Chair #2 "My Power Chair"

Chapter 3…Chair #2 “My Power Chair”

Just couldn’t help myself…I need to leave chair #1 as when I posted the picture of my bleeding heart plant, I just have to switch and go to chair #2…..my power chair. My escape to the outside world. Boy, am I glad the days are finally turning warm as now I can wind around my side walks and check the gardens out up close. Even pull a weed or two in the process. There won’t be a whole lot of conversation this time as I want to share my yard with you.

We had winding sidewalks put in all away around the house and wide enough to hold my chair so that I could reach every place I wanted to go. I still sometimes aim that thing like a drunken sailor on Saturday nights as I get out of practice during the winter months. Raymond has more than a few sprinklers to fix due to my crazy steering. I did have the chair man come and tighten up the “joy stick” that is my steering wheel as it has been really loose and wobbly. He fixed it with a computer no less! I get to try it out tomorrow if it doesn’t end up too cold or rainy.

I want to get some pictures while everything is sooo pretty. A lot of the ground cover has been in long enough to really fill in some of those empty spaces and it is amaze of color out there. Most of the tulips and all of the daffodils are gone and the shrubs and bushes are budding. The red bud trees are in full bloom. The tulip tree was the first to come out and it never has been so full! It was gorgeous!! The rain and the winds took off the flowers really quick which was a bummer. The tulip tree is shown below plus an up close on one of them when it was half way out. The bleeding heart mentioned in the last chapter wouldn’t go where I wanted so I deleted it and put it here.

Tulip tree Tulip blossom up close Bleeding heart
Until my daughter, Mary, gets here with her camera I want to show you our pumpkin patch in 2008. The Thanksgiving in 2007 we had pumpkins around the yard and two of them were by the gate in the corner up by the street. We had forgotten to throw them away and didn’t see them until it snowed then they stuck out like a sore thumb. We just left them there as they were all gushy. We never even thought about anything growing but low and behold, we had the neatest pumpkin patch! We never did anything to them and they just got water when everything else did on the sprinkler system.

Grandpa had a pumpkin party where six of the grandkids plus a friend came and got to pick out their pumpkins. Grandpa had bought Halloween cookies and made lemonade for all of them. Evan, not even two , just had to carry his own pumpkin. Nope, no one could help him. The four boys just had to carve them as soon as they got home so they got to eat their supper by pumpkin light!! What memories. I could never imagine my mom letting us do that! These four boys have the neatest parents ever!!

Even Tanner picked out his pumpkin!

Chapter 2.....chair #1

Chapter 2 of “chair #1”

My son, David, gave me this chair after I went through three in two years. I have gotten so large and sit in the chair so much, that my weight really did a job on them. David found a real comfy one for me that promises to hold my weight and it has! Hooray! Money well spent and I thank him for it, again. Well, silently just about every day I thank him. It can roll on the carpet with ease too, which is great, as those plastic things that go under the chairs on the floor would end up like they were shredded strips in no time at all. I know, I tried it once!

My chair has seen so many wonderful things happen on the computer when I do genealogy. Ah, genealogy, my staff of life as I really think that it literally has saved my life over the last 10 plus years. I have met some of the nicest people in the whole world by doing genealogy. Hmm, that’s rather a funny sentence if you think about it …..met people by looking up dead people!!

I guess you could say I started out being really involved with genealogy when I transferred my DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) membership up here to Utah from where I was a member down in Hemet, Ca. I was involved more in the lecture/seminar part of it with my “Cemetery Research and Gravestone Rubbing “ and “Collecting and Preserving Memorabilia” talks down there.

A wonderful man in Hemet gave me a four volume set of books on Middlesex, Ma. families from the inception of the county to 1908 when the books were published. Those books have been the nicest gift I have ever received. I am really fortunate to have them as the copies people have, won’t let go of them.

After becoming really involved with the DAR ladies I ended up eventually making my personal web pages with the encouragement and tremendous help of a lady. I met Ginny over the Internet doing DAR look-ups using their Patriot books with her being one to inquire about a name she was searching. One thing led to another and I put look-up information on my web pages using those books. After that, my life really got busy and I love it.

I was found by a 90 year old man’s family and he lives down in So. Calif so close to where we did, we could have visited had we known we were 7th cousins!! His family found us via my web pages. He and his wife stopped by last year on their way to Idaho to visit that daughter and family and he was driving! What a neat visit we had. My brother Fred was here from Maine at the time too so it was extra neat. We had a lot of laughs and looked at each other palms. Okay, none of us are palm readers but it seems that some of the Bancroft’s have the same lines in our palms. Straight across from one side to the other with no break. Sure enough we three had them! Betcha you are looking at your hands about now. hehee

p.s. My bleeding heart plant is in full bloom…not very big but with beautiful blooms

"The Four Chair Club"

My title of “Four Chairs” is my way of expressing the gratefulness I feel for my life. Four very special chairs represent me in this stage of life. Each one bring their own story of my seventy five years of being able to be here, on this earth, in this place and on this chair.

Let’s start with chair #1…I am sitting in it writing this…my computer chair. This particular piece of furniture sees me more than the other three as I spend the biggest part of my days and nights here pecking out with my pointer fingers the black keys that tell of my thoughts and feelings. I keep in touch with family and new found and old friends through email or FaceBook thru these keys.

The desk where my computer sits is messy, and I generally don’t like messy but lately I don’t get upset sitting here being crowded all around my keyboard. Crumbs from the soda crackers I keep on hand for those moments of feeling nauseous, or to eat before I take my meds; crumbs from my hulled sunflower seeds and wrappers of cough drops help make the litter even more loathsome. Uneven stacks of copy papers, catalogs from the mail, computer discs needing to be put away, just stuff. Oh, my big mug of ever present ice water on my left. A tight cover on it in case my elbow hits it and I knock it over. But it is overlooked with the silent promise to myself I will clean it up, sometime.

This was never, me, Not caring about keeping everything organized and cleaned up. Oh sure, things in the past have gotten messy but I would come to a halt in what I was doing and straighten everything up and then start over, all organized.

Funny that I am grateful for mess, isn’t it, but I am. I am here…I am functioning, I am living even though it wasn’t my plans nor thoughts to have these four chairs be the center of my life. I have learned to be grateful for the little things. Being able to look out my window and see the beautiful flowers, shrubs and notice the trees are growing bigger. For just a second I do lament the fact that a lot of things need doing out there….roses need to be pruned, shrubs cut down, things weeded, vines propped up, but I just say, ”thank you Lord for my yard”…. everything will survive inspite of what isn’t done. It always does.