A little cooler this morning but will again be a warm day but we had a good rainstorm last evening. The greenest summer that I remember for a while and the garden has been beautiful and the weeds very plentiful. Tomatoes have come on very well and pick them most mornings. Lettuce pretty much finished and the peppers still working at becoming peppers - lots of flowers.
Church of England today is at St Marks, Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire. About 60 kilometres from Beverly East Riding of Yorkshire where my Gray family lived at Holme in the Wolds near Beverley and Etton. Living near the North Sea must have been an interesting life I rather think but then living near any large body of water is different from living inland. I have enjoyed living along the Ottawa River these 46 + years now. We used to be able to see the River from our top windows but obliterated now by many streets of houses. Somehow though it is now really practical to drag one's kayak over there and kayak!
Yesterday more work on my pile of scanning and I hope to complete it by week's end. It is letters I discovered in other than the bag that I kept them in and put into my box to scan sometime over the past decade or so. The time has definitely come as I wait for my new glasses to arrive. I uncovered a picture of my father and his parents - it is a miniature of the larger picture of them which I scanned and sent off to my siblings. The original picture (large one) remains in England likely with my second cousins; I think that I understood that from their last letter a few years back now. Really I must get to writing occasionally. You could clearly see that Edward (my great grandfather) had strabismus in his eye as it was quite crossed in the larger picture - not so noticeable in the smaller pictures. He was very insistent on his children going to school until they completed all that they could at the local school before going into the trades with my grandfather being a blacksmith. Perhaps his strabismus limited his time in school; not sure about that.
When Grandpa talked about his father you could tell that his father had been very strict. One of his memories was his older brother and himself playing hooky from school and his father tracking them down and dragging them to school and he was not happy about it. They didn't repeat the experience - I think Grandpa said he was seven at the time. I have a wooden picture that Edward gave to my grandfather and grandmother that had been a wedding present to Edward and Maria Jane but I have forgotten all the details just that the picture came to Canada with them. I have treasured it all these years and it hangs on my wall and will be with me in my one-room aspect if that is how I find myself at the end of my life in a nursing home or something like that. The plan is to be independent but I am prepared for whatever happens. I think it maybe works better if you are prepared. My father did not enjoy living in a nursing home for seven years for sure!
Time for Church and then exercise, breakfast already completed and then latin. I started into a new section with fifteen new words. This is going very well. I am becoming comfortable with latin and having that be my prime item to do during the cataract surgery was a very good plan since I had help when I could not really read the material but still learn a new lesson orally. It worked perfectly.
God's blessings on the world today and on the Olympics ongoing. Congratulations to all the Canadian athletes on their efforts - sometimes it doesn't work but the actual value is in doing it more than winning it. Winning though is always nice I am sure but being part of it must be a life winning experience. Something to enjoy thinking about in the future. Our American neighbours continue to have the most medals (61 looking at Day 9) and are next to China which has 16 gold and the USA 14 gold. We now have 16 medals - 4 gold, 4 silver and 8 bronze. 63 countries have now won at least one medal which is wonderful to have so many of the 206 countries competing medalling.
No comments:
Post a Comment