On Tuesday we passed the Vernal Equinox, the first day of spring on the solar calendar. In terms of the weather, that doesn’t mean much here. In this part of the world, the possibility for wintry weather will persist into April and May. We even get snow and frost in June sometimes. What the equinox does mean is that now there will steadily be more and more hours of daylight, which will continue on to the Summer Solstice in June. It might take the weather a while to catch up, but the sun is growing stronger every day now. It rises earlier, sets later, and it feels warmer on my skin on sunny days.
Monday was cold and snowy. It made me anxious to look out on the snow covered garden and think of all the things I wanted and needed to be doing, but couldn’t. I wasn’t in school. I found myself pacing around the house. I did a couple of loads of laundry. I was tempted to just stay in the kitchen all day and eat things I shouldn’t. I tried to distract myself by tending my houseplants, but that didn’t take long. Finally, I opened my seed boxes and sorted through the seed packets, arranging them in planting time order – which ones to start indoors, which ones to sow directly outside, and when to do that. We are eight weeks away from Planting Out Day at the end of May. Some seeds needed to be started already. So I brought in some seed trays, washed and sanitized them, filled them with planting mix, and sowed the first seeds of this year’s garden – celery, parsley, onions, snapdragons, sweet peas, castor beans, and hollyhocks. And now I wait.
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| Last week summed up in one photo. |
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| Planting seeds. |
Tuesday was cold and snowy. I was home all day again. Feeling trapped inside by the weather, I spent a couple of hours indulging my need to do something garden related by watching Monty Don’s Adriatic Gardens. It was inspiring and frustrating at the same time, viewing those beautiful gardens from other, warmer places. When I finished that, I thought I’d try to do some work in the barn. I need to do some cleaning and prepare a new feeder for my laying hen project. I was hoping it wouldn’t be too cold inside the upper loft, but it was. I only lasted a few minutes before retreating to the house.
Later that evening, the Shilligs arrived home. They’d been out west visiting family for the last few weeks. It’s good to have them home again. We missed them.
Wednesday was cold and snowy. It was yet another day spent mostly indoors, looking out at a garden buried in snow. I did have an errand to run in the morning. I went over to the dairy for a few items. As I drove there and back, I thought how, if it was December, I’d be admiring the beauty of the snow, but my disgust outweighed my ability to admit it. I see it only as a destructive force preventing the advance of spring, stifling my work. I refuse to allow snow to be pretty in March.
Needing a distraction from the snow swirling outside my window, I spent some time later that morning watching a tutorial on book binding. I love well-bound books and it was fascinating to see the process of making one. Wednesday evening we had the missionaries and the Shilligs here for dinner.
Thursday was cold and snowy. I had errands to run in Wellsville that morning. It was nice to get out of the house. I got a haircut. I made my usual run to Runnings for chicken food. They were having a 10% off everything sale, so I bought extra.
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| What happened to spring? |
On Friday it was cold, but not snowy. It was 4° when I got up that morning. The sunrise was beautiful. We saw a little sunshine during the day, but it didn’t warm much above freezing. When I went down to the barn, I realized that I’d been premature in unplugging the water heaters. I was too hopeful back during those warm days in late February. I forgot what March is like. All the waterers were frozen. I had to run an electric cord down there again and plug them back in. The ice on the rain barrel was also too thick to break, so I’m back to carrying buckets of water down to the barn every day for the time being. I should have known better.
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| Sunrise on Friday. |
Miriam and Hannah left Friday morning for a quick trip down to the Thayn’s. Hannah’s car was not doing so great and she needed to buy a new car and Tabor offered to help her find a good deal. They arrived home again last night.
Stacey is putting together a video to celebrate our 40th anniversary coming up in May. I have been assigned the task of finding photographs of our gardens over all those years. I spent several hours on Friday looking through albums and digital photo files at the months of June and July for the last forty years. It was an exhilarating form of torture to see those gardens and then to look out the window. But it isn’t fair to compare March with June and July. They are as different as they ought to be. I only made it through 1984-85 and 2020-21. I’ll work at it more this week.
That night, Stacey and I went on a double date with Kurt and Julie to see the new Ghost Busters movie. It was nice to be on a date, but I was not impressed with the movie. We drove home through icy snow mixed with rain.
Saturday was cold and snowy. Stacey and I set out in the morning to run errands. We were planning to go to the Amish dry goods store up on Fox Hill and then on to Wellsville to do some shopping. We made it a mile out of Gold and turned around and came home. There was icy rainy snow falling and the roads were slick. We waited until noon and then set out again. We went to the Amish store, got what we needed, and came home again. After lunch Stacey finished the errands in Wellsville by herself. It was too close to chore time for me to go with her.
Today is Palm Sunday, the commemoration of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It marks the beginning of Holy Week, the most important week in human history that would see the Last Supper, the Atonement, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of our Lord. We don’t formally celebrate Palm Sunday at church. We have one hymn in our hymnal that mentions the triumphal entry, All Glory, Laud, and Honor, which we sang today. The tune to the hymn was written by the German composer Melchior Teschner (1584–1635). The words to the hymn were written by Theodulf of Orléans (750 – 821) who was a prelate, poet, and Bishop of Orléans (798 – 818) during the reign of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. As far as I can tell, it is the oldest hymn text in our hymnal.
To thee, Redeemer, King,
To whom the lips of children
Made sweet hosannas ring.
Thou art the King of Israel,
Thou David’s royal Son,
Who in the Lord’s name comest,
The King and Blessed One.
Are praising thee on high,
The people of the Hebrews
With palms before thee went;
Our praise and love and anthems
Before thee we present.
They sang their hymns of praise;
To thee, now high exalted,
Our melody we raise.
Thou didst accept their praises;
Accept the love we bring,
Who in all good delightest,
Thou good and gracious King.
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| The Triumphal Entry in early Renaissance art. |
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| The Triumphal entry in Baroque art. |
As we go through Holy Week, I have personal observances that I will keep, mostly involving music. On Good Friday I will listen, as I always do, to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. On Easter Sunday I’ll listen to portions of Handel’s Messiah and we’ll sing the Easter hymns in church. I never looked to see if there was music by Bach for Palm Sunday. Last week I did look, and there is. Bach wrote a cantata for Palm Sunday, Himmelskönig, sei willkommen (King of Heaven, welcome), BWV 182. He composed it in Weimar and first performed it in the Schlosskirche there on March 25, 1714. I am familiar with a lot of Bach’s music, but there is still so much of it that I do not know. I listened to this cantata during the week to see what it is like. It is lovely, of course. I will be adding it to my personal Palm Sunday observance from now on.
Today is also a particularly special day for the Howes. It is the birthday of two important people in our family. Today is my youngest sister Jaynan’s birthday. The fact that she is fifty-eight today makes me feel really old. I was eight years old when she was born and I remember some things about the blessed event. I remember my mother being gone to the hospital. Someone must have come to stay with us children while she was there and my father was at work, but I don’t remember who. I do remember my father making some meals for us while she was gone, which seemed odd to me as he never did that sort of thing. They mostly consisted of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup or hoagies from the White Spot restaurant down the street. I remember hurrying home from school on the day that Mama and our new baby sister came home. I could hardly wait to see them both. Being the youngest of us six children, we tend to remember more of the details of Jaynan’s early childhood. We remember funny things that she did and said, the silly songs she made up (I can still sing her Baby Tender Love song). I don’t know if you can say we spoiled her, but she definitely got special treatment. She also has the honor of having the longest and strangest nicknames among us children. My father was great at making up nicknames and we each had one or more of them, but he outdid himself with Jaynan. Sometimes he just called her Daisy, but he also came up with two whoppers – Dessymaydoodyboobimbumbillyballywinkwank and Dessaromanikapatoony. If she’s reading this right now she’s either smiling or blushing or both. Now here she is fifty-eight years old and a grandma! I don’t get to see her very often, living on opposite sides of the country as we do. I’m looking forward to seeing her at our family reunion this summer. Happy birthday Jaynan!
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| Baby Jaynan. |
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| Jaynan in the white shirt, back row, middle, the last time I saw her in 2022. |
The other birthday today is my nephew Kevin’s. He is my sister Hollie’s oldest son. He would be forty-three today. He died in 1994 at the age of thirteen in a bicycle accident. It’s strange to think he’d be a middle-aged man now. All my memories of him stop at such an early age that I can’t imagine it. But I know, because I know that families can be together forever, that I’ll see Kevin again, and that makes me happy.
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| Kevin. |
There will also be an astronomical event tonight (actually early tomorrow morning). In April, on the 8th, there will be a much anticipated total solar eclipse. What I didn’t realize until last week is that a lunar eclipse always occurs about two weeks before or after a solar eclipse. So tonight there will be a penumbral lunar eclipse. It will start at 12:53 a.m. EDT, and reach its maximum at 3:12 a.m EDT when 95% of the full moon will be in Earth’s shadow. A penumbral lunar eclipse is the most subtle kind of lunar eclipse. It won’t be noticeable until the disk of the moon is covered by about two thirds of the Earth’s shadow. And seeing it at all depends on the weather. I plan to go out and have a look if the sky is clear.
Today is also Purim, the Jewish celebration of their deliverance by Queen Esther from the genocidal schemes of the wicked Haman. Miriam made us some hamantaschen to celebrate. Hamantaschen means “Haman’s pockets” in Yiddish, and is supposed to symbolize the purse full of money that Haman offered to King Ahasuerus in exchange for permission to destroy the Jews. In Hebrew, tash also means “weaken”, and the hamantaschen may also celebrate the weakening of Haman and the hope that God will weaken all of the enemies of the Jews. Miriam made her hamantaschen with two kinds of filling – poppy seed paste, and marzipan. They were delicious. We will not be reading the whole Megillah as the Jews do during Purim, instead we are watching One Night With the King, an adaptation of the story of Esther.
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| Miriam's hamantaschen. |
It is cold, but not snowy today. The sun is shining in a clear blue sky, a very welcome break after last week when every day was cold and snowy. The drive to and from church was very pretty. Saturday’s icy rain/snow coated all the bare limbs of the trees and draped them in icicles that sparkled in the sunshine. Disgusted or not, I had to admire their beauty. The week ahead looks better with temperatures in the 50's most of week. Maybe the snow will melt. Maybe the flowers, the ones that survived, will resume blooming. Maybe spring will finally settle in. Maybe. We have family coming this week to celebrate Easter with us. The Thayns and the Murrays will join us and the Shilligs. We’ll have a full house and it will be wonderful.
