Steph, had not heard about Daisy until now. Obviously you must be posting that bit of news elsewhere. Am ever so pleased to hear it, though.
Am very fond of Whole Foods, as well; but Fresh Market and Trader Joe's are my favorites of that genre.
Oh, Jane! This was the traditional time of year for gingersnaps & cider back in the day, when I grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Barbara, I have never joined an ancestry group (other than having belonged to the Society of Washington, which is for decendents of the Washington family, but that is a different thing. I am also on the George Mason registry, again as a descendent), nor am I into genealogy. Never have been interested. The elderly women in my family were the first to fill me in, from childhood, on my heritage. Later the men, and strangely enough it was MOSTLY the men, who kept all the records made sure I had my full share of copies of stuff. So I have the lineages and all of that. I do admit to a fascination with the stories, though. The stories make you see and feel bits of the lives these folks who went into what I am lived for themselves.
For instance, one great grandmother had 11 children, 3 of whom died quite young. I have seen the lovely little gravemarker in the old family graveyard that had 3 sides and was raised to all three. This woman died when her youngest was only 18 months old. A second cousin, again a male, over in Baltimore showed me her real (not a copy) scrapbook once. Loaned it to me, even! Apparently, that was a popular pastime for women in the 19th century. Well, I wept. It was full of what would now be considered corny poetry cut out of newspapers and magazines, and all about children dying. There were also family obituaries and more cheerful stuff, but it was the stuff about babies that got to me. I suddenly felt inside of her, sitting at the dining room table after the children were all in bed for the night, cutting things out and pasting them in that scrapbook by oil lamplight. I even know the house she did that in, as it is still standing on the riverside in Fredericksburg, Virginia and the historic trolley ride stops there and tells tourists about the house. When the Yankees showed up on the hillside across the river, General Burnside told them to blast and destroy every building along the river except that house. You see, he had gone to West Point with a classmate who married my great grandfather's sister, and he had been a groomsman. He had spent a whole week with the family at my great, great grandfather's place, and become very fond of the family. They had a short truce during the Battle of Fredericksburg, and my great grandfather rowed across the river under a white flag and had tea with the Union Army General one afternoon. Then he rowed back and went back to being a Confederate Officer, made on the battlefield just for this war, and defending his town!
I love, love, love stories like that. But genealogy bores me to tears.
