises and things that I didn't know. I can't wait to continue this on my own.
A few years ago I found out I had a distant cousin living in the Northwest. Our grandfathers were brothers. But, we never knew each other. The family didn't visit. It seems that the brothers moved in two different directions as young men. Maybe Clarissa, my cousin, and I can get some more of this figured out.
Well... This is something to work on and learn about.
"J" is doing really well and the recovery seems to be going in a good direction. We had a good time yesterday, despite the rain. It was a nice visit.
 We had two days of rain and now the sun is shinning again.This morning I went out and planted Hollyhock and gladiolus bulbs.

 This afternoon The Prospector and I sat on the porch for awhile. The Prospector hurt himself a few weeks ago. He did some 30 yr. old stuff with his 67 yr. old body and is paying for it dearly. He hurt his back and left leg. So he has been taking it really easy. He finally went to the doctor and they took xrays, gave him some pain meds and told him to rest. So he is...
He's not happy about it, but he has slowed down. He can't do much of anything.
 Carl is happy.
He sits with the Prospector and watches over him. (Notice the paw on the slipper.)
The hip and back are getting better but it will take time.
I'm doing double duty for a while but that's OK. At least it wasn't a broken back or a slipped disc.
 It will heal and then he needs to remember how old he is and be more careful.
Right, my love?
The sun felt good. I looked at my morning's work. The garden is doing nicely. It's been such a mild winter here. I feel bad even saying that with all the tornadoes back east, but we have not had much of a winter and I would like more rain before summer sets in.
This is how the front garden looks right now. Beautiful.
With tulips coming up next.
The parsley never died this year. It's still going strong.
Well... got to go and feed the goats and chickens now.
Have a nice weekend...

13 comments:

  1. This is a lovely post and so much to comment on. Love those blue flowers in your front garden, and the antique hutch in your friend's house. That is good your hubby is resting and healing, and your doggie is taking care of him, in the way good dogs do.

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  2. have a funny ancestory story for you....years ago, my grandmother traced my dads side and it went back to william the conqueror...so my mom really wanted to get hers done...and so my dad set it up, she went and they put this reports together...and she was so excited...until she opened it...the only royalty on her side was one king...his name was Fatass///true story...

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  3. oh, how I love our visits...what a good friend you have there and what a good friend you are...my my...the poor prospector....hope he's up and around soon...love the pooch on the slipper!
    love the family history...I have been doing a bit with my family...not too much yet..nothing I didn't already know...but I'll dig deeper...it is interesting
    love your garden...jealous abit.we still have cold and today rain...
    take care....everyone needs you

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  4. You've proved yet again what I have long believed - lovely people have lovely friends! I hope the Prospector heals soon. Learning to accept limitations is one of the hardest things about growing older, I think. Learning about our ancestors is much more fun!

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  5. hahahahaha Brian!!!

    Connie, your posts have been so heartfelt recently as though you are going through a transformation of your own! I mean that in the most beautiful, lovely, gentle way....so glad to know you friend!

    I'm going to go blind with the new word verification...have you seen it? Can you see it!

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  6. I'm commenting on my own post so I can see what you are talking about Pauline.
    I think I know what you mean. Some of the word verification "words" are so complicated that it takes a few times to get it right. I guess the only way to change this is to not have any protection. I'm not sure about that.
    Now, I will click on "Post a comment" and see what you're talking about. Someone else said something too.

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  7. I didn't have to do a word verification at all. Weird. I will check my settings.

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  8. studying genealogies can be habit forming. I love love love the lobelia!!!!!
    Take care of your man, it's hard on their egos when they find out their bodies are older than their will power.

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  9. Your friend's house looks wonderful. Your front garden looks wonderful! We have had a sporadic winter too, here, in Kansas.

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  10. Your flowers are just beautiful. Glad you and your friend had a good time. Hope your husand heals fast, tell me he is not 30 anymore and to take it easy. Have a blessed day. Madelline

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  11. My favorite thing to do is to dig up the old ones from ancestry.com...I too have people from County Clare and County Galway in the 1700's as well as many in Ontario (Renfrew and Toronto) who came from Ireland during the great famine...wouldn't it be something if we were long ago distant cousins?! Hope the prospector recovers in time for more on the 'honey do' list for the summer.

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  12. A lovely post, which would take a whole post to make comments!
    Genealogy is fascinating, revealing our foundations and giving us insight and understanding. The more you do, the more you want to do it.

    If I can't read the WV I just get new woeds ontil I get ones I can read!

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  13. Hubs is in your neck o'woods this week. I wanted to go and spring a surprise on you, but he said no time for playing when he has to be in the secret world of secrets he works on over there. Secrets! Hum bug!

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