Peachy

 I am learning all about fruit trees this year.  I have had my peach and apple tree for 3 years now, but I am just now figuring out how to take care of them.  My peach tree had a yield of about 5 peaches last year.  This year when I went to check on it there were hundreds of baby peaches on my tree.  I decided to peruse the internet to see how to care for it and if there should be that many peaches on the tiny branches. I found a cute video of a farmer explaining how to care for it.  I needed to thin out the branches, trim up my tree and spray it down to keep the insects from devouring my fruit.  It was pretty sad taking off all the peaches.  Look at that bowl full.  I still didn't take off as many as the guy said but I figured I would have more guts in a week or so when it would become even more obvious that there would not be room for the peaches to get nice and big because they were crowded.  I felt like I needed a little memorial for those baby peaches that never  got to reach their full potential.  So sad, but the others will thank me.

 I also decided to finally make use of my garden area.  I've half heartily tried a couple of times, but I am not good with plants.  I did get a ton of cherry tomatoes last year, but that was the only thing that survived.  This year we've got watermelon, cucumbers, 2 kinds of chili peppers, rhubarb, zucchini, red onions, basil, and some steak tomatoes.  We had some crazy wind that crisped up all my poor plants.  My heart broke again at my failed attempt at being a farmer.  But I babied them back to life and so far they seem to be perking back up.  Fingers are crossed.  I even got going on the insect treatment because it is really hard around here keeping the bugs away in addition to the bunnies.  Luckily only 1 or 2 a year manage to find their way through the fence and into my backyard.  My apple tree looked like it wasn't going to survive last years late snowfall after bloom.  My tree looked pathetic.  In fact it still doesn't look all that great (the one on the right)  But, it actually filled out and has 2 apples on it so far.  I got it sprayed down as well, so maybe my tree has come back from the dead.  Since I was going all farmer Heath this year I went all out and got a plum tree as well.  I just keep saying to myself, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can grow a successful garden.  :0)

We did completely loose a pretty mature tree in last years late snow fall.  It was identical to the one next to the big ole hole in the ground.  Even the tree that made it was 2x the size that it is now.  I had to cut half of it down because the branches had died.  When I was cutting them all off I just kept telling the tree I was sorry and that it was for its own good.  I felt like I was living out the analogy of the olive branch.  The other tree got the top cut off and then Nate got giddy at his plan to pull out the tree using the wench on the 4wheeler.   Even using the wench the boys had a bit of a time getting the tree pulled out and they lost some tread on the tires of the 4wheeler in the process, but they were successful and I'm sure felt like real men getting to yank that tree out of the ground.  I have a new tree being delivered today.  I got another mature tree (45 gallon) so I didn't have to loose too many years of growth.  We are going to chop the dead one up into smaller pieces to use as kindling for fire so all is not lost.

My Princess

I know I just wrote about Jordyn, but I could resist documenting another incredibly sweet thing about her.  Jordyn loves to be artistic and she loves to love people.  She is really good at it.  She spent hours cutting and taping the 2 hearts she made for me.  She made one 3D and the other one is all individually cut hearts glued around the edges.  I also got a drawn picture of me and her.  She let me know around dinnertime that a surprise  was waiting for me on my bed.  Yes, that is a picture of my unmade bed.  Don't judge.  Have you read my last couple of entries about locking myself in my office like a hobbit?  Other things suffer, but not the love of my daughter and now generations of family will know all about what kind of a person Little Miss Jordy was when she was my princess.  

Adventures in Genealogy ~ part 2

After my boost in confidence and excitement of actually finding family members while at the history center, I came home and tried it on my own.  I sat down at my computer and didn't get very far when I realized that in order to see a bunch of documents I needed an account with ancestry.  Bug!  Then I realized that there really was something magic about the history center because I couldn't make any progress for 3 days.  I kept looking up the same documents over and over and not finding any new ones or any new leads.  Some of my ancestors seemed to drop from outer space with no link to them.  I did make a very important discovery in those fruitless days however.  I realized that the actual census documents contained much more information than I was looking for at first.  I was finding other relatives that lived on the same street further down the document or in-laws living down the street.  Jackpot.  I also started making sure that I marked down on my documentation somewhere occupations.  I found that a lot of my relatives worked in the same places or same fields as each other or that is how spouses met etc..  It really does tell a lot about a person and helps you to link people that may not have a common relative at the time, but you put them aside because they had the same occupation in the same town so somewhere down the line they are most likely related.

I was feeling pretty deflated at my lack of success and decided to just wait until I could get back to the magic at the HC.  I was going to color my hair before an appointment that I had, but before I made my way up the stairs I had a thought hit me.  I had been looking for any traces of a relative by the name of Tobias Witman.  I couldn't find anything.  When you do a search it comes up with a couple of different spelling options that you can browse through but I could only find a couple of documents and no parents or siblings.  Well, this thought hit me to try Toby Whitman.  So when I walked past the office I decided to sit down and try it.  I was going to limit my time on this probable dead end, but give it one last try.  I included the h in the last name knowing that plenty of people spelled my name incorrectly and that at some point we probably dropped the "h."  Well this opened a few new things.  The other thing that gave me tons of information is that from the new search I was able to find out the death of his Son who is my grandfather so I used that to refine a google search and came up with tons of indexed obituaries with that family line.  From this site I was also able to find lots of my great grandmothers line as well.  I have no idea how I ended up on this site because all the obituaries were from PA even though I hadn't included that in my search.  What really blew my mind was to find out that it was a really small community in this area and there were a few families in my line that just kept marrying each other.  Now I'm trying to sift through to see if all of them fit, if they are cousins, or just exactly how it all shakes out.  Her line was one were they had 11 or so kids and the husbands married a couple of times probably due to the death of their spouse.  It is an intricate puzzle for sure.  The obituaries also gave lots of back stories and some cool information.  I haven't made the connection yet to one of the Witmans that shot his own father in the stomach over an altercation in 1942.

Needless to say my obsession was rekindled with a little success.  The work is daunting, lonely and extremely time consuming.  I find myself getting annoyed that my kids want dinner or I need to stop to run an errand.  Don't be surprised if in a couple of years I am in some dark hobbit cave with stacks of potential family names and my highlighter.  My kids think I am a weirdo whenever I tell them, "hey guess what cool thing I learned today."  It is usually met with an eye roll and a you're weird.  My desk looks like an explosion went off and I have folders and folders of information that I can connect directly to me and other things that I am waiting for a connection to be made.  The nice thing about my family is that once the lines came over from Germany and landed in PA generations stayed put and didn't move.  My father and his 2 brothers seem to be the only ones who left PA.  My next thing to overcome is focusing on one line at a time instead of going off in too many directions at once.  I found Witmans in Germany spelled a couple of different ways dating back to the 1600's, but the records are sparse with information.  I haven't even started my Moms line yet. Oi vey!

I have a couple of favorite must haves for taking on such a work.  My mechanical pencil.  Get a good one.  It keeps a nice sharp point that makes writing small very easy.  I also love sharpies for all the extra information that I write down on census copies that I print out, especially when I find other relatives that I wasn't specifically looking for on the same document.  I use different colors so that I can add other years to it.  For example if my original is a 1900 census I add the 1910 information to the same sheet in a different color and then add another color for the 1920 census.  This helps me cut down on printing reams and reams of paper.  I also can't live without my highlighter.  It is another must have.  You need a nice big stack of blank pedigree charts and family group records.  If you get ahold of 1 of each, just make your own copies.  You need a 3 ring binder, some sheet protectors and some file folders and of course a computer.  Now you can be a crazy genealogy hobbit too :0)

Adventures in Indexing

I recently started indexing WWI, WWII, Death certificates, marriage licenses, birth certificates and the 1940 census.  I was doing this a few years ago, but stopped because life got crazy.  I started up again and they changed things up a bit with a point system for levels of difficulty which a competitive person like me loves.  Here are a few things that I have noticed.  First and foremost how important it is to decipher the handwriting on a document correctly.  That is the only way people can find their ancestors and then when you get a bunch of crazy spellings because you can't read the handwriting it makes it so difficult to find them.  There is a system in place that helps with it.  What happens is that I index a document and then someone else somewhere indexes that same document.  If there are discrepancies between the 2 of us a third person comes in and arbitrates.  This helps with the accuracy.  Then I also have the ability to challenge arbitration if I found out that the other person was chosen as correct in a document.  does that make sense?
Another thing that I have becomes obsessed with is reading everything on death certificates.  I like to know how old they were and what they died of and who signed as a witness.  It is so surreal and it makes me ponder the day when there will be a certificate with my name and date of death and what I died of.  Crazy.  There were a lot of cancer in the early 1900's dying of ear infections, the flu, strep throat and some other crazy things that we just don't really die of anymore.  I also noticed that on marriage certificates if the woman was in her 20's she was labeled spinster.  There are so many fun things you learn from these.  In the draft documents I like to read if they gave a reason for not being able to be part of the draft.  Usually men sighted their wives and children or elderly parents.  Only 2 times out of hundreds of names did I see "because I don't believe in it" and there were lots that even though they had family they didn't list it as a reason not to go.  I also noticed that even though I don't know any of these people personally I have a tender part in my heart for all of them.  It is amazing to me that I don't think of any of them as creepy or weird or mean people.  I think of them with the highest respect and regard and really just see them for what they truly are, one of God's children waiting for their loved ones to find them.

Adventures in Genealogy ~part 1

I have been putting off and putting off doing my family history for years.  I have managed to get a couple of things here and there about the very basics.  The very basics are filling out your 4 generations chart.  Well, I would loose what little I had and always thought the challenge too daunting.  The kids were asked to work on their 4 generation chart and it made me grumpy.  I was like "just leave me alone, my kids don't have it ok?  It's not going to happen."  Then my next door neighbor and friend told me that we were going to go to the family history center.  Well we never really confirmed so on the day that it was happened to be a day that I didn't feel the need for a shower before the bus stop.  I found her dressed and ready to go.  Man, I had stuff to do!  Sigh.  Ok, I decided that if she would wait for me to at least get clean I would drag my sorry behind there.  Well, while I was getting ready I contemplated several times telling her to just forget it.  The pull to my bed was too great and my head hurt too badly.  I just kept getting ready though and the next thing I know I was in her car heading to the family history center.  I told her that I was already starving for lunch and I really didn't want to be there for more than 30 minutes.  I fully expected to be sitting there twiddling my thumbs waiting for her to discover thousands of her long lost relatives.  I was pretty complacent with just having stepped foot into the building and then next time maybe I would actually find something.  Baby steps, right?  Well the older lady (Pat) that is know as a miracle worker when it comes to helping people find their ancestors wasn't about to let me sit there.  She handed me that dreaded 4 generation chart and a pencil and told me to fill it in with whatever I knew.  Well, it wasn't much.  When I handed her my finished work she put her hands on her head and said "this is all you know, oh brother."  I had "Great Nan" written in.  She wondered how it was possible that I didn't know her name.  I explained that it was simple.  I called her Great Nan and nothing else!  Well, we sat down at the computer and started with the person I knew the most about, My Nana, Olivia.  I knew her married name to her second husband and I knew her first husbands last name because that is my maiden name.  With that little bit of information we were able to go back 5 generations on my Dad's side.  Once we would find something it would trigger a memory and I could know for sure that we were on the right track.  I kept getting up and dancing and signing the angelic voices song.  What is so cool is that 1 document leads you to another which leads you to another and pretty soon you know that a few generations back your ancestors came from Germany and Wales.  Well, at the end of the 2 hours Kim was dragging me out of the history center so we had time to grab some lunch.  My head was pounding even worse than before, but I really didn't care because lame o me found my ancestors and it was exciting!  I couldn't wait to go back and do some more.

The Beauty Princess

I keep trying to explain to an exasperated Emma that her little sister loves, adores and idolizes her.  If Jordy has an outfit that even remotely resembles what Emma is wearing she will change into that.  This morning Jordy came into the kitchen and saw that Emma had her hair in a ponytail and asked her what she thought she should do with her hair.  What did she come back out wearing in her hair?  A ponytail.  Jordyn does all her own hairstyles.  She is actually really good at it.  The only time I get to do anything is when she wants a complicated braid otherwise she even braids her own hair...she's 7.  The emulation has only amped up since they started sharing a room.  She came home from school today with a fairy tail that she came up with and wrote:

The beauty princess
once upon a time there lived a princess.  Princess Emma was so beautiful.  Queen Heather would invite people to the cable o see her beauty.  Then one night a terrifying dragon stole the princess while she was sleeping.  the next day prince Tyler got the news.  The queen said, "you are the only one who can go on this adventure to go and find a talking monkey.  The talking monkey would show you where to go."  When the prince first got to the jungle he found the monkey.  He had to chase the talking monkey.  And calmed the monkey down with a banana.  He asked the monkey if he knew where the dragon's cable was.  Then monkey took him there.  The prince saw the princess and told her that he was coming to get her down.  But the princess said that he needed to fight the dragon first.  So the prince fought the dragon and got the key.  The prince went up the stairs and got the princess.  Then they lived happily ever after.

I think this story might have melted Emma's heart just a touch towards her little sis.  :0)