Tangled Roots :: Time for a Change

Saturday, September 29th - - The sign at Beverly Beach State Park in Oregon states that this is an Ancient Stump that goes...

“Back to the dawn of the bronze age! This root mass was one of many buried beneath the beaches along the Oregon Coast between Newport and Neskowin. It once supported a spruce tree, which was buried when the land suddenly dropped into the sea. It remained preserved beneath the sand for 4,100 years before surfacing and breaking free in 1998. Violent winter storms washed it into the mouth of Spencer Creek in 1999.”

The root mass was quite large, perhaps 25-30 feet in diameter and appeared to be of one piece. An amazing thing, regardless of its age, with roots going off in all directions and twisting and curving around each other.



Monday, October 3rd - - The few days I had here on the coast of Oregon were incredibly nice. The weather forecast was as nice as was predicted, and as predicted the clouds and rain returned. It's time for a change...



After a great deal of thought, and realizing (among other things) that I'm just plain tired after being "on the road" for most of the last two years, I've decided to take a break from the travels for a while. I'm not saying the journey is at an end, in some regards it may just be beginning! Yes, that's rather cryptic. Sort of follows the mood I'm in at the moment.



I've been heading east for the last two days, but not back to Indiana, at least not just yet. I'll be making a stop in Salt Lake City to do some research (for an undetermined, indefinite period of time). The ancestors have been calling me and I think the time has come that more of them will reveal themselves to me! That's what I'm hoping for... The answers are out there, somewhere, the very least I can do is go and look for them. Perhaps I can make my way through the maze of tangled roots in my family tree and expose them for their descendants to see...

Trees in winter

This reminded me of a lady I spoke to on the garden hotline last summer. She could not be convinced that moss was the symptom, not the cause, of her lawn problems.


Sapsucker art.


Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata). Until finding that link when looking up the latin name, I didn't realize that the young trees were so smooth.


Camo bark: American Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis).


A mere two years ago, this fallen tree trunk was a major obstacle on the old logging road. Once it sagged and touched the ground, it disintegrated quickly.

Yellow Wild Flower

I don't know the name of this wild flower or the name of the small red one in a previous post.

The iGene Awards for Kinexxions

It's time for the Annual iGene Awards in which we announce our “best” blog posts from last year in five categories. Created by Jasia at Creative Gene for the Carnival of Genealogy, this year marks the 5th anniversary of the awards.



And this year, the ceremony for kinexxions is coming to you from Salt Lake City! What better place for such an event? And now, the winners...



Best Picture: Going through my Mother's papers after her death last February, I discovered a photograph that I had never seen before. In Mom :: Before she was Mom I presented that photo and several a lot of others. Is this my Mom?





Best Screen Play: The post Joslin Rendezvous :: The Homestead discusses a few of the trials and tribulations encountered by Virgil Joslin when he homesteaded in South Dakota in the early 1900s. Additional material written by his son Irwin would be used to create a feature-length movie that would star Sam Elliott and Meryl Streep as Virgil and Mary Joslin.



Best Documentary (investigative research): This past summer I decided to take on my Switzer family in Columbiana County, Ohio and found that there were Not One, Not Two, Not Three, but Four of Them! with “them” being men named Jacob Switzer. One of them was my ancestor, but which one? Yes, this is one of a series of posts, all of which are listed here.



Best Biography: The rules are going to be stretched a little in that two series of posts are being selected, neither were actually “written” by me. The Life of Hazlette Brubaker presents the story of my Grandmother's life, as told in her own words, in a series of 15 articles.



The Berlin Family :: John D. and Susannah is the first in a series of articles that includes family Bible Records as well as 35 letters written between 1861-1895 between family members. (Links to those documents are included at the bottom of the selected post.)



Best Comedy: Humorous writing is not really my forte (I've often been told that I have a very dry sense of humor, almost humorless.) At any rate, I've selected One Half of an Old Mare called Van Dora for this category. Maybe you “had to be there” but finding Van Dora in the inventory of the estate of William B. Jones had Carol and me cracking up for several days.



And that brings to a close the iGene Award Ceremony for ..... hmm, well, not just yet. Since I've been doing a bit of traveling I thought I'd modify the categories in several areas and present a “travel” version also...





Best Picture: Nature's Trifecta



Best Screen Play time with Geneabloggers: Ah... Anastasia and St. Augustine



Best Documentary: It Sounded Too Good to Pass By



Best Biography Unique Event: Badlands :: Where the Buffalo Do Roam



Best Comedy: A Great Big Ball of Twine

Written for the 114th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy.

Chipmunk

Look hard and you can see the tiny chipmunk on the left side of the tree stump. We saw him last time we went to the mountains.

Ultraviolet 25 Coolum Cave Queensland Australia

Big long moves to good holds and exposure to burn. Nothing too technical, just keep hanging on untill the top.





Photo: Phil Box

Early snow

Nothing like a little snow, to bring one out of a blog slump.



Every channel forecast snow, but I didn't pay much attention to their percentage predictions. My belief that it would actually snow, in Alabama, in early December, was exactly 0%.



But it did snow, a little.



Jasmine romped. She adores cold weather.



The chickens were wary. It might have been some evil plot, after all.



I don't remember the trees ever looking so nice, after such a light snow.



I hope the rosemary didn't get too frizzen.