Peace of April

Finally, spring is really here. Sorry about the lame title. Lucky to have come up with anything at all to post. Been a little blog-blocked lately. Time to crap the whip. 🙂

Went for the first bike ride of 2011 on Saturday the 9th. Took the blue Fuji Touring bike over to the kids’ house to spend a little time with daughter and granddaughter. Daddy was at work. Left the house as soon as the temperature went up over 48°F, which was about 11 am. It takes about an hour and a half to get there at my breakneck speed of 13 mph, average. Coming down a big hill heading east on Route 103, I spotted something that looked like about the size and shape of one of them newfangled computin’ tablets. It usually takes me about 30-45 seconds to make the decision to turn back and check out the roadkill. In this case I had to wait for some cars to zoom by and then head back UP the hill.

Yes, it WAS a computin’ tablet. A genuine road killed Apple iPad, 32G model.

It had been run over at least once and was quite dirty and full of sand. I expect that it blew off the roof of some idiot’s car last winter and was subsequently flattened and/or snowplowed over to the roadside. I strapped it onto my pannier rack to take it home and examine it further. At the least it’s pretty good roadkill for the first bike ride of the season. And I’ve been wanting an iPad for some time now. Might as well see the photo of the iPad’s insides now … There’s a surprising amount of empty space inside.

Post-dissection. Removed batteries to recycle at town dump. Keeping the rest as a souvenir.

I was a little tired after that ride of 35 miles round trip. But it was nice to see the baby and stuff. She was awake for about half the time and made some great faces at us. She’s only 3 weeks old, but her eyes are still looking sorta bluish gray. We sort of expect brown eyes, due to the dominant genes and whatnot, but whatever color they turn out to be will be just great. It’s still so amazing to look upon this tiny little girl.

The Route 114 cairn remains. Went for another ride Sunday.

Decided to add two little stones to the top.

Sunday was a little cooler, especially some of the back roads where there was still a fair amount of snow in the woods. It feels weird when it’s warm out and you ride through these little pockets of refrigerated air puffing onto the road from the forest.

By next weekend this “ice on the rocks” will be gone. Some of it had already fallen by the time I passed on my way home.

The maple syrup season ended. The college operation netted over 50 gallons of lovely light brown syrup. They measure the sugar content of the sap as they collect it, and collect sample bottles after each batch that’s boiled down to syrup. In the photo below are the series from last year and this year, left to right.

You can see last year’s batches ended up darker than this year’s.

The final step. Filling the bottles full to the top of hot syrup. It shrinks so the bottles must be filled to the top.

On the home front, there is garden news. The garlic cloves planted last October have started to poke through the straw mulch. This is a very welcome sight. I’ve used the broadfork that was pictured in the last post. It seems like it’s going to be pretty effective. In the past all the beds were turned by hand with a regular turning fork. The soil literally got turned over every spring. The broadfork, with great speed, just stirs the deeper layers and aerates a little. It doesn’t flip the soil structure over and the soil doesn’t get fluffed up as much. The theory and sales pitch is that this makes for healthier soil and less weeds. I may try applying some organic fertilizer and running the broadfork over the beds the other way since it was such a fast process. We’ll see.

Garlic sprouting through about 6 inches of oat straw mulch.

The walking iris had a triple bloom a couple weeks ago.

In case you’re wondering, this plant stands next to a red art-deco chair whose seat makes a striking background.

That’s about all for the moment.