More Lewis & Clark Plants

 Lewis & Clark documented many other plants besides Lewisia and Clarkia. 

In their journals, they noted Balsam Root, Prickly Pear Cactus, Glacier Lilies, Silky Lupine, Snowberry bushes and Bear Grass. How many have YOU seen????

Plants Named For Lewis & Clark

 

President Thomas Jefferson sent captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on a journey of exploration. Congress approved the expense of the venture because it was hoped that a water route across the continent would be discovered. On a personal note, Jefferson was eager to learn what there was to be discovered in the 530 million acres America had purchased from Spain in 1803 for a mere $15 million dollars.

There was no water route across the continent, as the Corps of Discovery found out. But Lewis and Clark collected and sent back to Jefferson 239 pressed plants and some 176 were new to science at that time. 

In what is now North Dakota, they "discovered" the plant was named after Meriwether Lewis, the lewisia.  (Pix on left.) This plant was also known as Bitterroot because the Indigenous Peoples had been making bread flour from the dried roots for centuries. Lewis found the taste bitter; hence the name. 

Clarkia (on the right) was named in honor of William Clark. Lewis found this plant near Kamiah, Idaho, in 1806 on their return trip. 

For the record, Lewis and Clark really didn't discover that many new plants. The specimens they collected were likely sub-sets (for lack of a better name here) of known species. 

Lewisias come in a variety of colors (as shown above) and may be purchased in most area garden centers in spring. They are a hardy perennial. 

Old Jokes For Old Folks

 

This is a deee-lightful, hits-the-nail-on-the-head joke book. For instance:

* "The future will soon be a thing of the past." George Carlin

* "You know you're old when you see the movie Jurassic Park and it brings back fond childhood memories."

* "The older I get, the better I used to be!"  Lee Trevino

* "Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late." Benjamin Franklin

* "Old age is 15 years older than I am."  Oliver Wendell Holmes

* "True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."  Kurt Vonnegut

* "A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age."  Robert Frost

* "You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake." Bob Hope

* Some people will never be too old to learn new ways of being stupid.  Unkown

* "Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed." Charles Schulz

* "You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred."  Woody Allen

* "If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old."  James A Garfield

Baumann's Excelsior Meat Roaster

 
Charles Bauman's Meat Shop was a thriving business in Belleville, Illinois. The business placed this ad in The Semi-Weekly Advocate, the local paper, on Friday, Sept 26, 1879:

BAUMANN'S EXCELSIOR MEAT ROASTER

"This apparatus is an air-tight chest or box, which must be put in the parking part of the Cooking stove. By this mode of Roasting or Baking, meats will cook as tender as mutton. Poultry of all kinds cooked in this way is the most palatable and delicious ever produced by any other mode of cooking and as regards economy this chest cannot be excelled. The cost of this apparatus will be more than saved in three or four months from the fact that butter, (by the way, a large item in the course of a few years) as the essence from the meat forms a most delicious gravy, by a distilling process. The chest if made of the best quality of sheet iron, on a self-sealing principle. Any housewife who gives it a fair trial will not do without it. The cost of the Apparatus is very small, from the fact that it is very durable. If well cared for it will last from ten to fifteen years.            320 East Main Street, Belleville, Ill. 

This image is the best I could find for a Baumann's Excelsior Meat Roaster. 

Likely not correct but surely close? 

Washington Cities From The Air

 I'll leave it to you to name the city shown! Good luck!

 

Kennewick, Bellingham, Grays Harbor, Seattle, Spokane, Port Angeles

Cemetery Trees Tell Tales

Couple of years ago, a like-minded friend and I spent a delightful day driving in southern Spokane County to the places where her family had lived. 

I snapped this pix in that cemetery (name I've forgotten). I was wandering around while she was taking pix of her family's tombstones. I was immediately struck by the eyes in the tree. Do you see them?

We cemetery-wanderers have often times felt a special kind of feeling when we visit any cemetery and especially when we visit a family cemetery. It's the sort of feeling nearly impossible to describe but it is real enough, as many would attest.

Is that big tree a "hiding place" for spirits? A resting place? A visiting place? Do the spirits of our dead ever come back to the places of their burials? And we have to ask: why would they? But if they do, they surely have their reasons. 

This photo I took in Fairmount Cemetery in Spokane. Some family member (I surmise) had come to visit and had left this little red ceramic cardinal bird atop their family's tombstone. Why would they have come to visit........ and to leave that little red bird.......... unless they felt "something," some connection with their dearly departed. 

Ah, the tales that cemetery trees could tell if they only could. 

Without A Plan All Is Lost

 

This is a true story. If you can't handle a very sad truth, quit reading right now.

I was walking one day with my Tika (dachshund) a few years ago on my gravel-county road. I came upon some stuff that a yahoo had dumped along the roadside. THAT was bad enough, but this picture, all busted apart, was in that pile of dumped junk. It didn't look recent enough to me to be a jilted girlfriend but somebody's mother or grandmother. And there it was dumped into the weeds along a gravel road.

Picture on the right was taken in a big thrift shop near Sequim. One corner of a big room was filled with stacked picture frames......... and not just frames but PICTURES. Family pictures. Why in the world? How in the world?

Okay, dear readers. A line from an old Kingston Trio song rings in my mind: "This could happen to you!" 

If you do not have a plan for all your family genealogy and photos and memorabilia, the likelihood is 90% that it will go to the dump or Goodwill. (Where do you suppose all those shoeboxes of old photos found in thrift shops comes from??????) 

Your family has their own busy lives and collecting genealogy and family history was YOUR hobby. You must not assume that they'll be as fanatical about it as you've been. 

Please, please know that I "preach" the truth here today. Please start crafting a plan for when you "cross over that Rainbow Bridge." It takes a plan to leave a legacy and not a mess.