4/09/11: MAPLE SAP IS SHUTTING DOWN, GOVERNMENT ISN'T

AH, SPRING...

...IS BURSTING OUT ALL OVER!

Saturday, 10:00 AM.  46 degrees, wind WSW, calm.  The sky is partly cloudy and hazy, and the barometer predicts the same.  There isn’t much snow left in town, but still plenty in shady woods and on the ski hill.  The channel ice is laced with open water.
    I just returned from the annual Bayfield Regional Conservancy pancake breakfast.  It is always well attended and is a good fund raiser and name booster for the Conservancy, and I was happy to just sit and eat and talk rather than flipping pancakes this  year.
    I hear that the Nourse Sugar Bush, one of the oldest in the region, and supplier of syrup to the pancake breakfast, is going to stop sugaring for the year, as the sap run has slowed so much.  Andy and Judy probably will not continue much longer either, as the nights warm up and sap flow hesitates.
    We went out to Cornucopia for fish fry at Fish Lips Bar last evening and it was very good, and very reasonably priced at $7.95, all you can eat fresh fish, potato pancakes, coleslaw and toast.  Not the most compelling name, though. 
    Yard work beckons, and I have to get a start today and tomorrow, the daffodils are coming on fast.
    I am rather sorry the government shutdown was averted, it would have been interesting to see what was consideered essential and nonessential.