Still some smoke in the air likely but it is a beautiful sunny day. Will we come to dread the bright sun; I hope not as it is the busiest time for the birds and animals. Since I am old I can just enjoy all that warmth but the young people have to live in this world which we have helped to create and starting now to work on Climate Change is such a necessity and not to push it off onto the future when the need is more desperate.
The trees around me are starting to be the biggest feature in the landscape as the stretches of blue sky is now visible behind their hugeness. But they drain the land around them; their need for water is huge and their roots reach everywhere. Love the trees though and their leaves hold the moisture for a long time. after a good storm. Gardened yesterday and gradually we are seeing the rows emerge although the herbs are still hard to weed.
Kayaking yesterday was quite lovely. There were at least six beavers, two great blue herons and an entire family of Canada Geese on the water - parents and six young. The beavers were very curious swimming in tandem with us but they were still quite far from us. It is nice to see them curious instead of frightened.
No work on research yesterday; just thinking about it but did send off the completed Blake Newsletter to my guest columnist to read his section. So that is in good form for the first of July. June will pass quickly with all the kayaking, the gardening and the cleaning. But then summer is always very quick and I do not actually mind as the winters are long and lots of research time.
Prayers for Ukraine as always; Glory to Ukraine. They deserve a better life than what has been handed them for over a century. Their deep ancestry makes them more independent; wanting freedom to chart their own path in the world and there are more than 40 million of them; it isn't like they are a few thousand people trying to make a point; they are millions and the Russians have tried to kill them off before. It is nice to see the Freedom Fighters of Russia helping Ukraine and trying to get rid of the psychopathic Nazis Putin and his enablers.
On to the day; another cleaning day and then back to research once again. But intermingled with kayaking and walking; a summer break so to speak. We are planning the full eclipse of the sun next April; we are about an hour's drive north of the full eclipse so will do that. It is a while since I was right in a full eclipse - there was one when I was a child. Solitaire games completed once again and we are 2/3rds through June already. June passes quickly as usual. Not enough rain this June but still ten more days so perhaps a couple of good rains. Then into July and other than pretty much always raining on the first of July - Canada Day - there isn't always a lot of rain in July.
Getting my tea today and the words of "Jesus Christ be praised" were in my mind. I never know what brings various hymns into my brain at any given time but I do love hymns and yesterday we had four lovely hymns to sing in the service. Looking forward to the new canon at the Church with his wonderful sermons to be. I do so enjoy a really deeply researched and biblically resourced sermon although the present sermons are very interesting but bringing up the history and the interesting tidbits of research and telling the stories of the days when Jesus walked the earth with his stories of the greatness and wonder of God His Father are truly magnificent.
My only time to go back to a University course on campus was a course on group therapy at St Paul's University - excellent professor and I was tempted them to pursue a little more of that type of course work but along came George DeKay with his needed profile on the Pincombe family and I never really got back to thinking about that. Instead my destiny was to do surname studies first looking at two of my mother's surnames and one of my father's surnames. I wasn't bold enough in 2006 to take on Blake (did do that in 2011) but rather took on Pincombe and Siderfin (my mother) and Lambden (my father). The names were interesting and somewhat smaller studies. I read all the posts that came from the Guild and along with my course work that I completed in 2007 I launched myself on my retirement research plan. Way back in 2007 I was just 62 (and now approaching 78) and I mapped out a sort of plan in my mind of doing this research into my early 70s and then publishing what I found. The publishing started on time but the focus changed from a more general look to a specific look at Blake (the Andover, Hampshire, England Blake family), Pincombe (the Pencombe family of Herefordshire which appears to have gone with Lord de la Zouch to North Molton, Devon in the latter part of the 1480s), and the Siderfin family for whom a book had been produced by James Sanders in 1912 which did need some updating. Initially I thought this would be a small project but as the data flowed in I realized that he had made decisions based on what was available to him and some of these decisions were limited by the data he chose and so the rewrite of the entire book basically as a new book is in progress. The Charley family book was a motivation for sure although I simply retyped that one which I discovered in a bookstore in England so that it was available to researchers since few copies now seem to exist. Doing that sent me on to the Siderfin book since it too had a few inaccuracies which I could correct and simply republish but not to be; the total rewrite is in progress and the most difficult chapters have taken quite a bit of time but when I move on into the 7th and 8th generations that will be much easier as the records are more available, there are more records and I am getting into what I call the near present - the 1800s.
Then when Blake and Pencombe have been completed moving into some of the other surnames (Rawlings, Beard, Buller etc etc) for whom I have collected information to look at them probably just with respect to my own line but that could vary - definitely Buller is in my mind but it will be difficult. As a family I first find my line in the Bermondsey area of Greater London with Christopher Buller born circa 1764. There is a lot of information on Buller but is that my line? I need to do more collecting of information to see what I can find. Lots of Buller matches particularly those that I can pinpoint as being descendant of Christopher Buller and Mary (Beard) Buller who married in 1794. But that is in the future and I avoid getting too into thinking about that (my maternal grandmother was a Buller). They are a very interesting family actually with one foot in Birmingham and one foot in London - going back and forth it would appear on business. Sadly my grandmother's grandfather died suddenly in London (leaving his wife and ten children (eleven initially but one died as a young child) who moved in with her mother) and her father fell out of favour with his family due to marrying a woman with an illegitimate child (not his he was in South Africa as a medic during the Boer War). An exciting family as it appears to have run away from his apprenticeship with his uncle to join the military. Finding anymore information on this line will be a difficult process I think.
Onto the day and breakfast soon. It will be a busy one.
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