Audrey Godfrey

I've noticed yellow daffodils brightening the yards of our neighbors.

As yet, ours are still deciding when to bloom.

The bright yellow against the still barren earth cause me to remember a poem by William Wordsworth titled "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud."

I've been right handed for over 70 years. I'm really good at doing things right handed, such as writing, lifting, cooking, housework, typing, holding a book, etc. However, an operation on Jan. 4 forced me to be left handed, at which I am not very good.

First of all, a brace with a hard "pillow" that holds my right arm in place prevents me from doing many of the tasks I used to handle with ease-like eating, fixing my hair, holding a newspaper or a book. It forces me to sleep with my hand in the air perpetually signaling my readiness to answer any questions I dream about.

Among the treasures I enjoy at this time of year are old Christmas postcards sent to my father in the first and second decade of the 1900s. Costing only a penny to mail, and a penny to buy, the cards traveled back and forth between my father in North Ogden and his cousins in Weston, Idaho. The messages rarely were humorous, nor were they maudlin verses, but displayed little works of art with sincere written greetings.

Cousin Harold wrote on a card imprinted with "Ever Thine" and a picture of a child in a bright red coat holding a white dove: "I hope this finds you all well as it leaves us the same at present. We are having an awfull cold winter out here, so cold that little Karl and I cant go out to play. Write soon."

Three women signed another card that featured a curly haired, pink-cheeked girl with "A Joyful Christmas" message surrounded by red holly berries and leaves. Another holly framed winter scene arrived from Pearly Swift.

On Oct. 16, 1758, the great lexicographer and philologist, Noah Webster, was born. He is famous for his American Dictionary of the English Language published in 1812 which defined 70,000 words.

Since its publication, many dictionaries have followed. My version is Webster's College Dictionary. I like words. When I'm reading I continually run to my dictionary to look up a word's meaning. Here are a few of the words I've discovered.

Agita describes my condition after eating too many tomatoes. It means heartburn.

I was interested in Merrill Spendlove's letter on Monday, August 1, regarding the small amount of taxes going to North Ogden and what the city does with it (I was born and raised in North Ogden). One thing he didn't menton is the city museum which has been housed in and upstairs room accessed by steep stairs. I visited there a few weeks ago and I am amazed at the amount of information and artifacts housed there. The room is well kept, everything is labeled and filed. The story boards made by museum board members are interesting, as are maps of the mountains and their peaks which are identified.

About this time of year my mouth waters with thoughts of a plump red cherry. I grew up eating red cherries. I grew up in a cherry orchard -- first sitting in a box with my toys, then outlining "rooms" with rocks to play in, and finally picking and sorting the fruit. My siblings and I like talking about those days in the orchard -- who worked the hardest, which pickers we liked, who ate the most cherries (and paid for it later).

Our orchards were planted in the late teens of the 20th century by my grandfather William A. Montgomery on rocky ground sheltered from the frost of the valley just below the mountain road in North Ogden. Our dad bossed the cherry pickers -- a core group of family and young people glad to have a summer job, as well as Italian and German prisoners of war, and, one year, men sent from the Salvation Army in Ogden.

How do you write about two important days and do them justice? The best I can do is chronicle how my mother (and father) helped our family honor our ancestors and then throw in some humor straight from the cemetery.

Almost as long as I can remember, our family spent the morning of Memorial Day picking flowers on the mountainside, enjoying a great outdoor breakfast, and meeting again at the cemetery where we talked about our loved ones who had passed on, especially our Grandmother Stena and two baby boys who died before we were born. The wild flower bouquets honored our pioneer era ancestors who we thought would appreciate having their graves decorated with flowers from our Montgomery mountain property.

Gathering those bouquets meant hiking to find the flowers. My mother, up until about two years before her death, managed to make the climb as far as the canal. We found her effort remarkable, as was her life. Her sense of humor would cause her to appreciate the rest of this column.