Cindy and I went on an impromptu road trip yesterday. I did do a video of it, but blogger says it is too large to put on here, so there you go. We wanted to go and check out the Cemetery while the leaves were changing colors and see how mom's plot was doing.
As you can see it was a rather cloudy day, but in between the clouds beautiful blue sky was showing. You can see the North Mountain in the background, but not much leaf color was showing. The really reds have not yet begun to make their presence known.
We usually check on all of the graves, not just mom's. John's was looking fine. He was our younger cousin who died a number of years back. He was our Aunt Freda's youngest son.
Aunt Freda's grave was looking well. We could see that her great granddaughter Odessa (our cousin) had left her rock that she painted at the paint night for her, which was lovely. Odessa was our maternal grandmother's second name.
We checked out Abel Beals, who was one of our earlier ancestors, and his wife's grave. We checked out a lot of them actually. All were in good repair. There was a lady there from Toronto cleaning up some gravestones of her ancestors. We had a lovely chat with her about genealogy, etc. It was quite interesting. I think women are more interested in genealogy than men perhaps, but I could be wrong.
I think there is probably something inside each of us that longs to know more about our roots.
We then went up the mountain to check out some other things. This was the first school that my mother ever went to. I have a photograph actually of our grandmother standing in front of it with her school mates, which dates back to the early 1900's.
Our Aunt Freda's funeral was at the church which is just next to this building and there were so many people at our Aunt's funeral that they had to open up this old school house with a video relay for the overflow. Our Aunt Freda was that loved by many, many people.
We then went to go to our maternal Great Grandparent's farm. I have shown you it before. This is the house that our mother was born in. Mom and her sister Thelma used to sit on that front porch looking out over the valley below, scraping pieces of turnip with a spoon as a snack and treat.
This was so beautiful a farm, that people wanted to get married here and hold their wedding receptions here beneath the beauty of the orchards. It was a successful farm as well, with orchards, sheep, dairy cows, etc.
Our mother had so many lovely memories of this beautiful (once upon a time) place. It had largely become derelict, but we loved to go there and see it and think about, speak about, all the stories mom had shared with us through the years of her time spent living on this farm when she was a child.
It was gone.
Imagine our distress at discovering it was gone. There was nothing there but charred trees . . .
Charred ground and leftovers that had not quite been totally incinerated. There had been a fire. And it was just gone . . .
We don't know how or why or when. Sometime over the summer we assume. We were last there I believe in November or so of last year.
It was quite upsetting to see. We know that mom would have been totally heartbroken to see it gone, and we were as well.
The outbuildings are still there. That is only how we were able to recognize that we were at the right place.
We then went to the church/cemetery just below town to find our ancestor Brigadier General Timothy Dwight Ruggles grave. We had been saying we were going to do this for four years now and we finally did.
He has quite an interesting history which you can read about on Wikipedia, and is the ancestor that I have in common with my friend Glenna who lives across the road from me.
We also checked out the plaque that was erected to him at the park in our town. Well, him and a few others. We had not checked out that before either.
So it was quite a family history type of a day. I think we were out for at least three hours. We will need to try to find out now what happened to our great grandparent's house. I am sure someone somewhere will be able to tell us. Was it an accident? Was it on purpose? We will find out . . .
Cindy had always said if she won the lottery she was going to buy the property and restore the house to its grander days. I remember being inside the house a few times with our mother when she went to visit her cousin Florence Ruggles there. As I recall, you stepped down into the kitchen from the back porch room.
So that was our day/adventure yesterday. The rest of the day was quite uneventful. I did get to talk to Douglas after his procedure. They decided that there was nothing untoward about his stent and have just switched his meds again. They said it if got worse then he could come back and they would replace it. But there is only a 50% blockage at this point and that they generally don't do anything unless it is at 70%. So they are driving back to the Island today. Well his father in law is driving as Doug is not allowed to drive for several days. He said he was going to have a nice breakfast this morning as he had not been allowed to have anything yesterday morning.
I am going to finish clearing out the fridge today. I wonder what other surprises I will find! The mind boggles. My friend from church Eileen calls it the walk of shame. LOL She, too, lives on her own. She knows just what I am talking about. We all experience it. It is certainly a learning curve, this learning to live on your own. This trying to change the habits of so many years of having a large family, etc. to buy for and feed. You would think that it wouldn't be much different than buying and cooking for two. But it really is in a strange way. Any how that's my chore for today.
I best get going now and so will leave you with a thought for today . . .
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˚ ˛ •˛• ˚ ｜ 田田 ｜門 ★
*.˛.The purpose of life
is not to be happy. It is to
be useful, to be honorable,
to be compassionate, to have
it make some difference that
you have lived and lived well.
~Ralph Waldo Emmerson
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In the Kitchen Today, Honey Bun Cake. The small batch. A lovely 8 inch vanilla cake, with a cinnamon pecan brown sugar swirl and a sweet glaze. This is simply delicious and a very easy make.
I hope that you have a beautiful day today. You know, you all really do make a huge difference to my life. I know that there are not as many of you as there used to be, and you are largely silent. That is perfectly fine. I still know you are there, and it is such a fine thing that I have someone to share my ponderings with. I am always grateful for your listening ears. I appreciate you, I truly do. Whatever you get up to today, don't forget!
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And I do too!
