Weather Rules Now

I just hate to be cold, so fall isn't fun for me, with the winter coming on...but usually we get a terrific warm October so I'm still hoping. I brought in all the green tomatoes, though, and will patiently wait for them to redden and then can or dry them. The shortage of sun does make it all the more delightful when it does come out. I don't have a clothes dryer, so it creates timing challenges, but I'm used to watching the skies and predicting. I have a few things out this morning that will be swiftly brought in under the eaves if we get a shower. I got the west side painted and it looks all clean and new, and I evicted the squirrel from a nest on my old wooden Market booth that for some reason I am keeping. South side will have to wait unless we get a long stretch of sun. I have a young Flicker coming to my suet and keeping the starlings intimidated. The bushtits don't seem afraid of the Flicker, and the birds seem to know which ones I am fond of and which I am not.

This photo is from late July when I set up across from a flower seller at the Tuesday Market. She saw me admiring the glads and gave me the whole bunch at the end of the day. Sweet. Tuesday Market was fun while it lasted but I had a hard time keeping my body going twice a week like that. Market is a very physically demanding day, as most of you know.

Trying to wrangle a bunch of details like windshield wipers, fixing flats, finishing the caulking. It's endless, the maintenance, and I'm trying to take comfort in it rather than finding it discouraging. Everything needs attention periodically, and a few things have gotten away from me. But I cleaned the attic a bit (of things I had hidden up there to reduce my clutter) and am working on the project room. I got out so much stuff for the wedding prep in June, and now have to get it all back into the filing system that is my space.
I am a visual learner and like a lot of stimulus to be creative, so I have a lot of what other people call clutter. I know it is my job for the remainder of my life to de-accumulate and change my habits, and I've started on that.

I will probably take the time to create a new blog for my house research and book project. I got all my research organized and took it in to the Lane County Historical Museum to see what they could tell me. I had a lot more details on my people (I'm researching the Davis, Huddleston and Vaughan families, mostly) than they did, and some might help them date some of their other materials. The researcher found me some wonderful items, though, including a journal by one of the other sons of William Tyler Vaughan describing their trip west, and a photo of Samantha Huddleston's house, built in 1853. I'm not positive, but I think it is still there, dressed up to look newer than that. I had walked by the location on 8th St., 356 W. 8th, the day before, and it was next to a house that looked old enough, but now I can take another look and see if I can find the bones underneath the modernity. It has two front doors and is now a duplex, but I think James Huddleston might have built it with Samantha's mother Catharine Davis in mind. She was a milliner for a time after her husband died, and one half of the house could have been for her to do her sewing and receive clients. Catharine lived for 40 years after Benjamin Davis died in 1858, only 8 years after they had arrived here and taken a land grant out on River Road. Samantha outlived her husband by 37 years, and the two women had a lot in common, and were both powerful in our history. The photo is of Catharine near the end of her life. I have a photo that may be Samantha and Iantha with their mother, but I can't prove it. Yet.

I have just about enough information on Samantha Davis Huddleston now to write an article about her, though of course much of it will be speculation amid the few documented facts. I know my land was part of the original Huddleston Donation Land Grant, which was the piece that is now circumscribed by 8th, Jefferson, Chambers, and either the Amazon or some line across around 16th or 17th streets. That is most of the west side neighborhood, but Samantha platted and sold off most of it beginning around 1900.
I can trace my particular little piece to a sale to the Vaughan family in 1908, but I had hoped to prove there were buildings on it earlier than that, and couldn't find any indication on the few maps from that time.

The Museum had a wonderful map show (extended through this week) including some excellent hand-drawn maps from around 1900. The photo shows a little piece labeled F.G. Vaughan, and it seems to say it is 48.63 acres, but the map isn't precisely dated.  I'm still chasing down a couple of details about that. Eugene is shown as a blank inside it's limits, as this map is about the unincorporated areas. I was lucky enough to get there on Tuesday morning before they had put that map away. It is too fragile to keep on display, so it went back into its wrappings.

One thing fascinating about history like this is that so much is continually lost because no one wrote it down, or there were no descendents, as in the case of the Huddlestons. Samatha's son Henry lived with her his whole life, and died a year before she did in 1926. And that was the end, except for other Davises whom I may not have found yet. I know one of her sisters married a photographer, and if I could find his collection of ambrotypes, she would surely have been pictured in some. Unfortunately he lived in CA and Iantha Jane died there, so I don't think the UO has any. That research is never-ending, though, and I can't really do it all right now.
I'm trying to bring my focus back into my house and write the book, because I will distract myself endlessly with these small details. It's all so very intriguing. We're so lucky in Eugene to have so much physical evidence left, houses and trees and artifacts. Our history is really still quite new.

My organizations are having Annual Meetings and elections and politics is a crazy mess, and I love the quiet of my living room with my research spread out and all my photos available to ponder. I'm still learning from the demolition photos, now that everything is covered up again. My theories are refined, adjusted, reflected upon, and some I'm still sticking to even when they seem unlikely. This is the good side of winter and I suppose we need the inside time when it is too wet to garden or build. Balance is a goal.
And winter brings bean soup and steamy kitchens and flannel sheets, and more books. I hope to survive it. I will miss the lovely, stretched out warmth and the evenings on the deck. I hope next summer comes before too long. I'm going to have a few projects left over for it.
And now that we have had two rainy Saturdays in a row, and thrived nonetheless, I can do this fall Market thing. I got new tires on my bike (after a flat on my trailer at the end of Market last week) and I have the full rain suit and shoes covered. I'm not going to worry about it. I will try to enjoy everything that comes.
Not really much else to do about it, but grin. And read. And write!