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Last week marked the 21st birthday of the website. (And you didn’t get me anything!) I didn’t say anything because I knew, from my handy spreadsheets, that this week we’d break seven million visits to the site. These things should be acknowledged together, and just once.
So let me simply thank you. I appreciate your being here. I don’t know why you keep coming back, but I’m glad you do. Thanks for that, too.
I updated the art on the front page of the site. It starts like this. Go give it a look and come back 60 seconds later. It’ll be refreshing.
And while I was doing that, I rolled over for a quick shot. It is also refreshing.
This morning, and right on schedule, I looked out to see the first of nature’s candy ready to come inside. So I grabbed the first basket. I had four this morning, a treat for my troubles.
This marks the beginning of our third peach crop here. I’ll probably be at this for eight to 10 days, but in increasing volume. For the first time, Poseidon seems interested in them. I have no idea how we’ll deal with that. We’re going to be giving away more than a few of these peaches. In fact, we sent off two dozen-plus peaches to friends today, fresh from the tree. Come get some.
Not every day produces a widget. Most of mine, in fact, do not. You find other things to measure against, I guess, or you just come to rationalize the very real truth that not every day need a product. It was also prohibitively hot. The heat index got up to 103 by the time I stopped checking. It doesn’t much matter anymore after that anyway. Somewhere as the mercury climbs it is just all painful.
Or put it this way, I stepped onto the front porch long enough to bring in the shipment of cat food, a chore which takes long enough to open the door, step outside, make sure no cats come with me, taking two steps, bending over, lifting a small box, pivoting and walking back inside. It takes no time. And you could feel the heat in that brief amount of time.
Later, I walked outside to check some other thing, a task which took about 90 seconds. In that time I’d already begun to sweat.
Right now, it is raining buckets.
Tomorrow it’ll only be in the 90s. Who knows what I’ll accomplish tomorrow.
The view from the front yard, somewhere between the gloaming and real darkness.
Oh, hey! The art on the front page has been updated. If you click over to kennysmith.org you’ll see a lot of images that fit into this theme.
I have also concluded the monthly computer cleaning, deleting files and updating the thises, and some of the thats. One of those tasks is monitoring the spreadsheet with website traffic data. Last month was the second most popular month in the site’s long history. In the next month or two we’ll hit another big milestone for the humble ol’ dubya dubya dubya. (And I thank you all for coming back more than once.)
Tomorrow, much like today, but even better.
It’s Friday! Right? Friday? Yeah. Sometimes you have to check a calendar, just to be sure. I wrapped up the week’s grading in yesterday. And I have done the updates to my computer, cleaning a month’s worth of files, creating subdirectories for May, updating site statistics in the site statistics spreadsheet.
And, hey, we’re well ahead of last year’s numbers here, so thanks for that. I don’t know why people come here, but I’m glad you do.
So one class wrapped up this week, and their final is due next Monday. My online class has another week-and-change to go, with a lot of work still to come. And a lot of things to grade, and then grades to submit. The next two weeks, then, are busy. A lot of sitting here staring at computer screens, plenty of little study breaks, but then right back to it.
I never learned that skill young, but there’s nothing like impending deadlines to teach new skills.
I set out for a 25-mile ride after a day of sitting in front of the computer. One of the regular routes I established last year. It is a route that, on the map, is roughly shaped like a bullet, though I am not nearly as fast as.
I went into town and through it, doubling back and through a crossroads that has the word “town” in its name, but it is nothing more than a red light, a farmer’s market, a gas station and a small car dealership. Then, out into the countryside.
I took a turn that sends me back to the river, but crops, woods and a few houses and developments in between. Usually this is a road that gives me five or six miles without any cars. And, once you’ve done this for a while, those experiences stand out, and you make note of them, so that you may ride them again.
When the road ends, it is time to turn right. You have a nice wide shoulder-slash-bike-lane-but-mostly-shoulder, where you can do four miles super fast, which you also make note of, and visit as often as you can. And then back on the road for home, a seven-mile stretch … into the wind.
This is a mistake. The conventional wisdom is that you start into the devise a route that puts you into a headwind first, and then the tailwind on the way back. Economy of efficiency when you’re more tired. Because I was doing a rectangular route, a squishy bullet, I should have had a tailwind to start, and a tailwind to finish.
But, if you live in a place like we do, this is a challenge. Nearly an impossibility. Today, on that same road, a straight line with flags flying at regular intervals, the wind blew from every direction on the same road within 80 minutes.
What even is that?
This is a glorious time of year. The changing of seasons, the warmening of the soil, the bluening of the sky, the wettening of everything, these are lovely things, full of the promise of the future. The promisening of the future, if you will.
But there are things to complain about. There’s the pollen. And there is the impermanence of the weather. Granted, this one differs based on where you are. Some places spring just two or three days before you’re slouching your way into a bone-melting summer. Some places spring comes non-too-soon. Perhaps it just feels like a flirtation of spring. There’s the inconsistency, for a time, of the greenening of things. And there’s all of that winter and fall to deal with. Where do all those extra leaves come from?
Then there are the flowering buds.
Here’s what I’m urging the horticulturists and the botanists, the agronomists, the biologists, the bio-technologists and the plant breedologists to do: develop an attractive shrub, or dwarf tree, that blooms throughout the growing season.
Sure, this will take a little more energy, blooms are consumers, but think of the propagation possibilities of a plant that can offer bugs and bees pollen for months on end —
I now see the problem with this plan.
But maybe it’d be worth it. Isn’t everything so beautiful in the spring?
We’re going to have a brief hiatus on the blog. I’ve spent this week catching up, just in time for the end-of-semester pace to kick in. I’m hoping that, next week, I can get ahead of things for a change. Which will be great, because it will allow me time to get behind again in the weeks that follow. That’s the run to mid-May, just trying to stay in touch with the schedule and its demands.
But I’ll be writing here again on April 21st.
Maybe someone will figure out the ever bloomening tree by then.
