Thursday, April 18, 2024

Spring is so busy and Pencombe extraction going well

Yesterday was a combined day - work outside and work inside. It is spring; that wonderful glorious time when the sun shines brightly (although hopefully rain today) and one is outside but the best part is regenerative gardening. Wonderful words; my daughter was so right. This is definitely the way to go. Generally, in the last fifteen years I would be out there working for hours in the morning digging the garden, raking and all that stuff. But now I just have to move some of that new earth onto the existing earth (and grass in this case) and then sprinkle grass seed after patting the earth down flat with a rake and the rain will come and the grass will grow and I will have not disturbed the tunneling and the movement of the insects, earthworms and everything else beneath the level of the ground. Nor will I have exhausted myself digging. 

I found the grass seed, I found the thing that lets you scatter the grass seed but will probably not use it as it is just a narrow area along the street edge. I am still going to let the blue flowers bloom and then the dandelions come although will gradually spread a thin layer of fresh earth on top of all of that. Gardening could yet be fun and interesting. I am overly content to be helping with greening the earth. 

Other than that I have barely looked outside as I am working on extracting the Pencombe/Pincombe/Pyncombe/Pencomb/Pincomb/Pyncomb/Pinkham entries from Find My Past. Gradually my new file is taking shape as I link in all those known lines to me with the proven data. My old file is good but it is limited as I did not pull all the data way back when. I was still a newbie and really why would a Pincombe in Exeter, Devon, England interest me although I noted that they were there and collected all their wills. But my understanding of one name studies has grown by leaps and bounds and now I am making up for not collecting all of that data as well. Some of it is in that old one name file but not as complete as I would like plus when I started Find  My Past was still a twinkling in the eye of some entrepreneur and not yet past that initial stage of offering. Find My Past was 1837online.com when I first knew it and certainly did not have the records that it has now. I bought up all kinds of fiche and with my trusty fiche reader transcribed earlier records in my first days in one name studies after the Pincombe Profile was produced for my cousin who had initially pushed me into genealogical studies. George DeKay passed away a few years ago and his emails are sadly missed but I still have them all if I want to remember his thoughts. We shared our mutual 3x great grandparents Robert Gray and Elizabeth Cobb. They never left England but their sons - Robert, William and James came to Canada. The first two around 1832 and the last later. I would need to look that up. George wrote a book about them and that was when I first heard about George as he discussed the Gray family with my mother. He wanted a picture of Grace (Gray) Pincombe and I am not sure why my mother did not share the one that she had actually. It is possible that at that time she did not have it and my uncle had it. My uncle was not interested in genealogy but he did save all of that paperwork which I now have. But the picture of my great grandparents William Robert Pincombe and Grace (Gray) Pincombe was in her hands when I saw it (it was in the box of pictures that my mother had given to Edward when he wrote their 50th anniversary book). Not a really good picture of Grace; one would not call her beautiful in that picture although I have seen pictures where she is one would say well presented but still not beautiful. Not all women are but she had a strength in her "Yorkshire" features that told of a woman who had had four children, first stillborn, the second my grandfather, the third her daughter who followed her mother to the grave one year later at thirteen years and another son who only lived for six months. Life was cruel to Grace but also kind in some ways. She loved the pace of life in her social circle which included her mother's sister's son Sir John Carling and all the rest of the Routledge and Carling clan in the London, Ontario area at that time. They have spread across the land from ocean to ocean now but Grace is not forgotten. She still lives on in the hearts of her great grandchildren and great great grandchildren. The story is interesting because George was writing the book when his aunt said to him you have forgotten Grace and by then it was nearly 100 years since Grace had passed away. George remedied that and called my mother and she was most happy to provide him with all the details for the Pincombe line in her possession at that time. By then we were in Ottawa living and I heard all of this and can still read it in her letters. It gave her a new avenue to look at and she picked up the traces and helped George produce that section of the book. Perhaps he was remembering that thirty years later when he asked my younger sister to write the profile. She sent him on to me. Yikes! genealogy I knew nothing about it but he persuaded me to do it (I was still working in those days) and so I took up 42 courses at the National Institute for Genealogical Studies (began that is; I would still be doing those courses long after the Profile was done (completed my PLCGS in 2007)). Who would have thought I would ever get my head out of the world of science and work on history. Except I always enjoyed history in my youth and it was just completing the circle I guess. 

However, I must get some work done. The morning is early but I need to bake some muffins to keep up my strength and my weight. There is a lot to do today before the rain really comes tomorrow. Well not do a lot just that narrow strip of land at the road's edge to add earth and grass seed. Is it too early for grass seed? Well I can always spread more later!

I have, though, barely looked outside this spring. Life has been so busy working on these books. Plus I can see all that I want to see out of the back window with the birds. This has been a great spring for birds. I really should fill the feeder but my neighbours do that and I can see the birds very well. 

So on to the day. Tea and Latin on duolingo. Then breakfast and bake the chocolate chips muffins (I can freeze them since I can not possibly eat twelve muffins in a couple of days!). In between my two sets of stretches, jumping jacks, shoulder stands and walking. My weightlifting will be the movement of the earth from the bag to the front lawn. I think I will just carry the shovel fulls to the front. Will see how that goes. Filling a wheelbarrow does seem like making work for myself when a shovel at a time could do it. Then working on Pencombe extraction and followed by a run and lunch. The day is assigned. 

Another day in God's world; would that peace could come in our time. Our brave young men and women gave up their lives more than a hundred years ago now in the First World War and eighty years ago in the Second World War so that we would have that very thing. Life may call upon us to do that for the next generation. Peace but not peace at any price. God's world deserves better than that. God sent Satan into the deep fires where he belonged millennia ago. It is not for us to judge our fellow man unless there is a debt to be paid to society but simply for us to learn to live together without greed without envy and without war. We actually do not have to bite at these wicked assaults on countries unless we are forced to do so we just have to corral the satanists (stifle their economy) who inflict such damage and pain on God's children and help those who are attacked.

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