Quiet Day -- June 9

Rising on Sunday morning I was eager to delve into Jon Meacham's biography of Thomas Jefferson while sipping my coffee.  So eager, in fact, as to prolong the pleasure before moving off to exercise.  Intellectually I comprehend the mind-body dualism but when it comes to apportioning time for one over the other, I suppose it depends on nature of the experiences/values to be drawn therefrom.  Therefore, an interesting book is likely to have an attractive force above and beyond the voice within me saying: "Cochran, get your butt in gear and take care of those exercises!"  This day, I was just plain rebellious and cut short the time on the elliptical to a quarter of what I've been mostly doing for the past three weeks -- 200 calories instead of 800.

I tried rationalizing my general lethargy on whatever would stick, but ultimately nothing was very convincing -- so after breakfast I cut the front and side lawns and weeded flower beds.

It was another beautiful Michigan day and I took the occasion to enjoy some of our blooming plants in the backyard --

All of which made me glad we have perennials that greet us every year.

Later on in the afternoon I broke down, cleaned and lubed my small chainsaw and tackled a remaining few branches of a formerly humongous shrub that had gotten entirely out of control.  Eight dwarf English boxwood  plants now occupy the footprint of the departed shrub and so long as the deer or the rabbits do not eat them, we should have an acceptable replacement in a few years.

In exchange for time on the elliptical in the morning, after my chores and a good shower, I walked downtown to City Hall and dropped off utility bills.  It was a very quiet afternoon in Big Rapids, but I encountered a few people on foot, and chatted with them. That's the nice thing about a small town and a slower pace of life!

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Returning home I pruned back and repotted the 12-year old begonia plant which my former Ferris State colleague, Tom Oldfield (retired dean of the College of Technology) gave me on my 50th birthday.

My former colleague, Tom Oldfield

Originally it was exclusively an indoor plant, but as I kept putting it in larger pots, it became something of a monster, now in a large tub.  I've taken to leaving it outside during the warm weather months and then bring it inside over the winter (where it continues to bloom).  Two years ago I used a cutting to bring a second large planter along with a thriving version of the original.  These two wintered indoors successfully this year, but their leaves got a bit wilted in the lower light.  I separated the large tub plant today and now have three plants to work with.  Twelve years is a long time to keep a gift plant alive, but so long as they get some TLC, they should do just fine.

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I enjoyed a late afternoon and evening running through new material received for my genealogical collections. Online I perused several digital collections and located an advertisement placed by my great grandfather 99 years ago in Detroit Free Press:

Detroit Free Press, February 20, 1914, p. 6

Yes, the very fellow I am named for, the culprit who put chlorophyll in our veins!  Here he is, with my great grandmother, Sophia, around the late 1920's.

 

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Several years ago I prepared a photo montage showing my great grandparents (center) surrounded by their 11 children, all of whom were born in Detroit.  My grandmother, Sophia Mach Cochran is the woman on the left in the second row:

My great grandfather Richard Rudolph Mach died in 1937.  When his widow died in 1965 she was survived by 125 descendants; today the number of their descendants is well over twice that.  We have a very large extended family in Michigan.