Fall is very much in control of the season now. Yesterday I cleared away the sunflower stalks. The squirrels had claimed most of the flower heads but there were still three that had stems that were too thin for them to climb and possibly they didn't notice them. I left the flower heads on the lawn for the squirrels and in the early evening they came (two of them) and ate them on the spot. The grey squirrels have just arrived this morning to finish off the sunflower; I just took a break from cleaning and watched that. This is definitely their yard; are they the same family year after year I have no idea but the vegetation in this area suits them very well. Beautiful black and grey squirrels with their bushy tails and their arrogant manner as they own the land they survey. They have been here likely for generations and will still be here generations from now one would hope and pray. They are part of the land for sure. Although I feel very Canadian, I am a transplant with my father born in England and my mother's line going back in Canada to her father and his mother all born here. The English blood runs thick in my veins and so English from six different areas of England - the south east, the south west, the south, the midlands, the mid to northern east and the north. Way back there is Scot from the Highlands and hidden to me even yet there is Irish back there perhaps not that far mid to late 1700s but somewhere back there I do have Irish ancestry. But really it is all British Isles ancestry - those beautiful green Isles seen by Europeans through the centuries and they too migrated to the British Isles as I do carry the blood of Europeans in my veins from way back although my Huguenots came to England in the late 1400s so just six hundred years for them.
Yesterday the basement cleaned and the painting of the red steps completed. They look quite nice and I may give them another coat in the spring since there is still red paint. My that paint just keeps coming and the level barely slips down - amazing really. The next is light blue paint from Edward's office and there is painting here and there to freshen up and a spot where Edward put one of the internet cables through the wall from a feeder to enhance his reception. Perhaps if I had noticed that at the time I would have wondered about that. Always so fastidious in how he managed everything he just cut a hole in the wall and put the wire through - so unlike him not to have put in a plate of some sort. Sometime around 2012 he put that through. I was busy with my surname studies and he was busy with his surname studies. DNA had quite captured me although mostly the yDNA at that time. I was still really just starting to look at atDNA which was more of Edward's interest. He was thrilled with atDNA as I extracted the information for him from Ancestry into a large Excel file he found the proofs for his 80,000 people family tree. The matches were enormous for him on Ancestry and everywhere else really. His colonial roots shone forth in those results. Most of his ancestors came to Canada as settlers in the early 1800s up until the mid 1820s but a few came a little earlier. A few late comers who were not American colonials came in the early 1830s from Norfolk, England and in the late 1840s and again in the mid 1860s from Mecklenburg-Strelitz now part of the eastern area of Germany. But it was all those Americans testing on Ancestry with deep colonial roots in New England and New York testing that allowed him to go back many generations with an assured proof of the likely son or daughter in each line. It was a thrill for him and he enjoyed it so very much.
Although it is said to be mostly clear in the skies it is cloudy here and I can not see the slipper moon that I saw yesterday morning early. The trees remain part of that but it is cloudy here. But it is meant to be mostly sunny with a high of 22 degrees celsius and the air quality at 33 very pleasant.
Today I clean the main floor and I will sand a dent on the wall that happened last summer. I filled it with plaster and will sand it today getting it ready for that slightly off white paint. There are a number of spots to do but just little items. We painted all of that about four years ago so still looks very nice but I will fix up the spots that need a little touchup. That will follow the blue paint. So a busy day ahead.
I also want to get back to the charting of the Siderfin Book. I think I have more or less in my mind decided how the book will flow and I just need to get that done. Likely it will take me longer than I think which is fine; no schedule for that here. Just plan on getting it done. Then I can return to my Blake and Pincombe books. Today I need to publish the Blake Newsletter and will get that up on line.The yDNA study is a bit stagnant. I realize that I am likely dealing with a lot of people with deep ancestral lines in England and can not see a value in doing their yDNA. It is the deep ancestry that is so exciting but perhaps a lot of people do not really want to know their ancestry prior to a few thousands or more years ago when their lines came to the British Isles. I think in general all populations have this migrant influence in them as people wandered about the earth with that itchy foot syndrome. Otherwise we would not be finding patches of unexpected DNA haplogroups (y, at and mt) all over the world.
Breakfast and then Latin and then cleaning the pattern is set and I just need to follow it day after day as I progress towards now 80 years of age come next fall. My parents lived into their 86th year (my mother) and 95th year (my father) and my grandparents that I knew into their 81st year (my maternal grandmother) and into his 79th year (my paternal grandfather). In the 1950s and 1960s that was a significantly long life span just as the mid 80s and mid 90s was for my parents. They saw so much; so much war and it did influence how they lived their lives. The mourning for those young people lost in the late 1940s and well into the 1950s was enormous and a huge part of our life in London, Ontario. We were a military town when I was a child and so those soldiers who walked our streets were a memory of those lost young people I can remember thinking that as a child. Our soldiers were a very important part of London until the base finally closed and the units moved elsewhere.
One thing I never realized about myself until much later in my life was how I first view people when I meet them. I needed my boss for a particular item when he was at one of the other hospitals back in the 90s. I asked the secretary that I had called to let my boss Dr. Nimrod know that I needed to speak with him urgently. I had tried a couple of means of reaching him but the meeting was rather important and I knew that although it involved mostly moving about the building where the group was meeting. She said what does he look like. So I said he is a tall man solidly built. She said most of them are anything else and whilst I was contemplating that she said to me is he black? And I said yes he is. I notice height, I notice build but apparently one of the last things I notice is the colour of one's skin. We all come in different colours even the pale white like myself - my husband had very white skin and mine is more pinkish like the English; his background being primarily Germanic. So an interesting discovery about myself when I was about 50 years old. My mother brought us up to have no prejudice if that was possible. I think she succeeded and especially she felt a very supportive attitude towards the First Nations. Way back she felt that they were not being treated as the British had intended and the treaties had been quite firm on their ownership of land. Listening to my mother was often very informative and interesting as I learned much about life in her time and especially the depression and the Second World War years. It formed her character which I find to have been quite charming in retrospect although my mother was certainly very strict during my childhood and I was probably rather frightened of her. She was a loner I would have said although very polite and perhaps one of my faults is overly polite so I tend to really put space between myself and others. But her friends from childhood were her life long friends and she loved them all dearly.
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