Spring Blooms Spring Moon

A varied and eventful week! Again we had a visitor from the NW and a nice visit too getting caught up about friends and family. Last night, between 3 am and 4am I snuck a peek at the total moon eclipse and could see it from our back window.

And the blooms are everywhere! We are going to actually plant even more blooms in the coming weeks. We are planning to convert the former vegetable garden to a flower garden.

The moon was interesting last night and almost looked "striped" at one point. We are lucky in that we have nice views of the sky here in this house -- our previous home was surrounded with huge oak trees which were beautiful but their umbrella-like coverage only let in small pieces of the sky.

And going back to the previous home in San Francisco, due to fog, very little of the actual sky came through visibly.

Speaking of Vision

At our time of life, vision can be an issue. Especially if your hobby taxes your ability to see tiny pieces of your work,

Gail needle points a lot and has many many examples of her work around the house. Lately she had taken to using two magnifiers and a bright light to aid in working on the intricate details.

But now, two days ago she received her Craft Optics lenses that she wears just like her glasses and is able to "see" her work comfortably.

These telescopic lenses look similar to the glasses that I've seen surgeons wear. They do take getting used to but so far they are doing what they should do.

The glasses come with a new pair of prescription lenses made from Gail's most recent prescription and the telescopes are positioned in front of them.

The high intensity light is an extra but we think a must-have. Very slick set and for her hobby work very much appreciated -- unfortunately the needlepoint that she just started is a "large" scale version that really does not require as much magnification. But she has plenty small scale pieces coming up.


And the Herb Gardening

About every three days we have to "harvest" our indoor herbs. It is amazing that they grow and continue to grow so much.

We now have our drier positioned next to them and as we harvest -- we dry.

I can see why herbs are so expensive in the store because after you dry these herbs, they shrink down next to nothing . . .

We have a nice set of herb jars labelled and ready for production -- it will take some doing to fill them. But we enjoy the farming . . . whether we ever enjoy the produce, that's another story.

Thanks Cousin(s)!

This week, in GENi I saw that Melissa Guensler found out how she was related to both our first president and to our latest president.

Well, since Melissa is my (our) second cousin then that means I too must be related to those same presidents.


Melissa Shumaker Guensler is the granddaughter of Harold & Nettie Hiles and her mother is Iris Hiles. Any one can check in GENi  to see how they might be related as well.

So, I did check:

Above, you can follow the paths to see how I am related to George Washington and how I am related to Barack Obama (per GENi).

Melissa and I are related to these presidents in the same way which is not surprising. Any of the rest of you are probably related in the same way depending on how you are related to me (or Melissa).

Thanks to another Cousin!

Thank goodness for Cousins.  Because I receive some really good ideas and tips from many of them.
As a matter of fact, cousins are really the only relatives of mine that I receive much feed back from.
And the interesting thing is that before working on this blog or on genealogy, I did not even know most of them (the ones that I hear from).

Last post, I had mentioned that I was looking for the connection of our family to the presidential Harrisons. At that time I only found one Harrison in our tree but it came in a branch that I was not expecting -- my paternal side (Hiles) as opposed to my maternal side (Bumgardner).

I identified Louisa Harrison as marrying Jeremiah Hiles and so I was going to climb that Harrison branch in hopes of finding the link.

But things have changed:

Thanks to another cousin (you know who you are) I was sent the above marriage information for Jeremiah & Louisa HARRISON  Johnson -- of course it still has to be verified as a birth name Johnson or a married name Johnson, but so far this is the only evidence that I have.

So now I have my work cut out for me -- I have not found any supporting evidence as to the family and I have had to "unconnect" some of the Harrisons that I connected to last week . . . oh well, that is not unusual.

And Lastly

A major challenge this year and a task that kept me away from doing "fun" things has been taken care of, at least for now.

Taxes are due in about ten days April 15, I managed to beat the deadline and have electronically filed as of April 1.

Both the IRS and the Franchise Tax Board (CA)
have accepted our return -- that doesn't mean that they agree with it -- only that they have accepted it.

We'll see about agreement in the coming months . . .


That was a bit of our week. Have a great Easter and we'll see you all "in a few"!