Infestation news

The day dawned grey and gloomy with a mist hanging in the air. It misted enough to make the driveway damp but it never actually rained and the street never actually got wet, only damp. On a day when the morning low was higher than the average high for the day, bicycling seemed likely if the sun would just be strong enough to dry the mist. It was. The temperature in our front yard is currently 56, a full 20 degrees above the average. Even with the overcast I am going to have to put this one down as a pretty nice day.

A new infestation of the Emerald ash borer pest has been reported by the daily press. It is a bit depressing to think that very shortly these things will not be newsworthy in the slightest. But it is still interesting enough to a large enough group of people to have to location reported. I went looking for the new spot. Here it is on the Farm campus near the Saint Paul Student Center.There's that tree there and then one down the hill a bit near the Fairgrounds. The location is only about a block and a half from the big metal cows which means, yes, the new infestation is more than a mile closer to our ash trees than the previous infestation. But who knows?

This afternoon in France FC Nantes traveled to Concarneau for its opening game in this year's Coupe de France. The opponent, US Concarneau is a CFA 2 team, the fifth level of French football. Conditions were reported to be rainy, cold and windy, the weather that an underdog always wishes for. Concarneau 3, Nantes 0, an embarrassment. What once seemed like a promising season with another return to Ligue 1 now reels rapidly towards disintegration.