In the past few years, I’ve become more attentive to the onset of spring, probably because I am finding that the winters here are now seemingly overly long. Right now, I’m looking out the bedroom window, and seeing the beginning of what Pete calls the green haze – a haze all right, that occurs when the leaves start to bud.

The robins are back. A single swallow couple is inhabiting the house. The others must have struck out for differing digs. Today Pete went and moved the other, unoccupied swallow houses to more favorable locations – we doubt that they’ll end up being occupied, but there may be other late-comers.

Truck sorting

And there is now plenty of light. I took Tyra out for an after dinner ride, and I had plenty of time to do this. And the best news of all is that it will continue to get lighter for another month and a week. I prefer the winter to the summer solstice because the winter solstice means that we are going into the season of light and the summer solstice means that we are going into the season of darkness.

I had my day planned and did all I set out to do. Just two things. The first was to sort the books in the rear of the Ford 350. As it turned out, it took more time than I thought to sort through the 30 or so boxes of books. Pete set up a table, using Jim’s sawhorses and a sheet of plywood. So I was able to pile boxes and fill them at the back of the truck. This was far better than the alternative, which would have been to carry all the boxes into the Meeting House, sort and clean, then reload them into the truck for distribution at the Reading Rendezvous. (Geez, after two years, I can now spell rendezvous correctly. Will wonders ever cease).

The process took me far longer than I thought. I started at 10:30 a.m. and finished at 5 p.m. Pete and I thought that we’d head to town and do Bill’s distributing (he’s out of town right now), but I agreed with him that we overshot, time-wise.

The second thing on my list was clean the goat and chicken pen. Well, I ended up cleaning just the goat pen – I figure I’ll divide this time-consuming task into two parts. I am wanting to get all of the winter bedding out of the chicken pen, and this is going to take time.

The chickens are extremely healthy, and they’re really enjoying getting out of their pen twice a day. And I have trained them to go back into their enclosure – I follow them and swoosh them back in the direction they should go.

My ride on Tyra – the ground is now soft. I took to the trails less than a week ago. I should have gotten out on them two weeks ago.

Tomorrow we’ll find out what the problem with my car might be. Then on Wednesday both Pete and I will go in for our own seasonal diagnostic.

Next: 133. 5/15/23: Cottonwoods