Beverly (9), Skipper (new Sheltie puppy), Barbara (10) off-season on a Dennis, Cape Cod beach, 1967
On Monday I finished boxes #9 and #10 of the 14 family history boxes I’m going through. #9 had taken about a month, but #10 only took an afternoon, being mostly books which were either shelved or dispatched. Above and below are two of the photo treasures I found. So many fond memories taking our Shetland Sheepdog, Skipper, to the Cape to visit my grandparents! Too few pictures!
I was able to identify my Ukrainian immigrant grandparents (William & Katherine) in the picture below, standing on either side of the porch steps. This was the funeral for their son, Jon, who came to America with his mother when he was only 5 months old. He died at age 9 of appendicitis. The little girls in front of the coffin are my aunt Lil, who was 4, and my aunt Jean, who was 6. Auntie Lil lived to be 101 years old when she died, and she often remembered her beloved big brother, who would share whatever candy he had with her. (My father was born 3 years after Jon died.) I have no idea who the other people are in the photo, but my guess is that they are members of the church they attended.
Funeral picture for Jon Stephen Chomiak (1909-1919) younger sisters Lillian Elizabeth and Augusta Jean standing in front of coffin parents William & Katherine standing on either side of steps, behind the older unidentified girls, March 1919
5.20.25 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden ‘peve minaret’ bald cypress
I can’t stop thinking about something a naturopathic oncologist told my sister, who was recently diagnosed with endometrial cancer, the same kind of cancer I had. Apparently having blood group A is associated with an increased risk of cancer, and blood group O is associated with a decreased risk of cancer. Both my sister and I have type A blood.
wild quinine
Coincidentally, a few days after learning this, while going through another one of my family history boxes — I’m now on box #6 of the 14 — I found my mother’s blood type A identification card from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she was receiving treatment for metastasized breast cancer in 1990. She died when she was 59, in spite of four years of surgery, radiation and multiple chemotherapies.
goldenseal
As I was pondering the significance of now knowing her blood type, it hit me that her father, my grandfather, had prostate cancer. (I have no way of discovering what his blood type was.) With some aggressive treatments he survived his cancer and lived to the age of 95.
bigleaf magnolia
And then I started wondering about my grandfather’s parents. Locating his father’s death certificate I discovered that he died at age 75 of adenocarcinoma of the transverse colon, metastasis to liver. He had surgery in August of 1948 and died in July of 1949.
apple cactus
Finding these connections for four generations in a row is unsettling, as looking closely at genograms can often be. If I could trace it I wonder how far back the cancer line would go. All my children have type O blood so likely they will be spared from this specific cancer risk factor.
apple cactus
The gene for type A blood is dominant, and the gene for type O is recessive. Which means I have a recessive O gene that I passed on to my children. (They got their other O gene from Tim. One needs two O genes to have type O blood. Tim also has type O blood so that’s the only kind of gene he could give them.) It surprises me that none of them got the dominant A gene from me because the law of averages suggests that half of my children could have received it and had type A blood!
bulltongue arrowhead
Until my sister consulted one, I never knew that naturopathic oncologists existed. After witnessing the nightmare I’m living through due to radiotherapy aftereffects she is not interested in submitting to the same recommended treatment for her cancer. We both are of the mind that sometimes, for some people, quality of life is more valuable than a prolonged quantity of life. It will be interesting to see what things we will learn about other treatments from this alternative, integrative physician.
golden marguerite
Meanwhile, the current administration continues its efforts to cut funding for health care and cancer research. And now this:
If you’re under 65 and don’t have a chronic condition, there’s a very real chance you won’t have access to a Covid-19 vaccine this fall. Much depends on what happens next month. ACIP could defy the FDA and recommend vaccines for broader use, but that would be risky. We’ve never been in this situation before. ….. This isn’t about whether everyone needs a yearly Covid-19 vaccine—that’s a legitimate, ongoing scientific debate, and one ACIP was already tackling in June. This is about how decisions are made—and who gets to make them. FDA political appointees are sidelining expert panels, bypassing transparency, and turning public health into a performance. That might fly in other arenas, but shouldn’t when it comes to people’s health and daily lives. ….. Vaccine decisions must be rooted in evidence, debate, and transparency. ….. If this is the new model, we should all be alarmed. ~ Katelyn Jetelina (Your Local Epidemiologist, May 21, 2025)
silver dollar eucalyptus
Closer to home, last summer I endured three episodes of seed tick bites on my legs following walks in the botanical garden. I thought I had solved the problem by using recommended permethrin as a repellent but when I took a walk there on Tuesday I was attacked again and now have 9 bites. I’m done! The pictures in this post are not worth the price I’m paying to have gotten them!
3.21.25 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden sandhills pyxie-moss
Last year the sandhills pyxie-moss was blooming on January 28 and was still blooming on March 7. This year we saw only one flower on the clump on February 26, but finally, on this March 21 visit we found a full bloom! We will keep checking on it. You may remember that this miniature shrub is very rare and found only in a couple of North Carolina counties.
trailing arbutus
hepatica
little sweet Betsy
When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. ~ John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)
rue-anemone
purple cress aka limestone bittercress
bloodroot
It seems reasonable to believe that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction. ~ Rachel Carson (Silent Spring)
eastern red columbine
eastern redbud
sassafras (redbud in the distance)
After enjoying this wonder-filled morning, a pleasant surprise was waiting for me at home in the evening. As I went to close the drapes in the living room I noticed a pretty mourning dove sitting on the edge of the birdbath on our deck. She was watching me. We made eye contact and we gazed at each other for the longest time. Tim finally went and got the camera and took this picture of her, still looking at me. Years ago, and shortly after my mother died, a pair of mourning doves used to keep me company in my garden while I was out there weeding it, but it’s been many years since I’ve had one make contact with me like this. I felt comforted.
mourning dove photo by Tim
Things have been pretty discouraging around here since Tim had his stents put in. Thankfully he seems to be doing well in cardio rehab. But my dear sister has been diagnosed with the same kind of endometrial cancer I had back in 2017, and her prognosis may not be as favorable as mine was. Also, due to osteoporosis I’ve had to give up my beloved yoga practice. I’ve replaced it with tai chi, which I am liking well enough, but I still find myself grieving for yet another loss. I was very grateful for the solace the mourning dove was offering me.
February wasn’t very kind to us this year. It started out well enough with a couple of nice walks but then we were hit with a couple of weeks of viruses, and several days of snowy, icy cold weather. Worrying about my sister’s worsening health problems has added to the feeling of the rug being pulled out from under our feet. But yesterday the temperature reached 71°F and we made a brief afternoon visit to the botanical garden.
sandhills pyxie-moss
We were looking specifically for the tiny sandhills pyxie-moss that we saw last year but were disappointed to see only one little flower on the clump. Maybe February was a bit too harsh for this ‘rare minute creeping subshrub,’ too. But we were happy to see some of our old friends from last winter.
Last year we had daffodils blooming in the woods behind our house on February 21. Not this year. I think the 3.5 inches of snow we got on the 19th, followed by days of cold temps, made them wait a week or so. But now they’re blooming! Today I’m dealing with malaise and the chills from my second shingles vaccination. But I hope to get back on track soon.
Mount Khomyak in the Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine image credit: Wikimedia Commons
My maiden name is Chomiak, anglicized from the Ukrainian, Хомяк. When I was a little girl I asked my father how to pronounce it and what it meant. The son of Ukrainian immigrants, he spoke Ukrainian fluently. But however hard I tried to copy him I couldn’t master the starting “kh” sound of the name. “What kind of Ukrainian are you?” he would tease me. He then told me the name translated to hamster, and I thought he must have been kidding.
Apparently Mount Khomyak is a popular Ukrainian hiking destination. It is 5,059 feet tall. The Visit Ukraine website says that it gets its name from its peak, which resembles the back of an alpine hamster. (Well, there you go, Papa wasn’t kidding!) The top is completely covered with stones, and lower elevations have green meadows and coniferous woodlands. I thoroughly enjoyed looking at all this beautiful mountain’s pictures on the Visit Ukraine website.
My heart is still broken over the invasion of and endless war in Ukraine. But it was fascinating to learn something more about the land of some of my ancestors.
My sister estimates they got 9 inches of snow from Tuesday’s nor’easter, which left a winter wonderland behind it. I loved the pictures she sent me from the woods surrounding our childhood home.
eastern hemlock
the birds have found food here since the 1960s
the shed my father built more than 60 years ago
the wheelchair ramp my son and brother-in-law built for my father in the 2000s (the house my parents built is barely visible behind it)
Yesterday I posted a picture of a tiny cone on a hemlock tree struggling to survive at the North Carolina Botanical Garden. Today I’m sharing a picture my sister took last week back home in Connecticut. The snow covered branches belong to one of the few remaining hemlock trees my brother-in-law has been fighting to save.
And below is an illustrated poem someone shared of Facebook, Dust of Snow, written by Robert Frost.
image credit: Suzanne Schafer Bakert
Playing around and meditating under the hemlock trees in winter kept my heart full of joy all the winters I spent growing up there!
Today we’ve been married for 48 years, or as Tim is saying, it is our four dozen anniversary. 🎕 It was a small, down-to-earth and unpretentious wedding, outside, of course, in the garden of a justice of the peace.
Beverly & Barbara
My sister was my maid-of-honor, shown here at the small reception my parents hosted in their back yard. As I’ve mentioned before, my little sister grew up to be taller than me. For a couple of years we were the same height and were often mistaken for twins.
I found it!
While sorting through all our stuff last month I came across my mini wedding album. I hadn’t seen it for years and was happy to discover that it hadn’t been lost as I had assumed.
Tim often introduces me as his first wife, which still makes me smile. His sense of humor is one of the many things I still love about him, after all these dozens of years. 💕
