A Cat, Bees, and a Cemetery

Wow, way too long since I've posted here. I've been posting at the Webajeb blog, though. This past week I've been very focused on making Webajeb website changes, getting my online store functioning (and I did all by myself!), and now am busily uploading my digital products AND creating new ones. I'm having such a good time now that all that boring and tedious techie stuff is pretty much done! And I must say, I've learned a LOT. But the designing & creating is what I truly love. There's inspiration all around me. Inspiration came in the mailbox this past week in the form of junk mail! I made two new digital scrapbook page layouts based on that piece of advertising. You can see them here.

So...what have I been doing on a more personal level...hm! Must confess, not a lot. I've been spending most of my time in front of the computer in my little dark hole of an office. It's a good thing my friend, Betsie, asked me to visit her cat, Fitz, while she is away traveling, or I mightn't have gotten out of the house at all! Here's the handsome guy:
Earlier this week we did take a drive out to Bloomfield, in Sonoma County. Way back, I bought the BEST honey at Bloomfield Bees & Bouquets and I'm almost out so I wanted to get some more. We found the farm stand just fine using the address I got from the internet, only to find that the beekeepers have moved. There was no new address posted, but am sure I will be able to find it on the internet (I know they have a website). Anyway, here is a photo of their oh-so-cute little farmstand:
It's on the honor system; you can see a box attached to the door on the left. It's got a slot in the top where you drop in your money for whichever item you buy. Gotta love that! Unfortunately, they were totally out of the large jars of honey I was after! I ended up buying some creamed honey out of the little white refrigerator, and Mike got a small container of honey with the comb still in it. I guess we are going to have to find their new place if I want my big jar of honey.

The address of the farm stand showed the city as Sebastopol. But very nearby was a teensy town named Bloomfield so I guess that's where Bloomfield Bees got its name. We decided to explore this little town of Bloomfield and found it to be very small. The entire downtown area seems to consist of a restaurant (Stormy's), a masonic lodge, and the town hall. A block away is a single building that is the Bloomfield School. A few streets of houses are nearby and, at the very top of a hill, the Bloomfield Cemetery. Since we love old cemeteries we had to get out and have a look. Here are some photos:
Some very old headstones, dating back to the mid-1800's.

I tried to look up Bloomfield on the internet, curious about how many people live there, but couldn't find a number for how many people live there. The town came into being in 1856 and at one point in the late 1850s, it was the second largest town in Sonoma County. In 1877 it had four hotels and a population of 250. Then the railroad passed it by and it stopped growing. So I'm guessing the population is probably about the same. From what we saw, that seems about right.

The other reason I'd wanted to go to Bloomfield Bees was to possibly talk to the beekeepers about starting up a beehive in the backyard. I don't know where it has come from, but lately I've had this obsession with beehives. Wha'? I just want one in my backyard so that I can harvest my own honey. Is that crazy? I've been tempted, while driving I-5 to snag one of the hundreds that are visible in the fruit orchards, and take it home. I could do it in the winter while it's cold and the bees are hibernating. When they woke up in the spring they would be in my back yard! I did a little research and have found that a start-up hive with a queen and some drones and all the equipment needed to maintain it would be around $650.00. Yikes!

Maybe I'll just go buy a jar of honey instead.

Benicia Arsenal Post Cemetery 1849

Sunday afternoon we took a drive....

...and tucked away at end of Hospital Road in a southeast corner of Benicia is a small, and very old, military cemetery. As the name of the road implies, there used to be a hospital at this location as well, an army hospital, which was used between 1849 and 1854, and was the only army hospital on the West Coast. The hospital is long gone, but the cemetery remains.

The cemetery is known by a number of names, among them the Benicia Military Cemetery, the Benicia Army Cemetery, and the Benicia Post Cemetery. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Benicia Arsenal-Benicia Barracks Historic District. It is the oldest U.S. military post cemetery in the Pacific States.

This cemetery is the final resting place for 211 people; soldiers, civilians (including some women and children), and prisoners-of-war (Italian and German), as well as three dogs. Originally the graves were marked with wooden plaques but over the years became weather-worn to the point that the names could no longer be read.

When renovations were done and marble headstones erected in place of the wooden ones, many then had to be marked as Unknown.

Seven headstones mark the graves of German prisoners-of-war. These graves are in a far corner, away from the rest.

We found the lone Italian prisoner-of-war buried among the U.S. soldiers and speculated that by the time he died, 1944, Italy had become an ally of the U.S., thus explaining his priviledged resting place.

The cemetery burials date from 1849 through 1958.

The graves of the three dogs, complete with little American flags. These graves are in an area of their own, way off to one side. I wish they had dates on them!

A little later we drove by this building, recognizable by most Benicians; the Clock Tower. We paused to read the plaque out front which stated it was built in 1859 and originally had two towers. An explosion destroyed it in 1912 and when it was rebuilt it had only one tower, this time with a clock installed. We noticed that the clock does NOT keep the correct time!

We met this kitty by the art studios near the Port of Benicia. She was very friendly and let us pet her. Mike even gave her a little beef jerky. Her collar tag told us her name: Sunflower.

Oh, we did see another animal on our little outing, in the cemetery porta-potty:

A raccoon!!