Sapcicles and Thanksgiving Observed

 In our last episode, I saw sap dripping from the cut limbs of damaged box elder trees. Last Tuesday, the temperature at 6:00 a.m. when we got up was 8°F. Brrr. I went for a walk later in the morning. It was warmer but still brisk. More branches had been dripping sap than I first realized. Sapcicles hung everywhere. This is the same one I posted last week. It was still dripping. The sap was much sweeter, almost as sweet as maple syrup.

Boxelder sapcicles--look at how long the one on the left is!

The sap was so much sweeter because some of the water froze out of it on its way down the sapcicle. When ice crystals form, they tend to squeeze out everything except other water molecules, which concentrates whatever is dissolved in the water. One method that First Nation peoples used to make maple syrup was to put the syrup in a hollowed out log and let it freeze overnight. In the morning, they removed the ice that formed on the top. By doing this repeatedly, they increased the sugar content in the sap that remained. Alternatively, they put the sap in a sac of leather or birch bark and added hot stones to make it boil. They did not have metal pots to boil the sap down over a fire until the pasty-faced Europeans came along.

This one was impressive in sheer magnitude

An article in the newspaper resolved an issue that I brought up in my last post—why don’t we make syrup from box elders? It is because box elder sap has half the sugar of sugar maples. Both are in the maple (Acer) genus. Now I wonder what selection pressure caused sugar maples to have such sugary sap.

Here are some more examples of sapcicles. As long as there is some intact xylem to move the sap up from the roots, the sap keeps flowing. When I checked yesterday, the sap had stopped flowing at last.

This one went all around a lower branch

Several sapcicles from one long wound

Sapcicles scatter through the woods

The tulips are coming up, although they did not grow much last week, cold as it was.

Tulips wishing the weather would make up its mind

Yesterday, we celebrated Thanksgiving Observed because one turkey dinner a year is not enough. We had seven guests, and a good time was had by all. I took a picture of the turkey when it came out of the oven.

Thanksgiving Observed turkey

And a picture of the table, although the light from the door messed with the exposure and focus. As I prepared to take the picture, Kate said, “Wait until I put the bowl of potatoes down so it doesn’t look like I’m going to eat the whole thing!”

Dinner--Chuck is not visible on the other side of Kathy (in blue) and Terry is not paying attention

I made both pecan and pumpkin pie and forgot to take pictures. The pecan was the clear winner, although just as many people had half a piece of each. Only Terry had just pumpkin, and that was because he broke a tooth and is waiting for an implant. He can’t chew nuts well at the moment. At the end of the evening there were two pieces of pecan and 5 pieces of pumpkin left. This could be a story problem: how many people had only pecan pie?

With Thanksgiving Observed done, I’m ready to focus on garden prep. Summer will be here before you know it!