Old history in mid city

Here I am, still in south Georgia. Altho now I am further south...Thomasville. It is a lovely old fashioned little southern town with an interesting history. Apparently this was one town that a lot of very (and very very) wealthy northerners came to visit in the "hey day". It is still surrounded by plantations, many of them keeping the traditions now as hunting retreats that the northern socialites enjoyed back then...and still do.

I'm not here for hunting, or socializing on plantations, or the history. I'm here to help my mom move from half an hour north to here. It's been a dream of hers for many years and I'm proud of her for finally achieving this goal in her life. Everyone should be able to achieve their dreams in life!

She found a cute little "cottage" in the middle of town, surrounded by old victorian houses built in the 1880's or thereabouts. It is a small place but nice. And, her landlord is an interesting southern fellow. His family owned this whole block at one point which included two victorian houses, a mother-in-law house and this little cottage. Also on the property is an old barn that is really neat looking. This is looking out the back window of the cottage, the fence is a small back yard attached to the cottage and the barn you see only shows a tiny part of the whole structure.

The landlord said this area was once a huge pecan grove, normal for southern Georgia. And he still has a couple of huge ones in his yard.

I think about the history of all of this as I sit eating my lunch and gaze out the window, taking a moment before unpacking more boxes. So much history in this little back yard.

On another note, I'm reading a really terrific book that I must suggest to anyone who loves to read about nature. It's "The Forest Unseen" by David George Haskell. Truly a gem! He makes learning the science of nature interesting as he talks about a tiny meter measured circle he created on a mountainside in Tennessee. He calls it his mandala and goes every week throughout a year to see what is happening in and around it, starting in January.

I find his writing very fascinating and have learned about hexagon snowflakes and Kepler, Bergmann's rule describing the relationship of size to rate of heat loss, and how plants retain heat in the freezing winter by soaking their cells in sugar (very farm related fact). It makes me want to study the world around me more and more. I think I will create a mandala of my own on the farm in the woods when I get home!