Friday, April 17, 2015

Mid-season?

In some ways it certainly seems like mid-season.  For example, it doesn't seem possible but I have rides on seven days in a row.  That's mid-season like ride repetition.

And I am starting to feel sort of . . . like, almost strong.

However, there are lots of indicators that it is still early season.

Like, just as one example, the first pink flowering shrub of the year.
Very pretty, I thought.  So pretty that I stopped to take a photo.

The one indicator that very, very clearly says early season though is that even if I am starting to have moments while riding when I feel strong when I actually arrive home I am mostly without mistake knackered.

Still, it's pretty nice to be out there riding around thinking I might actually make it back to where I was last year.  And even though I am knackered I am a tiny bit less knackered each day.

I am a year older and not a single thing has gotten easier.

Here's another giant that has left the neighborhood, that makes at least six.
Just looking at the bark and the cross section of the logs and the fact that clearly the homeowner has made an effort to get all of the trunk pieces shortened to fireplace size meaning to me that he wants to salvage the tree as firewood I am going to identify this as the loss of a very large oak tree.  They don't seem to have anything on the house there that looks like a fire place chimney but if I am correct that it is an oak then they have maybe salvaged enough oak fire wood to be sold that may be sufficient to cover the cost of the men who came out and created that pile of former tree parts.

It was a nice day, eventually into the 70s, very light wind, I got all the way to Vadnais for a second time already this season.  That's probably not mid-season though.  I think I need at least a dozen times to Vadnais to declare that I have reached that level.
But it was another very nice day and that cottonwood at Lake Vadnais clearly demonstrates that the trees are budding out.  It is still April but it is no longer even early spring.  I know that it can still be 32 degrees on Memorial Day but for now we will take it.

Another nice day.

3 comments:

Santini said...

Nice ride report, and reflections on the season. That pink flowering shrub is really attractive.

Vadnais again? Woohoo.

It isn't a straight line downhill, by the way. Some say that your 70's are a better decade than your 60's. A testable hypothesis.

We have a couple of 32's in our forecast for the coming week. And we still haven't hit 70 here, though it was that warm inland yesterday for the first time since October.

TOPWLH said...

Lovely photos. It looks like full on spring and it felt like it yesterday, too. Nice post.

Emily M said...

Maybe they have a fire pit? Those are popular on this side of town.