One more sign

Saw the first porcupine of the season on the way home last night, so the bloom is in progress. Only one more sign to go and everything will be in place, but I am a little worried about that one. The swans have not showed up on their pond yet and it has been ice free for about two weeks now. That in itself is not so worrying, but there is another factor. While there was still ice on the pond where I have seen them every year, on another lake near here (for geography's sake, my swan pond is about 8 miles west of here and this lake is a couple of miles to the east) some idiot with nothing better to do with his high-powered rifle shot two swans. A couple of canoeists found them floating on the water. It is pretty easy to imagine my swans not being able to land yet on the pond to fly on to that other lake and meet that violent end. A serious hunt is on for the shooter (a state trooper was quoted as saying we take our swans seriously here) but there is probably little chance the culprit will be caught and strung up until his neck is proportionately as long as a swan's. So it goes.

Meanwhile my son is racing north from college at a rate of almost $200 a day. At that spending speed for what it is going to cost me, he and the truck could have flown north. These kids today.