The Quest is Over

As you know, Hubs and I have been looking for a replacement for our recently deceased electric kettle.  After having replaced kettles on a nearly yearly basis, we decided to go with a stove top model.  We have looked at everything from All-Clad to OXO, from big to little, to plain to fancy and from cheap to expensive.  Not being able to make a decision other than we didn't want to mortgage the house to buy a kettle, we made an impulse buy last night.  We stopped at our neighborhood Target store to pick up dishwasher detergent and we ran across this.

Yes, I will say that I purchased it for the color but what would you  expect from someone who chooses books by the cover art.  I haven't tried it yet but Hubs has and he says the whistle will wake the dead.  I didn't hear it as I was drying my hair but I will take his word for it.

In other news, I have been trying to make Facebook a kinder, gentler place (ha! futile, just futile) so I have been posting photos of my favorite things.  I like garden gates and light houses, history facts and inspirational quotes.  Well, ok, maybe not the quote thing so much but honestly, anything but the nastiness that is regularly spewed on FB.

So, today I posted this photo and thought I would share it here --

This is a painting by a Texas artist named Dalhart Windberg.  He is a native Texan, born in Goliad in 1933 and living in Georgetown, Texas.  He specializes in landscapes of the Texas hill country as well as other areas of the state. We own a print of this painting and I always thought it looked familiar to me, like I "knew" it.  Then it dawned on me that it looked just like the entrance to the Harper Cemetery, Harper, Texas.

This is what the entrance looks like now but years ago there was an old wooden gate (exactly like that in the painting) that you had to jump on to unlatch.  Then, about thirty years ago there was a steel farm gate that you didn't have to jump on but you did have to unlatch it.  Now there is no gate -- I would assume that the gates were removed when it was made a community cemetery rather than a family cemetery.  It is all cleaned up now, not as "rustic" as it used to be and there are many new names there.  It has grown, is taken care of and is truly a testament to the pioneer families of the Texas Hill country.
 
If you visit this link, you can see photos of all the headstones there -- http://www.fbgtxgensoc.org/photos/har/index.shtml.

 The Harper Cemetery started out as a family cemetery.  Anybody related to the Rogers Family could be buried there.  If you visit the link above and look at the headstones  you are traveling through my paternal family tree.  Boyett's, Giles's, Bierschwale's, Rogers -- yes, that is me on my paternal grandmother's side of the family.  There is a lot of history there was well.

So, anyway, that was my "gate" for the day.  I have been posting lovely photos of gates in magazines and on pinterest but today I decided to post one that had personal meaning to me.  Welcome to my world.