April is the cruellest month . . .
That is the first line of T. S Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. I never liked the poem. It is too modern for my taste, which means it lacks rhythm and rhyme for the most part and is a bit too oblique in its meaning. But I do like that first line. April is a poetic month. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (which I do love, especially in its original Old English, which makes it sound magical to me) opens its Prologue with a tribute to the month:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote (When April with its sweet-smelling showers)
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, (Has pierced the drought of March to the root,)
And bathed every veyne in swich licour (And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid)
Of which vertu engendred is the flour; (By which power the flower is created;)
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth (When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,)
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth (In every wood and field has breathed life into)
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne (The tender new leaves, and the young sun)
Et cetera.
Eliot’s line describes this April better than Chaucer’s, so far. We had beautiful, perfect spring weather at the beginning of the week, a lovely taste of those Zephyrs with their sweet breath. But by the end of the week, winter had staged another attempted coup and hit us with cold winds and snow. Cruel indeed.
There was a light frost on Monday morning, but after the sun rose, the temperature was mild the rest of the day. I spent most of the day outside. I mowed for the first time this year. I didn’t mow grass really, it’s still too short, but I mowed up all the winter debris from the lawn. I spent hours cleaning out flowerbeds, weeding, getting rid of the last soggy leaves from last fall that always accumulate in the corners. Midday, my onion plants arrived in the mail and I spent an hour planting them. I now have two 8' x 4' raised beds filled with onions and I feel like a rich man.
That is the first line of T. S Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. I never liked the poem. It is too modern for my taste, which means it lacks rhythm and rhyme for the most part and is a bit too oblique in its meaning. But I do like that first line. April is a poetic month. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (which I do love, especially in its original Old English, which makes it sound magical to me) opens its Prologue with a tribute to the month:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote (When April with its sweet-smelling showers)
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, (Has pierced the drought of March to the root,)
And bathed every veyne in swich licour (And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid)
Of which vertu engendred is the flour; (By which power the flower is created;)
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth (When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,)
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth (In every wood and field has breathed life into)
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne (The tender new leaves, and the young sun)
Et cetera.
Eliot’s line describes this April better than Chaucer’s, so far. We had beautiful, perfect spring weather at the beginning of the week, a lovely taste of those Zephyrs with their sweet breath. But by the end of the week, winter had staged another attempted coup and hit us with cold winds and snow. Cruel indeed.
There was a light frost on Monday morning, but after the sun rose, the temperature was mild the rest of the day. I spent most of the day outside. I mowed for the first time this year. I didn’t mow grass really, it’s still too short, but I mowed up all the winter debris from the lawn. I spent hours cleaning out flowerbeds, weeding, getting rid of the last soggy leaves from last fall that always accumulate in the corners. Midday, my onion plants arrived in the mail and I spent an hour planting them. I now have two 8' x 4' raised beds filled with onions and I feel like a rich man.
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| Tidied flowerbeds. |
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| Onions planted in vegetable garden #1. |
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| Tidied vegetable garden #2. |
I also worked in the barn on Monday morning while I was waiting for the frost to melt. I moved the chicks out of their little pen into the entire mid section of the coop. I also retired their small waterer and feeder and set up bigger ones. I still have the heat lamp set up because our nights are still pretty cold. The chicks love having more room. They are fledging now, their fuzz is almost gone, replaced by new feathers. They will be sequestered there for a few more weeks until they are big enough to join the main flock.
Tuesday was the same sort of day with the same sort of work – weeding, raking, enjoying the exercise and the sunshine. That night we had a little thunderstorm and about an eighth of an inch of rain, but after a cool and cloudy morning, Wednesday turned out to be the nicest day of the week. The temperature rose into the 60's, perfect for doing strenuous garden work – and that’s just what I did. I wrote a few weeks ago that I felt a need to expand my vegetable garden this year after years of reducing its size. On Wednesday I tilled several new garden areas. They are actually old areas that I let go fallow years ago. I tilled and prepared the place where my pumpkins and squash will grow, an area for a large cucumber patch, and a large area for corn and beans. I haven’t grown corn in years. I don’t grow sweet corn, I grow flint corn for grinding into meal. Tilling is hard work, but now it’s done and I’m happy for that. After I’ve planted all those new areas (in May when the weather is more reliable), weeding and maintaining them will make my garden chores a bit more arduous this summer, but I want to do it. I actually love to do it.
Tuesday was the same sort of day with the same sort of work – weeding, raking, enjoying the exercise and the sunshine. That night we had a little thunderstorm and about an eighth of an inch of rain, but after a cool and cloudy morning, Wednesday turned out to be the nicest day of the week. The temperature rose into the 60's, perfect for doing strenuous garden work – and that’s just what I did. I wrote a few weeks ago that I felt a need to expand my vegetable garden this year after years of reducing its size. On Wednesday I tilled several new garden areas. They are actually old areas that I let go fallow years ago. I tilled and prepared the place where my pumpkins and squash will grow, an area for a large cucumber patch, and a large area for corn and beans. I haven’t grown corn in years. I don’t grow sweet corn, I grow flint corn for grinding into meal. Tilling is hard work, but now it’s done and I’m happy for that. After I’ve planted all those new areas (in May when the weather is more reliable), weeding and maintaining them will make my garden chores a bit more arduous this summer, but I want to do it. I actually love to do it.
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| The new cucumber bed. |
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| Where the squash will grow. |
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| A place for beans and corn. |
While I was working in the yard, I was thrilled to see bluebirds checking out the birdhouses on my kiwi arbor. They nested there last year. I hope they choose to do so again this year. They are lovely birds.
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| A bluebird inspecting a birdhouse. |
On Wednesday Rachel gave birth to our newest grandchild, a little girl. Well, not really little – she weighed nine pounds and fourteen ounces. She is the Thayn’s fourth daughter, and our seventh grandchild. We are so happy she has come to join our family. They named her Florence Myrtle Thayn.
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| Newborn Florence Myrtle Thayn. |
On Thursday the governor announced that all schools will stay closed across the state for the remainder of the academic year. I feel a little sorry for the high school seniors. They didn’t get much of a senior year. But then, many of them had severe cases of senioritis before all this even began and could hardly wait to get out of school anyway. It just came in a way they didn’t expect.
On Thursday the weather changed and I only went outside twice – once to fill my new bird feeder in the morning, and once to do the chores in the afternoon. The new bird feeder is one I ordered online. I didn’t pay attention to anything but the price when I ordered it and when it arrived last week, I discovered that it is tiny. It only holds two cups of sunflower seeds. The birds love it, but they empty it in just a few hours. Our resident big gray squirrel, The Great Bambina (the children named her that, I’m not sure why), had some trouble negotiating it at first, but after some determined effort, she found a way to get seeds from it. I take the feeder in every night just in case a bear chooses to visit us again. When I went down to do the chores at 3:00, there were snowflakes swirling on a stiff, cold wind. At first it didn’t stick, but as sundown approached it began to snow harder and accumulate. It made me sick to watch it blanket the flowerbeds yet again.
On Thursday the weather changed and I only went outside twice – once to fill my new bird feeder in the morning, and once to do the chores in the afternoon. The new bird feeder is one I ordered online. I didn’t pay attention to anything but the price when I ordered it and when it arrived last week, I discovered that it is tiny. It only holds two cups of sunflower seeds. The birds love it, but they empty it in just a few hours. Our resident big gray squirrel, The Great Bambina (the children named her that, I’m not sure why), had some trouble negotiating it at first, but after some determined effort, she found a way to get seeds from it. I take the feeder in every night just in case a bear chooses to visit us again. When I went down to do the chores at 3:00, there were snowflakes swirling on a stiff, cold wind. At first it didn’t stick, but as sundown approached it began to snow harder and accumulate. It made me sick to watch it blanket the flowerbeds yet again.
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| The Great Bambina on the new bird feeder. |
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| Thursday evening. |
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| Thursday evening. |
Good Friday morning we awoke to find everything covered in three inches of snow. I was disgusted. All week long I’d been out in my garden enjoying the flowers and the sunshine and now it was like it had all been a dream. There wasn’t a flower to be seen. I spent the day keeping my personal Good Friday tradition of listening to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. I love that glorious music. At the request of our prophet, Russell M. Nelson, we fasted on Good Friday to ask the Lord “that the pandemic may be controlled, care givers protected, the economy strengthened, and life normalized.” I think because I was fasting and in a contemplative mood, the St. Matthew Passion was even more powerfully moving to me.
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| Friday morning. |
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| Friday morning. |
Hannah flew back from school on Thursday. She and Josiah drove down to Geoffrey’s house in Utah on Wednesday and then Hannah flew from Salt Lake to Pittsburgh on Thursday. Josiah isn’t coming home this time. He’s staying at Geoffrey’s over Easter break and then will go back up to Rexburg for his next semester. Hannah will be taking her classes next semester at home on the internet. When she arrived at the Thayn’s on Thursday evening, they sanitized her and put her into quarantine. Stacey got off work early on Friday thinking we needed to go get Hannah and bring her home, but it turned out that Miriam will be coming home some time this week and Hannah will come back with her
I was sad and a little angry on Friday when my garden was buried under snow. But by Sunday morning, Easter morning, the snow was mostly gone and the world was filled with flowers again. It occurs to me that there is some symbolism in this. The garden was buried under a layer of white death, just as the Lord suffered death and was laid in a tomb on Friday. And now it is Sunday, death is gone and “the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come” again.
"Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words . . . "
(Luke 24:1-8)
We had a very nice, if a little different, Easter. The Church had some great things on their web site – music and videos. I hope your Easter was joyous.
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| The flowers appear again. |
