Today is another in a fairly long string of beautiful, spring days! What a blessing we have had with this breakup. “Breakup” – the time of year in Alaska when the ice and snow melts leaving us up to our knees in water run-off, mud and potholes. This year has been an almost perfect breakup. Most daytime temperatures have been sunny and in the 40’s and then at night we get a hard freeze. The snow has melted gradually which means we’ve not had problems with puddles, mud bogs, and car-swallowing potholes! Yeah!!!

Several days ago a pair of swans flew overhead. Since then I’ve seen a few geese and ducks. Soon the flats will be filled with them. Some will continue north but many will stay to nest. Many eagles stay in our area year round, those that over-winter at the Homer Spit (lots of fish available there) have returned. Our skies are filled with the eagles once again.

Another sure sign of spring are the returning caribou. My daughter saw a small herd of caribou in a field a couple days ago. They, too, are migrating to their birthing grounds which happen to be right in this area. All adult caribou produce antlers. Non-pregnant cows lose theirs in the fall. Pregnant cows keep theirs. She saw lots of antlered cows. We’re going to have a nice batch of new babies soon. Hopefully, the grizzlies won’t feast too much.

We are still gaining over 5 minutes a day of daylight. At Christmas we had only about 5 ½ hours of daylight. Now we have over 14 ½ hours. Around the end of May, we’ll have light almost twenty hours with a dusk/dawn for the other four. With the benefit from all that light, I am hoping to have a small vegetable patch again this year. It’ll be another six weeks before planting can be done safely. We often get freezing nights until mid to late May. We can grow broccoli, cabbage, summer squash, peas, and salad greens fairly well in our area.

We’ve had several good, simple meals this week. I’ve also been out and about with no really good food available. I didn’t plan well and ate foods (?) that really didn’t agree with me. Once I finish doing up our taxes (yuck), I should be able to focus more on what good foods we do have to eat.