posted March 09, 2019 05:02 PM            

Spring is almost here.
I'll have to see what I can 'cook up'!

Some of the things I found from 1800s and 1900s cooking and gardening have been interesting. Maybe can be applied to today...

(music) Make Our Garden Grow (Barbra Streisand, song by Leonard Bernstein, from Candide) [5:44] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ7BhQw0gCY

Please Recycle

posted January 23, 2020 12:36 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by mirage29:

Had prepared URLs for postings for several previous months, to 'match' the general theme of the month-- and got interrupted too often and too many times.

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^ Still applies!! I like that topic. I like *ahem* 'digging-in' to history and stories of how folks survived back in the older days.

I remember my Scorpio Grandmother's basement. Had an entry way even-to the driveway.

She used a washer where she had to wring clothes through some rollers. I had even seen a concrete-sink that had washboard with it. (Washboard... looks like window shutters!)

She used to can things (in glass mason jars) from our huge garden that was big-enough to grow for all the many-extended relatives, PLUS an ability to sell food at a stand they would erect at the intersection of two roads by a huge field. (I remember that.)

Thing that was really fascinating was the stove she had in that basement. She could fire it up (with wood or ?coal, I'm not sure), and this would heat up the surface. She could cook on it. Vented to the outside.

They even had a coal furnace that they'd stoke. There were grates on the floor above the furnace that would allow the heat to rise into the house.

This house was built by my Taurus Grandfather in the early 1900s. They built two rooms onto the building, later.

One of those rooms was off the parlor.
Had a piano there.
I recall there was a long curved arch at the ceiling that acted as a kind of partition.

When relatives would die, my grandparents would have that person's casket/coffin set up in that piano room. {In our modern days now, there are Funeral 'Homes' that host the caskets.}

The other room they added was for my grand-uncle-- a Monsignor-Reverend in the catholic church. This room was for his get-aways from the church parsonages. He had been a super-pastor, and managed two churches in the diocese.

After we moved 400 miles south (when I was a child), we'd see this uncle. He would stay with us. He would have to travel to various diocese to participate in the ritual of installing new Bishops in these places.

I had stayed for a month at my Scorpio Grandma's home one January. My 'Uncle's' room was VERY cold!!

She had a big maple tree on her front lawn.
My grandfather used to drill in and hammer a 'shunt' into the trunk of the tree. A metal pail was hung below it, to capture the sap that would run in the tree during winter months.

Such a strange thing to ponder... A tree in the winter time, standing bald without any leaves, is so very Alive, Within.

(music) Sure on This Shining Night (Samuel Barber, perf by soprano Christine Powers) [2:31] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495FwRQWNNU

lyrics
Sure on this shining night
Of star-made shadows round
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground

The late year lies down the north,
All is healed, all is health
High summer holds the earth,
Hearts all whole