Bring spring

Recently, my folks decided that they wanted to build a retaining wall in our backyard, by our shed, to start a garden. So they ordered a pallet and a half of bricks, which were delivered by Home Depot. They were deposited in our driveway, and we had to move them to the backyard. Whew! Each brick is more than sixty pounds. I counted that as my strength training that day.

My dad is a workhorse. The bricks arrived on Wednesday, and he had the wall done on Saturday. I helped for a couple hours, but he did by far most of the work.

The completed wall!

All this taught me that I really don't like manual labor. I'm not very strong, and I find this kind of work boring and tiring. I'll stick with editing, thank you. But I feel bad that I'm not more well rounded to do this kind of thing. I did feel muscles that I haven't noticed in a while.

My youngest nephew, Nathaniel, often questions why we do things the way we do, and he was asking why they spent all that money and did all that work for just a small garden spot.

Now, if you thought that you were going to get a post without me talking about running, you were mistaken. I needed some new trail shoes, because my toes were literally coming out of my last pair. Luckily, Wasatch Running was still open, so I got some. I was going to order online and do a curbside pickup, but I couldn't get a discount that way, so I just went into the store and already knew what I wanted.

And since I had new shoes, I thought I would try new trails. A few months ago, I ended up by a trailhead at the end of North Salt Lake's Tanglewood Loop. There's a sign saying "Private Property," but it says "Access road closed to motorized vehicles & hunting," which to me implies that hiking, etc., is A-OK. There was a fenced area with an underground reservoir, and there were various dirt roads that are overgrown because they haven't been used in years. I think a lot of them are associated with the natural gas pipeline that spreads across our mountains. There were lots of roads that seemed like they were going someplace important, but there were dead ends. It was very confusing.

This part of the road looked newer, even though the surrounding roads still looked old.

 I hit most of the roads on Monday, and then I went back on Wednesday to hit the rest of them. It's really not a great "trail." There's little shade, and not really anything interesting to see. I'm glad I satisfied my curiosity, but it won't be on my regular trail rotation.

I have been running in the mornings/early afternoons because it's convenient to have my running done early in the day. But it rained Wednesday and Thursday morning, so instead I had to run in the evening. This has made me question the rules I have made about running on days it rains, because the trails weren't muddy at all. But that also reminded me that evening runs really are more enjoyable than morning runs. Direct sunlight is not fun to run in and has a bigger impact than temperature. Running in mid-60s in the evening feels cooler than running in mid-50s in direct sunlight.

Here is some tufted evening primrose, the first I have seen this season. When I got down close to smell it, I stabbed my finger on a goathead or some other sharp plant debris.

 Friday was Arbor Day, and it was also the fifth anniversary of the first time I went to North Canyon, my favorite trail, so I went there to celebrate. My stamina certainly is greater than it was five years ago. But I couldn't go very far up, because there was still lots of snow, the most I've ever seen there this late in the season, which is weird because this is turning out to be the driest April on record.

 My brother has been wanting to take my nephews on a hike to Ensign Peak, the long way, since he remembers hiking there from our house when he was a teen. So we went there on Friday night (leaving from Tunnel Springs Park), except we didn't go on the peak itself, as there were lots of people. Since I had been in North Canyon earlier that day, I hit 26,000 steps that day.

These are Wasatch Bluebells! This might have been the first time I had seen them in person, but I recognized them from my books, even though I didn't remember what they were called at the time.

 Since I was reminded that evenings are better, I saved my Saturday run for the evening. It took me longer than I expected, but I don't regret it. I went up some steep hills that have been very challenging for me in the past, but this time they weren't that challenging. I went past a meadow that's above Wild Rose. It was completely lovely as the glacier lilies and arrowleaf balsamroot seemed to glow yellow in the light of the setting sun (which was obstructed by clouds).

On my way home, the blossoming trees and the fragrance of pollen filled me with joyful spring feelings. I don't think I really paid attention to spring until my mission and especially college. Fall will forever be my favorite, but spring is spectacular in its own way. As I ran home in the mild temperatures, a truck was blaring "Stupid Love" out its windows, contributing to the pre-summer celebratory, party atmosphere of April and May. What a wonderful time of year!

In other news, I finished reading the second volume of Saints this week. I liked this one more than the first, but that might be because I'm more familiar with the history. When I worked at BYU Studies many years ago, I remember the secretary saying that in Church curriculum, Church history ends after the 1840s. It's true—we hear so much about Palmyra, Kirtland, Missouri, Nauvoo, the pioneers, the handcart pioneers, and then poof—no more. But truth be told, I find the Utah history far more fascinating than the pre-Utah history. In volume two, I especially liked how it showed how hard it was for the Saints to accept the Manifesto.

This week we also got to see a lot of people who were unfamiliar with science.

The Davis Clipper

I was filling a spray bottle with Lysol cleaning solution. My brother said to me something like, "Since you're not a Trump supporter, I assume you're not using that for yourself?"

Steps

Even though people are worried about the potential to be unhealthy, I'm using the opportunity to step up my cardio game with lots more running and other things.

A few years ago on Thanksgiving, I ran on a trail that went down into City Creek Canyon. Last week, I noticed another sign that looked like it was signaling another trail, which I presumed also went down into City Creek. So I decided to go check it out.

 But once I got past the sign, the "trail" vanished. There was nowhere to go. So I turned around and went on the usual trails. (These trails are above Wild Rose Trail.)

On my way to the trailheads, I run past a house that always has a truck parked directly on the sidewalk, even though there's tons of room in the driveway. And it's next to their parking strip, which means you have to walk on their grass to get around the car. It is annoying, and technically it's illegal, so I left this note on their windshield:

 That seems to have done the trick, because now they park in their driveway! (Which they should have been doing all along.)

I tried to be very friendly about it, and I figure that it's helping not only me but also other pedestrians. But part of me wonders if it was appropriate. My ward's Facebook page is open to the neighborhood in general, which is great, but a few nonmembers feel a need to post on the page to lecture their neighbors about shoveling their sidewalks or avoiding gathering. I 100 percent agree with their messages, but the way they do it seems excessively strange and even rude, so I hope I'm not being a jerk.

On Tuesday, I ran up a steep trail on the east side of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. I don't know if it's an official trail, but it's been there as long as I've been using the main trail. (In the five and a half years I've been exploring North Salt Lake's trails, I have been sad to see trails widen and shortcuts become more deeply entrenched. Stay on the trail, folks!

Wednesday and Thursday were rainy. On Thursday, I thought I would take the opportunity to ride my bike for twenty miles, a distance I have never done before, on the Legacy Parkway Trail. At exactly ten miles, I was at a Farmington park where I could see Lagoon, and it was time to turn around.

 That bike trail is super easy. So easy, in fact, that it's kind of boring coming back. It's only slightly difficult, but the tedium makes the scant difficulty much less enjoyable.

I go to Ensign Peak a few times a year, and I always go one way that takes me above Ensign Peak and I have to descend (and then ascend) a very steep trail. But the first time I went there, five years ago, I instead went below Ensign Peak and ascended a steep, narrow, unofficial trail. But now there is a completely new trail, with lots of switchbacks, and it was my first time using this new trail. I'm glad it's there, because it's better than what was there before. But I think I still prefer the way I usually go.

There were lots of loose rocks on the trail, one reason I don't like it as much.

My nephews spend their free time playing video games (boring) and watching YouTube videos of people playing video games (boringer!). But they also have to exercise (and they can leverage the exercise to get more game time), so I have enjoyed taking them on some of the smaller trails, which are too small to be worth my time most of the time.

I love all the glacier lilies on the lower portion of Wild Rose Trail! (The part of the trail that goes by the NSL landslide, not the main loop by the park.)

 Even though Friday's Ensign Peak run was more than nine miles up and down hills, I still had plenty of energy for Saturday's run.

Five years ago (again), I got lost on the trails and ended up going way farther than I had anticipated. I decided to go on the same trail again to see where it goes. So part of my run was places I haven't seen in five years, and part of it was completely new territory.

I didn't take my phone with me five years ago, but I was confused then to see a "no parking" sign lying on the ground. This is the middle of a trail that feels pretty isolated, so I don't know what it was doing there. But five years later, it's still there! But this time it was leaning against some trees.

Conglomerate outcrop

I believe this cairn signals a fork in the trail that leads to a cellphone tower, where I've gone a few times, but the trail there is very steep with loose rocks.

This is where I turned around.

 I ended up going 7.5 miles, with a climb of 2,100 feet.

I'm so glad that the Fitbit app finally shows elevation! For years, elevation was only available online. But even though they tell you your elevation gain in feet, they only show the actual elevation in meters. 🤷

I was in fact exhausted at the end of that run. But after a little recovery, I went with my nephews on a walk on Centerville's Prospector Rail Trail. It was kind of boring because it was flat and straight, but I'd never been there, and it's good to know it's not worth my time.

I took 28,700 steps yesterday!

I also had several strange dreams this week. In one, I had to pretend to defend myself from lions, but once filming was done, the lions wanted to be petted. In another, as part of my grad school preparations, I had to go back to junior high, and there I was interacting with adolescents when I'm in my thirties. And in the strangest one of all, President Nelson was visiting my ward, so the ward decided to try to impress him by having a big performance of secular song-and-dance numbers during sacrament meeting. There was a scene from Beetlejuice and a "Thriller" performance with a campy Michael Jackson costume. Some of the costumes were immodest, and I found it all to be entirely inappropriate for sacrament meeting. I wanted to lecture the ward on Brigham Young establishing the Retrenchment Society to prove that you shouldn't try to impress the prophet. I guess I'm a know-it-all even when I'm dreaming.

A very special Easter

This quarantine has certainly impacted everyone's Easter.

For us Melvilles, it means that my nephews are here so they won't be locked in their tiny apartment. It's the first time we've spent Easter with my two younger nephews.

My brother is almost the exact opposite of me, at least as far as holidays are concerned. My life revolves around holidays, but he is completely apathetic about them. My nephews call me Holiday John, and now they've been saying that my brother is a Holiday Nhoj, since he's the opposite. My youngest nephew, who is ten, told me that they don't celebrate Easter. They just buy candy on sale after Easter.

So we had to pull out all the stops for Easter this year. It wasn't really that different for us, but we had to make it enjoyable for the boys.

Of course, we colored Easter eggs, which they had never done before. They enjoyed using "Eggmazing," a device that spins the egg around while  you draw on it with markers. I prefer crayons.

Mine are the ones in the front: clouds, bats (for coronavirus), shamrocks, spiderwebs, polka dots, carrots, trees, and hearts.

This is the family's eggs, with most of the stripes being from the boys.

Then we had Easter baskets and an egg hunt on Saturday morning, since we've always done that instead of Sunday to keep it sacred. We got lots of jelly beans, Peeps, chocolate eggs, and chocolate bunnies—the traditional stuff. (Controversial opinion: cheap Brach's jellybeans are better than the fancy Jelly Belly or Starburst jellybeans.) The boys quickly found the eggs; by the time I put my shoes on, they had already found most of them. They said, "Why don't we do this at our house?" My brother tried to defend themselves, saying they have done Easter things in the past, but not even my oldest nephew, who is fifteen, remembers doing any such thing.

Then today we had a nice dinner with ham, funeral potatoes, deviled eggs, roasted vegetables, and carrot cake. My Melville grandmother always used to decorate a (non-carrot) cake with an Easter scene, so I did a similar thing. (She used regular marshmallows cut into bunnies instead of Peeps, and she died coconut green instead of using the edible "grass.")

My nephews again asked why they don't have a big dinner for the holiday. Success! Nathaniel (10) just told me Easter is now his second-favorite holiday when they're here (Christmas being first).

I've been playing my Easter playlist, casting it to my Google Home and Google Home Mini from my phone. For some reason, the big Google Home decides it doesn't want to play some of the songs, even though they play just fine from the Mini!

Easter wasn't the only noteworthy thing this week. Recently, I decided I wanted to be more careful about spending money on things that are bad for me. But then Governor Herbert wants us to buy things from restaurants three times a week. If I can save the economy by buying cookies (and sharing the Utah cookie fad with my California nephews), I will gladly do it.

Nothing Bundt Cakes

RubySnap

Chip

Crumbl

Cutler's

Crave

One night this week, Jimmy was licking my arm at 3 a.m. I looked at my watch, and he was licking me for at least four minutes. He doesn't usually lick me that long, so it was so strange that he did for so long in the middle of the night!

On Wednesday, I went to Deseret Mill canning in Kaysville, since our ward asked for volunteers. I didn't want to, but I figured that nobody wants to, and I don't have a job or kids. My sister-in-law came with, and we made sure labels were on cans correctly. It was mostly boring; we were glad when the labels were wrong so we felt useful.

And I went trail running six days this week! On weekdays, I was surprised how non-busy the trails were; they were almost like normal days. I loved seeing all the springbeauties, glacier lilies, and yellowbells in blossom. What a lovely time of year!

Monday: the dirt road beneath Ensign Peak

Tuesday: Wild Rose

Wednesday: North Canyon. The main trail was snowed over, so I went on this dirt road, but there was a gate saying the road was permanently closed because of vandalism and illegal fires. It has been a few years since I've been there. The road's not that beautiful, so it's not a big loss, but it is a shame that rednecks ruin everything.

Thursday: The ridge between Woodbriar and City Creek

Springhill Geologic Park

Ridge between Woodbriar and City Creek

As I came home from yesterday's run, a loose dog in the street wouldn't let me past him, as though it owned the entire road. Of course, it doesn't. Yet another episode in the saga of Mark Hates Dogs. I will refrain from telling you what I hope happens to that dog.

As much as I like to think otherwise, I do seek the approval of others, and last week I didn't get one solitary like. Did I say something wrong?