opening day

jessi.bryan on flickr

Cloudy & 40 degrees. Wearing sneakers on the morning walk. Bird with a stick in its beak flying over the office. Bluebirds nesting in the back. Vernal lakes forming along the Otter Creek near Brandon in the usual places. Opening day of the baseball season. Go Giants!

It's what you learn after
you know it all that counts.
Earl Weaver
Zen page a day calendar

crocuses

Mud season has started on the roads. Lane is soupy during the middle of the day, still frozen at night. Open water on the Otter Creek. Crocuses at the Zen Center. Sound of a motorcycle.

cosmos

M64 BViHalpha on Google Images

In has been unseasonably cold the last few days, 17 degrees this morning. The upside is that it we have had brilliant sun during the days, and crystal clear nights. Pete & I went out Saturday night for some star gazing. A couple of friends who had shown some real interest in astronomy were invited to join us. Pete did a fabulous job of introducing them to the wonders to be observed in the night sky; the Orion nebula, star clusters, globular clusters, and more. I was even able to bag a couple of pelts for my Messier catalog collection, M's 64 & 53, just by accident I guess. We ended up taking a gander at Saturn, proudly gleaming in the southeast. It was the perfect ending to the evening, my feet were freezing.

I saw both of these guys yesterday. They were both very jazzed about the experience, and grateful for Pete's efforts and expertise in introducing them to the inexpressible grandeur of the cosmos. So was I. Thanks Pete.

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how men would believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. Ralph Waldo Emerson

M53 by russcope.net on Google Images

syrup

Trucks with gathering tanks observed on Route 7. Sugaring at Dakin Farms in Ferrisburg.

March 27, 2009
30's and foggy. Took a walk up the crossroads last night. As I started out, I saw steam rising from Eric May's sugar house. I was happy to notice the first signs of sugaring I'd seen all year. As I got near the top, there was a pickup truck parked on the side of the road with its lights on. It was Justin Turco out collecting sap with his daughter. I met him as I was walking by, and he invited me to his sugar house. He said to go on in, and he would be along in a minute. Walking across the bridge over the creek in front of his house; bright lights from the sugar house ahead of me in the rainy gloom. His wife Tammy was in sugaring-that smell! She gave me some hot syrup to sample, a taste of Vermont heaven. We had a great visit. The lights were on in the Johnson's sugar house at the bottom of the hill on my return home; sparks shooting out of the chimney looked like stars in the sky. I realized there are four working sugar houses within walking distance of our place. I think I am going to have pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast in the morning.

appaloosa

Actual green grass appearing over by production. Spring issue of Vermont Life magazine arrives in the stores. Daffodils from the American Cancer Society brighten offices at work. Snow darkens as it turns to slush, and fades away. Patches of snow & bare ground sometimes resemble the coat of an appaloosa.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
Thomas Jefferson
Zen page a day calendar

mysterious-or not

In the spring and the fall, with temperatures around freezing, there are some very interesting thermodynamic phenomena that take place. In some places there's snow, and in some places there isn't. There is snow where it's been piled up by the plows. There's snow along fence lines, and in depressions in fields where snow can collect. There's snow on north facing slopes; that's easy to understand. There's more snow on east facing slopes than west facing. Even that's not really hard to figure out. It is colder in the mornings when east facing slopes get more direct sunlight, and warmer when the west facing slopes get direct sunlight.
On the sidewalk at work, however, about 4/5ths of the walk can be snow free while the remaining fifth harbors ice or snow or both. The snowy section is about 5 feet lower in elevation, and on a slightly different angle. Could that make a difference? I have seen at least a couple of places on roads where the straight sections are snow free, and curved sections are snowy. Sometimes the bridge next to our house will be without snow while the areas on either side will contain snow.
It is fun, at this time of year, to be able to figure out the physics behind the observable phenomena. But it is actually more satisfying to observe patterns that are totally unexplainable.

here & gone

Deviant Brainwave on flickr

We went out to dinner on Friday night with the Blodgett's. We met them in the parking lot at the Price Chopper in West Rutland. While we were waiting, we faced the southeast, and watched the nearly full moon rise in the twilight. The sky had a purplish cast with some pink/red highlights from the setting sun. The moon was a light yellow. The pastel shades made me think of Easter.
When we came out after dinner, the sky was partly cloudy. The clouds were mostly dark, but streaked with bright silver on the sides from the light of the moon. I opened the curtains in the bedroom to be closer to the light of a beautiful night when retiring.
On Saturday night I went out to view the "Super" moon, supposedly about 14% larger than normal. I remembered that Jupiter and Mercury were supposed to be visible in the western sky. I was finally able to view Mercury through some tree branches from a distant maple, but I never did find Jupiter. I think it has finally faded away. Jupiter has been a constant companion for months now, probably close to a year. I remember seeing it in the southeast, and watching it slowly drift across the evening sky until its disappearance the other night. Eventually it will reappear in the morning, but those 4:00 viewings will be few and far between as evidenced by the infrequent sightings of Venus lately, also an early morning riser. I actually feel the loss of Jupiter. It's kind of like a child going away to college. It's nice to know that eventually Jupiter will reappear in the evening skies. I just don't know when.