Partygoers at the Rochester Senior Center on December 31 flaunted that it is never too early in the day to celebrate New Year’s Eve, and it’s never too late to make a change with a few New Year’s resolutions.

Seniors from all over Tri-Town filled the banquet room at the senior center on Dexter Lane this past Thursday to say goodbye to 2015 and hello to 2016, even if there were still another ten or so hours left until the official start of the New Year.

While guests enjoyed live music and a hot luncheon together to celebrate the ending of one year and the start of a fresh new one, volunteers were busy helping to clean up while Sharon and Woody Hartley prepared the dessert in the kitchen, heaping servings of bread pudding onto plates for Council on Aging volunteers to pass out.

Once the cookies and cakes were eaten, enough punch had been consumed, and the bread pudding went down in gastronomical history, COA Director Sharon Lally took the microphone to the center of the room, reminded her senior guests that New Year’s Eve meant it was time to make resolutions for the New Year, and called out, “Who’s got a resolution?”

“In with the new, out with the old, right?” Lally encouraged her guests to speak out and share their aspirations for the New Year.

Some shouted out, “To get rid of the junk in the house!” Others said they were generally going to try to be a better person, and a few vowed to shed those extra pounds this year. Yet it was Peggy Brown who had her own idea for the perfect New Year’s diet, and a few others seemed to like the sound of it.

“I’m going to lose 20 more pounds,” said Brown, patting her belly, “with a special diet of whipped cream, ice cream…”

Lally liked the sound of that.

“Sounds like my type of diet,” joked Lally.

Winnie Hartley, 96, the “most senior of us in the room,” as Lally put it, said her resolution was to get up in the morning and take care of herself, adding, “And not be a pain in the butt!”

Lally traveled around the room, giving turns with the mike as more guests hoped to become more organized in 2016, not argue so much with their families, and lose that weight.

Sandie DeMoranville had an entirely different idea for her New Year’s resolution, vowing to find a suitable beau for her granddaughter.

“She’s tall and very beautiful and single,” said DeMoranville.

“Well, I don’t think she’ll find him in this room,” replied Lally smiling.

Some simply wished for a milder winter than last year’s all-time snowiest year on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as outside temperatures that day reached the low 60s in Tri-Town.

Lally said the COA had a few resolutions of its own.

“To grow our fitness room program and, hopefully, do more fundraising for our new addition for our day care,” said Lally.

Lally told guests to try out their noisemakers before the big countdown to be sure they were working properly, and said sparkling cider was on its way.

“I wish I could have some alcoholic bubbly for you, but I can’t do that,” Lally said, eliciting a few disappointed groans from the crowd. “But we’ll have the spirit anyway!”

She said, perhaps 2015 wasn’t one of the better years to go down in history, but she left guests with one final hopeful thought for 2016:

“May we never have double snow on our roofs again!”

By Jean Perry

If the unusually warm weather brought you outdoors during the days around this Christmas and New Year’s, either in your own yard or walking up the sidewalk, you may have noticed a myriad of curious sights: green, green grass; hearty winter viburnum and cherry trees blossoming; Johnny-Jump Ups and daffodils pushing up through the ground; and lavender lilacs in bloom. Even some rhododendrons and azaleas flowered while still strung with Christmas lights, an unusual juxtaposition.

In the dead of winter, nature was coming into life in the Tri-Town region – and beyond. Christmas Day temperatures reached the lower 60s, preceded and followed by days of spring-like 50-degree weather.

Take this week’s cover of The Wanderer, for example. Although viburnum is known to bloom throughout autumn, this particularly warm fall, followed by an above-average mild December, kept some of these trees from reaching total dormancy and to reawaken instead to bloom out another round of flowers into the New Year. A series of cold days and biting frosts will eventually render the viburnum dormant; however, other types of flowering vegetation such as the cherry tree, sweetbay magnolia, and the lilac operate on an energy budget of sorts, and the warmer weather has caused some of these trees to expend too much energy too early in the growing season.

It is not entirely uncommon anymore for fall-flowering trees to perpetuate their bloom into the winter, said local arborist Paul Sellers, who is also the senior arborist for Eversource, but how quickly it turns cold and how cold it becomes will determine how the trees will perform in springtime.

“Generally, when we experience a warm fall season, like we did this year, plants start to flower prematurely,” said Sellers during a phone interview. “Generally, it’s not a full bloom that you get. Rather, a limited bloom happens.”

When the temperatures change, Sellers said, the cold kills off the foliage of the prematurely blossoming trees.

The result is fewer blooms in the spring.

One may wonder if is there anything that can be done to save the trees so they will still burst with blooms in the spring. Yes and no, said Sellers.

“Mulching is actually one of the best buffers for keeping the root system safe and secure,” Sellers said, “even through the winter months.”

It keeps the important root zone moist, which could help prevent further desiccation and vulnerability to root damage causing more of a negative impact next spring on blooming trees.

If you want to try to take action to help your trees after an early bloom, Sellers said it is still not too late to mulch around your trees and gardens, but hold off on using fertilizer until you have the soil analyzed by a professional.

“If you over fertilize, you can actually do more harm than good,” said Sellers. “It is worthwhile to have the soil testing done, and it’s best to have a professional do the assessment.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) deemed this December to be the warmest on record. Just about 12,000 daily warm temperature records were broken this month from the plains east to the coast where warm weather records were figuratively shattered. Furthermore, climatologists expect that NOAA, in 2016, will report the year 2015 as the warmest year globally ever recorded.

A record warm for Mattapoisett, Marion, and Rochester doesn’t attract a whole lot of climate change attention nationally, so we generally rely on evidence such as the December daffodils and tree blossoms – what I kind of consider to be the “prettier face” of the frightening phenomenon of climate change on the local Tri-Town level– to tell us that things are changing around here. It was a different kind of December than what we are used to.

By Jean Perry