when it rains, it pours

Most people knew that a tropical storm was passing south and east of us, but as I don't watch T.V. or read newspapers, I was completely oblivious.  I did notice that we had - and continue to have - days and days of heavy rain.

We've had torrential downpours, during which I throw open all the windows and the doors to catch the fresh air, followed by brief periods of blazing sun, during which I run around, shutting everything to keep the humidity and mugginess out.  Thankfully, we haven't had any problems with a leaking roof or pooling water.  Everything runs downhill into the pond. 

During the brief dry periods, I've rushed outside to take photos.  Pre- and post-rain tends to offer the best light, and I always try to take advantage of that, since the skills needed to manipulate light with camera dials continues to elude me. 

That bush in the corner of our fenced-off garden is a hydrangea.

It's blue, too, which is my favorite hydrangea color.

With all the rain, I've found plenty of mushrooms.  This is a mushroom that looks a bit like a morel...

I found a whole grouping of unusual-looking mushrooms...

 I was hoping they'd have a clever name like "candy corn mushrooms", since that's what they look like.

Alas, while there is a candy corn mushroom, this isn't it.

Oh, the magnolias!

We have several of these deciduous trees with lovely leathery green leaves, but we've had few blossoms.  Maybe the spring weather has just been too rainy.  But I pick them whenever I get a chance.  They're huge!

Here's a nearly CLOSED one, next to a dime for scale.

Since they're so large, I only need one to add a little something on the nightstands.

These flowers close up at night (even the cut ones) and open in the morning, opening progressively wider and wider until they're the size of dinner plates.  It's so beautiful.

The nasturtiums I planted are opening up...

I've had plenty of chances to photograph their beautiful leaves, which hold water droplets so nicely.

The mystery berry bush below my office window is putting out blossoms in preparation for fall berries...

The hostas are sending up stalks...

...which will open into pretty flowers.  I've got other pretty leafy plants coming up, but I'm not quite sure what they are.

We have a series of bushes in the back yard with dark green, waxy-looking leaves.  Five or six of them flank the back driveway and a couple of them are at the base of our patio.  I knew they were going to bloom soon because of all the swollen buds...

I like a wild and natural look, so I took some clippers and spent some time trimming back the leaves of both these bushes and the berry bushes, which hung gracefully over the patio steps.  I carefully trimmed back individual leaves so that there was some draping but a person could still easily pass through.  I don't think my husband was on board with 'graceful draping', because the very next day, I looked up from my computer to see him cutting down huge sections of the bushes with his clippers.  I rushed to the window to stop him, but the damage had already been done.

Chop, chop...

Chop.

I couldn't believe it.  I know he meant well, but oh, the humanity! 

Anyway, a day or so later the remaining buds opened and it proved to be a gardenia bush.

They're so beautiful, and the smell is amazing.  When the windows are open, the smell drifts in.  They're supposed to bloom all summer long...I hope so!

We've seen a lot of wildlife lately.  Even though only Todd's point-and-click camera has zoom and therefore the quality is fairly poor, I've enjoyed catching these animals in their natural states.  We have a lot of white-tailed deer here...

...but so far we haven't had any trouble with them getting into the garden.

We have a family of red foxes too!  I often see them trotting across our driveway...

...and through the yard of the empty house next door.

When I was going across the side yard, I thought I saw a toad ducking into a big hole.

Since the hole is just outside of my office window, I've been able to pay close attention to it.  Indeed there is a toad living there. 

Oh, isn't he a beauty?  He's a Fowler's Toad (Anaxyrus fowleri).  Fowler's Toads have a prolonged nasal call:  click here

They are known for burrowing into the ground and I think he's got himself a pretty sweet spot there.  I've actually become very fond of him.  Every time I look outside, he's perched on the edge of his hole without a care in the world.  I hope he stays awhile!

Hope you're finding some new life in your neck of the woods.  Have a great week!

We are family

Even at a young age, I was fascinated by family history.  I pumped my grandparents for information, lore, and personality profiles of the sepia faces that stared solemnly out of dusty photo albums.  I begged my grandpa to release old photos and mementos into my care and slowly, over time, he did.

The hotel stationery where he recorded the exact minute of his marriage:

Scores of crumbling old letters:

Telegrams from World War II:

He let go of the old photos, too...one at a time.  It's a good thing he did, because his house was destroyed in a flood and the old photos I'd cached are now the only ones that remain.  So many were lost.  I got my favorites, though, including this one of my Great Grandma Grace, who was the founder of the Humane Society in Anderson, Indiana.  This photo perfectly captures her - surrounded by her beloved flowers and pets.

I knew nothing about my paternal side of the family, and my maternal family is extremely small.  There are only a handful of people that remain.  No one really remembers the old stories, and I knew I needed to find a way to flesh out the meager facts I'd been compiling in a notebook.  I decided to join ancestry.com and went to work.

Weeks of hard work and seventy-five pages later, I am really pleased with what I've found.  I knew that my grandfather came from a long line of United Brethren ministers, stretching back to pre-Civil War days, but I was delighted to find actual photographs of some of them!

I found lots of military and census records...

I found birth and death certificates, and marriage records.

I found scores of newspaper articles.  Charming articles, including one about my grandfather being kicked in the head by a horse when he sneaked away to see the circus at age 10, and more serious articles, including one that described the rather gruesome death of my distant relative Leonidas.

I knew that my grandmother had two relatives that had come over on the Mayflower, but I had no idea that one of them (Edward Doty) was the settlement punk, getting into knife fights and suing anyone who dared to cross him.  This is only ONE of the pages of his legal tangles.

Above all, I found the stories I'd been looking for.

*Second cousins who'd run away to Canada to elope, only to perish in the great typhoid epidemic in the early 1900s

*A patriot during the American Revolution that was such a thorn in the side of the Crown that when general amnesty was extended to the unruly colonies to avert war, he was excluded from the list

*A relative whose whole family was scalped and killed by Native Americans and who was adopted into another family, later marrying one of the daughters and becoming the son-in-law of the founder of New Richmond, OH

*A distant relative who was embroiled in a murder trial, accused of murdering her second husband for the inheritance (she was later acquitted)

And so on, and so on.  

I learned that Lydia is one of the most common female names in my family, and Cornelius is a very common male name.  But I found some delightfully unique names, like Mayflower, Featherstone, Mastin, Aquilla, Azor, and Greenberry. Some relatives had nicknames like "Danger Nick", "Boss", and "Jinsy".  Many were slave owners and passed slaves to other relatives in their wills.  Many fought in both the Civil and Revolutionary Wars. Some were unbelievably wealthy, others quite poor.  They were solidly German, all the way back.

I have pages and pages and pages of stories, photos, and documents.  They are really important to me and I enjoy digging through them, but I'm not sure how or if I'm going to display some of the mementos.  I may just put everything in a big binder.  I did find a really charming family tree stamp set at TJ Maxx today.

It might be fun to make a series of "mini" trees, all compiled together in one big book.  Or, I may just use the stamp set for something else.  It's nice to have options, though!

I hope you take some time to peer into your family history.  You might be surprised by what you find!

Have a great week!

In the "Click"

Recently I bought a little bird bath and staked it outside our bedroom patio.

I found it at a charity antique store and I just love it.  On either side of the basin are little metal birds.

I want to put a bird feeder in that area too, but it's hard to keep the chipmunks out.  I told Todd that I was going to grease the shepherd hook pole so they'd slide right off.  I'm still working on that theory!

I've been admiring the ferns, which are full and beautifully bronzed, all around the house.

I planted a few hostas...

...but honestly, it is really difficult to plant here.  I learned in my Master Gardener class that South Carolina once had about 25 inches of prime topsoil, but people planted so much cotton that they ruined the soil, and it blew away.  What's left now is the 'hardpan' that was once deep beneath the topsoil, and it's hard clay.

Digging a single hole and putting a plant in is like sliding them into a tough clay pot - their roots are unable to penetrate it.  You have to dig really wide and really deep so that the roots can spread and become strong enough to go deeper.

Surprisingly, we have some really vigorous worms here that seem to be able to pierce the clay with no problems.

Every morning, I've noticed lots of black beetles on our front porch.  I wonder if they're drawn to the porch light at night.

Oh, and the mosquitoes are out!  This one posed nicely for me.

His feather antennae told me that he was male.

After a recent rain, I found little slugs all over the garden.  This one was climbing on one of my vines.

Slugs' eyes are at the tip of their antennae...just like in cartoons!  ;)

The ladybug larvae are gone, and now I'm starting to see the mature ladybugs.

This one is having a leisurely time, cleaning its wings after a nice rain.

I've seen quite a few spiders, which you'd expect, since we live by the woods.  I think this one might be an immature lynx spider.  They don't build webs, but lay in wait for insects on plants.

They're quite hard to see and I was lucky to find this one.  He was almost translucent in the sun.

Another favorite is the Venusta Orchard spider.  They are quite lovely, with their black-tipped green legs and jeweled abdomens.  They build small webs between shrubs.  Venusta is latin for "charming" and "beautiful", and I would definitely put them in this category.

The most amazing insect I've seen so far here is the Eastern Eye Click beetle.  At 2 inches long and with amazing coloring, he's quite a charmer.

Eastern Eye Click beetles have 2 false eyes on their pronotum to warn off birds and other predators.

Eastern Eye (and other) Click beetles are so named because they are able to bend their bodies and make a dramatic clicking noise.  They are also able to "bounce" about six inches off the ground while doing so, which is another tactic to frighten off predators.

Seen horizontally, the false eyes are still prominent.  The real eyes are quite small and located a few centimeters above the false ones.

I've been thinking about starting an insect collection and this was the most tempting potential acquisition yet, but I just can't bring myself to kill insects for the collection, which is a pretty crucial part of the process. 

I hope to see more of these and other insects as summer progresses!

Speaking of summer, Todd and I have started eating supper exclusively in our little sun room.

Regretfully, these photos were taken on a cloudy day...but at least you can see the basics of it.  We have shades that pull down over the screens to keep the room cool.  One bamboo couch...

...one small table to eat on, and another for work (both built by Todd)...

In the corner, another door opens into our kitchen and living room.  I keep a big fern here, and I like to keep the doors open for nice ventilation.

It overlooks the little pond behind the house, and we just love it.  It's pretty sparsely decorated, but that's what we like.  We don't plan on adding any additional furniture.  The animals love it too, and they are often found sniffing the breeze through the open screens...or catching a few rays behind the computer in my office.

I hope you're enjoying the warm weather.  Have a great week!