A perfect day for apple tree pruning. Not too cold, not too sunny, and just a little snow left.

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If you’re working outdoors in the heat of the day, consider taking some switchel with you: roughly three cups of cider vinegar in ¾ of a gallon of water, plus some honey and some ginger. Cider vinegar supplies potassium and the ginger helps potassium absorption. Honey both revives your energy and reduces the tartness. Variations of this concoction have been used by farm workers since before the Civil War.
The white pine needle damage you’re seeing is caused by a fungal pathogen complex, and its severity is linked to weather conditions from a year ago. Perhaps the dry June will lessen the severity of next year’s outbreak.
Twin fawns are frolicking in the evening. It’s so innocent seeming, it’s hard not to feel a sense of anthropomorphic dread on their behalf.
A robin was singing shortly after 4 am this morning, followed soon after by a veery. I’ve read that the timing of bird awakening is correlated to the size of its eye. Big eyed birds are the earliest risers.
The big damselflies called ebony jewelwing make it hard to walk the brook any faster than at a snail’s pace. The black wings of the males are pretty, but it’s their shining emerald abdomens that stop you in your tracks. They occur in masses here along the top of a new beaver dam.
Hummingbirds have been reported in the past few days not far from where I live. They typically arrive here around May 15th. It’s been a bit colder than normal here in the past month, making a person wonder what’s up.
Hummingbirds can distinguish many more colors than humans. Not just ultraviolet, but ultraviolet+green, ultraviolet+red, and ultraviolet+yellow. Researchers spent three summers deploying sugar of various hues to discover this. We are “color-blind compared to birds” according to one of the scientists. And, according to me, it’s good to clean out the hummingbird feeder before it gets moldy.
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