Did the Crocus Croke

Just when you think that Mother Nature is giving you a break from winter she hits you with another snow storm.  Well actually it wasn't so much of a storm as just a nice gentle overnight snow that came straight down covering all the tree branches with a white coating.  It was about an inch on the ground and did provide kind of a winter wonderland but at this point I didn't really care about any more wonderlands.

We have been having some really nice warm (50's and 60's) spring weather and the bulbs and spring flowers have been coming up like crazy.  We have some crocus around the yard that have started to bloom and over at Joan's mom's house there was a solitary daffodil that had bloomed.  I never realized how many they had planted until I was there working in the yard for a couple days cleaning out leaves and sawing up some limbs that the heavy snowfall had broken off a couple of pine trees.  There is a woods on the back of their property with a trail that dad always kept up so that you could easily walk to the back of the property.  They had planted daffodils along each side of the path almost the whole length of it and they were pushing up their leaves and probably will be blooming in a few days.  It should be quite a display of yellow blooms.

Did the crocus croke in the snow?  Below you can see the crocus blooms struggling to stay in the sun in spite of the spring snow coating all around.  Did the crocus croke - no I don't think so because we know that Mother Nature knows best.  The blooms just close up and when the sun comes out they come out again also.

These photos were just taken a couple of days again on March 26th.

Life is Good

A Tale of Murder - Part 3

At the end of Part 2 of this story my cousin Dick Lowther had been injured during the attempted robbery of coins from his home during the early hours of the morning on July 2, 2009.  When the dogs started barking warning a next door neighbor that something was awry he came out swinging a club chasing at least one of the robbers away.  He stopped to help Dick and called 911.  Dick was taken to the closest hospital, Robinson Memorial, in Ravenna.  The attending surgeon from Robinson testified in court that Dick said that when he went to the door a guy grabbed him, pushed him down to the floor, sat on him and held his head down.  The surgeon testified that Dick had a significant spinal cord injury and had loss of feeling and loss of movement.  The spinal cord had started swelling and as a result he was loosing feeling and ability to use his muscles to breathe.

I am telling this story from my knowledge of what happened as reported to us by Dick's sons and as reported in the Record-Courier newspaper.  The Record-Courier is the major newspaper published in Ravenna which is the county seat of Portage County and the site of the county courthouse where the trials of the robbers were to be eventually held.  The news of the robbery was front page news and included many photos of the perpatrators.  I would scan and put this information in the blog but am reluctant as I don't know what laws may apply to copyrighted published material.

Dick was life flighted to Akron City Hospital for more intensive care.  I don't know all the details of the treatment but I understand that surgery was done to repair his broken neck.  For a short time after the surgery Dick was off the ventilator and could talk and reveal the details of the assault.  Shortly after that he had to be put under heavy sedation due to complications.  For the next couple of weeks Dick remained in a comatose condition with little improvement until the doctors started to try and bring him out of the coma.  At first things were slow but eventually Dick did respond and regained some degree of consciousness but still required major life support. 

Dick was paralyzed from the chest down and a quadriplegic from the injuries and continued life support was required to maintain life in somewhat of a delicate balance to prevent infections and just keep him breathing. 

This is where some very hard decisions are presented to those involved in a situation like this.  At this point Dick could only commuicate by simple head movements.  The family along with the doctors decided to remove life support and for a short time without tubes, etc., Dick was able to communicate that he did not want to remain under life support.  Dick's life journey ended on July 30, 2009.
 
What a shame for an innocent retired person enjoying life with family and friends to have his life taken away by people engaged in such a deplorable act.  To be sitting watching TV one moment and then a few minutes away a quadriplegic and mortally injured is one of those twists and turns in life that you can't possibly imagine happening.   I guess the moral of the story here is to never open the door to your house to anyone at anytime asking for help.  As Dick's son said an offer to call 911 and report a motorist in distress is the only way to deal with this in todays world.

During Lent our Wednesday evening meetings have been discussing praying and ways of communicating with God.  This past Wednesday part of the discussion was termed "praying with the scriptures" and one way of doing this is putting yourself into one of the stories or persons of the Bible.  When asked who you might see yourself as or relate to one person said The Good Samaritan.  I have been thinking about this in terms of Dick's experience.  Is there a limit or should there be in terms of helping others?  I guess that a degree of caution and investigation is necessary at the beginning of helping anyone in todays world with all the scams out there.  Once you find out the details of who you're helping then go for it to the extent that you are able.  Was it any different in Bible times?  Probably not and like the saying goes - there's nothing new under the sun. The moral of the Good Samaritan story was to help others in need and that is a good thing but I would add to start cautiously.  Dick's intention was to help someone as he did many times before but little did he know what was waiting outside his door.

Next in the tale - the bad guys!

Life is good - enjoy!

The Day to Plant Peas

Thursday - 3/18/2010

I forgot to put in yesterday's entry a key item and also I have to make a concession that Mother Nature maybe doesn't really have a "cold heart" afterall.  In light of the great spring weather during the last week maybe I was hasty in making such an accusation.  We've been experiencing great spring weather, probably more like May weather this past week with the highs around 60 to 65 with a lot of sunshine and just perfect for working in the yard or garden.

I was thinking back to what my father used to say around this time of year which was that we should plant peas on St. Patrick's Day.  I don't remember if we ever did this but probably not as the ground is usually still too wet and cold but yesterday was perfect and spading the ground was easy. I got the shovel out and spaded enough ground to plant two rows of peas and left it to dry out most of the afternoon.  Late afternoon the ground was perfect to rake and plant.   I had to make a trip to Hartville Hardware to buy some seed as I didn't have any left from last year.  I picked Little Marvel which according to the tag on the bin had the shortest growing season of 63 days so around May 20th we should be eating fresh peas out of the garden if my father knew what he was talking about.  I didn't however check the phase of the moon  and all those other factors so critical with gardening.

All this is also predicated on whether the ground hogs, possum, deer, raccoons, etc., that use our garden as a lunch basket leave the peas alone.  I think that peas were one of the vegetables they left alone last year.  They sure loved the green beans.

Mother Nature - we're in your hands.  Sunday when we get the predicted rain mixed with snow we'll be complaining about the weather again but we know that it won't last.

Life is Good

Two Days at Enjoyable Hard Labor

Wednesday - 3/17/2010
Happy St. Patrick's Day to All
A slight diversion from "A Tale of Murder".
The last couple of days have been the most fantastic of spring days.  The sky has been cloudless and with clear blue skies with temps around 60 degrees our yard was calling for help in getting cleaned up.  One of the annual spring tasks seems to be to clean all the gravel and pieces of sod that the snow plow throws onto our grass on the berm of the road.  I thought that last year was bad but this year set a new standard.  Undoubtedly the large amount of snow increased the number of times the plow came through.  I can't be critical of the job that they did and we always had a clear road to get out of the neighborhood.  I do wish they wouldn't put their blade beyond the edge of the paved surface and leave the loose gravel and sod in place.  So much about ranting about that.

So yesterday the whole day was spent shoveling and raking gravel and sod off of our yard and then hauling it away with the garden tractor and trailer.  My next door neighbor Jack helped me some and then we worked on his.  Getting out of bed this morning brought the discovery of aches and pains in places that I didn't know I had.  Last evening Joan had started cleaning out leaves and debris from our flower beds and there were many piles around which I added more of and started cleaning those up plus cleaned out all the debris from last years vegetable garden. 

To my surprise I came across the area where I had planted carrots and found some of the green carrot tops sticking out.  I had left some in the rows on purpose and planned to dig some during the winter but I had forgotten all about it.  I went ahead and dug them out and found them in great condition.  Below is a photo of my harvest.
(left click to enlarge)

In case you are wondering about the colors they are from some heritage seed that I bought that supposedly were grown as long ago as 1000 years.  They are called carnival blend carrots and pretty neat I think.  Upon eating some I got wondering if they were anything like ice wine made from grapes that were frozen increasing the sugar content as the carrots in my opinion seemed sweeter and had more flavor that they had last fall.

Life is Good.

A Tale of Murder - Part 2

In the last blog entry I told a little about my cousin Dick and some family background and at the end I was explaining that Dick was peacefully sitting at home watching TV after midnight in the early hours of July 2, 2009 when there was a knock at the door.  It was a young woman saying that her car had broken down nearby and could she use the phone to call for help.  Dick was always the type of person to help someone when they had a problem and invited her in to use the phone. 

Shortly after she was in the door Dick heard some more noise outside and going to the door was attacked by two more males waiting outside.  One knocked Dick down a put his foot on his neck to hold him there.  In the meantime the other male and woman began searching through the house for coins reportedly worth $50,000 and possibly also any guns that Dick had.  During all of this there was another male waiting on the street as the driver of the get away car.    The female and male in the house began searching for the coin collections that they had came after and possibly any guns.  About this time the noise had stirred up the dog next door and he began barking and had aroused the neighbor.

At this point the robbery plan started falling apart and time had run out for the robbers to make any kind of a significant haul.  Next door the neighbor had awakened and seeing that something extremely wrong was happening came out of his house to investigate with a large wooden dowel and seeing Dick being attacked and held down went after the guy with the club.  By this time the man and woman inside the house had grabbed some coins and they fled to the car along with Dick's attacker and made a get away.  The neighbor seeing that Dick was seriously injured called 911 for help. 

I don't know how the police system works but apparently an all points bulletin was put out on the robbery and that the theft of coins was involved.  Later in the morning an off duty policeman acting as a security guard at an IGA grocery store observed people trying to convert coins to dollars at the machine there and having some problems doing it.  He put two and two together and called it in and asked for backup.  Within a matter of hours all four were under arrest.  What they were trying to cash in were 740 commenorative quarters worth about $185 and amounted to their entire heist.

(To be continued)

A Tale of Murder - Part 1

This is a true murder story and the victim in the story was my cousin whose name was Richard "Dick" Lowther and lived in Rootstown, Ohio. 

Dick was a first cousin of mine and the son of Arthur and Hazel Lowther, Arthur being the brother of my mother.  I have many memories of the times during the growing up years when my parents and uncle Art and aunt Hazel were all alive us cuzzin's would be able to get together.  Most of these times involved meals either in Kent, Ohio at my aunt and uncles house or at our farmhouse in Uniontown which was about 20 miles south of Kent.  This wasn't a real often gathering but maybe once a month or so.  This was back in the days when the whole family would gather around the dining table to eat together and enjoy whatever topics of discussion came up.  Aunt Hazel was an excellent cook and my mother was a great cook so wherever it was it was a great meal.  We lived on a farm and my mother could whip up a meal for two people or twenty people at the drop of a hat covering the table with dishes of food mostly from the garden and farm.  Joan always jokes that you couldn't see the table for the food and that is no joke. The culture of our two families was quite different. We were "country folks" and they were "city folks".

My grandparents (Lowther) lived in the south half of a farmhouse that my parents owned across Portage Line Road from our house.  My brother and his family lived in the north half of the house so I spent a lot time over around there.  My cousins and aunt and uncle would come often to see the grandparents there.

Growing up on the farm I only had one friend that lived relatively close by and the general area had not turned into housing developments yet.  It was pretty much scattered small farms and in those post war times a lot of the owners had gone to working in the rubber shops.  My father said that they were not real farmers since they did not earn their living farming but were just city farmers.  In some ways I think that my parents liked it that there were not a lot of kids around to influence me during my "growing up" years.  So when the occasion came to go to Kent to visit my cousins there it was somewhat of an experience for me.  They lived in the city of Kent and had a lot of other friends of their age in the neighborhood and going there was always a mind expanding experience with me being the naive country cousin.

Usually about once a summer mom and dad would let me stay at my cousins house for a weekend  and vice versa they would come and stay at the farm for a few days.  Dick was a couple years older than I was so he had a drivers license before I did although I started driving tractors and trucks on the farm starting around eight years old (another story).  Dick's sister Diane was about my age so it was always fun to go there and meet the neighborhood kids and run around in the "big" city.  One memorable summer day Dick and some of his buddies decided to go to Twin Lakes where someone they knew had an abandoned property and they went swimming. I was never sure whether they had permission to do this or not but they talked me into going along.  I couldn't swim but there was a nice sand beach there and a short ways out there was a wooden platform fastened.  They said that the water was not too deep and I would be able to walk out to the platform.  Going out wasn't too bad keeping my head above water but coming back I must have been at a different place as I missed my footing and amongst flailing of arms one of the other guys pulled me to shore and after gasping for breath and spitting out water that I had swallowed I was fine.  I think that it was somewhat of a life saving experience overall.  I never told my parents about that experience as it was one of those things that you don't tell parents about it or it would mean no more opportunities of that kind.

When the cousins came to the farm it was a different experience for them also.  It would be times of playing in the hay mow and jumping down into a pile of hay, going back to the creek on the farm and fishing and doing the kinds of things that I thought was fun.  It was probably somewhat boring but nevertheless "different" for them.  Dad always could think of some kind of work for us to do so that would keep us out of mischief.  One day when Dick was probably around nineteen and I had my drivers license he showed up with a '57 Chevy with glass packs.  He let me drive it and boy was that cool.

Over the years as we all grew older we went our separate ways and seeing Dick was maybe just a once a year thing at a reunion or anniversary gathering or chance meeting at the Portage County Fair.  Sometimes he would just stop by to see what was happening.  Dick had a family and eventually was separated and the last number of years lived by himself in Rootstown.  He was well known in the area belonging to a number of social organizations such as Parents Without Partners, Ravenna Moose, Kent Masonic Lodge, Kent Canadian Club, Kent Coin Club, and United Methodist Church of Kent.  Dick was an avid coin collector and had a collection worth quite a bit of money.  He also reportedly had a collection of guns.

This background leads up to the happenings of early in the morning of July 2, 2009 when a woman came to Dick's door saying that her car had broken down nearby and needed help.

Mother Nature Has a Cold Heart

I'm just going to cover January and February weather in general with a few comments as I'm not disciplined to write daily on the blog   Anyone that likes snow would have loved January and February in Ohio as we virtually had snow almost everyday.  We were fortunate in that all of the snow came down gently and we didn't have any wind and blowing snow to speak of causing drifting or we would have had a real mess to contend with.

We had plenty of snow the weekend that we got back from North Carolina and without much drifting the road crews have done a great job in our township to keep the roads passable.  I decided however that I would rather mow the grass twice a week in the summer than run the snowblower four or five times a week and sometimes twice a day in the winter.  Below is a photo of some driveway clearing with the snowblower.

From the last week of January and through February the snow just kept coming down almost on a daily basis. We didn't see the ground until this week (3/9).

Where did we park the van?

An excellent example of an "ice dam" or put another way damn ice.

I had to try this - it didn't hurt much and came right off after Joan poured the warm water over it.

The birds have been really hungry. 

One of the worst disasters that happened was the collapse of ten hangars at the airport where we keep our plane resulting in the destruction of 10 maybe 11 planes.  I think that one hangar may have had 2 homebuilts in it.  Ouch!!

Fortunately ours held up fine in spite of the heavy load of snow you can see on the roof.  Here's 25Whiskey poking its cowling out of the hangar.

Looking forward to Spring.

A Week of Concern and Rememberances

The week of February 1, 2010

The week of February 1st was a week of snow and trips to the hospital to see Joan's dad.

Joan spent a couple of nights at the hospital alternating with her brothers and sister.  It was a tough week as dad was too weak to undergo treatments that might have solved part of his physical problems.  Late in the week he was released back to the assisted care facility.  Mom and dad had been in a stand alone cottage where they enjoyed some self-sufficiency but returning from the hospital they were put in a room in the main building where dad could receive more intensive care.  On Saturday morning around 8:15AM dad quietly passed away.  Over the past couple of years dad had some congestive heart failure but in general had been in fair but declining health but he never really complained about feeling bad.  In a sense the happenings of the last week transpired rather quickly and he was gone quicker than any of the family would have thought if asked a month or two ago.

The death of a parent makes you think of your own mortality and the death of my own father back in 1976 caused me to adopt Joan's dad as my own surrogate father.  Both men were probably best described as kind and gentle people and shared many common traits.  Both were firm in their faith and supporters of their churches.  Some common names were shared - my dad's middle name was Floyd, Joan's dad's first name was Floyd and my brothers middle name was Eugene which was Joan's dad's middle name.

Growing up we never missed going to worship on Sunday and never worked on the farm on Sunday other than the normal chores that had to be done such as milking the cows.  It was a rare Sunday that we did some kind of work on the farm that was deemed necessary such as getting a field of hay in the mow before expected rain on Monday.  I only ever heard dad cuss one time and that was when we were moving the combine and a grain wagon from a farm that we tenant farmed in Uniontown.  Dad was anxious to get to a different field to combine wheat because the weather was good and the grain was dry.  I don't remember who was driving which but as we were about to pull out onto Canton Rd. whoever was second bumped the other and it broke a hydraulic line on the front of the tractor and hydraulic oil went everywhere.  That pretty much ended the combining for that day as we had to park the tractor and go get parts and make repairs taking up most of the afternoon.  Well it probably wasn't the first time that I heard those words but it was the first that I heard my dad say them.  It was definitely an overstressed situation for dad.  As much time that I spent with Joan's dad I never heard a cuss word.

Joan's dad was a veteran of World War II and received The Bronze Cross and Purple Heart.  He served his country well having left his wife and daughter Joan back home.  The family was fortunate that he was able to return home at the end of the war at a time when many didn't.  We all consider him a hero in our eyes.  Some of his letters home during the war survived and are very tender and expressed his love for his wife through his own words and those of poems of other authors that he sent.

Some of the good times that I was glad to share with Joan's dad was fishing.  We made a number of trips to Wingfoot Lake some of which when the macular degeneration had taken some toll on his eyesight but even if he couldn't see the bobber very well he could still catch as many or more that me.  One of the very memorable fishing trips that we have talked about many times was a day fishing in South Carolina on Lakes Moultrie and Marion.  Dad, Joan's brother John, and myself had hired a guide named Tom to find some catfish to catch.  Tom was kind of an "old codger" and I think that dad in particular wasn't taking well to his demanding ways in telling us how to fish.  He was real fussy in where and how to put the line in, how to hold the pole, etc., etc., and keep your eye on your line and not be looking around enjoying the scenery.  We had just spent about 20 minutes getting started fishing and getting our instructions from Tom when dad hooked onto the first fish of the day and it was a big one at that.  Tom helped dad land a 39 pound catfish (we have always called it a 40 pound, you know how fishermen are) into the bottom of the boat. We all stood around looking at it dumbfounded as it was the probably the largest fish any of us had ever seen let alone caught. Tom started yelling at the rest of us to not pay any attention to the fish and watch our lines which was kind of hard to do with such a big fish at your feet.  We knew later of course that Tom wanted us to be ready in case there was another big fish that might hit one of the other lines.  We ended the day with a whole lot of catfish and of course dad won the pots for the first and largest fish.

In later discussions with Tom during breaks or over lunch we found out that he served during World War II in the Pacific islands.  He was one of the guys that went onto the islands and directed fire from the big guns on the battleships offshore.  He was another war hero.  After we found that out we were glad to accept his instructions.  On a later trip Joan's mom also went along and her presence created a whole different atmosphere and we all had a great time.

Joan's brother Scott spent a couple of nights with dad in the hospital and had some heartfeld discussions with him.  Scott gave a very nice talk at dad's funeral about family times and dad's relationship with the family.  Scott said that one of the lasts things that dad had told him was that he had "no regrets".  What a wonderful thing to be able to say in your last days is that you did your best and have no regrets!