Beware the Ides +/-

© harrington

Welcome. Thanks for sliding in. In a few days, we'll have reached the Ides of March. I think Caesar was as likely to be killed driving his chariot over et tu Brute [scroll down to the 3rd line, 4th paragraph] ice-coated roads like the one in the photo as to be stabbed by 60 of his closest friends. (As an aside, do you suppose there's any hidden message that goes with the Minnesota Environmental Congress being held on the Ides?) Back to cold reality, just about 3.5 or so of the 4 miles +/- of my township road gets like this almost every mid-March. (Full disclosure: my driveway is even worse, but it's much shorter.) The township's policy is not to plow unless more than three inches of snow falls from a storm. Not unreasonable, except for the compacted, then melted, then re-frozen into ice, coating we end up with almost every "Spring." Last year the well above average temperatures provided a tropical (for Minnesota March) interlude and the sudden melt of what little snow there was avoided the normal skating rink. This year looks like it's going to compensate for last year. Have you ever thought that Minnesota would be a much more pleasant place to live if the average temperatures weren't made up of such extremes? On the bright side, this is sap collecting, syrup making time. Out in Colorado, daffodils are coming up and bees are out and about. [check March] Here in My Minnesota, we just need to hold on a little bit longer and the ice will turn to melt to make mud out of our class five aggregate and the mud season will stick around for a month or six weeks before becoming dust season. Enough kvetching for today. (Another blow for a multicultural Minnesota.) Friday night's Red Horse concert was great. I pick up two CDs I should have bought long ago. Saturday, I got to read an amazing book. I also finished transplanting all the dawn redwood seedlings (more than twice as many as were supposed to have made it this far). Yesterday we headed for the coop in Stillwater instead of St. Paul. On the way down Highway 95, I managed to get some distant photos of an eagle in flight. We had Mexican for dinner last night. All in all, a pretty good weekend even though the change to daylight savings is going to have my internal clock all katywampus for a couple of weeks or so. Hope yours went well too. Stop by (urban)/slide in (country) again tomorrow. Rants and raves served here daily.