Riverbend Journal

  I'll admit I've been a vit envious of Steve Reed's critter videos which never fail to entertain. I already had a trail camera that took still videos but it just wasn't the same and never seemed to catch other critters besides deer which are plentiful.  During Amazon Prime day recently, I purchased a deeply discounted trail camera that takes video and set it up on a post on my back deck pointed towards the garden. I promptly forgot about it for nearly a week until I happened to glimpse it being set off in our house security camera footage which is focused on entrances to our house and not towards the garden area. In that footage, I could just glimpse a deer off in the far distance. I retrieved the footage from the newly purchased trail camera on my way inside from picking that morning's vegetables from the garden and started to review it. Besides hours of footage of me working in the garden, I was pleasantly surprised to see some interesting videos of a few critte

  One recent evening, my wife happened to look out the window and spot a visitor. She at first blamed me thinking I had placed a plastic version of the visitor on a fence post as a joke or a deterrent to our rabbit problem. That is, she thought that until the head swiveled 180 degrees and stared at her. During the springs and falls, when our bedroom window is open, I have heard it talking many a night. Barred owls are quite common here though I don't see them very often so it is a treat to see one. I am positive that with our mulch, there is more than one mouse living in our garden and as we found out a couple days ago, one rabbit too. My wife was walking between rows of vegetables when she stepped on something that gave a yowl causing her to jump back. A small rabbit took off fleeing the garden and hiding in some shrubbery next to the house so I don't think there was serious damage. Finally, we heard about a new restaurant in town which was right up our alley. My Alabama broth

 I neglected to mention this, but I’m actually sitting on a deck overlooking a body of water that I can’t see the other side right now. This means I have to peck type with one finger for the next five days so my apologies if I don’t stop by or leave a comment on all your blog posts. I’ll read them all when I get back home and I’m sure write a story or two about where I am at.

  1870 map showing Appanoose Island and the ferry It was 6 a.m. Friday morning on the 30th of March, 1860 when Obediah Aumack drove his horse and wagon into the Des Moines River at lower ferry of Ottumwa on his way to do his daily milk deliveries. As he drove the team through the shallow water, he saw the body of a young girl laying in the river slightly downstream at the head of Appanoose Island. She was laying on her side with her face down in twelve inches of water and her head pointing downstream. Her red calico dress was hooked on a tree stump beached on a towhead at the head of the island.  Sand had already partially buried her body. Her skull had been broken and blood matted her auburn hair and small gold drop earrings. One eye was black and blue and the face swollen. Deeply indented finger marks were still visible on the fair skin around her throat. Aumack shouted for some help from some people on the town side of the river but the distance was too great to be heard clearly so

For the last week or two, our harvests from the garden have looked very much like the one above, a few yellow squash and a couple handful of French green beans. Largely, we have been keeping up with them just eating them with our evening meals but we did break down and give away some squash to a couple of acquaintances that evidently weren't hooked up since squash and zucchini are practically everywhere this time of years. With a cool streak for July, nearly breaking records for the lowest high temperature of the day in the upper 70's, we decided to take advantage of it by digging up what remained of our root crops. Above, you see what was left drying on our deck before we started the preservation process. We had eaten most of our white potatoes over the last couple months so there wasn't a lot of them left. But we hadn't picked any of the red potatoes so there were quite a few of them. Being the first year for this garden, the soil quality is horrible but I was pleased

  I've written in the past about someday writing a book about a true story that I came across years ago. But I have come to realize all these years later that by setting my goal so high, I have doomed myself to failure and indeed, every time I sit down at the keyboard on the computer, I become so lost in the details of book formatting, citations, getting the order of story correct, fleshing out details and fretting over other details, that nothing really every happens towards the writing aspect.  Back when I started this blog some 21 years ago, I think it was every November was a month when bloggers all over the world dedicated to writing a story of sorts and I participated a couple times. There were no dreams of publishing or getting things just right, only putting words to "paper" and I have fond memories of those days. So I thought I might attempt to do something similar with this true story that has been percolating in my brain all these years and maybe pick one day a

  After throwing a party for my MIL's 76th birthday and getting things cleaned up and put away, I was crawling into bed when I noticed the strobing light coming through our bedroom windows. I put on my glasses, looked and saw it was some very intense lightening that wasn't very far away and yet didn't make a sound. It was just silently flashing at a very rapid clip. I'm not sure I've seen anything quite like it. The storm cell eye passed a little over a mile or two from us so we never got a single drop of rain. 

  Checking to make sure the coast is clear. Saturday morning I arose and did my morning routine. As part of that routine, I checked on the bluebird house from the dining room window and didn't see any activity. I kept watching for probably around 20 minutes and saw not a sign. Thinking they had already fledged, I put on my shoes and went outside to check but saw that the three chicks were still inside. Indeed, they had all been standing up but laid right down when my face showed itself. I knew fledging was probably imminent so I went inside and sure enough, it soon got started and I was fortunate to capture some of it on "film" using my DSL camera with zoom lens through a dirty window. Enjoy the show. One of the parents saying, "You can do it!" "Do what mom? Wow, there is a lot of room out here." Chick 1 successfully launched out and landed in the grass near the house without me catching the shot. Parents back saying, "Chick 1 did it. You're n

  July 11 For various reasons, there is not a lot going on in my life, at least that I can blog about. I have resigned my schoolboard position after nine years which is my limit of three year terms. But that was quickly replaced by joining two more boards, one of which will probably require a fair amount of my time.  The garden is fairly slow right now. I'm still picking yellow squash and giving it away or eating it, but that is about it. Fairly soon I will need to harvest the potatoes and hopefully start getting some tomatoes. Everything else is just growing away in the heat and sun and still a fair amount of time away from producing. The bluebirds, are soon going to be fledging judging from their feathers and activity. The last time I opened the door to take a picture, they all immediately laid down and tucked their heads. I watched them a bit yesterday, the earliest time of fledging and didn't see a lot of activity other than from the parents making quick stops to drop off a

  During one of those week with guests, the neighbor lady who always gave us cookies and who died last winter, had an estate auction. Since it was right next door to our house, it was convenient as we could walk back and forth without feeling obligated to stay there all day. We bid on a few things and one of the items I bid on was a Christmas Santa that one of our guests had been eying. But lumped with it was a small cardboard box full of brass parts in plastic bags. Not knowing if it was valuable or not, I picked up the box along with the Santa and carried them both home and deposited them before returning. It was a few days later before I was able to look at the box to identify what was in it. I took the pieces out and after a bit, created an assembly that you see above. Still, I wasn't sure what I was looking at. It obviously attaches to the wall but with no electrical accommodations, I just wasn't sure what it was. I did a few google picture searches that turned up nothing

Every few days, we go out to our garden and have been harvesting veggies as they become ready or as needed in the case of the root crops. Although the soil quality is poor at this stage and has affected the amounts we can harvest, having it right outside our door means little is lost to spoilage or because it got to big to eat as what often happened with our garden down on the farm. As a result, we are probably averaging about the same quantity of harvested goods as we always have despite the smaller garden and poorer soil quality. We've been working potatoes, parsnips and (not shown) carrots into nearly every meal these days. For the most parts, the root crop plants are still green above ground so we are only picking as needed and leaving them in the ground for a bit longer to preserve them through the hot days of summer. The yellow summer squash we have to pick as it is ready. We've been eating a lot of it grilled as a side but it is starting to outpace our appetites. We'

  As you can see above, the bluebirds hatched, well three of them did. For some reason the fourth never did hatch nor have I seen the eggs for some time. I wonder if it is there in the bottom of the nest covered up with debris of if it got broken up and carried off somewhere. Only time will tell for sure. What might not be so obvious is that for the last two weeks, and technically still, we've had guests staying with us and due to logistics, they have been staying in my office with the foldout Murphy bed. This has meant I have had little access to my desktop computer where I do 99% of my blogging and have had to rely on my iPad to do my commenting. So please excuse me if my comments have been shorter than normal. Those guests left and a missionary for our church moved in the very same day and will be with us for the coming week. Fortunately he has a busy schedule so will only be in our house to sleep a few hours over night before starting his busy schedule the next day. So this sho

  Note, all these photos were taken about ten days ago. We have a series of guests that will be staying with us for a few weeks of July and with everyone home, our only spare bedroom is the Murphy bed in my office which means my time spent on my desktop, where I primarily blog from, will be limited. Thus I am writing a number of posts ahead of time just to keep things going. I can comment from my iPad in a pinch which short responses but I wouldn't want to try to compose a blog post using the same way. Above was the state of our sweetcorn patch, planted far later than I have ever planted it. It is in need of mulching which I hope to do some cool morning in the near future. But it looks good and if things go right, we should have some home grown sweet corn near the end of August. I expect we'll have eaten plenty of other sweetcorn also grown and sold locally before them. A friend of ours brought us a flat of eggplant so we stuck that in the ground. This is the Japanese kind whic

  In case you noticed my absence in commenting or responding to comments on this blog, it was because I was off again on a road trip. Our eldest had freshman orientation at her college and so we all headed up to attend that. We got there a bit early and so headed off to find her dorm for the year which we located and you can see in the above picture.  After that, we attended seminars all morning on everything from adapting to paying tuition. Our college aged children were separated from us and the parents attended more tailored seminars that we could chose from a list. Nothing terrible exciting in all of those. Perhaps the only thing that changed for me is that my romantic notion of someday attending college again is now permanently squashed. Sitting in the seats of large auditoriums with someone droning on and on about something in a far to perky voice just didn't bring back the good memories.  One positive is that after we were reunited, our eldest said she was just a big nerd. A

  As I put together facts in chronological order, I find myself in unfamiliar terrain. Knowing the terrain is useful information when you are dealing with multiple families of the same surname. If a family spends their life in roughly one location but has one outlier, it is wise to scrutinize the outlier for authenticity. My Chicken family origins begin in Durham County, England along the North Sea, a place wholly unfamiliar to me. So I found a period map of the time and started plotting various milestones along it to see if everything looked plausible. My 5th great grandfather John Chicken was born in Durham City which is located at point A on the map above. He marries my 5th great grandmother Ann Hutton Chicken at St. Andrew Auckland, point B above, but she gives birth to two sons, my 4th great grandfather Joseph Chicken and John Chicken 1 (more on the 1 later) back at point A. It is also at point A where Ann Hutton Chicken dies two years after the birth of John and when he dies a fe