Dootnie Speaks: Last Trip to Cellar Mountain – Part 1
My Dad, Dootnie, died June 27, 2010 of complications from cancer surgery. He was 71 years old. I intend to write a full-length post about fulfilling Dad’s request to be taken to Cellar Mountain after he died, but I haven’t finished thinking it out yet. April 29 would have been his 72nd birthday. The day [...]
Back from the Big Apple
We left the hotel taxi stand at 6:55 last night, and arrived back in Glen Allen at 2:00 AM. Traffic wasn’t bad, except right when we came out of the Holland Tunnel. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful – just long when you’re tired from three full days of schlepping around the city. [...]
Heading Out to NYC
My family and I are heading up to New York City for a couple of days. We’ll be driving – we find that to be less of a pain in the butt than the expense, headaches, and groping of flying. The city is great the week before Christmas – we first did this in ’03, and [...]
Dootnie Speaks (10): The Things He used to Do
I was up at my Mom’s house at Pine Forest last weekend to do some work. Debbie and Lindsey and I took a power washer and spent the better part of the afternoon washing the house. She went to Crewe as we were finishing and brought back some pizza for us to eat. As we [...]
Pine Forest Nottoway – a tour, of sorts
I went out to Pine Forest yesterday to cut grass and fish a (very) little. I spent about four hours cutting grass and trimming around the pond, and maybe thirty minutes fishing. I’ve written about Pine Forest a lot, and I thought I would put together a post to show you what it looks like. [...]
Pine Forest Trip: Mom’s Birthday, and some fishing
We headed out to Pine Forest yesterday to celebrate my Mom’s birthday. Which one was it? You’ll have to ask her… We had dinner with her and my siblings John and Stacey, and their families – had some cake and ice cream, and did a little fishing. Mom serves up some cake and ice cream: [...]
Sweet-Hot Pepper Relish: The Recipe
I posted earlier about going to Pine Forest to watch Mom make some of the great pepper relish she’s made for years. I didn’t have the recipe at hand when I was writing, but I found it in an old church recipe book that my Mom contributed to. It was published in 1997 as a [...]
Johann’s Sweet-Hot Pepper Relish – How do you make that stuff?
My Mom has been a canner/preserver for as long as I can remember She and my Dad have been inveterate garden-keepers for almost as long as they were husband and wife. Mom grew up on a farm, where keeping a large garden was just one element of her family’s near-complete self sufficiency. Each year’s harvest [...]
Dootnie vs. Cancer: The show must go on…
Image by nimboo via Flickr Five days, thirteen hours, and six minutes. That’s how long it’s been (at the start of this writing, anyway) since my Dad passed from this place to a better one. Our faith in God gives us assurance that this is so. Our faith in God also assures us that he [...]
Dootnie vs. Cancer: Two
An update Dad at Pine Forest, Christmas 2008 Last night, nurses informed my sisters that Dad was off of both of the vasopressors (the drugs that raise blood pressure), and that he appeared to be regulating that on his own. They also said he was being fed through a tube – this would be the [...]
Dootnie vs. Cancer: One
Image of Franklin L. Reid Note: I’m writing this series of posts for two reasons: to fill the gap left when Dad couldn’t write on his own blog anymore (privately followed by our family and friends, it was his way to communicate what was going on with his chemotherapy treatments); and, because I can’t think [...]
Save the blueberries!
Well, sort of. There aren’t actually any blueberries yet, but there will be. My Dad got some blueberry plants with the intention of growing them for the first time. He’s been doing gardens for as long as I can remember, but never planted blueberries. One of his brothers told him about growing them, so Dad [...]
