Quiet After The Storm

I surveyed my yard, the gardens, the bird feeders. The yard is a disaster. Debris everywhere. There are things in my backyard that blew in from other places in this neighborhood I have never seen. But the birds are happy. They are feasting as never before. The feeders survived and I only had to make a minor adjustment to one out of the three.

The gardens are in a major disarray. But those daffodils have guts because though they looked tumbled upon, they are making their best effort to stand back up.

47 mph winds with a mixture of snow, ice and rain for two entire days. It looked more like winter than spring around here and the temperatures are not suppose to be out of the 40's until Friday.

We got about four inches of rainfall here. Roads have been flooded out by the overflowing rivers and creeks. Trees toppled over from saturated grounds. Six inches of snow fell North of us in the mountains. New England, I understand got hit much harder.

I believe my weekend is already cut out for us around here. We need to clean up the debris out of the yard and gardens. Hopefully, this is the last of the crazy bad weather around here until next winter. Did I say, hopefully?

I am sure I can then return back to writing about family history instead of the weather. But, in the meantime, I was contacted "via" email from a distant McCaffery relative who came across my blog and I asked for any information she may have about the McCaffery clan. It would be especially great if she had information on our great grandfather John McCaffery. Anyway, it appears that this relative was the granddaughter of John Edward McCaffery, son of Collum & Catherine, brother of our Uncle Coll who was cousin to grandmom. For a long time now I questioned whether or not this John was our great grandfather and was really a nephew of Collum & Catherine and not a son. That question was answered with this latest email. If this person was a granddaughter and our grandmother was an only child then there are two John McCafferys, the one listed living with Collum and the one who is our direct descendant. I now wonder if perhaps Collum Sr. and our John McCaffery were brothers? Now that I know that Collum Jr. and our John were not brothers put probably nephew and uncle which meant Uncle Coll and grandmom were indeed second cousins.

At this point, you may be wondering how we came about calling Uncle Coll, uncle if he were a cousin of grandmom? Simple. Uncle Coll married grandmom's husband's sister. So, even though he was grandmom's cousin, he was also an Uncle to grandmom & grandpop's children by way of his marriage to grandpop's sister. Confusing? Yes. It is even more confusing when you realize that grandmom was born Anna Marie McCaffery and when she married grandpop became Anna Marie Gallagher whereas her sister-in-law was born Anna Marie Gallagher and when she married Uncle Coll she became Anna Marie McCaffery. Very confusing? Yes.

Of course this is not the first brother & sister duo marrying. Grandpop's own mother Mary Keller married William Gallagher then Mary's brother John Keller married William Gallagher's sister Sally Gallagher. Mary Keller became Mary Gallagher whereas Sally Gallagher became Sally Keller. I am thinking none of our family got out of the city much for they married each other's cousins, brothers and sisters.

Close family? Huh?