Spring Flowers? I Have the Photos To Prove It!

It's amazing what 180 miles south makes as far as growing season. So here in Southwest Wisconsin, the spring flowers are already blooming. These little blue beauties are "Glory-in-the-Snow"!

Of course we all know these are Daffodils! The bees were already working the flowers this afternoon.

Another pretty lavender spring flower....I believe these are Crocus.

Healthy Grape Hyacinth

I couldn't find any spring flowers coming up around the black bear, but I do know the hostas will be breaking through the soil very soon.

Our snow just melted last weekend in Northwest Wisconsin, so we'll have to wait until 3 weeks or so before we even see spring flowers. The sunshine and warm temps (57 degrees) are refreshing and much needed to lift our spirits.

Easter dinner will be served at 7 pm tonight and then my parents would like us to go to church with them tonight at 9 pm for a Holy Saturday service. This will be new for me as I never go to a late night church service, only AM services! A little extra Java after supper will solve my sleepiness.

PS. We drove our bicycle route down to Southwest WI yesterday, and I found myself yearning for my bicycle. I could almost feel every hill, every bump, every long stretch of the route. I even could remember exactly where we made our rest stops each day of our bike trip. For the last two years, Ted and I have biked down south using both State trail system and highway 35 along the Mississippi River. We are always self-contained so we can camp along the way and make our own meals. Once you start doing trips like that, it becomes very addictive. I'm not sure if we can make the trip down this summer, but sure hope we can squeeze it in somewhere like late July or August.

The Greenhouse Is Up

This is a sure sign of spring! When the little greenhouse goes up, that means business.

I only worked 1/2 day today, so when I got home early this afternoon I really wanted to soak in the warm sunshine. There are still a few small ice patches amongst the hosta beds, but the main part of the yard is warming up nicely. Besides the soil thawing out, my allergies have awakened. Over the last 3-4 days, I've been sneezing a lot, plus blowing my nose. Oh goodie, goodie.

The vegetable plants have been started in pots and are coming along nicely in our sunny bay windows. As soon as the nights are above freezing, the plants will go outside in our little greenhouse. I'm just hoping the cat will not discover the tender taste of our veggie plants! You never know with Annabelle. She discovered my pussy willows in the window the other day, so nothing is safe around our house.

We took off around 3 pm this afternoon for a quick road trip to Southwest Wisconsin to visit my parents for Easter. Saw lots of cyclist out riding on highway 35 going south along the Mississippi River between Nelson and Trempleau. Overall, it was a nice sunny and uplifting day.

The Last Nine Years

Since I'm stuck indoors most of the day at work, these are some of the things I see all day long. I worked until late tonight, so I missed all the beautiful sunshine....oh wait, I did drive to Eau Claire for an afternoon meeting. Maybe that counts for getting outside?

Everyone needs a rainbow. This is our happy place in the library, otherwise known as the children's area.

Lots of books, lots of wood grain! That's my library. Some days I feel like I live here....nine years of feeling like I've lived there! What would I do without books in my life? Books are like bicycles, you just can't have enough.

Cooking Maple Syrup is Addictive

We're cooking maple syrup one more time! This time we are better prepared with two aluminum pails. These pails are leftover from the commercial users who switched over to using pump driven tubing system. They don't even make these pails anymore, but we were lucky to find these pails a small-town shop in Central Wisconsin. Believe it or not, the sap is still running. With warmer days and nights in the twenties, it's perfect conditions for running sap.

So how much sap is cooking today? I think Ted cooked about 17 gallons, which consisted of sap from our maple tree and sap from Chris's friend. He started at 10 am, but I don't think it will be totally cooked down to syrup by the time we want to go to bed, so we will just turn the burner off and then recook again tomorrow. Maybe next year we'll sneak around the neighbors yards and tap their maple trees!!!!!

Decided to take a 6 pm lake photo tonight. The conditions were really windy, but the water and sunshine just glistened. Wow, can't believe we had ice a week ago, and now I'm looking at ripples in the lake water.

PS. I didn't hear the loons tonight. They must be south of us on the BIG lake.

The Lake Ice Is Finally Gone

Finally, the lake ice went out on Monday with all the north wind blowing at 20-25 mph. It always amazes me how fast the ice will leave. Ted and Chris were down on the ice on Sunday morning drilling some holes, and by Sunday night most of the ice was gone. By Monday, it was ALL gone....just like that, lickity split!

When I was outside tonight in the yard, I heard the familiar call of a loon. How exciting is that? This seems a little early for the loons to be passing through, but after hearing this lonely loon, I know we will have about two weeks now as the loons will be camping out on Tainter Lake. It really only last about two weeks or so and then the loons move to Northern Wisconsin. It's so exciting to hear the loons laughing and calling out their eerie cries.

So what is this? It's a rain barrel! We decided that we would start collecting the rain run-off and use it for gardening. The rain barrel isn't set up yet, and we aren't actually sure where we want the barrel to go. We look to have the rain barrel functional by May. Not too much longer and we'll see green grass!

My Spin Class Schedule Has Changed

This is what it looked like Sunday afternoon. My heart sank a little when I saw the snow, but I'm hopeful this will be the last snowfall.

Today was a normal day at work and then spin class tonight. So I took over the Monday spin class this week because the spin instructor couldn't teach any longer due to bike training. So who came to my class tonight, yup, the other instructor! What? I think the wind and cool temps kept him inside, plus he just found out today that his entry didn't get picked for the famous "Fat Tire" mountain bike race in Hayward, WI this coming fall. Poor guy....he was crushed. The first time in 20 years that his entry didn't make it. The Fat Tire mountain bike race is determined by a lottery. You either get picked, or you don't. The race organizers have to use the lottery method due to 1,700 riders for the long race and 800 for the "short & fat" course. After riding the race consectively for 20 years, I think it was a real blow for "M" and he was feeling a litte down tonight. I think I cured him of his low feelings, with lots of hill climbs on the spinning bikes and little rest time inbetween. It was an honor to have a real cyclist in my class tonight!

"The Shack"

On Saturday, we drove out to the "Sap Shack Bros." maple syrup farm, north of Colfax. Chris's friend K and his brother have been making maple syrup for four years now. This has been a good year for maple sap.

The boys told me that as of Saturday, they had collected 900 gallons of sap and have cooked down 30 quarts of maple syrup, which they had already canned into the wee hours of Friday night.

Here's a picture of their large stainless steel tank that holds all the sap, which is being heated by the wood burner below. You can see the plastic hose which feeds the sap into the tank. As the sap cooks and boils, more sap is added, and that's why it takes so long to cook the sap down to syrup consistency. This process can take days.

Here is an additional stainless tank with sap that was ready to be cooked. After collecting the sap from the trees, they can only cook so much at a time, so this is kind of like the holding tank which is located behind the shack. This particular sap was several days old.

Of course, all shacks come with an old dog. I don't remember this fellows name, but he was a good mellow dog. When we arrived, he was sleeping on the floor of the shack. With the wood fire heating the sap, it was nice and cozy in the shack.

Here's a picture of Chris's friend K, showing me his tanks on the four-wheeler. This is how he collects the sap from the maple trees. What is most interesting is that this is a small business run by two young brothers! I am so impressed by their hard work. They don't advertise their maple syrup, but just sell by word of mouth.

Before we came home yesterday I bought two quarts of fresh maple syrup...$10/quart. So how much did Chris cook up yesterday? He ended up yielding 3 quarts of maple syrup. Not bad.

On a final note, we woke up to 4 inches of wet heavy snow this morning...oh yippee! It stayed cool and very windy today.