And you thought I was making it all up. The average temperature in January was 1.7 degrees.

March 13, 2014 – Thursday

-2 degrees/clear/calm

Pentoga Road

I’m not sure how I could sit around all winter begging for something to do and now, with the time change and a hint of warmer weather, I’m running from sun up to sun down. How’s that work?

With Tuesday and Wednesday's warm temperatures, the drive is bare for the first time since last November.

With it staying light later in the day, I drove to Iron Mountain on Tuesday evening so I could ride back with Sargie. I knew I needed to go on Wednesday, so why not bum a ride each way? It was nice talking for the thirty-five miles home and getting to spend a bit more time with each other.

I rode back with her on Wednesday, dropped off some papers at the doctor’s office and my tax information at the tax place. Will I get a backhoe or not? A lot depends on what kind of refund check I get this year.

I arrived home and immediately began transplanting the sprouted pepper and tomato seeds into potting mix. It was a tiresome job, spreading papers on the kitchen counter, filling the six packs with soil, then donning my magnifiers and using tweezers to carefully pick up each seed with a dangling root and planting it. More than three hours was spent doing just that.

I’m tickled at the success of one variety of Russian tomatoes. I paid $5 for five seeds, very expensive. All five sprouted and appear hardy. We’ll see what happens, but I’m optimistic.

Next came my five-mile afternoon hike. Though the temperature was barely above the single numbers and the wind quite strong, it was a pretty day and with the dry pavement, the first since last November, I picked ‘em up and put ‘em down. There were no twinges in the knee and it felt like the old days when I was a bit younger and things seemed to have worked just a little better.

Brutus was ready to play his daily game of fetch and we did just that after I arrived home. After, I carried in the wood and called it a day to the outside activities.

Some papers were graded Wednesday evening and I ran the sweeper over the floors. Needless to say, I slept well last night. Since she closed, Sargie had a very short evening. The girl may have had vacation last week, but she’s making up for it this week and closes three of the five working days.

Sargie’s opening today, so she should be home early tonight. I’m going to walk my five miles first thing this morning then apply spackle to a few places in the kitchen and begin to prime the walls. Sargie and I hope to have the kitchen completely finished by Sunday evening. Neither of us likes the house being ripped apart with kitchen items spread over the first floor and heaped on the dining room table.

It appears a warming trend is to begin early next week, which means I’ll start tapping trees. I’ve not prepared any of the maple equipment yet, so that’ll be another chore to add to my growing list.

But then I’m not surprised.

After all, a man’s work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road…

Even with the kitchen torn apart, it's always a good time to make popcorn. I may have added a few too many kernels.