Making Ukuleles - the Devil is in the Details

     I have taken an approximate two year hiatus from my blog. This wasn't really intentional, it just happened. Before addressing more current happenings, I wanted to finish up some older business. I had left this particular post languishing as a draft and thought it deserved a better fate.  I organized it a bit better, made a few adjustments, and here it is.

     I collected all of my work in progress photos of my ukulele for those who are interested in more of the details of ukulele construction.  Sadly, I didn't take a photo of every step as I was more focused on learning how to make an ukulele than on documentation of the process.

Gluing on the kerfing in preparation for gluing on the top and bottom

    Kerfing is glued to both the top and bottom of the ukulele's sides. The kerfing functions as a gusset,  providing a larger surface for attaching the top and and the bottom of the ukulele to the sides. It's called kerfing because it usually consists of a strip of wood with lots of partial crosscuts such that the wood becomes flexible. The width of a saw cut is termed a "kerf".  Instead of actual kerfing, Bill manufactures his own substitute. He steam bends a number of thin wooded strips using the same form he had used to bend the ukulele sides.  He then glues those strips together to make his "kerfing". He originally adopted this method because kerfing is actually quite expensive to buy considering what it is.  In the following photo the laminations of the kerfing are clearly visible.

A different view of gluing on the kerfing

    The top and bottom are glued on to the kerfing which provides a reasonable amount of surface area for the glue joint. Without the kerfing an approximately 16th inch thick front or back would be glued to an approximately 16th thick side resulting in a pretty feeble glue joint.  The clamps are placed as closely together as is practicable to insure a solid glue joint. The following picture clearly illustrates the old adage that a woodworker can never have too many clamps. 

Gluing on the top

        The top and bottom of the ukulele are made with some fudge factor in mind. Therefore, after gluing on the sides, both the top and bottom need to be trimmed to fit. I did this with my freshly sharpened pocket knife.  I was pretty nervous about the trimming process but I really shouldn't have been. After all the trimming, a mini router (dremel tool with a very expensive attachment) is used to cut a place for the perfling and binding.  Perfling is the fancy trim around the edge of the face of the ukulele.  Binding is the fancy trim going around the sides of the ukulele, adjacent to the perfling.  It is obvious to me that spell check knows next to nothing about building instruments.  It really doesn't like the word perfling and is absolutely sure that I really mean to say "periling".  The process of using the router was further complicated by the fact that neither the top or bottom of the ukulele is flat. An inexpensive factory made ukulele does indeed have a flat top and a flat bottom.  However, the top of a nice custom made ukulele has a 25' radius curvature, while the bottom has a 15' radius curvature.  Imagine a 25 foot ball formed of a thin shell of wood. My friend Bill has a special jig that allows his little dremel tool turned into a router to follow that curvature.  The curvature isn't very noticeable if you don't know to look for it.

The top has to be trimmed after it is glued to the body.

    The walnut rosette was cut out using yet another specialized jig for Bill's dremel tool turned into a router.  The same tool was used to make the sound hole and to cut the channel for the rosette into the top of the ukulele.  A brace is glued to the underside of the top to support the rosette and sound hole area.  This support piece makes it a little less dicey to router out the area to be occupied by the rosette. The thickness of the top and bottom pieces is only .07 inches thick.  Less than an eighth, but a little more than a sixteenth. I failed to take photos of a number of construction steps because at the time I was seriously absorbed into learning how to make an ukulele as opposed to documenting how to make an ukulele.

The Black Walnut Rosette

     At some point a small crack developed in the back of the ukulele.  Fortunately, this was easily repaired with a little bit of super glue.  Thin super glue is used so that the glue will readily wick into the crack and the adjacent wood fibers. The finished repair would have been more visible, but for the spalted pattern of the wood which resulted in some needed camouflage.

A small crack developed on the back

  

     The addition of the perfling and binding add a great deal to the beauty of the instrument.  We used black walnut and maple for both the perfling and the binding so it matched the rosette.

The addition of periling and binding

  

 

    The spalt pattern is caused by a fungus growing in the wood. The dark lines are actually where one fungus colony ran into another fungus colony.  The symmetry of the pattern is obtained by book matching two consecutive slices of the board.  The boards are stacked in order with the same  orientation and then opened like the pages of a book to produce this sort of symmetrical pattern.

A close up of the spalt pattern

     

Dirty Work is Afoot

   I spent a few days a few weeks back assisting my son in building a 10 feet by 20 feet rammed earth cabin. It involved some serious manual labor, shoveling dirt, gravel and cement into a mixter, adding the correct amount of water, then mixing it all until the water was evenly distributed.  I was quite happy to oblige, when after a few days of hard labor, they determined that the most helpful thing I could do was to take their kids off their hands for a week.

    Rammed earth construction has been around for a very long time. It simply involves mixing some dirt with a little water, then pounding the dirt into a form.  It is a little more complicated than that, but not a whole lot. The dirt has to be the right mixture of sand and clay. In my son’s case their soil contains a lot of clay. Therefore, they are mixing equal parts fine gravel with their native clay soil. After some experimentation they determined that 3 shovels of gravel and 3 shovels of their clay soil, mixed with a little less than a quart of portland cement and about a half gallon of water, produced a mixture with the right consistency. The cement serves as a stabilizer and makes the wall more resistant to moisture.

John Tunnell screening the native clay soil to remove clods, sticks, roots, etc

My son, James, working at the top of the form, added the mixture and tamped it into place

      They poured a very stout foundation for the cabin, 18 inches thick. I’m not sure how deep the foundation is. There are 3 foot long pieces of rebar sticking out of rhe foundation to help secure
The wall to the foundation. In addition, they are also planning to add a concrete cap to the top of the wall, intended to help bind the wall sections together.

The pile of fine gravel

The pile of sifted clay soil

Bags of portland cement

       There are some serious advantages to rammed earth construction.  The completed building has an incredible thermal mass which tends to stay cooler in the summer.  It also is relatively inexpensive.  The major down side that I could see was a whole lot of serious manual labor.  Also, if you are building it without the benefit of heavy equipment it seems to take quite a bit of time. However, with the heavy equipment it goes much faster but isn't so inexpensive.

A completed section of wall

Tunnell family picture on the scaffolding

       

Family History Friday - Jonathan Calvin Cunningham in the Civil War - Part I

    This post was inspired by a recent addition to the Richland Family History Center. Someone donated a 244 volume set entitled, "The War of the Rebellion, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies".  It contains a massive amount of correspondence, reports and orders from both armies which the US Army started compiling shortly after the end of the Civil War.   Technically, it is around 130 volumes, but many volumes consist of more than one book.  There are a total of 244 thick books which take up a whole section of shelving in the basement of the Richland Family History Center.  There is a lot of detailed information about where particular units were assigned, specific orders given to those units, and after action reports.

     About a month ago, while searching on Ancestry, I discovered the enlistment, muster, and discharge records pertaining to Jonathan Calvin Cunningham, my third great-grandfather.  I was able to attach those documents to him in my Ancestry tree.  Since my tree is public, anyone is welcome to take a look at them. I have always been intrigued by Jonathan Cunningham's Civil War service.  First of all he was born in Tennessee, lived on a plantation with slaves, found slavery to be repugnant, and moved to the Ozarks in northern Arkansas to get away from it.  After the Civil War broke out, Jonathan Cunningham went to Missouri and enlisted in the Union Army.  When he returned home after the end of the war, his wife divorced him because she couldn't handle the shame of being married to a yankee. Obviously, he made some serious personal sacrifice in order to stand up for his principles.  I found a few stories about his Civil War service in "The History of Baxter County".  The muster records provided his unit and the dates of his service.

      I will start with facts that we know from his military muster records.  Jonathan Cunningham enlisted in the Union Army at Pilot Knob, Missouri on July 5, 1863.  Pilot Knob is in southern Missouri, east of Springfield and west of Cape Girardeau. He joined Company C of the Second Arkansas Cavalry and served in that unit until he was discharged in August, 1865.  He  may have had prior service in a Union infantry unit, but I've not been able to confirm this yet. There are bimonthly muster records which indicate the soldier's current rank and company and whether a soldier was present with his unit, absent, wounded, sick, etc.  A review of his muster records show that he was present with his unit from July, 1863 through October, 1863 and that he was promoted to Corporal in September, 1863.  During November and December, 1863, Jonathan Cunningham was absent from his unit, on detached service to Fort Smith, Arkansas.  From January, 1864 through June, 1864 he was present with his unit, but was sick in a government hospital in Springfield, Missouri from July, 1864 through October, 1864. He was again present with his unit in November and December, 1864 and had been promoted to Sergeant.  The nature of his illness is not mentioned. Serious illnesses were not uncommon for Civil War soldiers and many soldiers died from diseases such as dysentary, typhoid, and cholera.  He was then present with his unit from January through August, 1865. He served with Company C for his entire term of service.

      Included with the muster records was a description of Jonathan Cunningham.  He was 5' 6 3/4" tall, with black hair, gray eyes, and a "florid" complexion. (I'm thinking of your basic red-faced irishman) The description indicated that he was a farmer,  33 years old, and further provided his place of birth as Hamilton, Tennessee. The final muster record shows that he was mustered out of the army in August, 1865 at Memphis, Tennessee.  At the time he left the army he turned in a revolver (probably a Colt), a Sharps carbine (a type of rifle with a relatively short barrel), and a saber.  So at this point we know when he served, his rank, that he served in a union cavalry regiment, what weapons he carried, and a brief physical description.

       Now back to the 244 volumes of "The War of Rebellion".  Each volume has on the spine of the book, the time period and the location covered.  I was able to determine which volumes pertained to Missouri and Arkansas, from July, 1863 through the end of the war.  I looked in the index of each relevant volume and found a list of all the pages which included a reference to the Second Arkansas Cavalry (Union).  This may sound like relatively dry research, but I found some of the reports and letters were very interesting and once in a while a bit funny.  One of the first things I learned is that during 1863 and 1864, the Second Arkansas Cavalry served primarily in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. They were often used as single companies attached to other full regiments. It seemed that they were possibly used as scouts.  This would make sense to me as the unit consisted of men from the areas being patrolled who would be familiar with the territory.  For example, a regiment such as the Tenth Illinois Cavalry would go on a patrol or mission into northern Arkansas and would take with them one company of the Second Arkansas Cavalry.  A cavalry regiment seemed to consist of about 200 men while a company consisted of about 30 men.

       I found another reason why the Second Arkansas Cavalry may have often operated as individual companies. In a letter, dated November 12, 1863, General John Sanborn reported to his commander, General Schofield, that while on paper,  he appeared to have a sufficient force, much of his troops are not adequately armed and supplied. He listed the Second Arkansas Cavalry as a specific example, stating "A small portion of the Second Arkansas is mounted and armed."  I noticed that after action reports in addition to listing the number of men killed or wounded on each side, invariably mentioned how many horses they had captured and whether any horses had been killed.

      The first report I found pertaining to the Second Arkansas Cavalry is a somewhat funny story that I will term "The Great Bacon Debacle".   On July 25, 1863, just a few weeks after Jonathan Cunningham had enlisted in the Second Arkansas Cavalry, a company from that unit, commanded by a Captain Carpenter, was assigned to guard Union supplies in a small Missouri town with the colorful name of "Hogeye", also described in some of the reports as "Buchanan".  When the company was attacked by guerrillas, they burned the supplies and fell back to Cape Girardeau.  The supplies destroyed included 45,000 pounds of bacon.  I have a hard time imagining just how much bacon that would be.  Brigadier General Clinton B Fisk, the Union commander of the District of  Southwest Missouri, and obviously a bacon lover,  referred to the incident as follows:

         "The abandonment of Hogeye (Buchanan on the map) and the burning of the supplies by Captain Carpenter has the appearance of having been very disgraceful and cowardly. The captain and his company are now safe in Cape Girardeau.  I suppose I have no authority in the premises, as it occurred within General Davidson's jurisdiction."

      If bacon isn't worth fighting for, what is? I think it is unlikely that Jonathan Cunningham was involved in this incident as Company C was commanded by a Lieutenant Orr, rather than Captain Carpenter.  Also, the incident happen just three weeks into Jonathan Cunningham's military service.  It sounds like Captain Carpenter came very close to being court-martialed.  However, I found a number of instances in which a company of the Second Arkansas Cavalry was assigned to either guard supplies or escort a supply train.  The term "supply train" refers to a number of wagons pulled by mules and doesn't necessarily mean there was a locomotive involved.

   I found a document called the "Organization of troops in the Department of the Missouri" dated December 31, 1863, which indicated that nine companies of the Second Arkansas Cavalry were then assigned to Cassville, Missouri, while one company, Company K, was at Springfield, Missouri.  Referring back to the muster records, Jonathan Cunningham was on detached service at Fort Smith, Arkansas during November and December, 1863.  Fort Smith is located south of Fayetteville in northwestern Arkansas.  There was a road that ran south from Cassville, Missouri through Fayetteville, Arkansas, on to Fort Smith.  It was referred to as the "Wire Road" because there was a telegraph line that ran along the road, which was also used by Union supply trains.  I found a number of reports of patrols conducted by companies of the Second Arkansas Cavalry along this road.  The telegraph line was in need of constant repair as Confederate troops, guerrillas, and even sympathizers were frequently cutting the line.  I found one report in which a mother and her daughter were caught attempting to cut the telegraph line.  Guarding supply trains, protecting the telegraph line along the wire road, and searching for Confederate regular troops and guerrillas seemed to have been the primary activities of the Second Arkansas Cavalry in the latter half of 1863. I also found a few Confederate dispatches which indicated that all or part of the Second Arkansas Cavalry was at Fort Smith on a few occasions.

   Some of the after action reports only refer to the fact that a company of the Second Arkansas Cavalry was present during the patrol and don't provide any additional details.  Usually the specific company isn't mentioned, but on a few occasions the commander is named.  If Company C or Lieutenant Orr are specifically mentioned and the muster records show that Jonathan Cunningham was present with his unit at the time of the action, then it is very likely that he was a participant.  However, even if I don't know whether Company C was specifically involved in a particular patrol or skirmish, all of the reports still provide a good sample of the types of activities he might have experienced. I will provide some specific examples in my next installment,



 

Ukulele Number One

    Since moving to eastern Washington I have met a wonderful new friend, Bill Willis, who loves to make ukuleles.  Bill is an chemical engineer by profession and is a serious detail guy.  He has put his heart and soul into his hobby and has produced some gorgeous instruments. Even better, he was willing to share his talents and accepted me as an apprentice ukulele maker.

     As it just so happened I had a one inch thick birch board left over from a tree that used to grow at the corner of our yard in Snohomish.  The tree had been cut down by the power company because it grew too close to our power lines. They offered to cut it into firewood length for me, but I asked them to cut them into ten foot logs.  I had no idea what I would ever do with the wood, but it seemed a waste to turn this birch tree into firewood.  I then persuaded my son-in-law to help me load it onto a truck so I could haul it over to the house of a friend who owned a Wood Miser bandsaw mill.  Ten foot long freshly cut birch logs happen to be somewhat heavy. The slab cut boards ended up at the Beez Neez Apiary Supply where they dried until they became useable lumber. I used most of the wood for various projects at the bee store. Apparently, none of the projects were very memorable as I honestly can't recall what I did with a whole birch tree. However, I had this one board left, and it coincidentally had come from the middle portion of the tree so it was close to quarter sawn. That happens to be important when you are selecting wood to make into the body of an ukulele or guitar. It also had some beautiful spalt, which is a type of figure left in the wood by a fungus.

     I took my birch board over to my friend's house  where he resawed it into very thin boards on his bandsaw.  There were a lot of knots to avoid, but we ended up with some nice useable pieces for the back, front, and sides of an ukulele.  I'm not sure as to the exact date we started this project, but it was well over a year ago.  One reason it took so long was the fact that Bill was very patient in giving me the opportunity to do as much of the work as was appropriate for my skill level.  I can only claim to have done about one third of the work, but I was able to watch the entire process from start to finish.

       We finally finished it around the end of May, 2018 and it turned out to be very beautiful. It was so pretty that it was hard to do more than sit around and look at it for a few weeks.  That was just as well as it took several weeks for the strings to stretch sufficiently that I didn't need to retune after each song. I have a lot of photos of the ukulele as it progressed along which I intend to share in this blog. However, I'm now working on several other ukuleles which hopefullywill involve me doing a much greater portion of the work. The body of this first ukulele is made from spalted birch. Black walnut was used for the rosette, the binding, and the veneer on the head piece of the neck.  The neck itself is a combination of maple and black walnut. The fretboard and the bridge are made of macasser ebony, while the nut and saddle are made of Indonesian water buffalo bone. Spruce and pine were used for the internal bracing and the tone bars on the back and front of the ukulele body.

This is just after we glued on the top of the body of the ukulele.  It still needs to be trimmed.

This is a close-up of the black walnut rosette, with Bill's label visible.

This is the back of the ukulele body which still needs to be trimmed.

      I took up playing the Ukulele about five years ago. We do a bi-annual cousin camp for our grandchildren to encourage stronger relationships with their cousins.  We chose to do an Hawaiian theme that year. We had a friend from church who was willing to give hula lessons to some of our grand daughters. That required me to learn half a dozen chords on the ukulele so I could accompany their hula performance. Then Linda bought some cheap ukuleles on line which we made available for the kids throughout our weeklong cousin camp. Now, five years later, about half of our 26 grandchildren play the ukulele.  I therefore have a long waiting list of kids who would like me to make an ukulele for them. I'm only 66 years old and am pretty healthy. We'll see how far I get.

This is the completed ukulele

     It has been a very busy fall.  As much as I am enjoying our extra acreage, there is a lot of work associated with more things to maintain. I am in the process of rehabbing our old barn.  It is structurally more sound than it first appeared to be.  It's primary faults are a few broken windows and a dilapidated west wall. In fact, half of the west wall was missing.  That is a significant problem as that is the direction of the prevailing wind.  I am in the process of reframing the west wall and replacing the two broken windows so that the barn is more weather tight and provides better shelter to the animals.

    I'm also working to replace or repair most of our frost free hydrants.  We have a total of five. The only one that was working was the one in the back of the quonset hut, the least convenient to use for watering the animals.  This past week I was able to replace the one in the back pasture near our well house.  Now I have two working frost free hydrants. This will save me a lot of work watering animals this winter.  It was also a major personal victory for me as plumbing isn't my strong suit.  There is another non-functioning frost free hydrant in the barn that is next in line.

     I'm planning to plant blueberries and raspberries next spring.  I've decided to plant them behind the house near our underground propane tank.  That patch of lawn is relatively small and is very difficult to mow with the riding lawn mower.  I don't think it will take any more work to tend the berries than it currently takes to keep that small portion of lawn mowed and edged. In order to get rid of the grass I'm covering it with a layer of straw and leaves from our maple trees, then covering it with a tarp.  Hopefully the grass will be gone by next spring.  

    I was really pleased with our vegetable garden this year.  Most things we planted did very well, with a few minor exceptions. First, the baby geese harvested my red cabbage prematurely.  Then Buster, our goat, got out and finished up what the geese hadn't eaten. We had already harvested a lot of the green cabbages so the cabbage crop wasn't a total bust.  My attempt at sweet corn was indeed a total bust.  I planted it a bit late and I simply picked the wrong spot in which to grow it.  That spot wasn't adequately watered by the sprinklers and was too far away from any hydrant to water it with a hose.   I also had somewhat of a crop failure with my Floriano Red Flint Corn, also because of sprinkler issues.  I did end up with enough of a harvest such that I can try it out.  This is a polenta variety.

    There are several different types of corn.  The primary difference between the different types is how much of the kernel is pericarp versus endocarp.   The pericarp is the outer layer of the kernel that has the color.  The endocarp is the white inner portion of the kernel.  Flour corn has a fairly thin pericarp with most of the kernel being endocarp.  Dent corn has a thicker pericarp and less endocarp. Flint corn is mostly pericarp, with little  or no endocarp   Everyone is pretty familiar with sweet corn, field corn, and pop corn.  Field corn is dent corn.  The endocarp dries and shrinks quicker than the pericarp, resulting in the characteristic dimple in the end of many of the kernels.   Pop corn and sweet corn are both types of flint corn.  Most people are less familiar with flour corn as it is not something you would normally find in either a grocery store or a farm stand.   The pericarp is best cooked by boiling as in corn meal mush or polenta.  Thus flint corns are best suited for polenta.  The endocarp is best cooked by baking. Thus flour corns make better cornbread than flint or dent corns.  Dent corns end up in the middle, not being best for anything, much like all-purpose flour.  You can grind up dent corn and make a decent cornbread, but flour corn works better.  Most of the corn grown in the United States is dent corn.  It is grown both for animal feed and for processing into a wide variety of food ingredients, such as high fructose corn syrup.

     My paternal grandparents and my maternal great grandparents all grew corn, undoubtedly field corn.  Enos Henry Sinor, my mother's grandfather, rented two miles of railroad right of way to grow corn.  He used a lot of it to feed animals, but he also took a significant amount to be ground into cornmeal. The miller kept a third of what he ground as his payment. They had fresh cornbread almost every single day.

     Most of the corn I have grown over the past ten years have been various types of flour corns. Since I was living in western Washington for most of that time, I was very limited in the varieties that I could grow successfully.  We just didn't have enough heat in the summer to grow most kinds of corn. I did have success growing some very short season varieties such as Painted Mountain, Mandan Red Clay, and Ruby Gold, all flour corns.  Usually the rains would start before the corn had adequately dried down and I would have to bring the corn under cover so it didn't go moldy.  Now I am living in a place with plenty of summer heat.  I can probably grow about any variety of corn I chose.

     Last Saturday I paid a visit to Bill's Berry Farm near Grandview.  I went to get a load of straw bales to use as bedding for the animals and mulch for the vegetable garden.  The straw was located next to a five acre corn maze.  Bill was lamenting the fact that the corn was going to go to waste.  Apparently not many local Grandview farmers still grow field corn to harvest as grain. Most of the local corn is now harvested green and made into silage for dairy cows.  The only nearby farmer with a corn combine didn't want to get his equipment dirty for just five acres.  I asked him if I could have some and he said I could.  After loading my straw I picked enough field corn to fill half of the back seat of my pickup.  Most of it will go to my chickens this winter.   I will keep some of it on the cob as the chickens seem to enjoy having something to peck at.  I will run some of it through my corn sheller and crack it for the chickens.

      Author's Note:   I was looking at my blog this morning as I had not been posting for some months.  I discovered this draft from last fall and decided I should go ahead and post it.  A lot has happened in the past six months, to include a wonderful experience with bottle lambs, the hatching of a new generation of geese, progress on the old barn rehab, and the completion of my ukulele.  I'm going to try to get caught up and cover those subjects in my next few posts.


 

Moon and Stars Watermelons

     A serious up side to our move to from the west side to the east side of Washington State is the increased warmth and the resultant longer growing season.  This allowed me to grow watermelons in my garden for the first time since 1977.  I grew four different kinds.  One plant was a Sugar Baby, a type of small personal sized watermelon.  I grew that at Linda's request.  I have to confess that I am a little unclear on the concept when it comes to growing small watermelons on purpose.  I misplaced one of the seed packets so I'm unsure of the names of one of the varieties that I grew.  It was a nice round red-fleshed watermelon that ripened earlier than the others.  I also grew an orange-fleshed variety called Tendersweet.  Those melons were medium sized and were somewhat elongated.  However, the obvious  "Star" attractions of the watermelon patch were the red-fleshed Moon and Stars watermelons.  These were the last to ripen, but they were easily the largest melons.  That plant set two melons, the largest one weighing 34 pounds.  The reason for that name is pretty obvious.  The melons start out green striped, but at some point the skin turns darker green and lots of yellow dots appear all over the melon.  The yellow dots are the stars while the big yellow patch on the underside of the melon is the moon. They are really quite pretty watermelons.

     Moon and Stars is an heirloom variety.  Obviously it has seeds. Another trait of many of the older watermelon varieties is a much thicker rind than most modern watermelons.  Obviously some people considered a thick rind to be the sort of flaw that needed to be bred out of watermelons.  Anyone who has raised chickens would disagree.  Watermelon rind is my chicken's favorite treat.  I usually throw all of the watermelon rinds into the chicken pen. The following day the rinds are like curled up pieces of green paper.  The chickens peck out everything except the green skin.

Moon and Stars Watermelon

    Another benefit to a thicker rind is the possibility of pickled watermelon rind.  I remember my mother making pickled watermelon rind when I was a child.  This is a well known pickle in the South.  On the other hand, when the subject of pickled watermelon rind is raised, people from the North will often comment that they had never heard of such a thing.  I wasn't raised in the South, but my mother was.

    Recently my sweet wife gave me a special gift, a book entitled "The Joy of Pickling".  This book happened to have three different watermelon rind pickle recipes.  I tried out two of them.  The first recipe was called Gingery Watermelon Pickles and involved first soaking the peeled watermelon rind in pickling salt.  After a six to twelve hour salt soak, the pieces of rind are rinsed and cooked in a syrup seasoned with lemon, ginger, cinnamon, cardamon seeds, cloves, and allspice berries.  The second recipe was called Minty Watermelon Pickles.  In this recipe the peeled watermelon rind was first soaked in pickling lime (CalciumOxide) for eight to twelve hours.  After rinsing, the pieces of rind were cooked in a seasoned syrup containing the same seasonings as the first recipe.  The only difference was the addition of a sprig of mint to each jar before it was sealed.  Both recipes turned out well.  The primary difference was that the first recipe produced a somewhat soft pickle while second recipe produced a very crisp pickle.  I actually found the pickles made with lime to be a little too crisp.   I will have to try it again with a reduced time soaking in the lime water.

     My mother sampled the Gingery Watermelon Pickles and commented that they tasted very close to the watermelon pickles she remembered growing up in Arkansas.  However, the watermelon pickles she had as a child had more sugar and less vinegar.  I was surprised by this as there was a lot of sugar in the syrup used in each of the two recipes.

Gingery Pickled Watermelon Rind

Mom's Very Well Used Cookbook

        My sister recently shared with me a cookbook my mother had given her.  It was a very well used cookbook that my mother had received as a wedding gift about 67 years ago.  The cover was gone so I don't know the name of the cookbook other than it isn't The Joy of Cooking.  I know that only because that was Mom's other "Go to" cookbook.   Of particular interest to me was the fact that the book contained 5 recipes my mother had added in places where there was a convenient amount of blank space.  That seems to me to be a very good feature in a cookbook, room to add additional recipes.  I thought I should preserve these recipes and some of the stories behind them.

      The first recipe is called quart relish.  This recipe came from Mrs Washburn, the mother of Glen Washburn.  My father met Glen when they lived in Rock Island, Illinois. They were both members of a local motorcycle club and became good friends.  Glen was a large man and owned his own heating and refrigeration business.  He lived at home with his parents until he finally got married in his thirties.  My mother indicated that his living at home wasn't a case of failure to launch, but simply a matter of taking care of his parents due to their limited income.  Glen Washburn had an incredible knack of showing up at my parent's home whenever my mother had just baked a pie or his favorite banana cake. His mother's quart relish recipe is a fitting memorial to their friendship.

      Quart relish gets it's name from the fact that the relish is made from a quart each of the seven main ingredients. The recipe for Quart Relish is as follows;

   Mix together  one quart each of ground Cabbage, Green Tomatoes, Onions, Unpeeled Apples, and Bell Peppers. (However, the apples should be cored)

    Press out the excess liquid and add one quart of vinegar, one quart of sugar, one tablespoon of mustard seeds, and one tablespoon of salt (obviously pickling salt).

   Mix all of this together and bring to a boiling point. Simmer for five minutes and pack into sterilized jars.   Makes approximately 5 quarts.

   I would like top add a few editorial comments.  This recipe is elegantly simple. The only thing difficult about making this or any other relish is grinding up the vegetables in a meat grinder. Note that the instructions didn't include water bath canning of the finished product.   When my mother was a young housewife, this type of open kettle canning of jams, jellies, and pickles was common.  Since the relish contains a fair amount of vinegar and sugar,  chances are good that it would keep well without water bath canning. I don't ever remember any of Mom's quart relish lasting long enough to go bad. All the same, I would recommend processing the finished relish in a water bath canner for ten minutes.   I have not used this particular recipe although I have eaten a fair amount of quart relish over the years.  It is quite tasty and the recipe is worthy of recording for posterity.  My sister and her daughters recently made a batch of quart relish and I was a fortunate recipient of a pint.  I haven't opened it yet only because the flavor of most pickled products improves if one has the patience to wait three weeks after the pickles are made before the pickles are eaten.

    While we are on the subject of relish I think we should list Green Tomato Relish as the second recipe.   I made this relish just a few days ago and I was very pleased with the results.  It came out very close to the store bought sweet pickle relish that I love to put on hotdogs.   Mom was fairly certain that she got this recipe from her grandmother, Lillie Etta Heiskill, the wife of Enos Henry Sinor.   The Sinors were subsistence farmers in Baxter County, Arkansas.  They raised most of their own food in a one acre vegetable garden and as my mother put it, "They weren't the kind of people who wasted stuff."

    I too had a large vegetable garden this year, although I don't think it was anything close to an acre.  It was probably closer to a quarter of an acre. That is still a fairly large garden by today's standards.  I planted about ten tomato plants and they produced profusely.  In anticipation of frosts in the not too distant future, I started pulling up the tomato vines for the compost pile and harvesting the tomatoes, ripe or not (mostly not).   I ended up with three five gallon buckets full of green tomatoes.  Some of them I plan to store and let them continue to ripen.  However, that isn't a workable strategy for 15 gallons of green tomatoes. Therefore, I was very happy to give the green tomato relish a try.  Between the green tomato relish and three other green tomato pickle recipes I've tried, I'm now down to a mere ten gallons of green tomatoes ripening in my shop.

         Green Tomato Relish

Ingredients:
   1 cup of salt ( pickling salt of course)
   1 gallon green tomatoes
   1 gallon ground cabbage
   1 dozen medium onions, ground
   1 dozen sweet peppers, ground
   12 to 16 hot peppers, ground (according to taste).  I only added a few Jalapeño peppers, partly because I only had a few hot peppers on hand and partly because I don't like really hot food.
   6 cups of sugar (or more)
   2 teaspoons of powdered dry mustard
   1 teaspoon of ground cloves
   1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
   1 teaspoon of ground turmeric
   1 teaspoon of celery seed
   1/2 gallon of vinegar.

Directions:
   Add the salt to the ground tomatoes and let stand.  (The instructions didn't indicate how long to let the salted ground tomatoes stand.  I simply ground up the tomatoes first and let them stand while I ground up the other vegetables.)
   Drain the remaining ground vegetables in a cloth bag.
   Drain the tomatoes.
   Mix the drained vegetables with the tomatoes.
   Add the sugar, mustard, cloves, cinnamon, turmeric and vinegar.
   Boil five minutes.
   Add the celery seed.
   Pour while hot into sterile jars and seal.
   Makes approximately 20 pints.

Green Tomato Relish

     I have a few comments to make about this recipe.  Note again the absence of water bath canning in the instructions.  I processed my relish in a water bath canner for ten minutes.   Also note that most recipes from the 40s and 50s made large volumes of finished product.  Big families were more the rule then.  Also, while this recipe is not complicated, the grinding is a bit of work.  My feeling is "In for a penny, in for a pound."  If I'm going to the trouble of getting the meat grinder attachment for my KitchenAid mixer dirty, I'd rather do it for 20 pints of relish, rather than for a mere five pints.  Besides, the relish turned out so well that we will probably end up giving some of it as gifts.   If I don't make 20 pints, there may not be enough relish to last me until the next time I have a serious surplus of green tomatoes.
   



   

An Adventurous Trip to the River.

      A few days ago (I believe it was Monday) Linda and I took two visiting grand children to Leslie Grove Park in Richland. It is a nice park on the Columbia River in the north part of town.  The purpose of our visit was to give Natalie (9) and Conner (7) a chance to cool off playing in the river.  As we arrived at the park I noticed the wind had picked up a bit. As I blew up an air mattress (shaped like a sea turtle) I was questioning the wisdom of letting the kids play at the river with this much wind. I knew there was no diplomatic way to be the wet blanket. Just as I was about to tell the kids that it was too windy, I looked down river and saw a big blur that was heading our way. It was like the sandstorm scene in the movie Hidalgo on a smaller scale.  You could see lightning and rain coming our way.

     The front hit about ten seconds later as the wind changed almost instantly from about 15 mph to 40 mph. We were running to the car as we were pelted by sand from the nearby beach volleyball courts. Shortly after we managed to get the kids and our stuff loaded into the car the deluge hit. Richland gets less than ten inches of rain in a year so it is a very rare occasion to see serious rain.  Instead of an afternoon at the river we settled for a bit of an adventure and a trip to Wendy's. 

     Our granddaughter Natalie is a serious cat lover and has been trying hard to win the affection of our somewhat grumpy cat, Mrs Buzz Saw.  It is a source of serious frustration to Natalie that Mrs Buzz Saw spurns her efforts to make friends. It irritates Natalie all the more that I generally ignore the cat, who responds by showering her affection on me. I'm not the one who dispenses kitty treats. I'm not the one who feeds her or calls "kitty kitty".  Yet I'm the person Buzz Saw follows around when I'm working outside. When I sit down to watch a Mariner game the cat always comes to me when she wants to be petted.   Natalie has made an effort the past few days to try pretending she didn't like cats. She was hoping some aloofness would help draw the cat to her. Sadly, she just couldn't pull it off. The cat seemed to recognize that Natalie's apparent apathy towards cats was insincere.

Elk Hunting in Wyoming

   I returned from a trip to Lander, Wyoming a few weeks ago.  I had been invited to go elk hunting by my good friend Quentin, who used to work with me at the Beez Neez Apiary Supply.  The elk hunting didn't go too well because of the unseasonably warm weather. The elk were still in the high country because there had been no snow to drive them down to their winter range.  Unfortunately I had a tag for the area where the elk weren't. I did see a few large herds of elk about 5 miles south of our hunting area.  The elk hunt may have been unsuccessful, but it was still a wonderful trip.  I saw a lot of incredible scenery and enjoyed hanging out with an old friend.  It finally snowed the day before I left to come home.  I had the adventure of hunting elk in a Wyoming blizzard.  The visibility for most of the day was about 20 feet.  An elk would have had to trip over the truck for us to shoot one.

Our view from the truck, waiting for better visibility

    Our hunting area consisted of several hundred square miles of prairie intersected by the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail and the Pony Express route.  Our area included the place where the Willie and Martin handcart companies crossed the Sweetwater River and the Rock Creek Hollow memorial site.  We visited the Rock Creek Hollow memorial twice, once in pleasant weather and once during the blizzard.  I am amazed at the faith of the early saints who were willing to endure incredible trials for the gospel's sake.  The weather was miserable with good clothing. I could only imagine the misery of the poor hand cart pioneers who didn't have the benefit of good winter clothing.  I later learned that Quentin had helped build the stone memorial at Rock Creek Hollow when he was 14 years old.  His ward built the memorial as a youth project so Quentin hauled rock and mixed mortar.

Willie Handcart Company Memorial

         We may not have seen a lot of elk, but we sure saw a lot of Pronghorn antelope.  I would estimate that we saw over 1500 antelope on most of the days we were hunting.   Each antelope herd consisted of about 50 to 100 animals and we usually saw more than 20 separate herds on a given day.  Sometimes they stood and watched us, but usually they would take off running.  It was impossible to count them all.  The Pronghorn is North America's fastest land animal. Quentin told me that they can reach 55 miles per hour.  Their horns are quite unique in that they shed them every year.  We stopped at one point when Quentin noticed a pronghorn shed lying in the middle of the dirt road.  After I had picked it up he told me that he had only found about five pronghorn sheds in his life.  Amazingly, I found another one just five minutes later.  They turn grey as they weather and look just like a stick on the ground. I wouldn't have been able to spot it except for the fact that I noticed it was hollow.

Where the deer and the antelope play

      The above photo shows a herd of antelope on the ridge line with a solitary mule deer walking in front of them.  This was one of the few antelope herds that just stood and watched us.  In addition to the multitude of antelope, I also saw numerous jack rabbits, sage hens, wild horses, and one coyote.  We mostly saw the jack rabbits in the evening while we were driving back to the paved road.  The jack rabbits' fur turns white in the winter.  Normally that gives them pretty good camouflage.  It was having the opposite effect because of the absence of snow.  The white jack rabbits were looking pretty exposed. I'm sure they were feeling pretty relieved when the snow finally arrived.

Sage hen hiding behind a clump of sage brush

A white jack rabbit attempting to hide by holding still

       We probably saw about 40 wild horses, usually in groups of 5 or less.   Quentin told me that they used to hold round ups to reduce the wild horse population. I had heard about programs that allowed people to adopt a wild mustang.  That currently doesn't happen because some environmentalist group filed a lawsuit.  I'm not sure what their objection was.  Note how even the hoof print is in the photo below.  Since they spend a lot of time running on rocky ground their hooves wear fairly evenly.  It is all of that standing around on soft ground that makes horse shoes necessary.  Based on the number of hoof prints I saw I'm thinking there are a whole lot of wild horses roaming central Wyoming.

Wild Horses

A Hoof Print for Hannah

Speaking in Church

     A few weeks ago, Linda and I both spoke in church.  As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as Mormons, we have no paid clergy.  Various members of the congregation are given opportunities to speak each Sunday, usually on an assigned topic. Linda and I were both assigned to speak on recognizing and following personal revelation.  One of my daughters has since requested we provide copies of our talks for her children.  Since communication with my grandchildren is one of the primary purposes of my blog I thought I might as well just include it in the blog.  I'm somewhat inclined to ad-lib so I usually don't give a talk exactly how I wrote it.  However, in this particular case I followed my written remarks fairly closely.  After all of that preamble, what follows is the talk I gave in the Desert Hills Ward on October 24th, 2016:

     Since we are relatively new to the ward I thought I should give you a brief introduction to our family. Linda and I both grew up in Richland and graduated from Richland High School. In fact, we met in the Carmichael Junior High School orchestra.  I served a mission in Northern Italy and we were married about four months after I got home from my mission. We moved away about a year after we were married and then spent seven years in the Air Force living at various times in Monterey, California, San Angelo, Texas, Bellevue, Nebraska, and Eielson AFB, Alaska near Fairbanks.  I then was hired by the FBI and we spent 9 years in Houston, Texas followed by 13 years in the Seattle Division where I retired in 2006. For the past ten years I have owned a beekeeping supply store in Snohomish, Washington which hopefully will be sold by the end of the year.

     We have 25 grand children, soon to be 26 grand children.  I tell people that I am wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. I would refer you to Proverbs 17:6   "Children are an heritage of the Lord....As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man...Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them."  My mother, Cozette Tunnell, has lived with us for the past ten years or so. I keep telling Linda that I should get one of those T shirts that says "I still live with my mother." One of the remarkable coincidences in our family is that not only do I share my mother's birthday, but we have two grand daughters who also share our birthday.  some of this brief bio actually has some relevance to the topic Linda and I have been asked to address, which is  recognizing and following personal revelation.

    I would like to start with a little foundational material, quoting from the second paragraph of the Family Proclamation..."All human beings - male and female - are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and as such, each has a divine nature and destiny."  We can learn a great deal from this short quote.  First note that it says "beloved spirit son or daughter". So we are the spirit children of heavenly parents who love us and we have a divine nature and destiny.  I would offer that divine destiny means there are important things that God wants us to accomplish in this earth life.

   I would also refer you to 2 Nephi 2:25  "Adam fell that men might be and men are that they might have joy."  So not only are there important things God wants us to do in this earth life, part of that divine destiny is having joy.  So God wants us to be truly happy.  Not the fleeting happiness that the world seeks, but that abiding joy that comes when we live our lives in accordance with God's will and do our best to follow his counsel.

    Then I would refer you to the numerous scriptures where we are commanded to pray and to seek knowledge, understanding, and guidance from our loving Heavenly Father.  One of my favorites being James 1:5 "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him."

     So the basic principles are pretty simple. Let's review them once more.
1. We are the beloved spirit children of heavenly parents.
2. We have a divine nature and destiny.
3.  That divine destiny means there are important things we are supposed to accomplish during our earth life.
4. That divine destiny also means we are intended to have joy.
5. We are commanded to ask God for guidance and direction and we are promised that He will give us wisdom liberally.

     I would suggest that a great place to start following personal revelation is to read your Patriarchal Blessing.  If you don't have one, talk to the Bishop and do whatever it is you must do to be worthy of a patriarchal blessing.  I know that there is a younger age limit in that the Bishop has to determine you are mature enough to be ready to receive a patriarchal blessing. apparently the only upper age limit to receiving a patriarchal blessing is that you aren't dead yet.

     My patriarchal blessing has been very helpful to me in that it has functioned as a road map to important life goals, such as serving a mission and marrying the right person in the right place. Linda isn't mentioned by name in my blessing, but I was promised that I would find a good girl who was willing, able, and prepared to go to the temple.  I feel very strongly that marrying Linda was an important part of my life's mission. I prayed about that decision and realized that I wouldn't find anyone who would be a better mother to my children. That important prayerful decision has payed enormous dividends in my life as so much of my present happiness stems from it. If you have made a prayerful decision regarding marriage it also makes it much easier to persevere through the difficult times that happen in most marriages. I am not saying that it is church doctrine that there is only one right person for each of us to marry.  I just know that I was supposed to marry Linda and my life has been blessed because I followed the Lord's counsel in that decision. My patriarchal blessing also contained important counsel about obedience and following the counsel of church leaders as well as accepting assignments to serve in the church. I have never turned down an assignment to serve in the church and I know I have been blessed because of being willing to serve.

     The principles may be simple, but the application of the principles can be difficult at times. Linda and I have tried to seek direction from God in our lives.  I think in general we have done a pretty good job of getting direction from God in all of the important decisions we have made in our lives and in following His counsel. At times though it can be really difficult. We truly are like little children compared to God. He understands everything while we understand relatively little by comparison.  As a result we often don't ask the right question.  Linda gave one personal example of this regarding our transfer back to the Pacific Northwest.  In that case we got the right answer, but not for the reason we thought.  I'd like to give you another one where I received an important answer to prayer that didn't mean what I thought it did at first.

     Before we left Texas, my oldest son went through chemotherapy treatments for cancer.  The chemotherapy did a fine job of kicking the cancer to the curb, but it was very hard on him and damaged his immune system. Jonathan was a very smart boy. He was a National Merit Scholar and had earned a free ride scholarship to the University of Texas. It was his heart's desire to use that scholarship to attend the University of Texas.  All of this happened and then I finally got the transfer orders sending us back to Seattle.  It was very difficult for us to let him go away to school at the same time that we were moving, but it felt like it was the right thing to do.  A month or so after we left Texas, Jonathan fell ill and Linda flew down to Austin, Texas.  I followed a week later and I was able to see my son right before he died.

     When Jonathan was so sick I had earnestly prayed to my Heavenly Father and asked if he would be okay.  I received a very powerful answer that my son would be okay.  It was like being wrapped in a warm blanket of God's love.  It was very comforting and I assumed it meant that Jonathan would be healed and recover from his illness. But that wasn't the question I had asked.  I later realized that from God's perspective this was not a tragedy.  Jonathan was a very good young man and he was more than okay. Even if I had initially misunderstood the meaning of the answer to my prayer, it was very comforting to feel God's love.  I knew that He was mindful of us and the pain of our loss, but that our son was where he was supposed to be.

    At times I have been inspired to do things that were important for me to do, but I didn't realize it was inspiration at the time.  This is sort of like Christopher Columbus being inspired by the Holy Ghost to seek out the new world.  We know from one of Nephi's visions in the Book of Mormon that Columbus was inspired by the Holy Ghost, but I suspect Columbus may not have realized the source of his obsession at the time. My enlistment in the Air Force falls into this category. Linda's brother had joined the Air Force and I had given him a very bad time about that decision. Then, within a year, I did the very same thing. I could offer no logical explanation at the time for my flip flop.  As I look back on my life I now realize that I was supposed to do that and I can see how it impacted the rest of my life. I went into the Air Force with a guaranteed job as a linguist. That is how I learned to speak Russian, which subsequently helped me get hired as an FBI Special Agent.  I can't take much credit  for making that decision other than I did have a strong desire to do the right thing.  I was living the gospel and doing my best to keep God's commandments. Maybe the Lord knew I wouldn't be able to understand why I needed to do that so He just gave me a desire to do it and let me figure out the why when I was ready.

    So God cares about where we live, who we marry, what we do for a living, how we serve in the church, and a good many more things. He even cares who leads the music in the Primary. I served in the Bishopric for a while in our prior ward.  One of my responsibilities was the Primary.  Staffing is sometimes a problem in Primary as not everyone seems to realize what a special privilege it is to serve the children of the ward.  So one Sunday morning in Bishopric Meeting I was making recommendations to the Bishop regarding staffing the Primary.  I also suggested that I should inquire about a particular sister's music background in order to determine whether she might be a good choice to serve as the Primary Music Leader.  Our Bishop was very particular about making prayerful decisions about callings. He would usually prayerfully ponder names for weeks before making a decision to extend a calling. In this particular instance he surprised me and approved the name on the spot, directing me to extend the call.  When I met with the sister a week later, I extended the call and she readily accepted.  I then asked her about her music background and learned that she knew three chords on the guitar and could play "Hot Cross Buns". However, a week earlier she had the thought come into her head that Primary Music Leader would be a fun calling. She put a lot of effort into learning her calling and was a wonderful Primary Music Leader.  The children readily responded to her kind gentle demeanor.  I consider her to be a great example of a woman of faith.  She had every excuse available to decline the calling, but accepted it without hesitation.  She understood that who the Lord calls, He qualifies.  She had the faith that she could learn whatever skills she needed to serve effectively in that calling.   As I have thought about this since, I think I now realize why the Bishop was inspired to immediately approve the calling when I had merely suggested that I inquire about her music background.  If I had known that she had so little music background, I probably wouldn't have suggested we consider her for that calling.

    When we pray for guidance it is critically important that we pray with real intent.  That means we have to be willing to act on the answer.  He doesn't answer our prayers for guidance because we are merely curious.  With this in mind I would like to tell you the story of how we ended up moving to the Desert Hills Ward.  Linda is the one who received the initial spiritual promptings that we needed to move back to the Tri-Cities. I'm sure the Lord told her first because she was more willing to listen. I was quite content living where we had lived for the past 24 years.  I had lots of friends from church and from the community.  I had a big vegetable garden, my grape vines that I had started from cuttings, and fruit trees that I had grafted. I'm the sort of person who puts down deep roots. I was serving as a family history consultant in our ward which is a dream calling for a family history geek. I felt like I was making a serious difference in that calling.

    When Linda first brought up the idea of moving back to the Tri-Cities I was somewhat skeptical and even a little grumpy about it.  Okay, maybe I was a whole lot grumpy about it. However, she persisted and even pulled out the "I let you buy a bee store ten years ago" card and I had to agree that it truly was her turn to get to do something she wanted to do. However, just because I had agreed to it doesn't mean I had a good attitude about it. However, I also agreed that I would make it a matter of serious prayer. I think I prayed about it for more than a month before I received an answer.  We had come over to visit Linda's sister Liz, who lives in Richland.  While we were there the Spirit confirmed to me that we were indeed supposed to move back here.  With a very clear confirmation from the Spirit my attitude about moving changed significantly.  The move was still very painful and a great deal of work. It is just so much easier to do hard things  when we know that they are also the right things.  I still don't know all of the reasons we were supposed to move here, but I do know some of them. I'm sure I'll understand more with time. I always seem to understand life better through hindsight. However, it is a very good feeling to know that you are where the Lord wants you to be. It is also a wonderful feeling to know that He cares about where we live and that He still has service He wants us to perform and things He wants us to accomplish.
 

   

Birdwatching with Ali

    Every day that I am home I start my day by taking Ali on a walk.  A purebred English Setter, Ali doesn't consider these walks to be recreational. As far as she is concerned she is on a hunting trip.  Ali spends most of our walk diligently nosing the ground for the scent of quail, straining at the leash until she smells what she is seeking.  Once she has found the scent, she goes into stalk mode, walking carefully and more slowly, looking for her prey.  When she finds the birds, she goes into the classic "on point" stance.  She takes her hunting seriously and I find her quite entertaining to watch. I would have never guessed she is 13 years old from watching her hunt for quail.  She also pointed at ducks when there was water in the canal and occasionally points at the doves or the herons.

A Grey Heron Roosting Above the Beaver Pond

    A few days ago Ali came to the point position quite suddenly pointing toward a thick brushy area along the canal road.  As I was looking for the quail I thought she had found, a mule deer doe jumped up from behind the brush, not ten feet away.   I guess that is why its illegal to hunt deer with dogs.  The deer rely so heavily on their camouflage and their ability to hide.  With a dog on their scent, the poor deer have no place to hide. A few months back she pointed at a mink on the canal bank.  It really is fun to watch her work.

     I had been giving Ali the freedom to roam our property as she seemed inclined to stay put.  However, she has recently started taking herself for "walks" down by the empty canal.  Her walks have included supplemental activities such as rolling in the dead fish in the drained canal and crawling through the brush collecting cockleburs.  After such a "walk" yesterday afternoon she came home a dirty nasty mess.  I gave her a bath and spent several hours combing the burrs out of her coat.  Wet dog may not be a pleasant smell, but it is light years better than dead fish.

 
   

     

Western White Clematis, also known as Virgin's Bower

      I have finally discovered the name of the most likely source of my unexpected fall honey crop.  A friend from church advised me that the mystery vine, covered with white flowers is none other than Western White Clematis, also known as Virgin's Bower.  Once I had determined the name of the plant, I went on line to learn more about it.  Several web sites listed it as a minor honey plant, indicating that there usually isn't enough of it in one place to make a major contribution to the bees honey crop.  In our location it is quite plentiful along the river and the canal.  Every time I looked at it in late August and throughout September the blossoms were being worked by lots of honeybees.  It is very possible that there were other plants the bees were also working at that time, but I didn't notice any.  I took the dogs on a walk down by the canal almost every day that I was home so I have about six weeks of observations as to how much the bees seemed to like that particular blossom.

Western White Clematis, aka Virgin's Bower

    There is one way I can remove all doubt as to the source of my August and September honey harvest.  I can mail a sample of the honey along with a fifty dollar check to Texas A & M University.  They have developed a pretty accurate method of determining the floral source of any given honey sample.  They first determine the pollen content of the honey.  I'm not quite sure how they do that, but every floral source leaves a pollen fingerprint. When the bees are collecting nectar they can't help but get some pollen in the nectar. Based on the percentages of the various types of pollen found in the honey, the scientists can determine what the floral sources were.  Normally I am not sufficiently curious such that I would pay someone to determine the floral source of the honey my bees had collected.  Due to the fact that we are living in a new place and I am unfamiliar with what is available for my bees, I'm a little more willing to pony up the money to get a definitive answer.

After pollination the blossoms develop a hairy look similar to the Truffula trees in The Lorax 

            Another interesting thing about our new home is that there are lots and lots of praying mantises on our property.  I've found large green mantises and large brown mantises.  I've also found a lot of mantis egg cases in all sorts of places.  A month or so back, I was downstairs talking to my mom when I heard a blood curdling scream from upstairs.  I ran upstairs only to find Linda doing the praying mantis version of the bee dance with a very large praying mantis clinging to her shoulder for dear life.  Apparently,  the mantis had climbed onto her shoulder when Linda had gone out onto the front deck to water some plants.  I think it was a pretty traumatic experience for the both of them. I was able to rescue the mantis and return her safely to the outdoors.

The very mantis which terrorized Linda so much

A Mantis Egg Case