Spring!

I should have written this earlier this week, when I was biking for 2 hours around the nature preserve.  I had to push my sleeves up and roll up my pant legs to cool off.  It was wonderful.  Really different than the post-biking photo 6 weeks ago.  Now early spring is truly back though the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, a lot!   We are still biking, pumping hard against that "modvind" and our bike legs are coming back.

Spring is here though.  The day is 13 hours long today.   Quite a change from the 7 hours of daylight we had in December and headed for 17 and a half hours at the June solstice.  What a heady difference.  Spring and thoughts turn to cleaning and tidying up, at least with us Scandinavian types.   Two weekends ago the neighborhood had a tree pruning Sat.  Everyone turned out with clippers and ladders and pruned the old chestnut trees of their bushy crowns, filling 2 dumpsters with branches.

It was a friendly group and they finished with the pølse wagon driving up and everyone eating their fill of Danish hot dogs. 

 I took to the windows afterwards as all this sunshine made their sorry state more obvious.




















We weren't the only ones who were cleaning up.  The municipal workers were out for several days cleaning the canals and harbor of a winter's worth of detritus, mostly in the form of bikes.  They had a diver crawling the bottom and then they would haul up the old bikes, shopping carts, tires and in one case a seaweed encrusted statue of a man in 18th century clothes, looking pretty sorry lying there on the barge.

Here are other signs of spring:  the wildflowers, the crocus bed in the Kings Garden and Challa and his friends bringing out the trampoline for the season in the yard below our deck.

                                                                  
So begins spring and then summer.  The visiting season has arrived.  We just said good-bye to Debbie Ward after a great week of walking, eating and talking. It was such nice weather that after we dropped her at the airport (from our #5 bus line) that we walked home.  I love an airport one can walk or bike to.  It took us about 1 1/2 hours similar to our usual 5 mile walk around our neighborhood on Bainbridge. Now the rest of the visitors will come so expect more tourist photos, pictures of folks you might recognize (esp our grandkids) and of course more biking experiences.