In memory

As most of you will realize, I lost my paternal grandfather unexpectedly on Monday in a car accident. We've been quite busy as you might imagine, making plans, etc., but today was actually a pretty good day. I spent the morning searching through what seems like a million photos, starting from when my parents were first married and, in some ways, it was fun to reminisce.

We also had some wild weather today, which I'll get to in a new post, and I found some time to get away and take some pictures. After a visit with my grandmother I decided to take some pictures in memory of my grandfather.

In the above photo is the house in which I grew up and it is directly next to my grandparents' home; my parents moved last year and my aunt lives there now. Seeing those trees always makes me laugh because my grandfather had poor vision and when those trees were first planted (there were 6 then, lining the driveway; now there are 3) my grandfather would continually run over them with his big lawn tractor, some of them many times over. I'll never understand how any of them ever made it, especially to that size, and that they aren't distorted in shape. I was a bit late taking the picture so it was almost too dark to get anything.

My grandfather was a mason. He was long retired but he kept some of his equipment outside at the back of his shed. He was very good at his trade and couldn't drive down a street in my home town without pointing out the houses he'd bricked over the years - which were many.

This is what my grandfather always called "the park". It's at the edge of his property and was once a forested area. Over the years he cleared a lot of it and spent a great deal of time maintaining this area. Apparently he even had a "pet" grouse who would visit him here. I do hope that, in his absence, someone will be able to keep it up the way he did.

Oh, and the tops of the trees are cut off because I only had my zoom lens and I literally couldn't get far enough away to capture their complete height.

He burned wood almost exclusively to heat his house. I found this interesting specimen on the top of his wood pile in "the park".

Lastly, some flowers in one of the many arrangements we've received. I think this is waxflower and it's a flower I had really wanted in my bridal bouquet, however, it was too purple for my pink peonies so omitted it but I think they're gorgeous.