The heartbreak of molting

This time of year must be embarrassing for the male goldfinches. The molt makes them look awful, like an acne outbreak right before the prom. The females probably giggle and whisper every time the males fly by. It won’t be long, however, before the males are singing, “I’m too sexy for my feathers.”

That awkward molting stage

I keep expecting the box elder to stop dripping sap. Water flow through a plant depends on an unbroken column of water. Once an air bubble, a.k.a., embolism forms, movement stops. On my walk a week ago, the center of the cut branch looked dry, so I was sure the end was near.

The center of the branch was dry a week ago

On Tuesday, however, the whole surface was wet and dripping again.

But on Tuesday, it was all wet again

It is a puzzlement. Here is where the branch is broken. Obviously, there cannot be intact xylem (wood) vessels all the way across the diameter of the broken branch.

Even though it is obvious that the wood is broken most of the way across the limb

It got cold overnight Thursday, and another long sapcicle formed. It should be noted that the drops were not nearly as sweet as they were last time I tried them. The tree has probably mobilized the majority of its sugars to the buds by now.

Another long sapcicle

The last of the snow lingered until Tuesday. The only snow by the creek was in the shadow of a fallen tree. The tree broke in the ice storm but is hung up on another tree so that it has not yet hit the ground.

The last snow by the creek in the shad of a broken tree

From this angle, you can see the stripe of snow in the shadow of the tree better. All the snow is gone now.

A better picture of the shadow on the snow

On my walk this morning, I noticed that the pussy willows are fuzzy. Spring must be coming, in spite of the cold wind.

Pussy willows!

With the periodically warm weather and rain, the grass has started to green up. The hens are no longer content in their run. They stick their heads through the netting to get at the new grass and occasionally escape. I caught Dottie on the coop roof in a dilemma—jump down outside the fence or walk to the other side of the roof and hop down in the run? What to do? She made the right decision and returned to her sisters. Good girl, Dottie!

Dottie contemplates freedom vs. imprisonment: should I stay, or should I go?

My culinary adventure this week was pierogies. It was a new recipe from a TV show, and it had not been adequately tested. I followed the directions, but as soon as I cut out the 3” circles of dough, they began shrinking. Also, I did not have the counter adequately floured, and the circles were not circles by the time I got them unstuck. I rolled the next portion of dough out before I filled the circles from the first to give it time to rest. I used more flour. The next batch didn’t shrink as much or stick, but the extra flour made it hard to pinch the dough together to seal in the filling. Bah.

The directions said to use a heaping tablespoon of filling. I measured exactly with an ice cream scoop that was a little larger than a tablespoon. When I got halfway through the pierogies, I was way more than halfway through the filling. The tray shows the size difference in the second half. This was the first time I’d made dumplings since I discovered that Trader Joe’s sells perfectly fine gyoza potstickers. I am out of practice. When all was said and done, I had made pieruglies. Furthermore, one of them burst an aneurysm when I boiled them. Contrary to my hope that the mashed potato, cheese, onions, and bacon bits would hold together, everything dissolved except the bacon bits, and I ended up with one empty pierugly. And I have a whole bag of pieruglies in the freezer to get through yet. Lucky me. What’s that you say? Throw them out? After I spent all afternoon making them? Not a chance.

Pieruglies of various sizes