Well, here we are in a brand new year. So far it hasn’t been too different from the old one. I’m having a hard time remembering to date things 2014. The holidays seemed so short. Our New Years celebration was very modest. We made some good food for New Year’s Eve – our traditional mix of Japanese/Chinese/Mexican. I made okonomiyaki (Japanese pancakes with cabbage and bacon), we had egg rolls and wontons (spell checker wants to change that word to “wantons,” which I find funny), hot bean and cheese dip and tortilla chips, a cheese ball and crackers, and our favorite sherbet punch. We played games all evening and watched a movie to take us almost to midnight. That’s all.
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| Our New Years spread. |
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| Playing games. |
New Year’s Day Stacey had to work until 2:00 p.m. I made the pork and sauerkraut. I braised the pork roast and put it in the slow cooker and let it go for six hours. I planned to use the sauerkraut I made last summer, but when I opened the bucket, it didn’t smell good – which is saying something with sauerkraut. So we had to go to the cellar and bring up a jar from the batch I canned in 2009. It was excellent. Miriam made rolls. Hannah made the mashed potatoes. We finally sat down to eat at 4:00 p.m. I love pork and sauerkraut. I didn’t so much when I was little. I remember having to mix my sauerkraut into my mashed potatoes in order to swallow it. That has changed. Most of my children like sauerkraut – all but Hannah and Josiah. I tell them they’ll love it when their tastes have matured. The next day, Stacey made sauerkraut and dumplings from the leftovers, which I love even more than regular pork and sauerkraut.
School reopened on Thursday, but it was short-lived. A snowstorm blew in during the day and they let school out early. They canceled school on Friday. We got about six inches of snow, not a huge amount, but the weather was bitterly cold. Friday morning when I checked, it was eleven below zero. I went out to take pictures of the snow and only lasted about five minutes before my fingers were numb – and I was wearing gloves. There’s more Arctic weather expected this week.
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| Looking up the road past Shillig's house. |
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| Looking down highway 49 toward Raymond. |
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| The Beaver Pond. |
Amid all the snow and frost and sub-zero temperatures, a lovely thing happened here. I was watering my houseplants on Friday and discovered blossoms on my little bonsai mume tree. There are just two, but they are pink and perfect and fragrant and they make me happy. I first encountered mume trees in Japan, of course. In February of 1979 when I was serving in the city of Minoo, I was sitting at my desk studying one morning and I noticed a sweet odor. I searched the apartment for the source and finally found, on top of one of the wardrobes, a little bonsai tree covered with fragrant pink flowers. I didn’t know what it was or where it had come from. I asked the other elders and they told me it was a gift to one of them from an investigator. The elder who received it hadn’t taken care of it and thought it was dead when all the leaves fell off, so he just put it up on top of the wardrobe and forgot about it. Despite the neglect, the tree was very much alive. I took charge of it and tended it until I was transferred a little while later. I loved that little tree. I found out from one of the Japanese members that it was a mume tree, a Japanese apricot, and that they were highly prized by the Japanese because they are beautiful, fragrant, and they bloom in winter. One day shortly after that, while we were out tracting in the country, my companion and I came upon a full sized mume tree in full bloom in someone’s garden. It was spectacular. Later in my mission I encountered the elder to whom the bonsai tree had been given and I asked him about it. He told me that after I was transferred, no one took care of it and it really did die. He threw it away. That made me sad. When I returned home from my mission I tried to find a bonsai mume tree to buy and discovered that a tree the size of that one in Japan would cost me several hundred dollars. It would have been a very old tree despite its small size. I couldn’t afford one. Finally, just a year ago, I found a place on line that sells mume trees at a reasonable price, but not trained as a bonsai. I bought one and put it in a bonsai pot and am training it. This is the first time it has bloomed and the this is the first time I’ve seen and smelled those lovely blossoms since February, 1979.
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| My mume bonsai in bloom. |
I’ve been busy over the break converting old slides into digital photos. Several years ago my parents gave all the old family slides neatly arranged in pocket binders. I’ve been going through them year by year, converting them and fixing them with Photoshop. Many of the slides are in poor condition. The film has decayed and turned red. Many of them are scratched and dirty. I can correct some of it. I’ve been posting the photos in albums by year on facebook. It’s fun seeing old places and faces when they weren’t so old. I’m only up to 1966, so I have a lot more to do.
This week will be sad for us. On Tuesday Miriam leaves to return to Utah. The holidays will really be over then and things will be too normal around here. It’s been so nice having Miriam home. The week also looks like it will be full of nasty weather, freezing rain, snow, sub-zero temperatures. We’re battening down the hatches and stoking the wood stove. It looks like most of the country will be in similar circumstances. Stay warm.
