Eating Out

Yesterday I had lunch at Sizzlers in Merced with a group of ladies from the Methodist Church. Carole D's birthday was the event that inspired the luncheon.

The restaurant gave Carole a big Strawberry Sundae for her birthday treat. She ate the whole thing! Well, o.k., she gave the big strawberry to Maggie.

Today my sisters and I had lunch at the Jantz Cafe in Atwater. We arrived around 11:00 a.m. and just in time, it was already crowded, like every Wednesday. Every Wednesday is free pie day, you get a slice of pie, free of charge with your lunch. We saw our cousin Debbie there. She ran outside after us to take our picture, so I had her take one on my camera. It was 12:30, the sun was directly overhead, so there is much contrast.

I surprised Debbie by taking her picture. She always looks so nice!!!

Winton Cemetery

This is one of the roadways at the Winton District Cemetery. It looks so peaceful. I love the large old trees that are growing there.
I've been taking pictures of the tombstones there and uploading them to flickr.
So far there are 1,339 photos online. I am slowly adding more information to the pictures when the information is available to me. Some of the information comes from the California Death Records; it lists the people who died in California between 1940 and 1997.
Usually I have a little more information on the people with a Mennonite surname. That information sometimes comes from the "Grandma" file that the California Mennonite Historical Society has created and maintains. I have their latest CD with 1,250,285 individuals linked to their families. Some ancestors are traced back to the 1500s in Holland.
I also subscribe to their "Grandma" online, where they update the information since the latest CD.
The online file currently has 1,285,498 people who can trace their ancestors back to the Mennonite churches in Russia or Prussia. They don't include the birth dates for the living people online, but the dates are included on the CD.
They started something new last year. If you have pictures at flickr you can tag them with the identification number from the Grandma file. Each person has a unique ID number. Of course they want the OLD historical pictures. Or tombstone pictures. So I have tagged a few individuals with the tombstone picture from the Winton Cemetery at flickr. I just started, so only a few are tagged.
This is an ongoing project of taking more pictures, adding additional information and tagging some of them to the Grandma online file. Fun -- but slow.

Cherry Trees

This is the Rainier cherry tree. It's doing good, nice growth, good color.

And then there is Stella. For about a month now, it's been looking sick, the leaves are drooping and losing their green color. I didn't know what to do for it. Talked to an expert orchard man and I found out there is nothing I can do. Just replant. He said cherry trees are like that. Guess we were lucky with the cherry trees we had in Merced. Besides the Rainier, I have a Bing that is also doing good. They will pollinate each other. It will be sad to have to remove the Stella tree.

I ordered two new Iris plants this year, I should be getting them soon. They were the closest to red that I found. Need to find the perfect spot for them. My Irises are going dormant, not a pretty sight right now. I'm not going to separate them this year, decided to let them become large plants so they'll have more flowers next spring.