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| Crocuses on one of the days without snow. |
Happy Thought
Of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all
Be as happy as kings.
That is a poem I learned in the fourth grade – one of several I memorized from A Child’s Garden of Verses, which is still one of my favorite books of poetry. I remember that I chose to memorize it because every Friday we had to recite a poem to the class and it was short. It came to my mind last week as I was perusing the news sites, feeling a bit sad and overwhelmed at how angry and unhappy most of the world seems to be. I sometimes forget that there are a number of things in the world that should make me happy. I don’t think I’m a naturally happy person. I mean, I don’t exude happiness most of the time. I tend to be pessimistic. Sometimes cynical. I have to remind myself now and then that there is so much to be happy about. I often have to pause and take time to think on the blessings that abound in my life. When I do that, I do feel happy. I don’t know about being as happy as a king, however. From what I know of history, they were not a particularly happy lot. With my simple and quiet life, I suppose I am happier than most kings are and were.
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| The page from my childhood book of nursery rhymes. |
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| Robert Louis Stevenson |
I am happy that it’s April now. The last week of March was pretty rough at times. In the ongoing battle between Winter and Spring, Winter had the upper hand most of the week. In fact, I began to think that Winter had won the war altogether and Spring would have to retreat and try again next year. All week it was back and forth, cold and snowy, mild and rainy, then cold and snowy again. It changed every day and sometimes hour by hour. Spring made her best attempt to assert herself on Thursday, but Winter pushed back and took control again on Friday.
Of course, in my imagination, I personify Winter as being masculine and Spring as feminine. That actually works in several languages. English (a mostly Germanic language) abandoned the gender of nouns during the Middle English Period (1150 to 1500); we use “the” as the definite article for all nouns, but in other languages that still use gender like German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, etc, Winter is usually a masculine noun:
Dutch – de winter
French – l’hiver
Italian – l’inverno
Spanish – el invierno
Greek – o cheimónas
And in most of those languages, Spring is a feminine noun:
Dutch – de lente (“de” can be either masculine or feminine in Dutch, so I’m assuming she’s feminine)
French – le printemps
Italian – la primavera
Spanish – la primavera
Greek – i ánoixi
In my mind I see Spring as a lovely maiden trying to bring life and beauty to the earth and Winter as a brute who tries to subjugate her by freezing her to death. Many of the worlds mythologies also make winter a male god – Boreas for the Greeks, Ullr for the Norse, Itztlacoliuhqui for the Aztecs – and spring is often depicted as a goddess – Persephone for the Greeks, Iðunn and Freya for the Norse, Eostre for the Teutons, Cybele for the Romans. I just wish Winter would give up and go away and let Spring take over.
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| How I see Winter. |
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| How I see Spring (Botticelli's La Primavera). |
Thursday was the warmest day, but rainy. I wasn’t in school that day and I spent the day doing things to thumb my nose at the lingering cold and snow. I planted more seeds – a tray of cabbages and a tray of mixed flowers. The cabbage tray was especially fun. I planted 60 seeds, six each of ten different varieties. I don’t think all of them will sprout – some of the seed was old – but I hope they all do. Last year’s cabbage crop was a failure, so I overcompensated this year. If all 60 seeds sprout and grow to maturity, we’ll have plenty of cabbages to make into sauerkraut in the fall. The varieties I planted have interesting names like Danish Ballhead, Charleston Wakefield, Ruby Perfection, San Michele, Premium Late Flat Dutch, Glory of Enkhuizen, and Prefection Drumhead Savoy. Some varieties have a history associated with a particular place like Enkhuizen in Holland or San Michele in Italy that makes them sound pretty exotic for a cabbage. Cabbage is sometimes seen as common and stinky, but it is one of my favorite vegetables.
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| My seed trays. |
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| "Cabbage has a cabbage smell." (Katie in Meet Me In St. Louis) |
Thursday afternoon I went out during a lull in the rain and planted two new trees in my orchard. I ordered two pawpaw trees (Asimina triloba) that arrived late on Wednesday. I’ve tried to grow pawpaws before, but the deer ate the tiny trees in their infancy. I’m determined to try again. I am intrigued by them. They are a native North American tree. The fruit is described as soft and custard like with a tropical banana flavor. Because the fruit deteriorates quickly when ripe, they aren’t grown commercially and are not sold in markets. I’ve never tasted one, but I want to. Here in USDA Zone 4/5, we are on the northernmost edge of their range, but I will do all I can to grow them. After I planted these two tiny new trees, I enclosed them in a tube of hardware cloth to keep the deer, woodchucks, rabbits, voles, and mice away from them. In four years or so, I hope to taste the fruit.
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| This is what pawpaw fruit looks like. |
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| My two tiny pawpaw trees in their cages. |
Miriam heard frogs in our little pond on Thursday night. Not peepers, but bigger frogs making their spring courting music. I guess the courting was successful because we found three clusters of eggs. Soon the pond will be full of tadpoles and the thought of that makes me smile.
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| A cluster of frog eggs in our pond. |
Friday was April Fools’ Day. I know some people go crazy for the day, but I’ve never been a fan of practical jokes and things like that, so I don’t do anything. In keeping with the nonsensical nature of the day, Nature played a mean trick on us and gave us snow. As the day arrived, I wondered why we even have such a thing, so I did a bit of research and found that the experts aren’t really sure why we do either. The Encyclopedia Britannica says that “Although the day has been observed for centuries, its true origins are unknown and effectively unknowable. It resembles festivals such as the Hilaria of ancient Rome, held on March 25, and the Holi celebration in India, which ends on March 31.” Some think it has to do with changing the calendar from the Julian system to the Gregorian system in France in 1582 when the new year was switched from April 1st to January 1st and people who kept to the old way were considered fools. My favorite thing about the day is the three April Fools paintings that Norman Rockwell did for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1943, 1945, and 1948. We had a book of Rockwell’s paintings when I was a child and I loved to sit and examine those paintings with all their strange and nonsensical depictions.
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| April Fools' Day morning. |
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| 1943 |
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| 1945 |
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| 1948 |
Today is a gray day. The battle between Winter and Spring continues. This morning it rained, then snowed, then rained again. There isn’t any snow on the ground right now and I hope it stays that way until December. The house is very quiet this morning. We slept in late. This is General Conference weekend so we did not go up to Wellsville to church, but will watch today’s sessions here at home. Miriam and Hannah went down to the Thayn’s house for the weekend, so it was just Stacey and me here to watch the sessions. We watched two sessions together yesterday and Stacey watched the women’s session last night. Today we will watch two more sessions at noon and 4:00. They have been excellent meetings full of words of hope, calls to service and repentance, and powerful testimonies of the Savior. It has been a feast of the Spirit. The week ahead looks like it will be mostly rainy, but not quite cold enough for snow and that gives me hope that Winter has lost his hold. I have a new list of projects on the chalkboard in the kitchen. I’m anxious to begin them.
