Mystery solved...maybe

Mike, I was pretty sure I knew the answer to where the photo was taken, and when. This was a trip you and your family made up here for a visit, in - I think - 1961. Here's another print from the same roll, which I know was taken in my back yard. I remember the moment.



The same number is stamped on the back of both b&w prints, so they're from the same roll.

Back to the picture I included in the earlier post. I cropped quite a bit out of it; here's the whole thing.

Still kind of hard to tell for sure, things have changed a lot in 47 years. And just because it's on the same roll doesn't by itself prove it was also taken in my back yard...we could have gone to a park somewhere. Hmmm...time for a little investigating!

So I zoomed in on some small areas, scanned them at 1200 dpi (as fine as my scanner goes), bumped up the contrast a bit and tweaked the images in Photoshop LE.

Besides the branches and leaves, just to the right of Mike's ear I wonder if we're seeing roof lines and windows. It *might* be one of my neighbor's houses (Mrs. Crow's place back then).

Still not very clear at all.

So, what other details can we pick out?

What is that sticking up in the far left of the picture, below the trees in the distance? Stalks of asparagas, you say?

Yep, no kidding. When my folks bought the place in 1959, the previous owner had planted one row of asparagus, running north to south across the back lot (with a gap in the middle about four feet wide to walk through). My big sister and I (when I was old enough to be trusted with a sharp knife) would cut stalks for our mom. It would grow back every year, and the asparagus thrived through the 1960's, maybe into the early 1970's. Then, one year there were only a dozen - maybe twenty - stalks. The next year, gone entirely. Died out. Anyway, I'm pretty confident that's what we're looking at here.

One more area to check out in detail. Ignore the dark leaves in the background. If I'm right about all this, the background tree was an elm tree which over the years grew quite tall. It survived a couple of 70 mph winds and two ice storms, only to be killed by a lightning strike in 1990; and then was cut down.

When I was zoomed into these scans and looking around, the lighter colored leaves in the foreground caught my attention.

Especially the heart shaped one to the left of this line.

These sure look like eastern redbud leaves to me, and we had a redbud in front (to the east of) the aforementioned, ill fated elm tree. The redbud was just to the right and out of the field of view of the original photograph, but you can see it's shadow in the lower right corner.

I still can't swear to it in court, but now I'm more confident the photo was taken in my back yard, as it was in 1961.

Now Mike, I have a question for you. I found the color photo - with the red bow tie - in with some of my mom's papers. I don't recall seeing that before. What was the occasion?

Glad to read that you had a great birthday! That memory book in particular sounds like a neat gift.

Oh, one last question. That chocolate cake with the chocolate icing now...is that the recipe with the, you know, secret ingredient?