My current podcasts

Do the Thing with Melissa Urban (not all topics are whole 30 related)

Gretchen and Elizabeth (Happier)

Liz and Sarah (Happier in Hollywood)

The Moth

And I am still on This American Life app listening to their archives in order.

Hosta

I got up early Saturday morning and drove to Home Depot.

It was a ways away, but a successful trip.

Large selection of Hosta all at $2 a pot. I bought two more flats, 20 additional Hosta.

Came home and planted.

So I have put 46 Hosta in the backyard in the last two days.

Very pleased.

We also took out two small weird trees that were casting shade on my Perennial bed in the backyard.



I have mulch to spread.

I have weeding to do.

I have one small bed in the front that is 2/3 sorted and 1/3 messy.

I have blanket flowers to replace and possibly lavender to replace in the iron tree bed, which is my smallest bed (and also causes the most problems).

So I am getting there, and hopefully the weather holds. It has been nice low temps, so fabulous for yard work.

Bose

So I now have a pair of Bose (below).

And they work very well for me. The Best Buy guy set them up for me, before I left the store.

I wear it around my neck all day. I do not feel the collar around my neck (at all). And I find that collar very handy. Because I can let the buds hang down, loose, but have them handy to use.

If I have a phone call, I take it through the ear buds almost all the time. I listen to podcasts and audiobooks through them too.

If one of the kids calls, I can be doing something while I listen.

I use them while out with the dogs or in the garden.

I took me a while to get use the blue tooth. But I have the hang of it now, and do fine.

Story Worth

https://thebloggess.com/2019/05/07/tell-me-a-story/

Sarah and Liz have mentioned StoryWorth several times. I think Sarah's stepmother, who might be the only parent she has left alive, is doing this as a project for Sarah's daughter Violet, I think.

So, I wanted to mention it here, because I think it is a fabulous project.

Moving plants

It took a lot of effort over two days, but I moved the majority of the grape hyacinth from the back yard to three concentrated areas in the front.

I said “the majority” because I am sure I missed dozens.

As I am planting in the back, if I find bulbs, I will recognize/move them Immediately.

And the ones that still get missed will simply bloom next spring and I will find/move them then.

That will be welcome, because the ones in the front will have already bloomed (more sun) and I will know where I need to fill (next year).

I would guess I moved a several hundred bulbs.

So I am getting a lot of arm work.

We are solid mud here. So much rain. Both days I had to hose myself and dunk the dogs in tubs and pools.

putting old family photos in my red genealogy binders

Yesterday my mom helped me file pictures.

It rained all day, we were not able to move the grape hyacinths as we had planned.

I had a wide variety of photo pages, all archival safe. So pages made to hold 3”x5” vertical and horizontal, 4”x6”, 5”x7”, and 8”x10”. These were left from photo albums. And I was very happy to use them. Although now I need to order more 5”x7” pages.

We sorted pictures, only the ones I had in the computer room, put them in pages and then inserted pages into the corrected tabbed section of the right genealogy binder. So all the pictures of my grandma, are in her section with her papers.

My mother and one of my aunts had labeled almost all the pictures. My mom  and my aunt are both approaching 80.

All of this is because I am the youngest/last one. I am the last one who will know who any of these people are and how they fit together.

We took care of all the pictures I had downstairs. Upstairs is a metal cabinet full of pictures. Going to work my way thru that cabinet too. And my husband is going to have to help because a lot of that metal cabinet is his family’s pictures; all of his mother’s pictures came here when the boys cleaned out her houses. He went thru and scanned and emailed many identifiable pictures to his brothers, pictures of their immediate family. But he has done nothing long term, archival. Because every picture from his family is not labeled, he has procrastinated. That will leave our kids with a mess. And they do not know who many of those people are. My husband is the last one also. (We have the only kids.)

One of the genealogists at the library has two big bins of pictures where she does not know who anyone is. She has older relatives still alive, she scans pictures and puts them on an app where she wants all her extended family to log on and help label pictures. So far no one is participating. I think they are spread across the country so in person labeling is difficult. She needs to get on a plane and go to her oldest relatives, with the pictures.




I have very few pictures of myself as a child.

I have a few of my brother too. Last night I scanned and texted his pictures to my brother, my niece, my nephew. With the exception of his senior picture, my brother had never seen any of them.

And they might all be pictures I took, as a child. They look like a child’s eye. (We are six years apart).  Very candid pictures, just point and shoot. There were pictures of his 1st, 2nd, 3rd birthdays a couple early Christmases, that he did not know existed.

I have a few more that I will scans and send.

I did not hear from my niece but my nephew and his girlfriend thought they were hysterical. And I think scanned photos are more valuable to them than printed photos. (I have an office quality scanner). And it was free. And now his pictures are in a file on my computer.




I have been scanning and loading pictures on Find a Grave also. Relatives and also straggler photos that do not really have a place.

So when I have a random picture, that I do not really care about, friends of my grandparents for example, I scan it and load it to their (person in photo) grave. It gives a purpose to those stragglers.

My great uncle had two daughters and was divorced from their mother when they were very young. I had a picture of the girls together at age 2 and 3. It might be a picture their families have never seen. It is now attached to their graves.

I have been loading family pictures (attached to graves) too.

My red binders

My dark red genealogy binders all looked alike. There are about 20 binders now. Each houses a different section of my extended family. My husband’s family too. There are contemporary binders, my immediate family, my brother’s, my cousins’ families have binders too.

Middle went thru last night and put labels on the end of each one. And we lined them, across the back of the computer room counter.

So now I can tell which is which, and they are easily accessible, I think that will promote filing.

My mission is to have every piece of genealogy material in those binders.

All the papers are already filed. I add more all the time.

I started on pictures yesterday.



Anne just wrote about her own process-

https://altopower.wordpress.com/2019/04/30/2019-research-project-progress-report/