Still Waiting For Spring

I woke in the small hours of Monday morning with a mouth dry as dust and went to the kitchen to get a drink of water. When I looked out the window, I saw that it had snowed. I went back to bed, but had trouble falling asleep again. In that hazy half conscious state that rides on the edge of sleep, I had a dream-story form in my groggy brain. It was a spy/espionage adventure with overtones of Pilgrim's Progress, lots of allegorical action packed mayhem. The heroine was named Tess LaCoyle, an energetic woman with a highly charged personality, a sort of James Bond character, but not promiscuous. Her nemesis was also a woman, a cold-hearted villain named April Snow, a mean and ruthless monster. The sort of person who tromps through flowerbeds and crushes the blossoms without a second's hesitation in pursuit of her dastardly goals. The plot of the story was complicated and it rambled on and on as I drifted into deeper sleep. When I woke later, I couldn't remember anything of it but the two main characters and a few blurry details like the story took place in the streets of Osaka, and somehow there was a lot food involved. I'm sorry I didn't get up in the night and write it all down before it faded. It is a tale now lost forever, most probably a best selling novel with a movie franchise that would have brought me fame and fortune. Oh well, I never really wanted any of that anyway.

Monday morning.

I told Geoffrey about my dream and he used AI
 to make this fake movie poster for me. Pretty funny.

On Monday morning, my world was in a sorry state. With heavy gray skies, the temperature below freezing, and an inch of wet snow on the ground, I felt sad. I dragged through my morning routine, showered, dressed in clothing warmer than I would have liked, and then sat and read the depressing news headlines. I went to the kitchen and stood at the window for a while to watch the poor birds at the feeders. They seemed sad too, scrounging for food in the snow. After Stacey and Hannah left for work, I walked through the quiet house looking unsuccessfully for some distraction, then finally slumped into a chair. I wanted to fill up the house with some rousing music, but Miriam was still sleeping and I didn't want to wake her. With her poor arm, she needed as much rest as she could get. I couldn't console myself with food, not any that would sweeten my sour mood anyway. I picked up the book I was reading, Venice, by James Morris, and read for an hour. Its descriptions of that city, called La Serenissima, the Serene City, the Queen of the Adriatic, with its canals and bridges, and all of its Renaissance and Baroque splendor, seemed like a nice escape from wintry Gold. I checked to see what the weather in Venice was like that morning. It was 51° and cloudy with calm seas. That sounded pretty good. Then I remembered that in the last session of General Conference, Pres. Nelson announced a temple to be built in Nouméa, New Caledonia. That sounded interesting.

I didn't know much about New Caledonia. I had a general idea of where it was located, in the South Pacific somewhere east of Australia and north of New Zealand. Taking a mental voyage of discovery to New Caledonia on a bleak, snowy, cold Monday morning in April seemed like a nice idea. And so I went. First, I pulled out my big World Atlas.  Atlases have always been some of my favorite books. The bigness of them laid open on a table appeals to me. I have four of them. My favorite, the National Geographic Atlas of the World, Seventh Edition, was disappointing however. The only place New Caledonia appeared was on Map 128-129 of the Pacific Ocean, just a tiny island among many. I went online to find out more. Google Earth let me examine it close up. It is made up of dozens of islands. The main island is called Grande Terre, where the capital, Nouméa, is located. New Caledonia is an overseas territory of France and the main language spoken there is French. It is tropical. The people are a mix of indigenous peoples and Europeans. The population is 271,406. It has many unique species of plants and animals. I looked at the church's online map showing where meeting houses are located. There is one stake in New Caledonia made up of six wards on the main island and two branches on outlying islands. From the satellite images, it all looked lovely. The weather in Nouméa that morning was 83° with thunderstorms. Gazing out at my snow covered garden, that sounded great to me. I added it to my list of places to go someday. It will be years before its temple will be built and ready for an open house, but it's something to look forward to.

From my World Atlas.

From the church's meeting house locator site.

As the day went on, it warmed just enough to melt the snow, but not enough to make me want to work outdoors. Everything on my to-do list had to wait yet another day.

Monday night I was restless. There was an icy wind blowing and the moaning of it kept waking me up. Our furnace was malfunctioning and I felt the house getting colder and colder as the night went on. By Tuesday morning it was 20° and the day didn't get much warmer after that. There was a thin layer of brittle snow crusted over the garden. It felt like winter had returned full force, won the war, and would never leave again. 

From 1500 to 1850 the world experienced what is known as the Little Ice Age. Periods of abnormal weather over those years saw temperatures drop and glaciers expand and rivers freeze. I've read about some of the interesting historical events influenced by the Little Ice Age. The Black Death that wiped out a third of the population of Europe in the 14th century was exacerbated when poor harvests and food shortages related to the cold weather caused Europe to import grain from the Middle East with its accompanying bubonic plague infested rats. The Great Dying (1520-1700) was brought on when crop failures and the resulting famine and disease killed between 54 and 61 million people in North, Central, and South America. The disappearance of the Roanoke Colony in 1588, the Thirty-Years War (1618-1648), and the French Revolution (1789-1799) are all partly tied to the Little Ice Age and its crop failures, famine, and the resulting economic strife and political unrest.

Other interesting developments that resulted from the Little Ice Age were not as dire. I love the winter landscape paintings by Dutch and English artists that depict people skating on rivers and canals frozen solid that do not freeze today. And Stradivarius violins, cellos, guitars, and mandolins owe their remarkable tonal qualities partly to the spruce and maple wood used to make them taken from trees that grew during the Little Ice Age when the cold temperatures made the wood more dense.

Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap by Pieter Breugel, 1565.

Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters by Hendrick Avercamp, 1608.

The Hubay Stradivarius, 1726.

There were several factors involved in causing the Little Ice Age. One factor was volcanic activity. One of the most important of these volcanic related events was the Year Without a Summer in 1816. This came about when Mount Tambora in Indonesia, erupted in 1815 and ejected ten cubic miles of debris into the atmosphere. All over the world people wrote about the blazing sunsets resulting from the ash in the stratosphere. The ash veiled the sun and caused a volcanic winter in 1816. In North America there was frost every month. Snow fell in June. Crops failed. One of the farming families whose livelihood was affected was the Smiths in Vermont. Joseph Smith Sr. and his wife Lucy and their children left their failed farm and moved to a more economically promising area along the newly built Erie Canal near Palmyra, New York – a move that precipitated the beginning of the restoration of the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I pondered on all of this on Tuesday morning as I sat huddled over the electric heater by my desk – how the history of the world can change in significant ways by a slight dip in the temperature. I wondered about the people who, at the beginning of those frigid eras, waited for spring to come as it always had, only it didn't. During the Last Ice Age, which ended 19,000 years ago by the geologists' reckoning, the glacial ice sheets extended south far enough to reach this place where I am sitting. I owe my stony soil to their retreat. I've wondered at times if some remnant of those ice sheets might still be buried deep under Gold and that's why it's always colder here. Is there an ancient ice mound under Cobb Hill? I'd believe it.

The extent of glacier coverage in the last ice age.
Note that Potter County is at the edge of the ice sheet.

Our neighbor, Ray, came by later that morning and repaired the furnace. I spent the rest of the morning sitting beside the floor grate, reading. At noon I drove Miriam to the doctor to have her broken wrist examined. They x-rayed it again and put on a new splint. She has another appointment next week when they may put on a cast. Meanwhile, she is finding out how inconvenient it is to only have one working hand. Luckily, she has lots of caretakers around her.

I checked my phone as I was going to bed on Tuesday night and saw in the little weather app icon on the screen that it was going to be warmer on Wednesday. I didn't look at the details. That will be nice, I thought as I turned off the light and went to sleep. So I was surprised when I got up on Wednesday morning to find that it was 11°, the coldest morning we'd had in weeks. Disappointed, I checked the forecast for the rest of the week. The day was actually supposed to warm to 40°, not really warm, but at least above freezing. That was the only good news, however. The forecast said to expect snow starting on Thursday and running on into Saturday.

Downhearted, I went exploring to see what the literary world could offer as a solace to my frost blighted soul and I found a poem I didn't know by an author I'd never heard of, or so I thought. The author was Henry van Dyke (1852-1933), born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was quite a prominent man during his time – an educator, author, clergyman, and diplomat. He was friends with people like Mark Twain and Helen Keller. It turns out, I actually did know one of his works, the Christmas story, The Other Wise Man. However, I was not familiar with his poem Late Spring. It's a long poem. Here is a small part of it, the part that resonated with my mood.

Ah, who will tell me in these leaden days,

Why the sweet Spring delays

And where she hides, – the dear desire

Of every heart that longs

For bloom, and fragrance, and the ruby fire

Of maple-buds along the misty hills,

And that immortal call that fills

The waiting woods with songs?

The snowdrops came so long ago,

It seemed that Spring was near!

But then returned the snow

With biting winds, and all the earth grew sere,

And sullen clouds dropped low

To veil the sadness of a hope deferred.

Henry van Dyke.

Despite the sunshine that morning, the day did feel leaden. Anticipating snow has that effect on me. Knowing what was coming, I didn't feel any ambition to attempt any work outdoors. Even with the sunshine, it was too chilly and windy anyways. In the afternoon, Stacey and I went and picked up a load of firewood. We've used up most of the wood we stockpiled last year, so it's good to start building a supply for next winter – even though this winter is still hanging on. It's good wood, ash, which burns hot and makes long-lasting coals.

A truck load of ash.

I had a doctor's appointment on Thursday. That meant driving to Port Allegany and back, which took up my morning. The doctor's visit was uneventful – look at this test, make adjustments in medication dosages, schedule the next appointment. After every doctor's visit I find myself saying, it could always be worse. And it could, of course, so I'm thankful it wasn't. As I drove home, it was raining in Port Allegany, but as I approached Gold, it turned to snow, of course. That suspected underground glacial remnant at work again. It snowed all day, but it didn't accumulate at all. I'm also thankful for that. I planted more seed trays that afternoon – broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. My seed starting area in the woodshed is getting crowded. I need to start moving some things onto the back porch, but it's still too cold to risk that.

Running out room for my seed starts.

Friday was chilly and rainy. April seems to be stuck in a rut. A few sunny days, maybe a temperature above 50°, would be very much appreciated. But that doesn't look likely for another week, or more. After Stacey and Hannah got home from work, we began planting onions, at last. I doubled my onion order this year and I thought the bed we'd prepared was big enough, but I was wrong. Only half the starts fit the rows. This week I will have to quickly prepare another bed to hold the rest. It's a lot of onions, over 500 in total. We eat a lot of onions.

Planting onions, at last.

The garlic bed in front, the newly planted onion rows in back.

That evening Stacey and I thought about going on a date to the movies, but it was still A Minecraft Movie and we didn't want to deal with the crowd. That movie has drawn the largest audiences of the year so far at our theater, about a hundred people each night. That means people are going to see it more than once because we don't have that many people in Potter County. At least we haven't had the extreme craziness that other theaters have reported with chaos and rioting. We've just had some shouting when the "Chicken Jockey" scene comes on. All of that is out of the realm of my knowing or caring. King of Kings is coming next to our theater. I think the audiences will be smaller and more well-behaved for that one.

Yesterday was the first day of Passover. It was another gloomy day, cold and foggy in the morning and drizzling and overcast all day. At least it didn't snow. Stacey and I went on errands in the morning. We drove up to the Amish dry goods store on Fox Hill and did some shopping. We drove down to Hebron and picked up and unloaded another load of firewood. Then we spent most of the day preparing for Passover. During Passover anything that is leavened, hametz (חָמֵץ) in Hebrew, is forbidden. The only "bread" allowed in the house for the duration of the Passover is matzah (מַצָּה) made from wheat flour prepared especially for Passover. On the night before Passover, observant Jews conduct a search of their homes, called bedikat hametz (בְּדִיקַת חָמֵץ‎), to remove all forbidden food items, which includes anything made from wheat, barley, oats, spelt, rye, rice, millet, corn, and legumes. Everything down to the tiniest crumb in the bottom of the toaster is removed and burned. We're not strict, because we're not Jewish, so we don't observe the restrictions on the eating of leaven. We just did a general housecleaning as our preparation. Plus food preparation. Actually Miriam began preparing food earlier in the week when she made macaroons and pound cake on Thursday, and almond bread on Friday.

Miriam's macaroons.

And pound cake.

As part of our preparation, yesterday in the morning I went out and dug up some horseradish root. I collected some dandelion greens. We roasted an egg. All of those things go on the seder plate (ke'arah קְעָרָה), the plate that holds the symbols discussed during the ceremony. 

Freshly dug horseradish.

Dandelion greens.

Passover (pesach פֶּסַח) begins at sundown, but we didn't want to eat dinner after 7:49 because this is Fast Sunday and that's too late to begin our fasting. Our seder (סֵדֶר) began at 4:30. The Shilligs and the missionaries from the Olean Ward joined us. We read the haggadah (הַגָּדָה), the retelling of the deliverance of the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. We recited the ten plagues and the appropriate blessings as we broke and ate matzah and drank cups of grape juice. Throughout the seder we pointed out the symbols and types contained in it that teach of Christ and the parallels to the events of the Last Supper, the seder conducted by Christ himself on the eve of his fulfillment of the old law through his atoning sacrifice, death, and resurrection. We paused part way through the seder to eat the meal, and it was delicious. The menu was our traditional one: apricot chicken, latkes, asparagus, hardboiled eggs, matzah, grape juice, and for dessert, coconut macaroons and pound cake with strawberries. The pound cake would never be found in the home of an observant Jew, but we don't care. Then we finished with the final breaking of bread and the last cups. It was a great evening and an enlightening introduction to Holy Week, which began today with Palm Sunday.

The table set and ready for our Seder.

Our Passover Seder.

Sunrise was bright and sunny, if a bit chilly. I stood at the front windows and watched the sun come up over the hill and welcomed the Sabbath. The world, at least my little fraction of it, seemed peaceful. Today was Palm Sunday, the day we commemorate Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the beginning of Holy Week. We don't really do anything official at church for Palm Sunday. We don't have any hymns that sing about it. Today was fast and testimony meeting and several people mentioned it. We heard a lot about improving our Easter season celebrations at General Conference, so I decided to do something for Palm Sunday. Yesterday while we were out running errands, Stacey and I stopped at the florist shop in town and bought some palm fronds. I took them to church this morning and Nancy Jones, who brings flower arrangements for the chapel, added them to her bouquet of daffodils. It was a small gesture, but I liked it. Our church meetings were good. We're home and enjoying quiet for the rest of our Sabbath. The week ahead looks sketchy, a bit of warmth (60°), a bit of rain, a chance for snow. The usual.