Category Archives: Empty Nest

A pleasant surprise!

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photo of Mrs. DeWitt C. Owen
My great grandmother, author of cookbooks “Nellie.”

I had a welcome surprise the other day. I received an email from a stranger who was cataloguing a huge collection of antique cookbooks. He read my blog posts about my great grandmother’s cook booklets and said he ran into copies. We exchanged a few emails. He said he was impressed and they were a good representation from that era. We’re talking late 1890s to early 1900s.

I mentioned there was one booklet that I didn’t have. “16 Studies in White and Gold,” which are egg recipes. He scanned and emailed it to me. A week later he said he found an extra copy, asked for my address and mailed it to me! I was thrilled. Since he doesn’t have “Sick Room Necessities,” I scanned it for him. Also, I found several letters and photos of Nellie’s as well as her husband’s obituary, scanned those and sent them to him. (FYI, Nellie went by her married name as a cook booklet publisher extraordinaire, Mrs. De Witt C. Owen. Her real name was Ella Upton Leighton Owen.)

Nellie’s husband De Witt was first a printer and then a newspaper publisher. Eventually they left Dixon, Illinois for the “far west” moving to Anacortes, Washington where he was publisher of another newspaper. They settled in Marysville, Wash. when he took over that town’s newspaper. My namesake grandmother Elizabeth Owen was their only child. When my mom Mary Ella (named after her grandmother) grew up in Marysville, Nellie lived next door. She was in my mother’s memory a loving and kind grandmother, the most nurturing person in my mom’s life. Nellie died in 1948, so I unfortunately never met her.

Nellie was a strong woman and set the type herself for her cook booklets that she sold across the nation for 10 cents each. Her market was ladies’ church auxiliaries. The booklets were used as fundraisers, much as our kids sold gift wrap to raise money for their school. My aunt told me that at times, Nellie supported her husband and daughter with her cook book sales.

If you want to read more about Nellie and her cook booklets, I wrote about her HERE.

Here’s an except from “Sick Room Necessities:”

Have a wonderful Easter weekend! Any plans to celebrate Easter, Passover or Spring?

I found a few photos of Ella Leighton Hunter (Hunter was her maiden name, Nellie was her nickname) in an old family photo album. It includes photos of Rose Hunter and A.J. Blethen. Blethen founded The Seattle Times and the family still owns the paper generations later.

I found postcards from Rose Hunter Blethen writing that she was looking forward to seeing Ella at Christmas. Ella was adopted into the Hunter family after her parents died. Dr. Hunter, Rose’s dad, thought Ella was so cute and always thought well of her. She was adopted as a young child. I’m enjoying researching our family heritage and am impressed that as a journalism major, I’ve got lots of newspaper history in my blood!

The Final Month of Reading

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This is an iphone photo I took of our front yard yesterday when we returned from our morning walk. With everything in bloom you can barely see our house. I love this time of year with palo verde wearing yellow flowers.

I’ve reached the last two pages of my DIL’s syllabus for her AP English Class. I will confess that as the literature moved back decades in time, my reading fell off. I did a bit, but not all. I wonder if her students had a difficult time with these last few months of readings, too? I posted the syllabus at the beginning of each month if you want to take a look.

April Reading List

I’ve been more focused on photography than reading and writing. Here are a few photos from the past week:

A beavertail cactus in bloom with two flowers. There are more buds so more flowers to come!

Red hanging out under the birdbath.

I ordered a large canvas print of Red for our living room. For the five years we’ve been in this house, there is a blank spot to the right of our fireplace. I’ve been looking for art for that space, but never found anything I was crazy about. Red will go nicely there! A neighbor is coming over Friday to help me hang the print. She’s an artist who paints large canvases and an expert at hanging art.

What does April have in store for you?

Happy April First!

Spring is Busting Out All Over

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The bottlebrush bush that I posted Friday has many more blooms a few days later.

The bees sure enjoy bottlebrush blooms.

This is a vine growing up and over our front gate. I got an app to identify plants and discovered this is Pyracantha koidzumi, also called Formosan Firethorn.

Formosan Firethorn growing over our front gate.

This will be a beautiful flower soon, but will only last a day. I don’t remember the name of this cactus and the app gave me five choices that don’t fit. It looks like Hedgehog Cactus but the images on google have massive spikes.

Lantana. We had this plant in Palm Springs and it wanted to take over our backyard. I found out that Lantana is considered an invasive species in many places, including neighboring states. I may remove it.

Barrel cactus are blooming, too.

I’ve never seen this Yucca in our front yard bloom before. Amazing!

It has beautiful blossoms.

I’ve also never seen this tree in our courtyard have so many seed pods. My new app calls it Ebony Blackbead.

And finally look at this Silver Torch cactus is busting out all over!

What are the signs of Spring where you live?

Look for Joy

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Red sightings do give me joy. Always.

For Lent this year I am doing Pray40, which is on the Hallow app. On Sundays, Father Mike Schmitz gives a Bible reading and homily. Yesterday, the theme was “Looking for Joy.” Father Mike mentioned the following quote:

“Suspicion often creates what it suspects.” C.S. Lewis from the “Screwtape Letters.”

My major takeaway was that if we often find what we’re looking for. If we’re looking to be disappointed, most likely we will be. Distrust can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I realized that life truly is what we make of it. It’s was a reminder that our attitudes can be our destiny. If we look for joy, we can find it.

I’m sharing some bits of joy I had this week, birdwatching at home:

The joyful couple together at the Bird Buddy AI feeder.

I watched as Red fed Mrs. and then gave her a turn at the feeder, but I wasn’t fast enough with the camera to capture it. It was heartwarming though!

Quail Egg Update:

I’ve only peeked a couple times on our quail nest. Last week I said we had four eggs. We’re now up to a dozen! I wrote about our quail nest HERE.

Where do you look for joy?

We’ve got eggs!

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I walked by a planter growing an Elephant Feed plant. Two quail wooshed out like jets taking off. I scared them away. This planter has been home to a nest before and there were a dozen quail eggs in it two years ago. I peeked in the planter and saw two eggs. Later in the day, I had to take another look and there were four quail eggs!

The main issue is to not make the parents uncomfortable. That means I must stay away as much as possible. But the location of the planter is an issue.

This planter is in front of the gate to our garbage and recycling bins. If you want to read more about me getting written up and pink-slipped over recycling, you can find that post HERE.

I stressed out momma and papa quail a few times because I had to take out trash and recycling. I noticed the egg count has stopped at four. I decided to move my recycling into the garage. With a steady flow of Amazon packages coming daily, I tend to recycle a lot! But I talked over the garbage bin with hubby and we decided to leave it where it is. It’s going to be hotter than 90 degrees this weekend and that could end up being a smelly problem to have inside our garage. With our HOA, it’s not like I can move the trash to a new location without getting a fine.

So here’s to me not needing to use the garbage bin more than a few times a week.

UPDATE: Now we have five eggs!

We’re hoping the eggs will turn into these guys:

I remember telling a good friend that I had a dozen quail eggs in a nest two years ago. She asked me when I was going to harvest and eat them!

Have a great weekend!

What plans do you have for this beautiful March weekend?

March Reading List

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I will confess that February got by me without much reading. Each month I am posting my daughter-in-law’s AP English reading syllabus. I agreed to do the reading, but not the writing assignments. If you want to follow along, my first posts of each month have the syllabus. Each month the reading goes back in time from current days — to now Shakespeare.

I haven’t been able to focus probably thanks to surgery and recovery. Plus once I get done preparing taxes, I hope to do more reading.

So what is keeping me busy? Social events. Photography. Sitting in my backyard, watching birds while reading Amy Tan’s “Backyard Bird Chronicles.” Also, I downloaded the Merlin App and I am learning what bird’s songs and calls are what. The first bird identified was — you guessed it — a Northern Cardinal.

I’m fortunate with March’s reading list. I’ve read “Pride and Prejudice,” “Hamlet” and “The Tempest.” Whew! As far as watching “Clueless” I can do that. I had no idea it was based on Jane Austen’s “Emma.”

What plans do you have for March?

What have you read on this month’s reading syllabus?

Did you know that Clueless was based on Jane Austin? Or am I the clueless one?

Count Your Blessings

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I noticed a squirrel sitting on a rock across the pool in the morning sun. I like how the sunlight highlights his fur.

Count Your Blessings was how our weekly zoom call ended. Every Thursday, I have a zoom call with about a dozen other people where we discuss the world’s geopolitical problems, religion, local politics and news. We were on a dour note talking about how the world has changed from when we were young whippersnappers and how on earth our country is going to survive with 38 trillion dollars in debt.

Then one member of the group, who is a former history teacher and Jewish, said some insightful things, like there’s nothing new under the sun. If we think things are bad now, remember our country survived the Great Depression, World Wars and people of his faith faced the Holocaust.

He said to count our blessings. He said he looks forward to every Thursday morning to have an in depth discussion with a group of intelligent people who want to make a difference. He reminded us that none of us are homeless, we’re in good health, we have our families and our homes. He said in the Jewish faith they say blessings all day long. His favorite blessings are for bodily functions. He gives blessings that God has given him a miraculous body that still works!

I googled blessings because this was something new to me. I learned that people of Jewish faith aim to say 100 blessings a day.

We left the zoom call with positive feelings and gratitude for the important things in our lives.

A squirrel on a bench in our backyard.

I’m grateful for my family, my home and the wild creatures around me.

I spotted a Gila Woodpecker feeding somebody in the Saguaro Cactus nest.

He’s been going in and out the past few days. Maybe he’s preparing the nest, or there’s already babies in there.

I scared him away with my camera.

What are you grateful for today? What do you think of counting your blessings?