SPRING 2024

What is this you might ask?

Finding a Christmas present for a woman you’ve been married to for 47 years isn’t easy. After considerable searching, I finally found the perfect gift. Barbie loves bird watching, anything solar powered, and photography. I found a gift that combines all of them; a solar powered, smart, bird feeder, camera. Nobody ever said we weren’t up to date on the latest techie devices.

It’s fascinating to watch the birds feeding close-up. It’s like they’re looking you in the eye.

Alice is our “fairy god daughter” who is now 8. We’ve been trying to reduce how much stuff we have, and, in the process of cleaning things out, I found Fort Know which is a savings bank from when I was a kid, so it’s ancient like me. I decided it was time for someone else to cherish it as much as I did, so I sent it to Alice with instructions for how to open the “secret” combination.

There’s nothing better than a young girl’s smile or a note like this!

After the dreariness of late winter, it was refreshing to drive down the streets and see blue skies with all the trees, spring flowers, and lawns greening up.

On St. Patrick’s Day, Barb got out her favorite decorations to make us all look as silly as possible. You’ll notice she’s the only one that doesn’t look ridiculous.

Harris Sugar Bush in Greencastle bottles real maple syrup. They have over 5000 lines running 15 miles for collecting the sap out of their trees.

The process for creating maple syrup is surprisingly complex. When nighttime temperatures get to around 28 degrees, the cells in the trees contract which draws groundwater into the trees. As the sun strikes in the morning, the trees expand which causes the sap to flow. Once the sap has been collected, it undergoes reverse osmosis to remove excess water and then it gets heated. The result of all this is maple syrup. It takes 40-50 gallons of sap to create a single gallon of maple syrup.

 In addition to maple syrup, they had an interesting assortment of signs.

We were smack dab in the middle of the path of totality for the solar eclipse and fortunately the skies were clear. With all the negative things going on in the world and seemingly everyone arguing about everything, it was refreshing to have a quiet experience people could share and not get mad about. We sat at the end of our driveway and looked up at the sky along with everyone else on the street.

We taped eclipse glasses over the lenses of our phones so we could take pictures without burning out the camera’s light sensor. There was a big cheer when the eclipse started to end, and the sun came back out.

Cataract Falls is west of us and is the largest waterfall in Indiana by volume. There is an upper fall which has a drop of about 45’, and a lower fall that drops about 30’. This spring we had a tremendous amount of rain in a short time. We were surprised to find that the lower fall had completely disappeared underwater!

Spring means it’s time for the birds and butterflies to come back. It’s wonderful to hear all their happy sounds.

A heron passed through on his migration north. He looked bedraggled and grumpy.

We had two baby robins hopping around our yard from late April until early May. I almost stepped on them a couple times. They particularly liked sitting on lawn furniture. They finally got big enough to fly and are now sitting in our trees. Momma robin is still squawking at them. Evidently, they aren’t doing things to her satisfaction.

Ruby is terrified of thunderstorms. Somehow, she learned that the safest place in the house is the tub (she’s on the right behind the shower curtain).

Barb has a love hate relationship with raccoons. On the one hand they are cute and she likes to talk to them. On the other, they keep stealing her bird feeders.

So to paraphrase Garrison Keillor, “That’s the news from Noblesville, Indiana, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average”.

Hope things are good with all of you.