Friday, October 5 - History, Genealogy and Tomatoes

Here's the story for which we were waiting. A very old log cabin, surrounded by an old house -- the owner wants it all gone so he can build a new house. This log cabin, for various reasons, is potentially one of the oldest extant buildings in Kentucky. Last night, Barry and I went to the meeting to see what can and ought to be done to preserve it. Sounds like the beginnings of the Oakland Area Historical Society, when we had a small organization and were offered one of the oldest houses in town, that had to be moved at great expense. We did it, and today, that building is the Macartney House Museum. What will become of the log cabin we don't know yet, but it should be preserved, even if it has to be moved to Constitution Square, to join the other historic structures there.

While there, we also connected with the Boyle County Genealogical Association, and plan to begin going to their meetings soon. There's nothing like this in Casey County, though the Boyle people work regularly with people of other counties -- much like the OAHS works with Sidney, Belgrade, Rome, etc.

On another note, we picked our first tomato today. The plant originally was a little, Maine-born, 2 inch tall straggler which hitch-hiked its way to Kentucky by hiding in the begonia pot. Now it's taken over a corner of the back deck, and is working its way along the railings. We should have another month of growing here, and even in mid-November, we may be able to protect the plant so we'll have fresh tomatoes for Thanksgiving.

The knob on our east prevents the morning sun from greeting us until about 8:30 or 9:00 nowadays, and as we get closer to the standard time shift, it will be 9:30 before we actually see much of the sun shining on the ground. The corollary to that however, is that we are among the last in the valley to lose sunlight in the evening, and I guess I would prefer to have more sun late than early in the day. Being so far west in the Eastern Time Zone though, means that the hottest part of the day isn't between 1 and 3 PM, but rather closer to 3 to 6 PM. Back in Maine it's getting cooler by 3PM, but here it's still warming up. Funny how that works.

Foliage here is just beginning to show some color, a few reds and yellows. It'll probably be very drab due to the drought (KY is now officially a disaster area). It'll be another few weeks before anything really noticeable can be seen.

Saturday, it's off to PERRYVILLE.