The weather took us on another roller coaster ride last week. It was cold then warm then cold again. The last day of February was mild and lovely and the first of March started off that way too. But later in the day on Wednesday, the wind picked up and the cold came back with a vengeance. The wind roared all that night. Thursday morning we woke up to snow. During the night the wind blew down a huge old tree in the Ulysses Cemetery that fell across Highway 49. It took them all day to cut it up and haul it away and meanwhile all the traffic on Highway 49 was detoured which meant a long drive for me going to and coming from school. The wind also blew down a tree at the church. The old saying says that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. The first part was certainly true this time. I hope the second part is too.
On Wednesday, when I got home from school and took my daily walk around the yard, I was thrilled to find yellow crocuses blooming in the long flower bed. They seemed to appear overnight. Warm weather does that. Sadly, the next day they were under snow again and I haven’t seen them since.
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| Crocuses on Wednesday. |
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| The same crocuses on Thursday. |
The sap is running in the maples now. Our friends who run sugar shacks are busy collecting and boiling sap. There are seven huge old maples and two younger ones in my yard, but I don’t tap them. The oldest ones are over 200 years old. We tapped them once many years ago, but it was too painful for me to see holes drilled into them. And after all our effort we only got a pint of syrup. So we just buy our syrup from friends who tap trees for a living. During the winter the wind and snow always does some damage to my old maples – breaks off twigs and a few branches. When the sap starts to run, all those little wounds bleed sap and it drips and makes sap icicles. When the children were home we would sometimes find sap icicles and suck on them. They taste like slightly sweet and woody water.
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| Sap icicles on one of my maples. |
Most of my seed orders arrived last week. That made me happy. I love packets of seeds. I love to spread them out on the dining room table and arrange them alphabetically, then arrange them by planting location – flower beds or vegetable garden – and then arrange them in planting order. That’s not obsessive, is it? I’ve made my planting calendar and entered all the start dates for the various seeds. The first ones, celery, onions, and parsley, go into the trays on the 11th. And thus begins the growing season of 2017.
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| The garden of 2017 - in seed form. |
On Friday we had a rare and special treat. Two General Authorities, President Henry B. Eyring, First Counselor in the First Presidency, and Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, were in Palmyra for a special Face to Face Broadcast for the youth of the church. While they were here they invited all the members of the Palmyra Stake to attend a fireside on Friday night. Our Stake Presidency wanted to encourage the members in the far away branches to attend, so they hired buses to take the Wellsville, Hornell, and Bath branches to the fireside. Our bus left Wellsville at 3:30 p.m. We arrived at the Stake Center in Palmyra at 5:30. The Stake Center was packed, but they had reserved seating for the branches. The fireside began at 7:00. It was wonderful. It was great to be with such great men and hear them bear their testimonies of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The bus delivered us back at our chapel in Wellsville at 10:30 and Stacey and I were home by 11:00. It was a long evening, but very worth it.
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| Boarding the bus in Wellsville. |
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| On our way. |
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| Pres. Eyring at the pulpit of the Palmyra Stake Center. |
The cold weather is still here. It was 3° when I got up this morning. I see that the weather roller coaster will keep up the pattern. By midweek we’ll be in the 50's again. I wish it would just get warm and stay warm. I’m more than ready for winter to go away.
Tomorrow I will enter yet another new phase in my life. Stacey has prevailed and I will start going to yoga class with her. She bought me some “yoga clothes” – just sweat pants and an exercise shirt. I already have a yoga mat that she bought me last year. The clincher that shattered my resistance was when I saw that an hour long yoga session burns about 400 calories, where my daily brisk walks only burn 120. Stacey assures me that no one in the class will laugh at me even if (it’s actually when) I fall over. We’ll see.
Tomorrow I will enter yet another new phase in my life. Stacey has prevailed and I will start going to yoga class with her. She bought me some “yoga clothes” – just sweat pants and an exercise shirt. I already have a yoga mat that she bought me last year. The clincher that shattered my resistance was when I saw that an hour long yoga session burns about 400 calories, where my daily brisk walks only burn 120. Stacey assures me that no one in the class will laugh at me even if (it’s actually when) I fall over. We’ll see.
