Thunder and lightning in the night, and torrential rain thundering on the roof. I was happy to stay in bed warm and dry and listen to it all. Up early, still a bit dark, and I saw something moving on the deck.
It doesn't take long for the trees to figure out that Spring is here. A few warm days with cold nights and the sap starts running. The maple trees are tapped and buckets are filling fast. The driveway is lined with mature walnut trees, and they have all been providing sap along the blue sap lines. The lines can be seen in the photo background. The lines lead to a large tub in the little barn.
This is the third year for this home-made humble evaporator. It's constructed from a steel barrel lined with insulation and firebrick. Some large metal catering trays, various pipes, elbows, a couple of valves, and lots of firewood. It may look a bit rough but it works! Sap goes into the top pan, drips into the lower pans topping up the evaporating sap.
Do people still collect stamps? Perhaps philately is a thing of the past, now that email and social media are the modern means of communication.
I had a stamp album with lots of stamps when I was a child, but it's long gone now. But I still can't throw mail away with a stamp on it, so the stamps get packed into an envelope in the junk drawer. One of the local churches was asking for collections of used stamps, so I decided to find the scissors and clean up my collection.
A sample of the stunning stained glass windows at Humber Valley United Church in Toronto. The windows were designed and built by Eric Wesselow in 1977.
Eric Wesselow was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy and president of the Quebec Society for Education through Art. The Wesselow system of layering glass so that there are no visible lead lines was named for him.
