August 18, 1862
How foolish, nay how wicked are presentiments and omens! How weak to indulge in superstitious forebodings. I made myself actually miserable yesterday, had to exert a strong and determined will to keep myself from persuading Mr E not to leave home because it was the anniversary of my Mother’s death and I thought that the day which took my Mother was also to take my husband, when Lo, talking last night with father I found that both brother and myself had by some most unaccountable confusion of mind mistaken the day, and that she died in July! I immediately referred to some old letters, letters from her and from Grandpapa which gave me a pang to look at, far more to read, & found that he was right & for years I have been under the mistake. I was too young at the time to take much note of dates & so as I rarely speak of her I suppose that I fell into the error from miscounting & the 17th of August has by me been kept as a sorrowful sacred memory when in fact it is as any other day in the year to me. So as I have caught myself in such foolish presentiments on such causeless ground as I yesterday indulged let me be careful how I look forth gloomily to the future again.
Father & Mama have gone down to Conneconara today, and I am neither sad nor lonely. I have been since breakfast on the knees at the shrine of Pomona & it is now twelve o’clock. That is, I have been examining our young Peach Trees & cutting the borer out, & a tiresome job it is. I have had all of them scalded with boiling water at the collar & then well rubbed with sulphur & Lard, a process which I hope will destroy the eggs & make the tree so distasteful to the fly that she will deposit no more there. I must go at the Peach orchard tomorrow. There the trees being older the work will be more difficult, but none the less necessary, for there I think is the nursery from whence they all proceed. I had no idea that the grub was so large. Some of them are as long as a joint and a half of my little finger.
Source: Edmondston, Catherine Ann Devereux, 1823-1875, Journal of a Secesh Lady: The Diary of Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston 1860-1866. Crabtree, Beth G and Patton, James W., (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1979). http://nc-historical-publications.stores.yahoo.net/478.html
