We have a cuckoo clock in our dining room. We’ve had it for thirty years. It was a gift from Stacey’s sister Roxann. It cuckoos on the hour and plays a little song and on the half hour it cuckoos once and plays a different song. Usually the cuckoo makes a sound that sounds approximately like “cuckoo,” but sometimes it says other things. Sometimes during the night the cuckoo says very distinctly, “stupid, stupid, stupid.” Sometimes it says, “stop it, stop it, stop it.” I’ve heard it say both of those things many times. Last Sunday night at 11:00 p.m. as I was going to bed, I heard it say something new. It said, “trouble, trouble, trouble.” “That’s a new one,” I thought as I fell asleep. At 3:00 a.m. Stacey woke me up and said she heard a chicken screaming. We woke Josiah up and, after strapping on headlights and grabbing a rifle, we headed down to the barn to see what was going on.
On Sunday afternoons, Josiah lets his chickens out to roam in the front yard and along the edge of the meadow. They love to wander and look for things to eat in the grass. He has them well-trained and when it’s time to go back into the fenced chicken yard they usually file right in. Last Sunday, one of the hens, Loretta, rebelled. She wouldn’t go back in. After chasing her around a while, Josiah gave up and left her out.
So in the wee hours of Monday morning when we arrived at the barn, Josiah and I were not surprised to find feathers near the chicken yard fence. We walked around and found Loretta on the meadow path. She was roughed up, but alive. We couldn’t see any open wounds or blood. We saw no other animal lurking about. We thought we’d better go into the barn and make sure the other chickens were okay. We did that and then went back to see what we could do for Loretta. She was gone. We searched everywhere for her but didn’t find her. In the morning after the sun was up we searched some more. We never did find her. Poor Loretta. I suspect it was a fox that got her. That’s two of Josiah’s “ladies” we’ve lost in the last month. One of his oldest hens, Mrs. Anna Fletcher (I don’t know where he came up with that name), died of old age a few weeks ago. And now Loretta. So much drama down at the barn.
Daniel and Seth arrived just before 1:00 a.m. on Monday night (Tuesday morning) having driven 14 hours straight through from Missouri. They went straight to bed and then we were all up the next morning and off again to spend the day at the church history sites together.
On Tuesday Josiah went to the temple. Since we were headed that way, we (that’s Daniel, Seth, Josiah, and I) decided to make a day of it and go to all of the church history sites. We went first to the Peter Whitmer Farm in Fayette, New York, where Joseph Smith finished the translation of the Book of Mormon and where the church was officially organized on April 6, 1830. From there we drove up to Palmyra. We went to the Hill Cumorah, but we were running short on time, so we just drove to the top of the hill and walked around. After that we drove into Palmyra to the Grandin Press where the Book of Mormon was published. Then we went to the Smith Farm. We walked through the Sacred Grove, wandered around the frame house and barn, then ended at the log cabin. By then it was starting to rain and it was time to go to the temple. Stacey, Kurt and Julie, and other friends from church met us at the temple. We had a great experience there with Josiah.
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| At the Peter Whitmer Farm in Fayette, New York. |
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| At the Grandin Press. |
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| At the Smith Farm. |
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| Josiah at the Palmyra Temple. |
With Daniel and Seth here to help Josiah, we started to tackle the Project List I’d drawn up. So far the three of them have taken down the rain spouts on the house and cleaned them and the rain gutters. And they consolidated the woodpiles from three piles into just two. This week we will work on a few more projects, weather permitting.
The weather was wet for much of the week. And warm. I loved it. And even more importantly, the garden loved it. Things that were struggling along during the dry weeks like cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower, have gained new energy, grown new leaves, and are starting to look robust. This week I will blanch and freeze chard and open a few of my potato bales to get new potatoes. We’re eating raspberries now and enjoying that. It looks like after today the weather should be clear, and not so warm – perfect for working outdoors.
On Friday we embarked on an adventure. The open house for the Philadelphia Temple is underway and we decided to go. We loaded up the truck (the truck Daniel and Seth drove out from Utah) and set out on Friday evening. We drove five hours down to King of Prussia where we spent the night at a rather seedy motel. Saturday morning we were up early and headed into Philadelphia. The temple is a beautiful building right off highway 81. The open house tour was very well organized. First we watched a short movie in the chapel across the street then we went over to the temple. Before entering the building they put shoe covers on us to save on wear and tear on the carpets. The interior of the building (which I couldn’t photograph, but you can go to http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/open-house-begins-philadelphia-pennsylvania-temple to see other interior photos) was very beautiful. The whole temple is designed in a colonial Georgian style and every detail, from the exterior to the windows, woodwork, and furnishings on the interior, was perfect.
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| In front of the Philadelphia Temple. |
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| Putting on shoe covers before going inside. |
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| Exterior view of the temple. |
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| Photo of the Celestial Room (I didn't take this photo). |
After the open house tour we decided to drive around in Philadelphia. We are not good at navigating in big cities, but we had our GPS. Daniel did all the driving as we tried to find Independence Hall. The city was crowded with cars and people. There were so many one way streets and narrow streets. We found Independence Hall and decided to just drive by it and not get out of the truck. Then we thought we'd get something to eat. We told the GPS to direct us to the Reading Terminal Market, a place someone recommended to us. We wound our way through the crowded streets, got lost a few times, had to backtrack. At one point Daniel made a left hand turn but didn’t notice the little sign on the other side of the busy intersection that said “No Turns.” Unfortunately, the police officers behind us did notice. They made us stop right in the street (there was no place to pull over because there were cars parked on both sides of the one way street) and we sat there for half an hour while the officers (very slowly) wrote out a $138 ticket. By then the dislike I’d felt for the city had reached the “I hate this city” level. As soon as the officers were done, we headed out of city as fast as we could. When we were safely away, we stopped for lunch and then headed north. Our next stop was the Priesthood Restoration site in Harmony, three hours north of Philadelphia.
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| Independence Hall (as seen from the truck window). |
Harmony isn’t a place anymore, it’s just a remote part of Oakland Township in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, but an important part of church history took place there back when it was the Village of Harmony. It’s where Joseph Smith met Emma Hale and where they lived for several years after they married. It’s where Emma’s family lived. It’s where Joseph and Emma gave birth to and buried their first child. It’s where the priesthood authority was restored to the earth. And it’s where most of the Book of Mormon was translated. The church history site there is beautiful. The restored buildings are beautiful. The Susquehanna River where Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were baptized is beautiful. We had a wonderful time touring the site. Then we headed home.
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| Priesthood restoration monuments. |
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| The Isaac Hale home. |
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| Joseph and Emma's home. |
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| The Susquehanna river at Harmony. |
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| The boys skipping stones on the river. |
The drive home from Harmony was long, about four hours. We stopped in Elmira for dinner. We were tired of traveling then, our bodies aching from sitting so long in the truck. We got home at 10:00 last night and went to bed.
So today we are tired. I think some of us may have dozed off at church. Preparations for dinner are underway right now. After that I think everyone needs a nap. I know I do.
