Last week was a short week at school. Our Easter break began with a half day on Thursday and we don’t go back until Tuesday. Josiah and I used the afternoon on Thursday to prune the big Northern Spy apple tree. It was in need of a great deal of branch removal. We worked on it for several hours and I think it’s as good as it’s going to get for this year. The time for pruning is really over now. The trees are ready to break bud.
Our springtime progress suffered a setback last week, not that it had made a whole lot of progress to begin with. March decided to depart with a dramatic dump of snow. The old adage says that “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb,” but this year it came in like a polar bear and went out like a polar bear.
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| Sunrise on the last day of March, |
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| March's parting shot. |
April was kinder and a little milder – at first. On Thursday and Friday we warmed into the 60's. A lot of the snow melted, but there are still some lingering patches where the drifts were deepest. It’s been chilly this weekend. This morning we awoke to a dusting of snow, an abomination on Easter morning. On Thursday the snow finally melted off of most of my flower beds and by Friday at noon the crocuses were up and in flower. I knew they were just waiting there under the snow. It’s amazing how quickly they came up. These are the yellow crocuses, always the first to bloom. The other colors will appear shortly. The poor crocuses are covered with snow this morning.
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| Yellow crocuses on Friday. |
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| The crocuses this morning. |
All week long we continued to work on the upstairs bathroom. Mostly it's Stacey and Josiah doing the work. The tile is all in place now and tomorrow I will do the grouting. It will be nice to be able to shower upstairs again. Bathing in the downstairs bathtub is not so enjoyable.
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| Stacey cutting tile. |
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| Josiah finishing the tiling. |
Friday was Good Friday and also the first day (beginning at sundown) of Passover. We decided that this year we would have our Seder at the church. Because we live in Pennsylvania, which is technically outside the Rochester Mission boundaries, our missionaries are no longer allowed to come down to our house. In years past we’ve always invited the missionaries to our Seder, so this year we decided to take the Seder to them. It was a lot of extra work preparing the food well in advance and then hauling it up to Wellsville. The Shilligs and our senior missionaries did the table setting. It was a great Seder. We read the Haggadah with it’s account of the exodus from Egypt. We had good food – apricot chicken, vegetable kugle, potato latkes, almond bread, and pound cake, plus all the symbolic foods – matzah, horseradish, haroset, eggs, and parsley. The Seder always reminds me that the Passover is really about the Savior. All its symbols teach about the Redeemer and our redemption from bondage, physical and spiritual. The Last Supper was a Passover Seder and this becomes very apparent as we go through the breaking of bread (matzah) and the drinking of wine (grape juice) and the blessings and reminders of the covenant between God and his people.
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| Our Passover Seder. |
Also on Friday I kept my personal tradition of listening to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. This year I found a wonderful performance of it on YouTube done with a smaller orchestra playing period instruments and a smaller choir more like what Bach used back in 1727. I love the St. Matthew Passion. Bach is my favorite composer and the St. Matthew Passion is my favorite of his many and wondrous works. This morning, also in keeping with my personal tradition, I’m listening to Parts II and III of Handel’s Messiah – glorious music.
This is General Conference weekend. I love General Conference. Being on the East Coast, the sessions start late for us and that gives us nice leisurely mornings on Saturday and Sunday. We watched all the Saturday sessions at our house. Today we will go over to Shillig’s house to watch the sessions and in between we will have our Easter dinner. We’re having ham, funeral potatoes, zesty carrots, pickled eggs, and rolls. Having General Conference on Easter is a perfect combination. The messages we’ve heard and will hear bring into focus what Easter (and Passover) is all about – our deliverance from physical and spiritual death through the atonement and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. I wish you a blessed and happy Easter!
