Tuesday, June 2, 2015

2015 ~ Tuesday, June 2, Rosenbaum House Museum Florence, Alabama

For entertainment, we went to the Rosenbaum House built by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1939.
The group waiting to go inside (from Virginia)

It reminded me of a really nice passenger train with the close proximity of each room, how everything was built into the house, in the boy's room the bunk beds built into the walls as were the closets, cabinets, & draws.
Boys Room 
I loved how the many doors leading outside opened outside instead of inside.
How the light filtered inside the home where you could take a book from the long bookshelf to read from the light that filtered in from the long windows.
Living or entertaining room with a long row of shelves for his many books
In each room you could see outside so you could watch the birds, the squirrels and the rain, also they had their own private botanical garden with Japanese Maples, a flowing fountain and this could be viewed from the boy's room, or the room for entertaining.
I loved the house!

Frank Lloyd Wright grew up in the low green hill country of Wisconsin, where he was inspired by sketches of the local river and the arch of oak trees on the surrounding riverbanks.

He used his nature as an important factor in hi tranquil designs.
Wright's design of homes was influenced by the forms of nature, the stretches of rivers and the sky.

His home and studio were in Oak Park Chicago, Illinois. In his home, he used a design of windows that let nature inside.
Letting nature inside view from the bedroom 
It had long compressed hallways and geometric patterns in the windows and throughout the house.
Wright was an apprentice of Sullivan an architect in the early 1900s.
Compressed hallways
Wright wanted to get away from the victorian style.  In his design of the Winslow home, he used the arch, and he used the color of the earth which gave the home a sense of feeling.

In his design of the Moore home, he used the horizontal form and a more private form.

Wright used an arch for the entryway, an arch for the fireplace and he used his open form design throughout the home.

In his design of the Thomas Gale home, Wright's use of light brought the outside inside, which gave the house a unique effect.

Wright used the laws of nature to create his architecture. His opening outside and nature come inside. 
In 1902 Wright designed the Susan Lawrence Dane home. Wright had $60,000 to design the home and it was a masterpiece of prairie architecture.
Wright had butterfly lamps hanging from the ceilings, he used color of golden glass elegant pieces locked in time.
Wrights used repeated shapes and designs or prairie architecture. His patterns of music and design gave unity to the Unity Temple he built-in 1904.

He used the cubic design, open rooms(where the walls seem to disappear) with the light of nature coming inside. 
His space within was to give unity. In 1908 Wright built the Robbie home which had perpetual horizontal motion.
He used his open design with wrap-around windows, free-standing rooms, with the color of trees to represent the organic architecture. His use of space within on his roofs and walls takes the home inside out.
The roof and lighting 
One of Wright's greatest designs is the Johnson Wax Building, where he uses mushroom columns and glass tubing of windows, a remarkable building.
Architecture critic Peter Blake wrote in 1960 that during the 1930s Wright built four structures of a beauty unexcelled in American before or since. Three of these are Falling Water, The Johnson Wax Administrative Building and Taliesin West. The fourth is the Rosenbaum House 
Some of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture 
Some of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture 
Front of the house
In 1935, Wright built and designed for the man and his environment. The building had its own waterfall. The building and its surroundings enhanced each other. He painted the home a dried Rhododendron color.
A home where man and nature interlock.
Wright continued to create architecture until his death in 1959, at the age of 91.
Why I like Wright's architecture is because of the way he created beauty in everyday life.

His use of life and nature in his homes brought a unique quality that will last for several lifetimes.
Wright created form and substance in his architecture.
He understood the importance of a home and family life.

He loved nature and he knew how to create that form in his architecture.

I loved the Rosenbaum home with the simplistic yet unique design, how Wright used simple nature to create such a livable environment.

It's not a home everyone would enjoy but if you love light, and nature then you would love this home.

I loved it!


Monday, June 1, 2015

How does my garden grow?


How does my garden grow?
It grows with
Flowers red, orange, green, yellow, purple

Green Apples waiting to ripen
Tomatoes they are great between bread
Pecan, Walnuts the squirrel's store for the winter
Blackberries great for jam, pies, and hotcakes.
Sun Parasol dark red original sunparabeni usppaf Mandevilla
Peach Hibiscus 
Green Apples 
Green Apples
Tamed Blackberries
Blooms in the fall Autumn Sedum
Heaven's Gate birds love this flower
Raised beds of Tomatoes
Raised beds of Hot banana peppers
Mistress Mary, Quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With Silver Bells, And Cockle Shells,
And so my garden grows
Pecan Tree (nuts are always full of worms but the squirrels still eat them)


Birds that are attracted to wild bird food and sunflowers

Wild Bird Food 

American Goldfinch *
American Gold Finch 
Black-capped Chickadee*


Black-capped Chickadee & Nothern Cardinal  
Chestnut-backed Chickadee*
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Carolina Chickadee *
Common Redpoll*
Dark-Eyed Junco *
Common Redpoll*
Dark-eyed Junco*
Downy Woodpecker*
Downy Woodpeckers
Evening Grosbeak*
House Finch*
Northern Cardinal*
Northern Flicker*
Pine Grosbeak*
Purple Finch*
Purple Finch 
Red-breasted Nuthatch*
Red-winged Blackbird*
Tufted Titmouse*
White-Breasted Nuthatch*

Sunflowers
Brown-Headed Cowbird
California Towhee
Chipping Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Eastern Sparrow
Eastern Towhee
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Horned Lark
House Sparrow
Indigo Bunting
Mourning dove
Mourning Dove 
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Red-winged blackbird
Song Sparrow
Spotted towhee
Tree Sparrow
White-breasted Nuthatch
White-throated sparrow

Humming Bird
Humming Bird has her own special food

Saturday, May 30, 2015

True Grit

She found herself alone
deep in her thoughts
what have I done?

Weeks went by
her secret deep inside

No longer could she
hide her secret.

One morning the
pain began
her secret would
unfold.

Nine months later
her secret
would be told.

Her surprise
would bring
both pain and joy.

Friends and Family
rallied all around
to let her know
she was not alone!

Only weeks away
from graduating
what was she to
do?

She was still
in pain and
could not leave home.

Five days
she would graduate

Her gall bladder
could not wait

Many obstacles
she overcame

Graduating
day came

down the aisle
she walked

with her classmates
of 102

She had TRUE GRIT!










Thursday, May 28, 2015

A Special Needs Grandchild


Looking back, the first time I realized that I was needed was the day my daughter called me from Children’s Hospital in Birmingham, AL. 
She was crying and was terribly upset and she said, “My daughter is in critical condition and I am afraid she is going die.”
My granddaughter had already gone through a twelve-hour surgery where the doctors cut through the top of her head down to the base of her mouth to repair a  basal encephalocele and save the pituitary gland
Hubby drove me to Birmingham Children’s Hospital. 
I stayed the night sleeping in a straight back chair. 
My granddaughter seemed to be improving, so the next day I went home.   
The following Tuesday, my granddaughter took a turn for the worse.
She was leaking spinal fluid out her mouth, had two strokes and was in a coma. The doctors said that they would have to repair the leak, this would be her second surgery.
I stayed at the hospital with my daughter until my granddaughter stabilized which was about a week.
There were prayers going up everywhere by everyone we knew, for my little granddaughter to survive.
God answered those prayers. 
It was a long haul.
While she was struggling to survive in intensive care we tried to keep busy by taking long walks, going to the restaurant to eat.
We would go to the children’s harbor where my daughter got her haircut and I could work out on the exercise machines and where we also washed clothes.  
The Children’s Harbor was built for parents and their families to use while their children are staying for long periods of time in the hospital. 
We could only stay for short periods of time in the Intensive Care Unit and sometimes when they had to admit a child or one would die we would have to leave, and that was quite often. 

My granddaughter's condition looked critical from the day she was born and I did not want to get to close to her. 
I guess I was afraid of her dying, but I did want to remember her so I got out my camera and started taking pictures of her every time I saw her.

My granddaughter is an amazing little girl, a real fighter.  
She came through two difficult surgeries and came out with a different little girl. 
She was so frail and I was so afraid to touch, to feed, or even hold her. 
She gradually began to come back to us. 
Her smile slowly came back. 

The strokes left her paralyzed completely on the right side. The left side of the brain controls the right side of the body.
We later found out that she had zero blood flow to the left side of her brain.
We kept praying she would roll over, crawl or someday walk.
She could walk with the help of a walker but never on her own when she falls from a sitting position she cannot get herself up.
She depends totally on others to take care of her.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Cruel and Horrible deaths

Wilson Family Cemetery




Matthew Harvey Wilson son of M & E Wilson born Liberty VA March 2, 1816
While nursing his sick uncle J.S Wilson. They were cruelly torched and murdered. 
John S Wilson 

In Memory of John S Wilson born near Fincastle VA, December 3, 1789
Sabbath night April 30, 1865, while sick and nursed by his nephew M.H. Wilson
They were cruelly tortured and murdered by robbers.


From W. C. Handy’s 1941 autobiography, Father of the Blues, chapter one, pp. 3-4.
Contrast these characters with that of my maternal grandfather, Christopher Brewer. When his master, John Wilson, had given my Grandfather Brewer his freedom, he preferred to stay near Mr. Wilson as his trusted servant. At one time, near the close of the Civil War, guerilla warfare was common in this locality. Three robbers were eventually hanged five miles out of Florence. These thieves had undertaken to rob John Wilson. They stripped him and tortured him to death by burning paper and searing his body to make him tell where his money was hidden. He refused. My Grandpa Brewer likewise knew. They shot him to make him tell. He also refused. But when his wounds had sufficiently healed he went to Nashville and brought his young master, Coonie Foster, back home and disclosed to him the hiding place of the money.

Note: This incident occurred in Nov. of 1865. According to Wade Pruitt’s Bugger Saga, Tom and Dennis Clark, Elias Thrasher, John Campbell, Charles Oliver, and Albertie Gallion. were the alleged perpetrators of this crime.



From W. C. Handy’s 1941 autobiography, Father of the Blues, chapter twenty-two, p. 291:

Memorial Day Reminders

Memorial Day, an American holiday observed on the last Monday of May, honors men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. 
Two brothers gave all for their country.
Major Dick Johnson 1831-1864
J.E. Johnson 1839-1864
Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971. 
In Everlasting Memory, We, the people of Narragansett, dedicate this memorial for the courage, valor, and sacrifices of our Veterans in Vietnam.
Jasper County KIA WWI, WWII, Vietnam and Korea
Many Americans observe Memorial Day by visiting cemeteries or memorials, holding family gatherings and participating in parades. 
Celebrating Veterans from many different Wars! 
Unofficially, at least, it marks the beginning of summer.

2024 Christmas Journal Activies

 Merry Christmas and Happy New Year  To all my friends and family Hope this year brought you lots of health and happiness.  Just a recap ...