Friday, April 15, 2002:

I was up at dawn to look out the windows here to check on the status of the historic blizzard of April 2022. My treat was a beautiful amber full moon setting in the west, which meant some blue sky sunshine today. So far no wind here. One neighbor left in his 4-wheel drive pickup for work, otherwise Arthur Drive is still pretty quiet that I can see.

After some coffee, I filled the empty bird feeders and thought about how my Mother would always tell how she knew it must be a full moon because it would get wild at whatever hospital where she was working as a nurse — and later at senior facilities where she lived and hospitals where she was cared for in her elder years. She must have watched many glorious full moons all those years she spent in Slope County.

And to the very end, she would tell us how those early 20th-century rural folk would plant potatoes around Good Friday. She would tell us that with an impish twinkle in her eye because, of course, she knew very well that Good Friday moved around on the calendar and the potatoes were planted according to the weather conditions in Deep Creek Township of Slope County.

In her last years, she was fortunate in that her nursing home room faced west, so  she watched many western North Dakota sunsets and full moons. Years ago she chose to live in Sunset in Mandan, N.D., when it came time that she could no longer live independently. And a stroke of good fortune gave her a room with a view of the western horizon in the center of North Dakota.