This is my great grandmother Elizabeth Vawters with her fishing lode. She instilled a great love of fishing into the entire Vawters family, and I think it's genetic as I love to fish, too. My grandfather started taking me fishing when I was a little thing, so little that I don't remember the first time, and he was my fishing partner until he couldn't fish anymore.
She also was supposed to be an amazing gardener. My mom told me that she regularly took slips of flowers from cemeteries, grew large rose bushes from rose hips that she put under Mason jars to protect in the winter, and had a large medicinal herb garden that she made cures from on a regular basis. The green thumb gene seems to be passed down as well, although no matter how hard I've tried, I have never been able to accomplish the rose hip to rose bush trick.
My great grandfather Andy Vawters took a pretty active role in the garden as well. His perennial enemies were squirrels, which he called "tree rats" and stalked with a b. b. gun. They ate the fruit from his trees, you see. I've heard a story that he once was working on an area of the garden and accidentally killed a baby bunny; he cried for days. I guess the bunnies could eat the flowers and veggies, but no fruit eating on his watch!
