From My Backyard

Kathryn(Kiwiparks) – I read your post this morning and became a little misty eyed. Thoughts of my Dad, who  passed away in 2001, came floooding back. He gave me my love for both the outdoors and of vegetable gardening. I have mentioned in previous posts my love of hand watering, apparently a genetic trait, standing in the garden, surveying the plants, enveloped in a calm and usualy quiet world, the sounds of water gently spashing across the plants and soil, the smell of damp earth and a visual of my Dad with the hose in one hand and a coffee mug of Carlo Rossi Heary Burgandy in the other….Yes, what a memory and what a long rambling complex sentence…that is how my brain works sometimes when the memories flood in….

One of my favorite photos of my Dad, circa 1967, he was about 41 at the time. We were quail hunting up in the Kern River area.

I always carried a camera, this was with my Olympus Pen FT, half frame 35mm SLR. I saw dad sitting on this rock and shot this photo and then walked over for the one shown above. Thanks Dad!

The genetic link goes back even further, Charleston, Illinois – From my mother’s side, the Rennels family was a prominent and respected broom corn farmers. The Decker clan hailed out of Missouri, farmers tracing the farming lineage back into the very early 1700’s in the US, New York, Kentucky and lastly Missouri. Both Grandfathers, Rennels and Decker, left the tough life of farming behind in the 1920’s and moved to California. The oilfields were booming and both made good lives for their families from the oil industry. Roots do grow deep – I remmeber watching grandpa Rennels kill, scald and butcher some hogs around 1958 or 1959. I watched as he and grandma made sausage which we had with breakfast a few days later. Yum! Grandpa Decker kept chickens for both meat and eggs, grew tomatoes and had the best apricot tree and well as a few citrus trees. Grandma Decker attemted to teach me how to wring a chickens neck – I failed miserable in technique but was successful in the results.

Great Grandma and Grandpa Decker in Licking Missouri. Date is a guess – 1940’s????

Grandpa Decker -From farmer to the oilfields – early 1960’s

Grandpa and Grandma Rennels – with my mom and the Aunts and Uncles. 1951 or 1952 time frame.