News from Home

All of you probably know already, but Caroline (Mike) & Susan (Brandon) are with child. Anyone else? You know how Cecile & I love surprises.
I think that my outside (between holiday) chores are finished. I got all the leaves in the compost. For the first time, all the leaves are out of the pool area. I have most of Cecile's rose bushes transplanted to the south side of the pool. (between the grasses) Most of the Cana bulbs are in the basement. If you want some, you can take them back w/ you at Christmas. The Christmas light are up. I had to buy 6 more strings of lights because the trees keep getting bigger. We are going up to see My Dad & Marge probably next weekend & take him his late birthday gift / early Christmas gift. Megan is home for the weekend YAaa. Christina comes home on Sundays and has dinner w/ us. I need to talk her into coming home for dinner a couple time a week.
It' a long story, but I have a new riding lawn mower. Take a guess how many lbs. of crab are in the freezer?

Change is sometimes good

The American people have spoken. That is what these elections across the USA have said. I hope & trust it will be for the best. There have been other times in history where one party controls the Presidency and the other party controls either one/both or the House & Senate. It might just be what this country needs. That is what I love about a democracy. We do have a voice, but it takes a lot of us. I don't say very much about politics or religion, but most of you are not shy about speaking your mind. A lot of what has happened to our Country is about growing pains & change. I could elaborate, but it won't help anything. People (just people) run our government. They do the same things to live, every day, just like all of us. They one way or another attained a position where they are deciding policy on things that affect our lives. That doesn't make them better, or smarter. Any of you in time could do what they are doing. I never wanted to be a politician, but I have wondered if I would have sucumbed to the same pitfalls that most of them do. Big business runs this country, or any other democracy. It is dificult at times to maintain what we believe, when the pressure is on. I have been in that position many many times.

Rare American Chestnut

The loss of these trees is considered by some measures to be among the greatest environmental disasters to befall the Western Hemisphere since the last Ice Age.
The trees could be giants. In virgin forests throughout their range, mature chestnuts averaged up to five feet in diameter and up to one hundred feet tall. Many specimens of eight to ten feet in diameter were recorded, and there were rumors of trees bigger still.

Native wildlife from birds to bears, squirrels to deer, depended on the tree's abundant crops of nutritious nuts. And chestnut was a central part of eastern rural economies. As winter came on, attics were often stacked to the rafters with flour bags full of the glossy, dark brown nuts. Springhouses and smokehouses were hung with hams and other products from livestock that had fattened on the harvest gleanings. And what wasn't consumed was sold.

The tree was one of the best for timber. It grew straight and often branch-free for 50 feet. Loggers tell of loading entire railroad cars with boards cut from just one tree. Straight-grained, lighter in weight than oak and more easily worked, chestnut was as rot resistant as redwood. It was used for virtually everything - telegraph poles, railroad ties, shingles, paneling, fine furniture, musical instruments, even pulp and plywood.

Then the chestnut blight struck

First discovered in 1904 in New York City, the blight - an Asian fungus to which our native chestnuts had very little resistance - spread quickly. In its wake it left only dead and dying stems. By 1950, except for the shrubby root sprouts the species continually produces (and which also quickly become infected), the keystone species on some nine million acres of eastern forests had disappeared.

Grandpa gave us a seedling and it grew. Our tree is now over 20 feet tall and bearing seed pods. But the seed pods are sterile and don't give us any nuts. So we planted another seedling from Grandpa and are waiting for it to mature so we can have two chestnuts with nuts.

Information taken from the American Chestnut Foundation Website