I posted a train tune the other day and that’s dangerous business around here – once I start posting train songs it’s just hard to stop. Here’s Iris DeMent singing The Train Carrying Jimmie Rodger Home.
Strange as it may seem, I know there are some folks out there who are asking, who is this Jimmie Rodgers fellow? We’re talking about The Singing Brakeman. Here’s a sample….a little T for Texas, Blue Yodel #1
Jimmie Rodgers was born in 1897 and lived until 1933. In his short life he cemented his legendary status as the father of country music.
I’ve been familiar with the old time tune Chinquapin Hunting for some time, but I didn’t know what a chinquapin was until I attended Midwest Banjo Camp. I figured it was a critter in the possum family, but no, no, no. A chinquapin tree is a particular North American chestnut variety, so a chinquapin is a chestnut, and if you go chinquapin hunting, you’re in fact going chestnut picking.
I found a wonderful version of the tune on the YouTube machine, featuring Bruce Molsky on fiddle. I love the cello (!) player. This tune has great drive, even with no banjo.
When I was a kid, local chestnuts were a premium item, and not to eat. We played a game with them which involved drilling a hole into a chestnut and running a shoe-lace through it, with a knot on one end to stop the nut from coming off. I think we called the game Conkers. We would challenge one another to chestnut battles. The first thing to do was make a little depression in the ground – the pit – and the kid doing the challenging would lay his chestnut down in the pit first. The other kid would hold the chestnut in one hand and the end of the string in the other and whack his opponent’s chestnut with his own. We would take turns whacking one another’s chestnut until one of them broke. I recall we would keep track of the number of wins a particularly hard chestnut accumulated before breaking. Some kids had special secret formulas to harden their chestnuts so they would reign as conkers champs.
….although many recount stories of famous train wrecks and engineers and so on. I found a great version of Railroading through the Rocky Mountains – a wonderful fiddle tune – on the YouTube machine. Here are Hopping Jenny.
Of course if you’re not into Old Time Music but you still want to take an imaginary trip through the Rocky’s, you can do it by building a model railroad…
Taken seconds after Jack Shadbolt (pictured here) chased a squirrel up the tree in the Hilton garden on 27th Street. (Sparrow on the teacup feeder grabbing some seeds.) Good morning from Longbranch, Ontario!
The new mosaic is complete! Here are two shots in different light conditions. Because of the nature of some of the materials used, the bird takes on a slightly different appearance depending on the light and up the position of the viewer in relation to the mosaic.
This morning, Tuffy P took over this blog to post about garden tour in Oshawa and Whitby. There was a request on the Twitter machine for some shots of our garden here at 27th Street.
You asked for it – you got it! Here’s a little slide show from a group of shots I snapped this morning…
Quilts were also featured for sale in one of the gardens that took part in the 15th Annual Artists in the Garden Tour – Oshawa/Whitby June 21, 2014.
Blooming fun times. Great time of year to enjoy the shapes and colours popping up in local gardens. Thanks again to all of the homeowners, gardeners, volunteers, musicians, artists and artisans that came together June 21st to support a great cause in the 15th Annual Artists in the Garden.
27th Street 