the sixth sense tour

Last weekends trip to Tennessee could be titled, The Sixth Sense Tour. Apart from the time spent celebrating a second cousin's wedding, we spent alot of time in cemeteries. In reference to the movie, I saw alot of dead people.

This badly weathered stone lies in our Nesbitt family cemetery in the Shiloh/Palmyra area. We are well acquainted with this place as this is my mother's family plot. It was founded and lies on the land that was home to my great-great grandfather, Samuel Nesbitt.

For years we've been trying to ascertain the location of the older plot, where my great-great-great grandfather Robert Nesbitt is buried. My mom and sister had been there years and years ago but couldn't remember the area where it stood.

Using information from a book written about our family in the 1960's, and further digging on the internet provided the area in which the four Nesbitt brothers settled in the 1790's. It lies only about a half hour from this spot. We were on a quest.

All that's left of this old marker tells it all - - born....died. Everything in between is the stuff of which history is made.

glowing fields

A bright sun rises above the horizon and light pours over a hayfield at Garfield Farm. The field literally glows a bright green. The harvest is winding down and the snow will soon be flying across the open fields.

Cornstalk stubble is no longer plowed under at the end of the season. The standing dry plant material catches snow and provides additional moisture as it thaws.

To all my loyal viewers/readers, I ask you to be patient as I'm having some computer woes (again), Photoshop has been affected by that ghost in the machine, and I'm off to Tennessee for some R & R and a visit to the family cemetery plot. There should be some interesting images of the place - graves going back to long before the civil war. We'll be on a hunt to find the original cemetery which holds the remains of the four Nesbitt brothers who served in the Revolutionary War and were paid partially in land - making them some of the first white settlers in Tennessee. Stay tuned.

waiting

There's alot of corn standing in the fields, waiting to be harvested.

I love the dried husks and fields of stalks still standing tall in the field. The snow will soon fly and I'm hoping all the work gets done before then.

johnson's mound

Johnson's Mound rises from the flat-as-a-pancake farmland that surrounds the preserve. It's the highest spot that I can think of in all the surrounding county.

The research says it's an ice-age land formation called a kame, but you wonder why all the sediment was deposited in only one spot and not at several locations.

This is the very narrow roadway (one way) that snakes it's way through the woods up to the top of the mound. In the wintertime the eastern slope, which has been cleared of trees, serves as a sledding hill for the kids.

It's a wonderful, peaceful place to spend some quiet time.