Drought Lessons

What a summer this has been!  Here in the Indianapolis area, it was VERY hot and VERY dry.  Record-breaking, actually.  I have a few perennial plants that come up every year that I try to maintain, and this year, for the first time in several, I actually dared to plant annuals in the pots on my patio.  What have I learned?

1.  I have planted the same types of flowers in the patio pots for years.  As long as I was home to keep them watered, all was well.  They were very pretty.  This year, I planted the same flowers...but they didn't do well, although I watered them daily.  I (apparently falsely) believed that as long as they had water, they would be fine.  What I didn't figure was that many days of over 100-degree temps would stunt them.  Watering kept them alive but didn't keep them pretty.  Now that the temps have gone down to "reasonable", the flowers are beginnng to look as nice as they should have looked much earlier in the season.  Just in time for fall and frost!!!!

2.  Grass gives up before weeds do.  After many weeks without rainfall, the grass turned brown and crispy, but the mulberry "volunteers" and other wicked plants were as green as ever.  I know it has to do with tap-roots, etc., but somehow it doesn't seem fair. 

3.  Now that the drought has so-called broken, the grass has greened, but the other stuff in the yard hasn't.  There are brown patches everywhere, and when I came home after two weeks away at my daughter's, there was a big streak of large mushrooms in my front yard. 

4.  With the storm that provided rain for the plants came hail.  Big hail.  Hail big enough that many houses in Plainfield will be getting new roofs.  Hail big enough that my perennial hostas out front were shredded, and the leaves that came down with the hail formed a drift on my sidewalk--all dead, just as if it were fall.  The jury is still out if I will be able to get a new roof.  I never had my roof checked after the last really big hailstorm in the mid-90s.  I'm ready now.

5.  My daughter and I decided to "put up" veggies and fruits this summer.  Unfortunately, the drought and heat made that stuff hard to come by...and it won't get any easier.  Here in Indiana, for example, green beans are hard to come by.  (My sister's garden is just now beginning to produce.)  I miss my garden!!!!! 

6.  It is yet to be determined how badly this year's harvest will affect market food prices.  Meat is already out of sight.  Produce and fruit will follow.  I don't ever remember eggs being as expensive as they are now...and it isn't over yet.

I think it's time for Home Owner's Associations to give up and allow folks to plant what used to be called Victory Gardens in war time.  Thankfully, I don't have an HOA to deal with here...just lots of tree roots.  Unfortunately, many young folks don't know how to preserve foods.  Time to learn!   

   

The Fountain

A few years ago, one of my cousins in Wisconsin sent me a digital copy of an old photograph of our great-great-grandparents. It shows them sitting on the ledge of a fountain in a wooded spot with a gazebo nearby and a large building behind them. The photo fascinates me. I have researched the lives of these people for over thirty years, and each year something new is revealed. But here they are, looking at me in through the lens of a camera over 100 years after they died-- a bearded David dressed in his Civil War uniform, and his wife, Bethsheba, dourly dressed in Victorian black from head to toe.

The fountain, itself, is quite distinctive. It is tall with three tiers, each smaller than the one beneath it. Holding up the tiers is a base that has some sort of tall birds facing forward, with wings outstretched and touching each other. A work of art! I used to gaze at the photo, wondering where that fountain might be and how I could go about finding it to take a picture of me sitting in the same place that my g-g-grandparents did.

My daughter, ever the genealogist, always takes the lead in these searches. We knew that David and Bethsheba had lived the last few years of their lives in the Wisconsin Veteran's Home near Waupaca, Wisconsin. With a few little clicks on her computer, she sent a copy of the picture to an email address at the veteran's home. From there, it was forwarded to a couple of people, and within two or three days, we had the answer: the fountain had been on the Home's campus but had fallen into disrepair and removed, although it was in storage somewhere on the grounds. Awwww.... I wouldn't be able to get the picture that I wanted, but at least we knew where my g-g-grandparents were sitting so many years ago--the location of that magnificent fountain!

I've been in northern Illinois visiting my daughter and family for a couple of weeks. Last weekend, kind of as a last-minute thought, we left on a perfectly beautiful day on a drive to Waupaca, Wisconsin, just to walk the grounds where my g-g-grandparents had lived and were buried. It is a three-hour trip, almost exactly. We found the cemetery instantly, and even better, found the graves almost the minute we got there. I've seen pictures of their tombstone, which looked almost unreadable and covered with lichens. This trip, the stone was scrubbed almost pure white! (Thank you to whomever cares enough about the men and women buried there to tend to their tomstones. I appreciate it!)

After touring the cemetery for a few minutes, we drove across the road to the Wisconsin Veteran's Home, looking for where that silly fountain might have been. We were also looking for a statue of a Civil War soldier that appeared in another old family picture, thinking it must surely also be at the Home because the family was attending a "funeral in Waupaca" (which would have been one of the great-greats). Somehow, we entered the Home grounds at an entrance other than the main gate, so we weren't seeing anything promising, but we kept looking. Eventually, we did find the Mother Lode--the ring of a fountain that had been dedicated in 1894, with a gazebo nearby and a large building behind. Eureka! Even the oak trees in the little park matched the ones in the picture. What a feeling that was!

The story of David and Bethsheba has long fascinated me because he left his wife and eight children in Peoria, Illinois, to go off to fight in the Civil War (for the bounty, I am told). He returned, then re-upped in a veteran's volunteer corps. Then his term of service was up and he went home. Unable to find work, he went off to "herd cattle" for a few months in South Dakota, and that was the last anyone heard from him. Awhile later, a man showed up on Bethsheba's doorstep saying that David had been killed by Indians in SD, so she was left to fend for herself and her eight kids. She couldn't read or write, and had no skills. I'm sure life wasn't easy for her. Eventually, in her older years, she went to live with one of her daughters and family in LaCrosse, WI. When Congress enacted a law allowing a pension for the widows of Civil War veterans, Bethsheba applied for it. She was turned down because she couldn't prove David was dead. The Bureau of Pensions started an investigation that took years, interviewing friends and neighbors to see if they might know of any reason why David would simply abandon his family. They also interviewed folks in the area of South Dakota where David was supposedly killed,, and sought to find out more about the man who brought the news of Davids' supposed death. Nothing ever turned up...but by now, it was thirty years after the war. David would have been in his 70s. Eventually, somehow, a very much alive David McKinney was found in Grants Pass, Oregon, drawing his own pension. His daughter was dispatched to Oregon and brought him back to LaCrosse, and Bethsheba took him back! It was all a mistunderstanding, he said. (I don't believe that for a second, but apparently Bethsheba did.) They eventually were admitted to the Wisconsin Veteran's Home where they lived out their last few years together.

After our trip to the Home, Megan found a book about the place online and ordered it for me. There, on the cover of the book (and in several other places inside), is that old fountain! I feel complete! There were so many fascinating things about the day. Wish we had gone earlier to ask more questions. We never did find the soldier statue. Maybe next trip...