Plum Blossoms

 Phyllis Tiegs piped up during the church's 'shared celebrations & concerns' portion of the service. "It was 73 years ago this week that Otto and I walked down the aisle of this church and were married."  Otto is now in a care facility.  Phyllis though can't be in her 90's.   I must have heard wrong.    After church I saw her at the bottom of the stairs and said, "Congratulations.  Did I hear correctly that it's 73 years?"  "Oh yes/" she laughed.  Later I watched as she walked across the street to her car.  I hope I'm in as good a shape when I reach 90.

Out in Sleipnir this afternoon I was finishing cleaning up the last long trays of geraniums I'd overwintered. I snipped off a stem that had grown askew.  It had green leaves on it so reached for one of my compostable coffee cups in order to put the snippet in soil and coax it to grow into a new plant.  That's when I noticed movement - a tick was working it's way up the edge of the cup.  My potting bench is at the very back of the shed.  The cup was located atop the bench and stacked up so it was maybe four feet off the cement floor.  If ticks have wings I've never seen them.   Have to admire the tenacity of the little buggers.   I picked him off the cup, scrapped him off my finger into a plastic container w/ 16 of his kin, and popped them all into the freezer.   Ticks may have impressive capabilities but that doesn't mean I would set one free.

Tonight Whip and I went out to the plum copse.  There are enough in bloom now that the air is scented w/ their perfume.  One of the delights of spring.

Cottontail

 Whip started barking this morning at the front door.  Can mean there is a visitor or that a rabbit is taunting her by chewing grass in the front lawn.  This time it was a visitor.  "Hi Sue."  he says.  Unfortunately, I hadn't a clue who he was until he pulled a garbage bin out of the back of his van.  Oh... my new garbage pickup company!  If you remember, Waste Management announced they wouldn't pick up in the area after April 20th.  Then they picked up their bins on April 13th.  To add insult to injury I think they still owe me for another month of pickup.  Just happy to be shed of them.  The new garbage pickup rep was pretty upbeat and said they were signing on more customers at a rate of at least three a week.  He also understood why many of us were so disgusted w/ Waste Management and the other pickup company in the area 'Republic'.  He said, "Garrett was paying $200 and the guy that takes care of dogs was paying just over $50 for the same service."   My new garbage pickup day is Monday - same as before so I should be able to remember it.  His service costs a few dollars more per quarter than what I was paying but is well worth it to me if cuts out the constant cost escalations and add-on's of his competition.  I'm hoping this new business makes a  go of it.

Replacing the Windshield

Today was the appointment to replace my car's windshield.  The crack from the stone was slowly growing so good thing I hadn't waited on it.  Dropped off the car and walked down to the Family Store (maybe 1/2 a mile).  Turns out that is the place where all the guys congregate for breakfast before going off for the day.  Talk included getting ready for the golf course to open, hunting turkey (there is a spring season), and farming.  After breakfast I walked up to the Toad House for a latte.  Talk there was a little the same and a little different - plans for fishing (it is the fishing opener this weekend) and people's various operations.  I sat back and went through the ballot for the Honeywell Board - looking up each candidate and writing 'yes', 'no', or 'maybe' next to their name.  Will get on-line and vote when I'm back home.  Next I went through the documentation showing how the Honeywell pension fund is doing.  While I was still working there the company stopped offering pensions.  Those of us vested were offered to continue our pensions or take a buy-out when we left.  I still remember Co-Worker Suresh coming up to me and saying he would never speak to me again if I didn't stay w/ the pension fund.  He was right as he often was when it came to finances.  I got a call that the car was almost completed so walked on back to the auto shop.  Finished a few more errands before going home.  It froze last night and probably will again tonight.  Hope the peonies can hang in.

Bluebird

All of the round geranium pots have been cleaned and now am working on the long planters.  It reached 50 degrees today but there could be a frost tonight and again tomorrow night.  I checked on the peonies.  They are up too high to be covered so they are on their own.

I usually wait until I see a tree swallow before putting up the bird houses but, as I said, my Monthly-To-Do said it should be done in April.  The day after I shut up the houses I did have bluebirds scoping out one house.  I hadn't seen them before so thought maybe the swallows were here too and I hadn't yet seen them.  There still aren't any swallows but I did hear a thrasher 'singing'.  Still waiting for the bobolinks.

Raven

 

I hadn't expected it to rain all day. That changed my plans a bit.  Drove over to Churchville early to grocery shop - wanted warm things to eat this week like soup, baked potatoes, and burritos.  The house felt cold when I returned.  I'd shut off the heating these past days because of a warm spell (60's and sunny).  I'm on off-peak heating so heat is on only from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.  Without any sun for passive solar heating and the temps down in the 40's it could be a cold day in the house.  Fortunately, I've got plenty of dry firewood.  Started a fire in the fireplace.  Turns out one white birch log lasts for an hour so it was pretty easy to keep the fire stoked all day.  I dressed like Sheldon on Big Bang Theory - a long-sleeved silk undershirt and a short-sleeved t-shirt over it.  Kept me cozy warm.  Why Sheldon who came from Texas and lived in Southern California needed to dress that way is a mystery.  Actually, I'm happy it's raining.  It should coax the countryside to green up even faster.

When I first came back here I only saw ravens in the deep woods but these past few years they've become regular visitors.  This one was dining on something in the hay field.  Ravens, like crows, are omnivores so I don't know what it had found/caught and, in truth, I didn't want to know.

Spring Beauties

Special music this morning at church was "His Eye Is On The Sparrow".  Oops - I hadn't yet put out bird houses.   My Monthly-To-Do list says to get it done in April and the month is fast coming to an end.  When I got home, Whip and I jumped into Jormungandr to do just that. Put up the paired houses by the end of the driveway, in the north end of the meadow and in the south end of the meadow, down by the basswood trees, at the south end of Gorgeous Gorge, on Neighbor Blake's land by Turtlehead pond, on Neighbor Doug's land on Pup Mountain, and on Brother Russell's place by the end of his driveway.  Stopped off to check on the ephemerals at the top end of the old woods. There are spring beauties blooming everywhere up here.  Interestingly, at the bottom of the woods there are more hepatica.  It's all the same woods.  Stopped off by Gorgeous Gorge and noted that big flat leaves of yellow pond lilies have unfurled and are floating atop the water.  Some spiky stuff growing right at the dam - might be cattails - will have to see what it grows into.  I also have a mineral block to put out for the deer.  Rummaged through Sleipnir and think old parts of my aquarium would make a platform to put it on.  Also noticed that I hadn't shut up the bird houses on the stockade.   I need a ladder to reach those.  Instead I wrote down both tasks on the white board.  Gives me something easy to accomplish tomorrow.

Library Sidewalk

The electric company had maintained power through all of the worst winter weather - blizzards, sleet storms, numbing cold.  It was last night's thunderstorms that proved too much though and around 9:30 p.m. the lights flickered a few times before finally going out completely.   Glad the flashlights were all juiced up.   I used one to navigate to the bedroom.   Whip was already there - thunderstorms aren't a fav of hers.  At 1 a.m. I was suddenly listening to someone give me a guided tour through Milwaukee.  Oh, yes.  I'd been watching a PBS mystery when the power went off.  Wonder who-dun-it?

As a teenager I remember my sister rebuking me, "You're always looking in the mirror."  Think it's a common phase for that age.  On the constitutional this morning I realized I had not even looked in the mirror yet nor had I combed my hair.  To passing cars hoped my vibe was more 'windblown' than 'mad old woman'.

Later (after combing my hair) I bopped into the library.  I'd already shut down/locked up the cash register last night when our lone patron in the library had printed four pages.  Librarian Trevor had taken the dollar the patron had paid and put it in his cashbox and I'd reached into my pocket to give the patron his forty cents change.  Not a lot of money I know but I wanted to enter the transaction in correctly today.   The sidewalk in front of the library was full of chalk drawings.  Trevor said 25 kindergarteners had been in this morning to visit the library and give him some of their Earth Day artwork to display.   The library had provided them chalk to draw on the sidewalk.  I made a note of their visit on the stats sheet - will explain why we had more people this Friday come in than normal. 

Earthworm

After I started my volunteer stint at the library it began to pour.  Little chance of anyone braving the deluge to come in tonight.  I first finished my usual tasks.  Then went looking for The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak.  Someone from another library was asking for our copy and we couldn't find it.  It should have been in the fiction section under "SHA" but it wasn't there.  I checked our records to see what the book cover looked like:  light blue background w/ a design on the front.  Should be easy to spot.  In case someone had put it in the wrong area I checked the Western Large Print, the Large Print, and the New Releases sections.  Nope.  Went back to the Fiction section and went through all of the books whose author's last name began w/ 'S'.  Nope.  Could be in Non-Fiction but that would mean checking each book.  Well, nothing else to do at the moment.  When I got to the Dewey Decimal System 300's (Anthropology) I found it.  Actually it wasn't shelved there as much as displayed: standing upright on a shelf.   Interesting spot for it.  

The rain stopped about the time I drove home and I immediately took Whip out for our nightly constitutional.  I saw earthworms for the first time this year.  I always find it interesting that 11,000 years ago  there were no earthworms here.   The area had been glaciated multiple times throughout the Pleistocene.   I like to imagine that, once things began to warm up, earthworms very slowly migrated from the south up to the Northwoods  but more probably they were all brought in by settlers either accidently or on purpose.  About a half hour after Whip and I got back, rain, thunder, and lightning started up again.  Radar shows it will probably go on all night.

Peony

First day this year that I hung laundry out on the clothes line.  Usually, as soon as the snow has melted enough, I'm hanging out clothes.  Over the winter I bought a new clothes dryer and have been happy to just throw things in there.  This first time out I didn't follow any of my rules.  I didn't check the wind direction and just hung towels, pillow cases, and cleaning cloths on the line closest to the house.  Wind was out of the south so those long items blew into the  jeans and t-shirts I hung on the second strand.  I didn't angle the clothes to catch the wind so it would blow through them either.  It will be sunny and warm all day so everything will dry even if I didn't hang things perfectly.  The furthest line I hung socks and underwear.  I never hang 'unmentionables' on the outside strand in view of the roadway.  Of course, to see them from the road you'd have to have binoculars.

Took Whip to the vet for her shots.  At the office I wrangled Whip onto the scales first.  She weighed in at 63 lbs.   Then the tech came out and, right there in the waiting room, administered the shots.  The assistant did at one point say I was Whip's "mother".  I corrected her immediately, "I'm not this dog's mother."  The assistant laughed.  It reminded me that I also hated when the insurance adjuster for my windshield kept referring to me as "Mrs. Mayer".  I didn't correct him since both the windshield company rep and I were having difficulty enough just  understanding him.  Come to think of it  I also get ticked when nurses, checkouts, clerks, etc. call me "Honey".  It might fly in the southern part of the U.S. but in the Northwoods it sounds condescending.   Maybe I'm becoming a crabby crone?  Nah...

 

American Tree Sparrow

Normally, it's garbage day but, as I said, Waste Management wrote a letter last month stating they would no longer pick up garbage in this area after April 20.   Then they picked up our bins on April 13th.  Neighbor Anita said there is a local start-up company that would do garbage pickup.  Have them beginning in May.

Amazon's AI assistant is named Rufus.  It's been insinuating itself into my on-line searches.  I noticed that Rufus offered to tell me "what my order history says about me."  Was pretty sure this would be like the newspaper horoscopes and fortune cookie slips: vague and vapid.  According to Rufus I'm orderly, health-conscious, and thoughtful of others.   Actually none of those are my strong suits.   Rufus's assessment capability needs more tweaking.

Felt something on my neck - yes - it's the first tick on me for the season.  I got out the last Nexgard chewable and fed it to Whip.  If I have a tick, she has a tick.  Called the vet's office and got an appointment for her annual Lyme's shot.  This area is Lyme's Disease Central.  I'll also pick up more Nexgard - just wish there was a chewable tick repellant for people too.

Ramp

 

Back to being cold here again.  Last night it froze and will again tonight.  I considered covering up the peonies that are poking out of the ground.  It would keep them from freezing but it's also forecast to be windy.   If the covering gets caught by the wind, it could break the new stems.  Decided not to cover.  Out in the woods the ramp plants have emerged and I've never seen them affected by frost.  The ground has warmed up (road bans went off on Friday) and it's heat should protect short newly emerging plants.  At least that's my plan.

Dark Sky

 

The last of our lovely days of warmer weather.  By afternoon sometime a storm was forecast to usher in much colder temps.  After breakfast I could already see deep blue clouds on the horizon.  Something about incoming bad weather makes me want to make sure everything is ready and I can hunker down at home.  First I went to the UPS drop off location to return something to Amazon.  There was a waiting line mostly because only one person was behind the desk and none of her gadgets - including her printer- seemed to be working.  I don't mind waiting but the lady in front of me kept swaying - like a metronome - from one leg to the other.  It became annoying.  Figured I could easily beat her senseless - she was incredibly thin - and that thought kept me calm until it was my turn and I could leave.    I mailed a bill, cashed some checks, returned a book and the picture I'd borrowed from the library, filled gas containers for Jormungandr and Svaldilfari.  I was on a roll so I called up Waller's Glass Company about getting my car windshield replaced.  The process is more complicated than it was when I did it in the last century.  Also more costly - over $400.  The lady I spoke to said it would be easier if I could come to their store to submit a claim.  I bopped over and she called the insurance company's claim department on her phone.  They had questions for her.  Questions for me. Questions for her again and then said the claim was submitted.  My policy has a zero deductible for this.  My appointment is in two weeks.   Another difference from when I last had my windshield replaced - this time it will take three hours to complete.  Picked up lunch and got home well before the storm hit.  Tonight I thought I might google anger management techniques - just for grins.

Hepatica flower along w/ leaves of spring beauty, cut-leaf toothwort, and trout lily

 

The library had put up a white-board and this year I've taken to using part of the time during my volunteer stint to write funny/witty sayings on it.   Librarian Trevor reminded the volunteers that 30 years ago April was designated 'Poetry Month'.  I've taken to writing poems (or portions of them) on the white board instead.   Last week it was a kid-friendly poem about an elephant that snored.  Tonight I wrote part of Louis Carroll's The Jabberwocky.  Thought next week I'd go w/ Lord Byron's She Walks in Beauty and maybe end up the month w/ something from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.   I print everything on the white board because there are many kids/adults that can no longer read cursive since it isn't taught anymore.   Reminded me that my parents and grandparents would  quote poems I assume they learned while in school.  Don't know if memorizing poetry was dropped as part of a school's curriculum too   Afterall, your phone can retrieve any piece of literature desired.  Still, there is that connection of heart and mind created by the ability to quote from memory.

Red Maple in bloom

I didn't know the word pareidolia  until it became the theme for our next GNO Christmas gift.   I do remember reading a few articles before that postulating that the tendency for the human brain to see patterns is a survival strategy so it's possible I had come across it.   I have been thinking about  'pareidolia' lately trying to figure out an appropriate gift and suddenly I'm hearing the word often.   Yesterday, I perked up when some guest on a TV talk show mentioned pareidolia.  Today's Words With Friends word search game's subject was pareidolia.  Tonight I was listening to Dan Brown's latest audio book and - you guessed it - the characters talked about pareidolia.  Friend Nancy said she also  had just seen the word in a Facebook post.   No, it's not that BIG BROTHER is listening in on our conversations and causing this to happen (at least I don't think so - ha).   It's most likely the Baader-Meinhof phenomena or 'frequency illusion'.    A new word or object can cause us to have selective attention.  For example, someone is considering buying a red car.   Their brain will prioritize and 'flag' any red car encounter.   Therefore, every subsequent red car seems confirmation that there are a lot of red cars - reinforcing the perception of frequency even though there are no more red cars than usual.    There are some fascinating examples of  the Baader-Meinhof  phenomena in our history (even the name has a story behind it).   Cool stuff but doesn't get me any closer to a pareidolia Christmas gift.

By the way, I've posted about the Baader-Meinhof phenomena before.  Interestingly enough in conjunction w/ a GNO Christmas gift idea.