Sunday: A Day of Rest

Up at 4:30 AM, discounting the spring-ahead. Drive south and east was dark with scratchy radio and coffee. Good start to things, driving into the sunrise. At streamside I found WFF. Good guy to hang around and we spent the first half hour going over various topics and emptying coffee thermos. Waiting a bit. Then on to what was essentially an aquarium fishing deal. We found some clear water (at that time, clear water was not a given - now most small streams are good to go - big water is still pretty high and blown) and perched ourselves high and dry. We basically took turns nymphing, and thus took turns taking rainbows. First cast was a hook up (lost fish) and second cast caught fish. The interest here is the visual component - we got to see most takes. In one instance I put the indicator up really tight and floated a tandem rig into a shallow pocket in which two nice bows were feeding... watched one swing over and eat the crap out of orange scud. Also watched several fish move to streamers - a couple moved all the way across the stream to tackle black shadowy flies. And to top it off, put a dry emerger on a fish and watched it eat it. Not bad. Pictures though, are not good. Will do better next time. Drive back was all sun. Home before noon, with that little adventure in the books.







Afternoon - down to the local Zumbro trib for a four-hour park stint. I'm worn to hell right now because over the last week I've pushed swings more than anyone you know. Some days heavy swings too. Sometimes both kids in swings side by side. I can't believe the boys haven't vomited once. Over and over - they laugh and laugh. Pretty cool. Good spring weather to be tromping in. James rode his bike approx 2-3 miles without complaint.










And finally - open the coffin to find life... After clearing off snow, I cracked the cold frame and found viable lettuce, spinach and even beet plants. Nothing too robust, but interesting none the less. I'm thinking maybe the snow blanket covered the box before the ground froze... ?? And then it never did freeze solid in the root zone... ?? I do know that the leaves of the lettuce froze through and fell over sometime in early December. Hard to say. Pretty cool though.