Spring, Sort Of!

Hi, everyone!

Today is the official first day of spring, but winter isn’t completely over!  Since I got back from Kauai, we’ve had winter days, springs days, and even summer days! The Wednesday after we got back, Grandma took me to the Van Gogh Immersion Experience.  Grandma told me that Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch artist whose paintings are popular all over the world.  He moved to England, then to France.  Grandma laughed at the “Gogh this way” sign, because America is just about the only place where Van Gogh’s last name is pronounced like “go”!  The first room of the display had lots of signs telling the story of Van Gogh’s life.  One sign said he simply signed his paintings “Vincent” because he didn’t think anybody would pronounce his last name properly.  Other signs explained that Van Gogh had bouts of mental illness and cut off his own ear during one of them!

The main room of the exhibition had moving projections of Van Gogh’s art on the walls, pillars and floor.  The images changed from one painting to another in very interesting ways in a half hour long loop.  I liked the part that showed Starry Night!  It was fun to watch a sketch develop into the final painting of a landscape!

Van Gogh painted a lot of portraits.  Some were of his neighbors, but he also painted a lot of portraits of himself!  I recognized the painting of apple blossoms, because Aunt Kara made a big wall decoration from napkins with that picture!

After we watched the images all the way back to those we’d seen before, we moved on into the gift shop.  There were lots of prints, scarves and shirts with Van Gogh paintings reproduced on them.  Grandma thought this doll was a silly souvenir!

The following Friday, we had some sunshine and spring temperatures.   I took that opportunity to go outside to see what plants were coming up.  I could see snow drop blossoms poking out of the ground!  There were day lily and daffodil shoots, too!  Something had eaten most of the leaves off the rhododendron!  Grandma thinks only deer could have reached all those leaves!

The next day, we had snow on the ground again!  Grandma and I decided to do indoor cooking projects.  We made three flavors of biscotti over two days.  My friend Rita-san told Grandma she planned to come visit, and we wanted to be ready!

By last Monday the sun came out and the temperature went into the 50s.  As the snow started to melt, Grandma got out and started pruning the apple trees.  I helped with the pole pruner and with the cleanup!  Pruning the three biggest trees took several days!  When we had rain in between the nice days, Grandma and I made an AWACS cheesecake and put it in the freezer.

The days of warm weather have helped my flower friends start blooming!  The snow drops opened up more.  There was a new clump that Grandma didn’t plant in that spot!  The first crocus blossoms were also in places Grandma never planted them.  The last patches of snow are starting to melt!

Yesterday, Grandma and Grandpa and I took Uncle Steven’s family to the pancake breakfast at the Cumming Nature Center in Naples.  Our reservation was for the first serving time on the first day of the maple syrup festival.  We got there a little bit early, so we had time to see the displays in the visitors’ center.

We had a family table and got all our food on one big platter!  We had a big  pitcher of maple syrup just for us!  The pancakes were yummy!  The sausage was yummy too, but it was hard to cut with plastic knives and forks!

After breakfast, we took a walk on the maple trail, just like last year!  At the tap station, Thomas remembered how to drill a tap hole and insert the spigot.  At the native traditions station, James already knew the native story explaining why sap has so much water along with the sugar.

There were trees being tapped all along the trail!  I saw different kinds of taps and sap collecting containers!

At the pioneer cabin, the interpreter showed James and Thomas the job pioneer children had.  They used yokes and buckets  to bring sap from the trees to the outdoor cauldron where the sap was cooked down to sugar.  James and Thomas both had to carry buckets all the way around the cabin and back to the fire!  James was tall enough to do it and even gave me a ride part way.  Thomas wasn’t quite tall enough to wear the yoke on his shoulders, so it was harder for him!

From the pioneer station open fire and cauldron, we went on to the sugar house.  The evaporator there has two stages and can make a gallon of syrup every hour.  There’s lots of steam as the sap cooks down!  After we visited the sugar house, we took the Haudenosaunee trail back to the visitors center.  I liked the bridges and boardwalk!

Uncle Steven invited Grandma and Grandpa to come for dinner yesterday, so the AWACS cheesecake came out of the freezer and went along for dessert.  Then today, my friend Rita-san came to eat lunch with us.  The biscotti came out of the freezer to go home with her!  That made it easy to get out the chilled vessel for the ice cream maker.   Grandma made the mix for cinnamon ice cream yesterday, so we churned it today and put the ice cream into the freezer.

Tonight we’re back at the bay for the first time since the Hawaii trip.  It’s chilly and windy!  The snow is gone, but there’s still some ice on parts of the bay!  I know I saw my shadow on Ground Hog Day,  but that’s already six weeks ago!

Love,

Lion-san