Ten Things of Thankful

This Easter will be unlike the Easters most of us have experienced in the past, but I hope that it will be especially meaningful, in a good way, for each one. I am linking my Ten Things of Thankful post to the blog hop hosted by Kristi of Thankful Me. 

When I descend our hillside, I am pretty careful about where I place my feet, for fear of stumbling on a branch, turning my ankle, or worse yet, falling.  The other day I was thankful I was being so careful,  so I didn’t step right on top of this little garter snake. They are perfectly harmless, and this one was probably no more than 18” long.

This garter snake blended so well with the dead
leaves and fir cones that I almost didn't see him.

The weather has been nice enough that the grass growing on what we refer to as our yard had reached the point we didn't think the deer were keeping up with their job of mowing it, so Vic was able to get out today and mow most of it.  There are three thankfuls here. Yeah, that the grass was dry enough to mow. Yeah, that the tractor mower started right up! Yeah, that Vic had  the energy he needed to do the job.

I don’t even remember how long ago it was  that Vic planted an eco-lawn mixture of seeds, but after all these years, one of the things that continues to come up  are some English daises. I love these little flowers. When I attempted to get down for a close up of some of the flowers, I ended up with an image that reminds me of a painting! I really like  being a painter without even picking up a brush, nor using Photoshop or an app to end up with a similar image.

A photo of English daisies that looks more like a
painting than a photograph

Without availability of foolscap paper in 1887 my 76-year-old great-great grandfather may not have written his 32-page  autobiography.  Punctuation and capitalization was predominantly lacking, so it is a challenge to read it, but when I first received a copy of a copy of it in the mid 1970’s, there was nothing that kept me from doing everything I could to figure out the letters and words. I kept a large magnifying glass nearby when some of the letters seemed to have faded right into the paper.

Page 1 of the autobiography written by Valentine Kimes Jr.

William F. Kimes, another descendant  of Valentine Kimes, Jr. also received a copy of a copy of the autobiography from the same relative about the same time that I did. Not only did he tackle the job of reading it, but he used the opportunity as a time to develop a new talent at age 70, to print the autobiography with hand-set type! The end result was this little book, all handmade.

Needless to say, I am thankful for the the descendants of Valentine who have had such an interest in this family, like one of my aunts who was so good to write letters to her  parents, her brothers and sisters, her aunts and uncles, her nieces and nephews, etc. If it were not for her, I would not have known about the relative that had the copy of the copy of the autobiography, and so many of details about the family.

After a couple of weeks, my body has made a lot of progress in trying to regain flexibility . Now I am able to move  more easily and the wincing  is mostly gone. That  improvement allowed me to be able to find that certain little book that I knew was in one of the boxes full of items we are storing.

The Worldwide Fast on Good Friday brought people of many faiths together in a common purpose. I am deeply thankful for this.

The time that I have had and have used to more fully contemplate the celebration of Easter has made it so much more meaningful to me this year. 

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