Pecan Grove (www.pecan-grove.net) Pecan Grove and Senior Residence

Raymond Reece had a bad fall November 1.  We took him to the VA hospital, after which he went to a nursing home in northwest Houston that takes VA residents.  He’s receiving PT and OT treatment, but it seems doutful he’ll return to PG.  He’s content, and has visitors fairly often.  Some tried to take him out of the nursing home for Thanksgiving dinner but he refused.  He likes his routine. The following picture is of Raymond in the nursing home, and Kathy.  The second picture is of the Milles and Elton visiting Elton’s brother, Roger Cleveland, in the nursing home.

I’ve updated the Current and Past Resident tables in the upper right corner of this blog.  Now with Raymond gone we only have 6 residents.  My father, Jack, lives in a house on the farm, and is at the residence a lot.   Here they are:

Back: John Cluver, Elton Cleveland, Jack Newman

Front: Jean Hagemeier, Fern Duncan, Alice Otken and Marybelle Armstrong

We have 4 staff working in the residence. The first picture is of Jennifer Maddox with her husband and daughter.  The second is of Lety Valdez with her parents who visited from Mexico.  The third picture is of Salena Newman (the manager) with Ashley Kipp who was visiting.  The forth picture is of Robbie Norman.

Wayne and Dawn Overby moved 17 miles to PG in November.  They are living in the house that Samuel and Conchita had been in.  We’re sure glad to have them here!  Wayne and Dawn are with Wayne’s bother Keith and family, and Alice in the first picture below.  The Overbys are on the right in the second picture taken at Clarence Roachells one Sunday morning.  The Colsons, Milles, Eubanks, Fern and Jack are also in the second picture with Clarence.

Ron and Ann Furrow were here to visit their son Brendan, who is married to our daughter Karla, and their 4 kids.  Also Mai Hoa from Vietnam visited the Milles and others of us who remember her.

Our workers this year are Rachel Potter and Emma Perez.  They were with us for Thanksgiving, also Kenion Bryant from the south Houston field.

Here are some Thanksgiving pictures:

Ken

The first major event at PG in October was Elton’s 100th birthday!  His son David, daughter Cheryl and Jim Hutchison, grandson Matt Hutchison and family, granddaughter Elizabeth Wimmer,  and Alicia Weaver came for the first party.  His daughter Karen joined us by Skype from Columbia.  Gerry and Margaret Gunderson came for the second party.  When the cake was being carried in to the first party, David went ahead with the cake box, pretended to fall, and threw the box on the floor.  Here are some pictures.  The second one is of Elton watching the cake “fall”.  The last picture is taken in the nursing home, visiting Elton’s brother Roger.

The other major events were the Texas conventions.  5 residents were able for Georgetown English, and 3 for Mountain Peak.  Raymond and Jack were the only ones unable to attend a convention.  Some were able to listen to the conventions at PG.

Jack had lower back surgery in September to relieve pressure on his spinal cord and some nerves.  The surgery went well, but the recovery has been long.  He spent a few weeks in a rehab hospital, then stayed in John’s room at PG while John was away at conventions.  He’s now back up in his house, and continuing to recover slowly.

Raymond Reece is having much more difficulty getting around.  He has fallen several times.  They are acessing him to see if PT could help.

Alice Oetken had a minor surgery which went very well, but then she had blood clots in her legs and lung, so was in the hospital several days.  Her niece Carol Martin came to spend several days with her when she came home.  Also Jim and Roberta Stipp (brother and sister) stopped by PG for a night after Effie convention.  Ron and Pam Lacock stopped by for a visit, as did Nadene and Lynden Laird.

Harvey dumped 21″ on PG in 2 days, which was minor compared to what Houston received.  It’s hilly here, so no concerns about flooding.  However the force of the rain washed a lot (maybe half) of the pecans off of the trees.  We finished the harvest and are still finishing the cleaning of the pecans.  One step of the cleaning process is shown below.  We’ve also started thinning the orchard.  Our trees are on 35 ft spacing.  In some areas they have started touching in the middle.  We have to cut out every other tree, so they are on 70 ft spacing.  This year we’ve cut down about 20 trees.

Ken

Last Friday Naomi Nicholson (88) started getting sick.  She went from the nursing home to the hospital Sunday morning, and passed away early Tuesday morning.   We knew Sunday morning in the emergency room that she wasn’t going to live, so we stopped all treatment and kept her comfortable.  She had more than 2o visitors on Monday, and responded when hymns were sung and to some questions.  Naomi came to PG in August 2011, and went to a nursing home in Conroe in January 2016.  The funeral was yesterday (Friday).  Barry Barkley, Rosemary Fandrich and Jane Estey came from the north east, and 4 of the Texas workers came, Lyle Schober, Marie Mounce, Joyce Lawerence, Emma Perez, Jennifer Bartels and Sarah Ranstrom.  Here’s a picture of Barry, Rosemary and Jane with Fern.  Also 2 pictures of the group together before the funeral.  There was a pot luck after the funeral with a much larger group.  We are working on notes from the funeral which will be emailed to the blog list.

Earlier in September a lot happened.  My dad, Jack Newman, had back surgery, and is still in a rehab hospital.  He’s making progress and hopes to return home next week. My brother Brent, and sister Ronda Rosamond came to be with him. Alice had emergency surgery for a hernia.  She has recovered quickly, but still has some pain.  Jean went into the same rehab hospital dad is in for 10 days of PT and OT.  It made a big difference for her… she was in a wheel chair and now is walking again.  Betty Denton and Lois Culver (John’s sister) came to visit John and Fern.  Here’s pictures of Lois with John, then Betty and Lois with Clinton, and Betty with her Texas relatives Bud and Mary Aldrich.

Ronda Stidolph took Marybelle to convention in Iowa.  Pearl Bailey and Alma Johnson visited Fern.  Jean turned 94 (before going to rehab).  Truman Weld visited from Oregon, shown here with Elton.

4 couples came to visit at the same time.  Unfortunately we only have a picture of Roger and Betty Egger from Canada (near where Fern is from).  The other couples were John and Betty Egger (John and Roger are cousins), Mel and Rudonna Pipgras, and Brian and Linda Blair.  Our 6th grandchild arrived in September, Emry Furrow.

That pecan tree we showed last month that was blown over by Harvey, we managed to stand up again.

Ken

August has been a very eventful month!

Friday the 25^th Ken and Kathy left for Hong Kong/China and the same evening Hurricane Harvey made landfall along the coast in Rockport, TX and rains began falling in the Houston area.

Saturday we remember experiencing heavy rainfall all day.  Salena and Lety’s families moved to the farm to be close to the residents because of the streets flooding.

Sunday the heavy rain continued all day and night and many meetings were canceled.  Terry moved his meeting to the residence for those who were staying on the Pecan Grove grounds.  We were amazed at the increasingly high waters in the pond behind the residence as you can see in the first two photos.

These photos show the waters from the pond overflowing into the forest and horse pasture.

The waters rose to cover the pier area at the cabin and the pond waters began to go over the dam.  We were worried it would break under the pressure.

Marcos caught a few of the escaping carp and they were prepared for supper at the residence.

Monday the rains persisted night and day causing the soil to turn into quicksand.  One of our 4-wheelers became stuck and we tried to pull it out with a small tractor and then a bigger tractor, but they also became stuck!  The photo shows Marcos, Terry, Dominique, and Ty (not shown in picture) trying to rescue the machines.

Tuesday we lost power in the morning, but was back up and running in the afternoon.  The rain finally stopped that evening and the sun came out briefly.  The residents were overjoyed and many went out on their walks, they and the buildings are all doing well.  The farm sustained minor damages with a few fallen trees and lost pecans.  We are grateful to be located so far north, many of the areas south of us were evacuated and destroyed by the flood waters.

Earlier this month we had a big change in personnel at PG.  Samuel and Conchita, who have worked here since 2013, decided to take an opportunity in San Antonio.  Samuel had been working on the farm, and Conchita at the residence.  We are missing them.  It was a pleasure seeing Bambi again before they had to leave since we have not seen him in a while.

Fern turned 87 and Jack turned 84 in August.

Ken’s sister Ronda, who was the manager here at PG for a few years, and her son Travis Chandler and family, visited at the same time David Bolt was here with his son Travis.  Nathan and Allison Potter also visited.

The Jeanes came to visit John, and the Tasics visited the Milles.

Elton flew to Quakertown convention.  Here he’s pretending to fly (100 year olds get special treatment), and then shown in a 4 generation picture.

Thank you for your continued interest and all the care and concern that has been shown to us.

Ken, Dominique, Mimi, & Salena