Mortonclan

While we were nearby, Daddy and Mama showed us kids Monticello. What a jewel of architecture, what luscious gardens, what innovative ideas for making a home and farm run smoothly! Although Mr. Jefferson himself was very unwise in many ways, and obviously did not fear the Lord, he had allot of smart ideas that were very fascinating. We came home very inspired about farming and the running of a farm.

Dee

Isn't this garden house (?) elegant?

Us three girls beside the Cock's Comb flowers...

The vineyards and orchards were amazing.

Looking at the thousand foot garden.

Daddy dear reading a plaque...

Dorothy

Martha, Dorothy and Paul at the end of the tunnel...

Two of my sweet sisters...

In 'ze kitchen!

Don't we have the loveliest parents!?

Monticello on the nickle...

"The man himself, I presume!" (I love the Paul's little boy posture-way too cute!)

The Next morning we made out way to the cemetery I spoke of earlier...

The sky overheard is a bright blue, and the morning sun that’s filtering through the trees hasn’t melted the light frost that’s on the Virginia ground. We’ve stopped in Buckingham county, and are walking down an old, winding farm road. The air is crisp and nippy, and we’re all enjoying the brisk walk after being in the car-the little boys run up ahead, shouting and calling…Our destination, farther up, in a stand of trees way up on the hill, is the graves of our great, great, great, great grandparents, Nathanial and Ann Morris, and many others. We walk on, through a corn field, up the hill-Ever since Daddy and Mama found this cemetery ( An incredible story of a series of amazing encounters and findings orchestrated by the Lord) We children have really wanted to see it, and also Nathanial Morris’ farm, the land we are walking on right now.

It just makes you feel so-I don’t exactly know how to say it, but when you walk where you fathers walked, and stand on the ground they stood on, it makes you feel so connected with history, such a part of it, like you know where you came from, and who your people are.

As we walk up, and see the old marble slabs sticking up out of that soil, the autumn leaves covering the ground, rustling and crunching under your feet as you walk closer, I’m just thinking about each stone, and what it would have been like if it had been me who was that young mother, or that old lady there, burying her husband. The year was 1813. You’re in mourning crape, and it’s blackness is so vivid against the white snow on this January day…the cold is making your soft, wrinkled hands red. You push them deeper into your muff. Hands…what all did they do? and your old, grayed eyes, what did they see? Did your heart beat fast when you heard news of the war, or read the papers? What did you do when he went off to fight? What did you think when they gave him this land for fighting? Did you have children then? You were a young wife then. Now you are an old widow. But your children, grandchildren, and several great grand children are there with you. Your son, an older man himself, now, takes your elbow. The first spade full is thrown in. A tear rolls down your wrinkled cheek, it’s warmth stinging her cold face. After a while, he will help her into the wagon, and take her home. But first, she wants to stand there a minute, leaning on her son. She is very tired. See that young man, there, next to the fresh mound of soil? Yes, the one holding his hat? He the old man’s grandson, Samuel A. Morris. As the family walks away, slowly, he looks back at the one stone sticking up out of the snow, and the frozen dirt piled around it. He does not know that one day, a great many years and stones later, his Grandfather’s great great great great grandchildren will stand there. It is November of the year 2009. The stone of Nathanial Morris, the old man, is now one of many, old and mossy, standing separately to the side with the old widow who buried her husband back in January of 1813.

The mound is not there anymore. Century's of rain, storms, wars and seasons have erased all signs of disturbance, and the stone is now surrounded by layers of leaves and moss. And right now, this very minute, a whole family of their descendants are walking among their markers, looking at names, writing down dates, thinking. Thinking about life, where it comes from, what ones does in it, when you die, and where you go after you do that one last thing. I hope and pray that the Lord can say “Well done, good and faithful servant-enter thou into the joy of the Lord!” to me when I die. And I hope that in two century's, when my great great great great grandchildren visit the spot where I return to dust, my marker, I pray that they will be inspired to continue on in following the Lord Jesus Christ.