Slight Detour: Saturday Slight

Just a light Saturday Slight this morning for no particular reason 'cept nothing particular is driving my writing passion.

Plus, it's mid-January.

Need I say more.

The photo above pretty much says it all: hints of winter mixed with frozen hints of spring.

I was thinking yesterday, while walking this north lawn area, how around this time last year while walking on top of a foot of frozen snow one sunny afternoon, I met Truk.

He was riding by with a bicycle and said "Hi."

Curious, as always, I walked toward the road and struck up a conversation. Within a few days, Truk had come back to our north lawn with his pruning equipment.

He spent two days pruning our old apple tree and a couple of plum trees.

Later, he did some pruning work for other people in the area who had fruit trees.

Soon after that, Truk was gone, back to Northern California. I'm assuming now that the plot of land he had been looking at in the area where he was raised might be his home now.

Our apple tree bore the least fruit ever last year, but I think the shortage had nothing to do with pruning.

We had some freezes at key times, and it just wasn't a great year for apples or plums here at the Lovestead.

I'm hoping that the influence of last year's prune job will hold over into 2021 and that the old tree will be loaded.

Lots of promise this time of year as the seed catalogs come out and thoughts of what can be done differently with the garden set-up dance around in the mind.

I'm a mediocre gardener. That's a fact because I've seen other gardens of friends and mine seldom matches up.

Regardless of the greenness of my thumb or lack thereof, passion always runs high each year as the process begins with winter-time seed selection, then seed planting, then seeds bursting from beneath the ground into tiny plants, followed by transplants, rototilling, weeding, watering and finally the best of all: tasting.

All good, and have almost approached the annual mood to start my seed selection. I've walked past the seed display at Co-Op a couple of times but have not stopped.

That will happen, probably soon.

In other news, Bill has a slightly sore arm this morning, for a good reason. He was able to get his first vaccination yesterday, as did other family members who live in Plummer.

Maybe one of these days we can visit with them and they can visit with us.

Little steps leading back to some sense of norm.

Right now, basketball provides some of the better distractions to winter---even when we can't watch some of the key games.

When your son is a coach, simply learning via text that a night went well for him and his team suffices.

That was the case last night in Lakeland, as noted by sports editor Dylan Greene's story below.

https://bonnercountydailybee.com/news/2021/jan/15/Impressive-first-half-stingy-defense-pushes-SHS-p/

And, today brings another ZAGS game, one of those late contests, beginning at 7 p.m. PST tonight.

The Gonzaga Bulldogs travel to California to take on the Saint Mary's Gaels.

We can watch the game on ESPN.

GABH, ZAGS!