By Peggy Goodrich, Commentary

Are you ready for spring? Think about it.

Spring has sprung. The flowers has riz. I wonder where the birdies is. Everything indicates a new season and a new beginning. Even though it has been cold and doesn’t feel like it some days, spring is here. The jonquils have pushed their little heads up and showed their sunshine-yellow blossoms. The grape hyacinths are taking over in areas from where they were last year. The red bud trees are in full bloom. The forsythia are a showy bright yellow.

Along with all the beauty comes the tasks of getting our yards ready for summer. There always are those leaves to rake again after the Pin oak trees bud. Where do they all come from? We raked them last fall. No matter how we leave the yard and garden in good condition in the fall, something happens in winter and it seems there still is much to do in the spring.

Regardless of the work cut out for this new season, it does not compare with the joys of spring. Nothing is more delightful than birds singing. The sweet smell of fresh dirt in the garden or field or the fragrance of spring violets awakens a beautiful harmony of nature. We tend to forget anything unpleasant and think only of pleasurable things when this season arrives.

With flowers budding and grass greening, baby animals being born, chickens and ducks hatching, the arrival of all the birds in our trees and bird houses, we want to join their joy in new beginnings and a new awakening of a fresh new world around us. Isn’t nature’s commencement much like our lives at Easter? We start anew. We think new thoughts. We initiate original, new projects. In some of our lives it is easier to start over in the spring than it is to begin afresh on Jan. 1. Winter can be so hum-drum, but ahhh ... spring!

With Easter, which came early this year, the busy work-a-day world is a challenge to triumph over one’s environment and really take time to be holy. We are determined to enter a new quest for religious solidarity. We enter a respect for quite devotion. We discover unknown resources. We breath new vitality in our toil and leisure. The glory of each new season is that it offers us a chance to begin anew.

Springtime and Easter time bring back memories of going to Grandma’s and Grandpa’s for our first picnic of the new season. Sometimes it was so beastly cold we had to have the picnic in the barn, but picnic we had anyway! Then we would play softball with every age participating. The older ones would run backwards to the bases giving the little tiny kids a chance to show what they could do. It always was fun when Grandpa would make a home run with all the little kids trailing after him. He’d say he could never have made it without their help. And you know what, we really believed him! We explored the hayloft and played hide and seek, and then went to the house and played in the attic and upstairs bedrooms. That was a trip back in time, but it also meant a new awakening in our lives, as we discovered how our ancestors lived. We tried on old clothes and shoes and played with old toys and read old books.

Back then it was legal and even advertised to give colored chickens or ducks to little kids for Easter. Every Easter Grandma and Grandpa gave each grandchild their choice of color for a little chicken. In time, when they feathered out, they were just lost in the flock of chickens we raised to eat each spring. But for about a week we knew which was our chicken and we gently cared for it and pointed it out. Each spring, Mother ordered hundreds of chickens from a catalog and the rural mailman delivered them to our door. We had a full brooder house. It was lots of work to keep them warm and fed and watered. But they sure tasted good fried later in the springtime, as did our Easter chicks.

In early spring, we plowed the garden again and got it ready to plant rows and rows of onions and lettuce and early things. Every week it was time to set out something else or plant seeds. It was a joy to watch the garden come up and those fresh onions tasted so good with beans. And there is nothing quite like wilted lettuce early in the spring. By March 17, the potatoes were planted and everything else had a special time to be seeded and planted. To my knowledge, we never had a garden that failed. Oh, it might have been beat down by hail, but we still harvested lots of garden produce to eat fresh and to can and to share.

As much as we loved school, we still looked forward to the end of school every May so we could play and do things at home. Every summer we painted the garden gates and barn doors and spruced up around the yard and house. We loved those busy chores and looked forward to them. Don’t you know it took a lot of planning to keep seven little pairs of hands busy during the summer? We thought it was all fun. As soon as school was out, we played school so we never were without reading and arithmetic and current events and geography as the need arose.

Perhaps my memory fails me and I remember only the fun things, but it seems we had such happy childhoods and looked forward to each and every day.

To awaken a new taste sensation this spring, try this recipe. It is a welcome change from the chocolate sheet cakes that are so popular.

Pineapple Sheet Cake

2 cups flour

11⁄2 cups sugar

1⁄4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons soda

2 beaten eggs

1 (16 ounce) can crushed pineapple, with juice

In medium bowl, combine dry ingredients with whisk until well blended. Stir in eggs and pineapple. Spoon into ungreased 9x13 pan. Bake in 350 oven for 30 minutes. Prepare this frosting and pour over cake when it comes from the oven.

Pineapple Sheet Cake Frosting

11⁄2 cups sugar

1⁄2 cup butter

2⁄3 cup evaporated milk

1 cup chopped pecans

1 cup coconut

1 teaspoon vanilla

In a medium sauce pan, combine sugar, butter, milk, pecans and coconut.

Boil six minutes over medium heat, stirring frequently. Add vanilla and mix well.

Send your comments to: Peggy Goodrich, Food For Thought, P.O. Box 1192, Enid, OK 73702.