End of Syrup Season

  This is our finishing pan being drained. A woefully short and unproductive  maple syrup season is almost over for us. It looks like we will have about 7-8 quarts for the year. Guess my sweet tooth will be on a diet.
   A lot of our perennial flowers such as daffodils are starting to come up.We planted a few new things last year so it is always interesting to see which make it through our winters. Of course this was a very mild winter so everything should have made it . My big worry right now is that the apple trees will bloom to early because of this warm weather. It would seem like warm weather early would be a good thing but it is not. I am sure it will swing back to seasonal temperatures soon and then stuff that came up to early will freeze. While most plants will survive the freeze and regrow , blossoms will not appear a second time on most trees. If the blossoms freeze there is no fruit this year. Our trees are young and would only produce a limited amount this year anyway.

We had a few small rain showers this week so it is not dangerously dry in the woods right now. This means that Ann is back to doing some campfire cooking.There are somethings that just seem much more tasty when cooked over a open fire. Even though Ann cooks on the campfire fairly often during the summer,those meals always seem a little special and more relaxed somehow. The smell of coffee perking along with the wood smoke smell is sure to whet my appetite and eating out of doors makes it seem like a picnic.