Fifty

Why is it that fifty, in terms of years, seems like such a significant number? Why do we give it special distinction and call it the "golden" anniversary? Maybe because it's halfway to one hundred? We seem to like to group things in spans of one hundred, so we have a century, one hundred years, and a millennium, ten centuries, and even an eon, 10⁹ years. Beginning in the 16th century, historians started dividing time into hundred year blocks in an attempt to give history some structure, which is why we call it the 16th century. And it's convenient to divide a century into ten year sections, decades, and call them eras and give them nicknames, and so we have the "Elegant '80s" (in the 19th century), the "Gay '90s" (also the 19th century before that term took on a different meaning), the "Roaring '20s", the "Swinging '60s", etc. 

Fashion in the '80s, '90s, '20s, and '60s.

In terms of human lifespan, hitting a hundred is fairly rare and it's such a nice number, so we make a big deal about it. There are big Latinate words for the big anniversary celebrations – centennial (100 years), sesquicentennial (150 years), bicentennial (200 years), semiquincentennial (250 years), etc. This year is our nation's semiquincentennial celebration. It is also a semicentennial, a fifty year anniversary, for me. It marks fifty years since I graduated from high school. We were the Class of '76.

Because of reaching that milestone, I find myself dwelling on that year more and more. I'm prone to historical reflection in the first place, but it's been more intense lately. Last week I read through my journal for 1976. I wrote down something every single day that year, even if it was just to record that nothing much happened. I was a dedicated journal writer. On the front page of my 1976 Journal, I listed my friends and their phone numbers. According to my list, there were twenty-one of them (in alphabetical order, of course): Nancy B., Chris B., Kim B., John and Sylvia B., John E., Sally F., Becky G., Nancy and Ginny G., Debbie H., Larry H., Dean and Duane H., Julie L., Chris M., Fran M., Becky R., Julie T., and John and Neil W.  Looking back at those names stirs up many happy memories.

After that phone list, I listed the movie theaters that we frequented and their phone numbers: The Naper, The Yorktown Cinema, The Tivoli, The West Plaza, The Isle, and The Skylark Drive-in. We went to the movies a lot. The price of a ticket was about $2.50 back then. I recorded every movie I went to through the year – twenty-eight in theaters in and around Chicago, and after I got to BYU later in the year, six foreign films (shown on the weekends for free in the JKB), three movies at the Varsity Theater in the Wilkinson Center (cost $1.00), three movies at the Joseph Smith Auditorium (free if you were a full tithe payer and got a semester pass from your branch president), and eight classic films at the MARB hosted by the Department of Theater and Media Arts ($1.00 for a double feature) – forty-eight films altogether, along with my critical assessment of each film.

Cinema in 1976.

Through the year I wrote about the parties, dances, and other events I went to. What date I took, if I actually took one. I went with my friends to a Styx concert at North Central College on January 3rd, a nightmare for me. I wrote about church activities – Early Morning Seminary, Mutual, Youth Conference. I wrote about my final semester in high school, that I mostly hated, and my semester at BYU that fall, that I also mostly hated. I wrote about my first job, the books I was reading, the music I was listening to. I kept a list of my favorite summer radio hits.

All By Myself by Eric Carmine
Dream Weaver by Gary Wright
Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
Dream On by Aerosmith
Trying to Get the Feeling by Barry Manilow
Welcome Back by John Sebastian
Shannon by Henry Groce
Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac
Never Gonna Fall In Love Again by Eric Carmine

I wrote about the things going on in my family – from small things like memorable Family Home Evening lessons, going on joyrides (gasoline was $.61 a gallon that year), and watching Rich Man, Poor Man on TV together – to big events like my sister Hollie's wedding on April 20th at the Washington D.C. Temple (that I didn't go to because I had to work). Then there was the family vacation to Pennsylvania in July that I didn't go on so I could stay home and say good-bye to my best friend as he left to serve a mission. After he left, I sat at home alone and sustained myself on eight flavors of Jello while watching Nadia Comeneci wow the world with her perfect gymnastics at the Summer Olympics in Montreal.

We wouldn't miss a single episode.

Nadia was perfection.

And I wrote about my gardens and the weather, of course. I was obsessing about them even back then. But I wrote mostly about my friends. Accounts of our antics make up the bulk of my entries. I was blest to have good friends, members of the church, who, for the most part, stayed out of trouble and kept me out of trouble. Those were good times. It doesn't seem possible that they are half a century in the past already.

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I saw this funny meme last week, and like many funny things, the humor is partly based in truth. Our weather here is so changeable that it seems sometimes we move through the seasons in a matter of hours.

Take Monday, for example. When I went to bed last Sunday night, we were in the middle of a wind storm. It was part of a huge weather system covering the entire eastern half of the country. The temperature was 48°, pleasant for March. When I got up on Monday morning, the wind had subsided a bit and it was 51°, even nicer. I checked the weather forecast map for the day, hoping I could get some work done in the orchard. It looked like this:

That's a lot of weather going on across the eastern USA – blizzards, tornados, freeze warnings, high wind, high surf. We were in that purple band running through Pennsylvania, a Winter Weather Advisory. The forecast for Gold said we'd hit 58° and have rain during the day, but the wind would pick up and after 2:00 p.m. we'd have thunderstorms – possibly severe – and the temperature would plummet to 15° during the night and bring us snow. From 58° to 15° that's a 43° swing, from lovely spring to bitter winter, in just a few hours. That's how things go here.

Outdoors not being suitable for work that day, I turned my need to garden indoors. Well, to the woodshed. That's sort of indoors. I was behind with planting my seed trays. I'd held off starting them because the electric heater I use in the woodshed died. Without it, the woodshed gets too cold at night for seeds to grow. So I drove into town to the hardware store and bought a new heater. When I got back, I filled and planted two trays, one with flowers – helenium and snapdragons, and the other with vegetables – celery, parsley, and bunching onions. Now I'm wait to see those first exciting sprouts emerge.

The first two seed trays underway!

The severe thunderstorm never happened and I was happy about that. The cold, however did come as predicted. And the snow. Tuesday morning, it was 15° and there was three inches of snow on the ground. The telephone rang at 5:50 to tell us there was a two hour delay at school. That made Miriam happy. Stacey was not happy about driving to work in the snow. As for me, I stood at the window that morning and looked out over a garden once again buried in snow. You can probably guess how I felt.

Tuesday morning.

That was St. Patrick's Day. The only green we saw that day was our clothing. The world outside was white. I spent a couple of hours that morning indulging in creating a wish list. Some people make up fantasy sports dream teams, I make up fantasy garden lists. One of the plans for the Foster's enterprise next door is building a greenhouse. A real, year-round, heated greenhouse. I told Sarah that, if she built it, I would grow all sorts of tropical fruit for her. That morning, I began a list of the things I'd like to grow, dwarf fruit trees, shrubs, and vines. I looked through my catalogs and visited several websites and made a chart noting the varieties and their prices. It is a mouthwatering list: mangos, papayas, lemons, limes, kumquats, tangerines, loquats, guavas, bananas, ginger, turmeric. I want to grow vanilla orchid vines, and I'm sure there will be other orchids too to add some tropical beauty. I don't know when the greenhouse will be built, but when it is, I will be ready. And I will probably live inside it through most of the year.

Fruit on my wish list.

I was awakened by the snow plow going up our road at 3:56 on Wednesday morning. That was earlier than usual. They usually plow around 5:00 if there has been snow during the night. I got up and looked out the window, expecting to see a lot of new snow, but there was just a light layer, not even an inch. Hardly enough to justify waking me up so early with the loud scraping of the plow on our gravelly dirt road. I went back to bed, muttering soft complaints. When I got up at 5:30, my usual rising time, I thought the house felt chilly. The furnace is giving us fits again. I went out and stomped on the grate to kick it on. Then I went through my usual routine, getting ready for the day. When I checked the thermometer to see how I should dress, I was unhappy to see that it was 4° outside. Ugh. I had to dig out a pair of flannel-lined trousers and some wooly socks that I had over-optimistically put away last week thinking I wouldn't need them again until next winter. I dressed and then sat at my desk beside my electric heater. Welcome to Wednesday, I thought. Cold, gray, wintry Wednesday.

When it was time to do the morning chores and check my traps, it had warmed to 12°. I bundled up against the cold with a warm hoodie and my barn coat and my fleece-lined gloves and went down to the barn. The traps were empty. I'd set up the water barrel again during that fleeting warm spell we had last week hoping I wouldn't have to carry water down to the barn anymore. Again, I was overly optimistic. There was ice two inches thick on top of the barrel that I had to smash to get water out. When I opened the door to let the chickens out, they weren't interested in leaving the coop, so I closed the door again. I threw them some scratch and then stood there and watched them eat. I was pleased to see harmonious behavior. Earlier in the week, the lone guinea hen escaped her pen and joined the main flock. I was afraid they would attack her, but they seem to have accepted her. They already have a peacock as a member of their flock, so I guess adding one guinea didn't bother them.

On Tuesday night, our friend Kerry Dunn brought us two flats of strawberries from the FFA sale at the school where she teaches and I spent the rest of Wednesday morning processing them. I didn't want to at first. It seemed a bother. But it had to be done because berries don't last long. I washed them and started capping them and the smell of the ripe berries rose up and it was like June had arrived. I mashed some and froze them to be used as a topping on our Easter pound cake in two weeks. I sliced some and set them on trays to freeze to be freeze-dried later. I made strawberry jam out of the rest. I don't think I've ever made jam in March before. I had to go down cellar and get jars and out to the woodshed to get the canner, rings, and lids. It felt good to stand in the steamy kitchen, stirring the fragrant strawberries. I made twelve pints of jam. It was a morning well spent.

Processing strawberries.

A good morning's work – twelve pints of jam.

The sun came out at noon and although it was still cold, I couldn't resist going out to sit in my little greenhouse. I queued up some music on my phone and sat down and fell fast asleep. It was warm and the sunshine felt so good. If I was a cat, I would have been purring. I woke up an hour later when clouds had covered the sun and a cold wind rattled the greenhouse. It was nice while it lasted.

Thursday evening we went to see the movie The Hail Mary Project. I'm a big fan of science fiction in book and film form and I am usually very critical of most sci fi movies, but I liked this one. The science in it is far enough removed from trying to be anything real that it worked. I recommend it.

Friday was the Vernal Equinox, the first official day of spring. The sunrise that morning was beautiful. I hoped it was the herald to the arrival of the new season, that spring would descend upon on us with the sun's ascent. But that fiery sunrise had no heat in it. The ground was frozen hard with frost. The sun, after all that morning glory, never managed to break through the clouds. By noon it was raining. I muttered the same not-much-comfort phrase I've been muttering a lot lately, "At least it's not snowing."

Sunrise on the first day of spring.

Because it was the first day of spring, I felt I had to do something significant. I waited for the rain to let up a little and went out and planted poppy seeds. Last fall I had prepared a bed for poppies along the bottom of the orchard and covered it with landscape fabric to hold back the weeds. When I took the fabric off on Friday, I could see that weeds had infiltrated the bed over the winter, but it wasn't too bad. Because they are so small, I mixed the poppy seeds with some sand and put them in a broadcaster and spread them over the newly exposed ground. Poppies don't mind the cold. In June that bed should be a mass of blooming poppies. I can hardly wait.

The poppy bed.

We had our usual Friday homemade pizza dinner. The Fosters came over. In addition to her regular excellent pizza, Hannah has become a pro at making a delicious keto pizza for me. We had great food and a nice visit. I like Friday pizza night. Later that night, we heard peepers for the first time. It was the first day of spring after all. I thought it was a little too early for them to begin singing, but I looked back through my journals. I found that in 2015 we heard them for the first time on March 15th, but most years they start around April 10th. So they are a bit early. And they will surely freeze a few times. The local folk lore says they have to freeze three times before spring is fully here. Poor little things.

Saturday turned out to be a pleasant, if a little cool, spring day. Stacey and I ran errands in the morning. We drove into town to the feed store and to Tractor Supply. On our way home, we stopped at Foster's house and helped load their dismantled chicken run into Tosh's truck. Then we came home and unloaded our chicken feed. Fosters arrived next door Miriam and Hannah joined us and we put up a new chicken run. It turned out pretty good. Their chickens loved being outdoors.

Putting up the Foster's new chicken run.

Later we had dinner together. Stacey made delicious chimichangas. After dinner, the Fosters went home. I did some work in the orchard, gathering up branches. Hannah lit a bonfire. Miriam started cleaning out her lily pond. Then Hannah put together the garden wagon she got me for Christmas. At the end of the day, I felt good. It felt like spring. We got a lot of work done.

Hannah assembling the garden wagon.

Happy with my new wagon.

I walked the garden several times during the day, looking at the flowers blooming and things emerging with the promise of more flowers soon. It's nice to see spring taking hold, but I know there will be a few more rough spots ahead.

Crocuses in the long border.

A patch of iris reticulata.

I went out this morning on a short walk. I went down to the barn and let the flock out. They rushed out into the early morning sunlight. I walked along the flowerbeds. It was too early for the crocuses to be open. They were still shut tight. It was a cool morning. I checked the birdfeeders. They were well attended. I counted a dozen robins across our lawn, the Shillig's lawn, and out in the big garden. It was a pleasant early spring Sabbath morning.

Crocuses closed tight, waiting for a bit of warmth.

Church was good. I love our little congregation. And I mean little. We have one hundred and thirteen people on our rosters, but on a good Sunday, only about thirty attend. Today there was just twenty-two of us. But Jesus taught that "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them," so I think we were fine. Our talks were good. Our second hour lessons were good. I came away feeling uplifted and that's what our meetings should do, edify and uplift and ready us for another week of fighting the good fight.

The sun was shining when we left for church this morning, but by the time we got to Wellsville, we were in a thunderstorm. Now we are home and the storm is still going. It's not a big storm, just a bit of thunder and lightning and the occasional rain squall. It is 58° right now, but this storm is the front edge of a cold front. It will be cold tonight and on into the first half of the week. I have some big garden jobs to do this week. My onion order will arrive tomorrow and I need to prepare a bed to plant them in. I must finish pruning the orchard. I've run out of time. The buds are swelling. I'll just have to bundle up and get it done. No matter what, it feels good to be working outside in a world reviving from winter. I feel revived too.