Red Poppies

First time in many years that I have been able to raise this kind of poppy. I have 2 plants that servived. Both are in large container pots. These are the first blossoms to bloom

Kings Canyon :: Zumwalt Meadow Trail

On the morning of June 21st I moved from Azalea Campground in Kings Canyon (west) to the Sentinel Campground in the eastern side of the park, down on the canyon floor.

The scenic drive of 30 miles from the west to east side of Kings Canyon National Park takes over an hour. The views along the way are breath-taking.

After getting settled in at the new camp site, I drove the 10 miles to Roads End. Along the way I stopped at Zumwalt Meadow and walked the trail. It was a nice, leisurely walk with the river flowing on one side and meadows and mountains surrounding you on the other side.

The river alternates between swift flowing “calm” areas as shown above and even faster flowing sections of ripples and rapids.

Looking east across Zumwalt Meadow.

Who Needs A Horse?

We see a lot of ummmm..."unusual" things where we are right now. The other day we went to Dollar General and there were not one but two horse trailers in the parking lot, complete with horses. I can't imagine one scenario where I'd be driving a trailer full of horses and absolutely need to take a detour to Dollar General, but what do I know. I've never driven a trailer full of horses after all.



I see what I assume is a local person that drives their motorized wheelchair around. Which isn't that odd by itself but the way this one is decorated in all different types of decorations does make it stand out. One day it had pinwheels that had LCD light in the center. And by pinwheels, I mean maybe 15 to 20. It was like watching a one man parade and gave me a big smile when I passed by.



We see really big trucks with really big wheels on a regular basis. And by really big truck, I mean bigger than our beast. I wonder how on earth the people get inside of these trucks. Do they have to climb up on the wheels first? Is there some sort of pulley system that gets them inside? I don't know the answers to these questions, but it is beginning to seem normal to me to encounter these things. At this point, none of this really fazes me.



But sometimes I see things that still have me doing a double take. This cool car was the case today. I took my cell phone and grabbed a few shots. Then Austin proceeded to tell me that it was the Cowboy's car. Ok...I'll bite. What does that mean? He tells me the guy who drives it looks and walks like a cowboy. I guess you don't need a horse to be a cowboy if you have a car like this that does the job instead.



Ah, I love life's random things. Makes it so much more interesting than the common normal things that we see so often that we don't even really see them. Pausing to really look is a good thing. In this case it was at least.



Living the life in still so warm Florida!

Cut flowers

My gardening group was approached with a project: to grow cut flowers for Hospice.

At heart, I'm a fairly practical person. Whenever I take a personality test, the results always come back the same: Logical. A realist. Pragmatic. A huge skeptic. So why I tend to have such grandiose visions in the planning stages of all my own projects, I have no idea.

I really needn't have worried how many times a week I'd have to drive to town to deliver the multitude of stems I'd be producing. (A boundless bounty of beauteous bouquets, I was sure!)

Oh, the hours I spent, researching the intricacies of each possibility. Was it a good cut flower? (Did the bloom last?) Could I grow it from direct seeding? Did it fare well in the south? Did blooms emerge within a reasonable time frame? Did googling the botanical name produce pictures that looked even remotely like the glossy catalog photos?

Finally I had my list, and ordered 15 varieties that seemed the most promising. We were late planting everything this year, but since we have such a long growing season that's not a problem.

Apparently though, the only thing I can grow is Zinnias. And a sunflower or two.

Technically I did have one California poppy. And there are some African daisies and Cosmos plants that have lots of foliage on them, if no blossoms yet. But mainly, just Zinnias.

Porkypine Canyon

On this day we decided to go to a place we hadn't been to for about five years, Porkypine Canyon, or that is what we call it as the first time we went there we saw a porkypine. This was about 25 years ago. Porkypine was wattling along down the road but when it saw us it went up into the rocks. I don't think it was the rocks I took so many photos of this day but a simular bunch that I didn't get a photo of. I really like this jumble of rocks with an almost square rock sticking up like a giant childs lego block. It was squared off so well it looked like it had been done by a giant machine. We didn't find any porkpines this day but did see a lot of fresh deer and elk tracks.

Curiosity won - and So did I...

Quite often I get frustrated with using online trees, particularly those on ancestry.com but I continue to use them for clues. And sometimes you get lucky if there are sources attached, which doesn't happen all that much.







At the time I was checking these trees last week, I already had a record of Dietrich's baptism but decided to click through to see what the record was because it looked like a different source than what I had.







I was surprised to see an image. Other records of baptisms I'd seen on ancestry were like the above but without images. I was a bit disappointed because it appeared to be the same document in my files. But I clicked on through anyway.







The above is a portion of the page. The entry for Joh. Dietrich is 3rd from the bottom. Looking at it closely I noticed that his sponsors were different than the record I had. The copy I already had shows the sponsors to be Dietrich Schadler and wife while the sponsors for Johannes (just above Joh. Dietrich) were Joh. Schwenk and Regina! This is apparently another transcription of the records. But how could I know which is correct?



The other thing I noticed, which I've circled in red in the above screen shot, is the number of images for this record set. Curiosity got the better of me and I started “jumping” through the images a hundred at a time. Image 150 looked like a journal or diary as was image 250. But image 350 displayed baptism records written in German Script! I had landed on baptisms for the year 1758 so started going back 20 pages pages at a time. Image 310 was for August 1751 so back one more page and there in the lower right corner was the entry for Dietrich! How cool is that!!







Above is a portion of image number 309 with the year 1751 at the top of the page. The entry for Dietrich is on the second line. It shows that his parents (in the first column) are Michael Hofmann and Maria Engel. The second column shows Joh: Dietrich born 22 June baptized 21 July. In the third column are the sponsors Dietrich Schädler and wife. No, I don't read German but this was, luckily for me, quite legible. And of course, having the transcriptions helps.



If you have an ancestry account and are logged in you can click on this link to get to the full image. There are two pages per image and Dietrich's entry is at the bottom of the second page.



This is part of a larger collection of “Pennsylvania Church and Town Records, 1708-1985” which ancestry added and which Randy Seaver wrote about in January. Being a little more curious, today I took a look to see what all was in the Montgomery > New Hanover > New Hanover Evangelical Lutheran set. You have to have an ancestry.com account to view the images.



“A List of Baptisms from 1740 to 1825 as they appear in the records of the congregation. New Hanover Lutheran” begins with Image 1.



A Diary or Journal begins with Image 141 which is dated 1865 Cheltanham, Montgomery Co. Pa. I didn't take the time to determine the writer. It begins in 1865 and goes through 1893. There were names written throughout. The first few lines of the first image: 6th mo 8 oh 1865. Our wedding day, were married at Germantown Meeting. A warm tho. pleasant day. A good many friends to dinner, more to tea, about 50 beside our family. Our bridesmaids and groomsmen all went home with us and spent the night. They were Enos Laikin and Mary Ann Imes, William Taylor and Mary A. Ogborn, Morris Ogborn & Susan Leattergood.



Miscellaneous Documents starting with Image 267: Permission to microfilm, then documents relating to the incorporation of the German Lutheran Congregation. Some documents in German Script, later ones in English.



Baptism Records in German Script begin with image 280. They start in 1744 and continue through 1878. Marriages begin with image 683 and go from 1809- 1882.



Deaths start with Image 721. The year 1886 is on the first image and 1884 on the last of 10 images so they aren't in any kind of order.



There's a bit of the history of the congregation, lists of Members and Communicants 1855-1919, Baptisms of Infants 1885-1912, Marriages 1887-1912, Burials 1886-1913 with a notation on the last page that there were “500 funerals at New Hanover to date”, more Communicants 1906-1921.



There are 20 images of German Script dated from 1744-1765 appearing to be congregation history and old records as well as several pages of signatures (in German) dated 1765-1790. And finally, Miscellaneous Records in German Script 1766-1796 (marriages, lists of trustees).



It's truly amazing the various types of records found in this data set. Most of them are of no use to me since my ancestors were gone from Pennsylvania by the late 1790s but what I found there (the baptism record of Dietrich Hoffman) is absolutely fantastic!

Swimming With the Manatees