Hillwood Gardens

“All my hopes rest in me.”

The image, Hillwood Gardens, was originally uploaded by Edna Barney. It is posted here from Barneykin’s account.

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The Sands of Assateague

Remembering warmer days on the beach at Assateague Island, whilst hoping for warmer days to return again. Remembering days that will never come again, whilst I “shed a bitter tear.”

The sea was wet as wet could be,

The sands were dry as dry.

You could not see a cloud, because

No cloud was in the sky:

No birds were flying over head—

There were no birds to fly.

The Walrus and the Carpenter

Were walking close at hand;

They wept like anything to see

Such quantities of sand:

“If this were only cleared away,”

They said, “it WOULD be grand!”

“If seven maids with seven mops

Swept it for half a year,

Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,

“That they could get it clear?”

“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,

And shed a bitter tear.

(“The Walrus and the Carpenter” from “Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carroll)

The image, Assateague Island, was originally uploaded by barneykin. It is posted here from Barneykin’s Flickr account.

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Kooza from Cirque du Soleil

We saw Kooza at Cirque do Soleil last night. Here am I the morning after. It was a wonderful show. I am so happy that I was not the lady whose seat popped up in the air during the show. She looked like she was about to have a heart attack. I think I would have. We did get popcorn, confetti, water spray and every other harmless thing you can think of sprayed upon us. We were in the second row in front of the stage. Actually, I found it somewhat frightening being so close – in case any of their acts were to fall or structures collapse. But it didn’t happen, so we had a good time.

We drove over to National Harbor at Fort Washington, Maryland. Although the Wilson Bridge was to be mostly closed off at 9 pm, we avoided that pending disaster by going over the bridge in the other direction. Next weekend we must remember to not go over the bridge towards Virginia anytime after 9 pm on Friday night.

The image, Kooza from Cirque du Soleil, was originally uploaded by barneykin. It is posted here from Barneykin’s account.

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My Own Farm Bell

From My Own Farm Bell

Edna’s Farm Bell at the Edge of the Wildwood

I’ve never lived on a farm, nor had any connection with farming, although, of course, many of my forebears did. However, I have always wanted to have a farm bell mounted in my garden as a remembrance of those bygone days of simpler times. What a surprise it was last Christmas when my son’s family gave us an old farm bell that they had found in Warrenton, Virginia.

Well, good Captain Cliff does not like to work outside when the weather is cold, so the old farm bell sat, packed and boxed, all winter long in the garage, where we bumped and crashed into it whenever we were entering or exiting our vehicles. It was in the early Spring, when we were visiting a home on the Eastern Shore, that I was captivated by another old farm bell. It was so charming and I took photographs of it and even blogged one of them: Old Farm Bell

After we returned home, and I posted my pictures, Captain Cliff became a bit eager to install my Farm Bell. He opened the box and unpacked it, and to our suprise, it was identical in every way, including the manufacturer’s name, to the one that we had see at the Maryland home. How delightful! So we tried to copy that one, including the new black paint.

My son suggested that we not paint it; that we leave it in its original patina, as it is in this photograph. I think now that we should have heeded him, but we didn’t. This photograph is how it appeared before the paint job. We have not yet been able to find proper cotton roping for the pull cord, but we are still looking. This synthetic rope is not quite right, but it is all we have.

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My Father’s Naturalization File

Although I was only six years old, I remember when my father became a citizen of the United States of America. I don’t remember the exact day or year, however I don’t need to anymore. I have discovered that the index to his naturalization papers have been published onto the Internet and he was naturalized on June 9th, 1947. The papers were filed under two names as he was christened as “Edward Arthur James Richardson.”

My father was named for his grandfathers, Edward Richardson and James Smith, and for his father Arthur. He was also named Edward, so he claimed, in honor of King Edward VII who came to the throne in the year of my father’s birth. When he became an American he dropped one of his three Christian names, Arthur. Even with all of those names, he was not known by any of them. To all of his friends and relatives he was always “Ted.”

The image, My Father’s Natualization File, was originally uploaded by barneykin. It is posted here from Barneykin’s account.

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My Mother’s Market

The Baltimore Market of My Memories

This Mother’s Day weekend I visited Baltimore’s Lexington Market, in remembrance of the times I went there with my mother as a toddler. I remember that I always found it to be a most frightening place, as I only saw the legs and feet of other shoppers. I remember tightly grasping onto my mother’s skirt as my younger brother and I stayed with her as she shopped.

I don’t remember exactly what groceries she usually purchased, however seeing the market displays this weekend told me that I would have been even more frightened as a toddler if I could have seen above the legs and feet of the shoppers to the iced shelves of the fishmongers’ and butchers’ products. The food items displayed this weekend brought back long forgotten memories of the dishes my mother prepared – fried scrapple, oxtail soup, crab soup, crab cakes and shad roe. Lexington Market Displays (Slide Show)

I wonder how my mother managed to get all of her purchases back home, as she did not drive? Perhaps my father picked us all up after work. Or, perhaps she travelled by street car, which was a very usual way of getting about the city in those long ago days. Then I wondered how she would have managed the street car ride with two toddlers in tow and bags of groceries. As my memories of those days are almost vanished, I can only wonder at how she accomplished all of those things in those bygone days.

I found one provender who claimed to be an old-timer at the Lexington Market. He was the man at the Muskrat-Raccoon-Alligator counter in my pictures. He began describing the way it was in the 1970s when he first arrived on the scene. I told him that my remembrances were from much earlier – like just after World War II in the 1940s. His eyes glazed over as he told me that there was no one alive today at the market who could remember back that far. It was almost as though I was speaking of the eighteenth century days, like 1782, when the Lexington Market first opened. (The Slide Show)

The image, Lexington Market, was originally uploaded by barneykin. It is posted here from Barneykin’s account.

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Old Farm Bell

We had the pleasure of visiting a lovely home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland last weekend. A classmate from Captain Cliff’s Naval Academy days had built a home on a peninsula on Harris Creek of the Choptank River. The location, previously a corn farm, was beautiful, with osprey and bald eagles soaring above. The owners are continuing the farming tradition, albeit, with much more variety for the use of themselves and friends. At the corner of his home I spotted this old farm bell and I photographed it with an ulterior motive in mind.

Our eldest son’s family had given us an antique farm bell last Christmas and it has been in a box in the garage since. I was hoping that this picture would inspire Cliff to buy a post for our bell and install it in our garden. So far, it has inspired him to make a trip to Home Depot. Perhaps not too distantly in the future I will be able to show a picture here of my own farm bell.

The image, Farm Bell Poster, was originally uploaded by barneykin. It is posted here from Barneykin’s account.

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Working in a War Plant

That is how my mother always described her stint during World War Two when she was serving her country as one of the now famous “Rosie the Riveters.” Although she never described it as service, she was obviously proud of the opportunity the war brought for her to work in a Baltimore defense plant or factory performing jobs that would have ordinarily gone to men.

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Aunt Ivy

I think of Aunt Ivy often these days, as she was my father’s baby sister and is the last living member of his generation. She is now 94 years old, and continues to keep her own home. She has attained a greater age than any one of her forebears.

Her family immigrated to the United States in 1915, when she was just a baby (picture), and the only relatives and family she ever knew were her own parents and four siblings. She graduated from high school about 1933 (picture), in Baltimore, Maryland, married and had two children, and worked as a legal secretary. She is now the ancestress of a clan of numerous descendants, including great great grandchildren.

The tiny babe in her arms, on her 94th birthday, shares the exact same name with her great grandmother. They are both named “Ivy”, as it was traditional in my grandfather’s family for girls to be named for flowers, and I suppose that he considered “Ivy” to be a flower. Her sister was “Myrtle”.

Aunt Ivy’s niece, “Violet” sent me this photograph, which I scanned. After “Violet” was born in 1929, the flower-naming tradition seems to have ended in our family. Perhaps with the new Baby Ivy, will come a resurgence of flower names for girls.

The image, Aunt Ivy and Baby Ivy, was originally uploaded by barneykin. It is posted here from barneykin’s account.

Visit Neddy’s Archives, for more of Edna’s writings.

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