Lawn Cutting, weeding, and spreading earth for planting grass

 Another busy day outside as I think fondly of winter to come. The tomatoes though are really tasty this year, the peppers very good as well and the beets and carrots to come. There is always something to weigh in on this heavy work that makes it all seem like an interesting sojourn. 

Still nothing done on the newsletters although I am starting to think about them and what I could write. 

Slow day today

Today I felt 74 years of age. I seldom have migraines but today one took hold and really only released me mid afternoon. Interesting phenomenon migraines. I have had them most of my life but the next day I am just fine. Hope that continues for a while yet!

Downsizing once again

I have two tables one of which belonged to my grandmother and one which belonged to my grandfather. The one table is quite small, more of a stool type thing except was probably used for plants which my grandmother Blake loved judging by the pictures that I have seen. The other table is one that my grandmother Pincombe used for her violets when I was a child along with several other tables. She had quite an assortment of violets when I first started going to her house on my own regularly (I was eight years old and until I married at 20 I went to her house every week pretty much). I still went to see her but not quite as often as life just became busy with me working and I decided to take some courses that year. However I did talk to her on the telephone a couple of times a week.

I need to ask my siblings, nieces and nephews whether they want these two particular tables before I take them to RESTORE (if they want them). Otherwise I will have to find another way to downsize them over the next little while. I need to keep downsizing and I have not kept very many things that  belonged to my family. Size was very important in my thinking. With these two items I just have a rocking chair that was my grandmothers left in terms of size. My workroom now holds everything that I want to keep but there is a large proportion of items in there that are not going to be kept as I continue to downsize. COVID-19 has made our passing books on to users stop. We have passed on to various repositories/libraries nearly three-quarters of our books. But there is still a lot to donate. 

My Pincombe line - DNA

Another interesting match on 23 and Me on the X chromosome. I finally have a semi-verification for my phasing of the X chromosome. One of my known Pincombe side cousins matched me on the X chromosome but the length was too short to be sure. Because her test was not on 23 and Me I do not have actual verification but the overlap with four other matches is now interesting given that one of the matches has ancestry back into the area near Bewcastle, Cumberland where my great grandmother's mother's lines were located prior to coming to Canada as my first Canadian immigrants - Thomas Routledge and Elizabeth (Routledge) Routledge and their nine children, son-in-law and two grandsons. They arrived likely in the summer of 1818 and known to be here by the late Fall of 1818. But as always with DNA one must do the family trees which I may just have time for in another six months! The phasing of the X chromosome with five siblings is fairly straightforward and you just really need a good match on the two sides to cement that phasing. But I do not have any first cousins and my mother's father was the only descendant of his mother (granddaughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Routledge) so finding that definitive X chromosome match with a really good length (the four that I have on 23 and Me are all around 20 cM or greater) is still a challenge.

One of my maternal grandmother's two sister's descendants testing would be helpful but I prefer to wait on them wanting to test and share their results. As the results pour into my set of accounts, it is gradually verifying the phasing of my grandparents. I also have some good information on my great grandparents phasing and may try to start painting that information this winter if time ever comes my way!

Continuing on in the vein of what to save

I have written my mother's story and it was surprisingly 285 pages long. I did insert portions of her letters into that story but the beginning was just what I remembered from my grandmother, mother and uncle Ed (brother to my mother). Towards the end of the 1980s my uncle Ed insisted that we drop by their home in Toronto whenever we went through Toronto on our way home. My uncle had been good to me as a child so found that really hard to refuse and we did endeavour to stop at least one of the ways through Toronto. After my uncle\s wife died we made an effort to go and see him monthly until he was taken ill and that was at the time of SARS in Toronto. I worked at the hospital here in Ottawa and would have had to be away from work for two weeks if I went to Toronto so did not go the last couple of months before he passed away. However I phoned him quite often and we wrote back and forth. He had put together an envelope full of pictures and other material that he wanted to go into his story. He was of a mind that my husband would write his story because Ed had written a story book for my parent's 50th wedding anniversary in 1988 (I helped a little). I have now written that story and I think he would be pleased. His story was 78 pages long. I knew some of his story and the records that he provided supplied quite a bit more. Since he did not have any children it was basically a story of his life in London.

What to do with all this material is a mystery. I have a box with the material that my uncle gave to me which is all scanned but I am finding it impossible to destroy the originals. He was a busy person in London; had his own store for years that I may ask if the London Public Library would create a Fonds for his records. It would not be that large but in years to come researchers may find it handy to understand the independent grocers who early on in London formed an association creating many many grocery stores that initially supplied the city until the larger companies took over.

It is something that I had planned to handle when we were to go to London last year but my fall resulted in our heading home much earlier than planned. Now it must be done by mail and I have not yet sat down and written those letters to see what I can put together along with the material that my sister has from my uncle's home as she completed the task of collecting material there.