Chasing History

Don't sleep on our first event! Emily Mumma and I are cooking up something that we think will be very special.  We are really excited to share our FIRST EVENT!  Come out on August 1st to Hee Haw Hollow to say hi and make your own Mosquito Bucket to take home. We will have items you can use to decorate a bucket and instruction sheets to assemble when you get home, complete with a pesticide free mosquito dunk! All free, so while supplies last!  Follow the event at Hee Haw Hollow’s Barn Sale & Vendor Event to stay updated on details. (Event details on Facebook)  If you’re asking, what the heck is a mosquito bucket? Keep reading! 🦟 With mosquitos becoming an ever growing problem in our area due to prime breeding conditions and the rise of mosquito related illnesses - many people are turning to fogging and using pesticides to control the problem.  Unfortunately pesticides don’t discriminate between friend and foe - putting many beneficial bugs at risk, like bees...

My native/pollinator garden updates. Please enjoy this pictures that show the progress over this past week-  Today I ripped out the Rose of Sharon bushes along the side of my house. They're beautiful and the bees love them, but they are so invasive and difficult for me to keep under control.  The goal is to have as many PA natives and pollinator plants as possible, while keeping the garden beds as low maintenance as possible.  I am using cardboard and organic mulch as a natural weed barrier deterant. I have two 50 gallon rain barrels that I use to water my plants and fill my bird baths.  Each garden space will have a bird bath, bird house or bird feeder installed with it.

Today, I sat in the Sylvia H. Rambo United States Courthouse and watched twenty-two people from ten different countries take the Oath of Allegiance. In that room, twenty-two completely different life stories converged into a single, profound moment: they became American citizens. During the ceremony, one of the newly naturalized citizens stood up to speak. He shared his story of the last ten years—the opportunities America had given him, the life he had built, and the family he's raising here. I found myself moved to tears. As the oath was administered and they were officially declared citizens, you could feel a collective weight lift from the shoulders of everyone in the room. It was a powerful reminder of what citizenship costs, and what it means. It made me think about my paternal great-grandmother, Apollonia.  She was born in a small mountain town in Italy. Widowed at age 22, she came to the United States just one year later in 1917. She was young, alone, and penniless. The odd...