Backyard blackberries in bloom

Spring garden is in

While some of the country is still having winter weather, snow and all, it is pleasant enough down here in southern Louisiana to risk getting an early start on a spring garden. I took Friday off last week to get the garden in, knowing that Judy and I would be at the temple in Baton Rouge on Saturday. This year, the main changes I made were to 1) plant a few eggplants that were given to me, 2) do my own indoor planting of tomatoes rather than buying transplants, 3) try bush beans instead of edible soybeans with the thought of planting soybeans in early summer. The rows are labeled if you click on the picture. The reason the potatoes are already up is that I planted them in mid-February. The cucurbits this year will include watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumbers, and zucchini squash. They spill over from the last row into the grassy area. We also planted a row of peas on the far side of the fence on the right side and will let them climb up the fence. All of you that live further north can appreciate that an early garden is one of the perks of living in the deep south.

Black and White

I was intrigued by a photo of a black penguin that came to my attention recently. We associate animals with their colors, and when the colors deviate from the norm, it really gets our attention. This one certainly got mine.

Also, anyone going to the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans knows that Spots, the white alligator is a must see. Another must see are the distinctively white tigers, Rex and Zulu. This is a great time of year to visit the zoo in New Orleans, before it starts getting uncomfortably warm for both us and the animals.

Green and Brown

Casualties of the harsh winter here included our grapefruit and key lime citrus trees, and our guava tree. However, we had an above average production from our winter garden, and produced the best looking carrots that we have ever produced here this past winter. At our Station, we planted sugarbeets for the second year in the winter (November planting), and in spite of the temperature dipping into the low 20's for several consecutive days, the beets look just fine as seen in the photo above that I took this morning.

However, there is concern in the sugar industry as to how well the cane is going to come up in the spring. It is not unusual for the above-ground growth of fall planted cane to be killed by the occasional freeze in the winter, so that the photo I took today near our farm is not alarming in and of itself. The above-ground dead growth is usually cut back or burned off to let the spring growth come through. For the most part, the fall-planted crop should be OK. Of greater concern than the plant crop is how well the stubble crops of the more freeze sensitive varieties survived the harshest winter we have had in several years. Each successive stubble crop is closer to the surface of the ground and thus will not be as well protected as the previous crop. We will know fairly soon how well our sugarcane crop made it through the winter, inasmuch as spring is right around the corner.

Extended family discoveries

One of the down sides of living far from relatives, as we did in Hawaii, is that our children missed knowing what it was like to be around cousins while growing up. I'm sure they understood it vicariously, in that many of their friends in Hawaii were surrounded by cousins.

After we returned to Utah for a brief period following our 16 years in Hawaii, our kids still didn't get to know their cousins, even though some were literally in the same town. Perhaps the closest connection was Michelle Malquist and Julie both going to Provo High. They were 2nd cousins, and probably felt some connection owing to their relatedness. Alan and Neal have been around Patricia Potts (1st cousin) and her kids enough to feel some connection there. They also probably feel a little bit of a connection to a few of their Aunt Linda's kids in Idaho. I don't think our kids feel any connection whatsoever to Fred's, Norma's, Carolyn's, or John's kids on my side of the family, and probably have no desire nor feel any reason to make a connection.

As I am gathering information the William Thomas Tew/Clara Elizabeth Snow Tew (WTT/CST) descendants, presently depending heavily on facebook and blogspot, I am struck by the obvious strong connections that exist at the cousin level in many of the family lines I am working on. I have found this project to be so fascinating. Even if this project falls well short of my expectations in obtaining all the information I am soliciting, I have already discovered so much about the WTT/CST descendants, my relatives, that the journey itself has been well worth the effort expended.

Here's just a tiny sampler of relatives (name, relation to our children, claim to fame) that caught my interest:
Kathryn Haynie (12/19/08), 2nd cousin, U. of Utah women's volleyball star on a nationally ranked team; was on the MWC All-Conference Team.
Sheldon Fisher, 2nd cousin, candidate for U.S. Congress from Alaska (Sheldon's family shown above).
Risa Tew Jorgensen, 2nd cousin, Mormon Tabernacle Choir member.
I also discovered that we have relatives, descendants of WTT/CST, in Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

Finding out where your surname is most concentrated

If you have never run into the website, MapYourName, that shows where your surname and surnames of your friends and relatives are most concentrated, not only in the U.S. but also in country of origin, you might find it to be quite interesting and educational. You might be in for a surprise, as I was. I thought that the name, Tew, was going to show up primarily in the Inter-mountain West, but it is as common in Alabama and North Carolina as it is in Utah. Of course, if you have a name as common as Smith or Jones, this website may not be very interesting or useful. On the other extreme, you may have one of those names that is so rare that it doesn't even register. However, most of us have names that fall in between these two extremes. Not surprisingly, Cajun names commonly heard around here, such as Arceneaux, Breaux, Boudreaux, Champagne, Leblanc, Robichaux, Savoie, Thibodaux, and Zeringue lit up Louisiana. I was intrigued that the names in my home town of Talmage, Utah, names like Allred, Burton, Christensen, Ericksen, Lindsay, Frandsen, Jensen, Sorensen, and Thacker were more Utah-specific than I would have imagined. Surnames are not as diffuse as I thought, even over many generations.

Kayaking to the Intracoastal Waterway

I took advantage of Washington's Birthday, a federal holiday, and crisp clear weather to kayak down Minor's Canal (approx. 2 mi. each way) from Bayou Black to the Intracoastal Waterway. It's still a little too early to see the brilliant springtime colors, but I went ahead and took a few pics anyway. The trees on the left side of the canal are mostly of the bald cypress and those on the right with the emerging brilliant-colored red male flowers belong to the swamp maple, draped with spanish moss. Here is a website that has some great pictures of Louisiana's wetland region.