January 26th Dave Wrote

Hello, everyone --

I'm never certain how the formatting on these e-mails comes through on your various computers. However, some of the letters come through in a very small type (e.g., see the list of dates above my letter). If I didn't know better, I'd think that some of you might be peddling eye-glasses! Of course, that might not be a bad business with all of us baby boomers getting to the point where we need to upgrade our glasses every year. I'm due for a new pair in March.

Well, we finally got some real winter: about 8 inches of blowing snow last Saturday-Sunday that caused our church services to be cancelled. I was really glad to have a snow blower to clear both my driveway at home and sidewalks at church. I can't believe that I used to have enough energy to actually SHOVEL our driveway before breakfast! And then I remember Mom telling how her father would go out with work crews in winter to shovel open drifts on public highways. How times have changed!

Today it finally warmed up to 34 degrees. That felt almost balmy after what seems like a full week of temperatures (or at least wind chill temps) in the low teens or even below zero. You sure can tell when it's cold outside of you burn wood: I think we burned as much wood in the last week as we did during the entire month of November. The wood heat sure feels good, however. Mom, I don't think I could ever move into a retirement center if it didn't have at least one wood stove where I could go to sit beside the fire.

Both of our boys are back in school, so the house is quiet again. We enjoy the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season and having our children at home, but we also enjoy the quiet after they leave. Tomorrow at noon, Carol and I leave on our "winter get-away" for four days. We plan to visit Mom, spend a day at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, then visit old friends in the Harrisburn and Lebanon areas.

I'm travelling to a lot of fruit grower meetings over the next 5 weeks. I'm scheduled to make 19 presentations (about 30-40 min. each) at 9 different meetings (in NY, PA, VT, Ontario) between Feb. 2 and March 10. Fortunately, I can use the same presentations for multiple meetings, so I'm really prepping only about 7 different power-point set-ups. I enjoy the grower meetings and the interaction that one gets when presenting applied info to audiences that will put that info to use during the next growing season.

I hope that my presentations come off better than one writer's opinion of some recent presentations at the Washington State Horticultural Society meetings. George Ing, a columnist in a fruit grower magazine, was complaining about how that meeting didn't stay on schedule whereas speakers 20 years ago were kept on a tighter time schedule. I especially liked the following quote, referring to the "good old days": "Speakers were not allowed 20 minutes of defining how the data was gathered while using an hour to fill a 30-minute slot with 15 minutes of useful info." Phil, I wonder if that might describe also describe some preaching? Not yours, of course!

Well, it won't be long before I need to start some of my flower and vegetable seeds for our garden. Putting seeds in the ground (even if only in pots) always gets me in the mood for spring. I'm sure it will be here before I'm ready.

Based on recent letters and conversations at Christmas, it sounds as though many of my siblings (and perhaps some of your children) are facing challenges and tough decisions that can threaten to take the joy out of life. I know that I had about five really tough years as I struggled to "let go" of our kids while also wondering if anything I'd done or am doing in life was really worth-while. I think that my mental attitude has improved considerably in the past 12-18 months, largely because I've finally accepted the reality that God isn't expecting me to solve all the problems facing my kids and my friends. I've come to believe less in my own abilities and more in the power of prayer and of God's love. Too bad that it's taken 57 years to get some of those concepts through my hard head! Anyway, I want you to know that Carol and I do remember you in our prayers.

I hope that all of your problems will melt away with snows of winter! But then again, that might make for a boring spring.