SoCS: sap

I have lived in the Northeast United States for my whole life and soon my thoughts will turn to sap.

Maple trees are plentiful here and are often used for maple syrup production. The sap flows in the spring and is tapped, usually now with lines rather than with spigots and covered buckets as it was done traditionally.

At least, it used to be done in spring when I was a child. What you need for a good flow of sap is days above freezing and nights below freezing. This used to be early spring weather, but now, with climate change and increased volatility of weather, those conditions sometimes happen as early as February.

February is not spring.

Some years, the sap starts to flow in February, but then it gets colder again and stops. If we are lucky, it stops before the trees actually start to bud as the cold weather can then damage the buds and affect the tree for the year.

When I was a child, we used to go to a local sugarhouse during sugaring off and watch as they evaporated the water out of the sap to leave maple syrup. I always liked the lighter, more delicate syrup. The sugarhouse had an attached dining room where you could order great pancakes and waffles, which were served with fresh syrup. Then, my sisters and I would order sugar-on-snow for dessert. They would bring us cake tins full of snow and a pitcher of warm maple syrup. We would drizzle it over the snow and it would instantly congeal into a candy which you could pick up with a fork. You could sometimes even twirl it around the fork like spaghetti. It was delicious, but super sweet, so they would serve it with homemade dill pickles, which were also really good.

It has been many years since I had sugar on snow, but I always keep a supply of real maple syrup at home. I refuse to eat “pancake syrup” which is usually just corn syrup with some maple flavoring thrown in.

In my area now, I usually buy maple syrup from a farmers’ market rather than directly from a sugar house. When I go back to Massachusetts or Vermont, I will sometimes buy syrup there to bring home. Right now, I have a gallon that was made in B’s hometown and about twelve miles from my hometown.

It’s all good.

I do worry, though, about the future of our sugar maples. They are stressed by climate change and the range of the trees is moving north. In the coming decades, we may need to import our maple syrup from Canada. I’m sure it would be as delicious, but probably in short supply, which would be very sad.

I’ll savor my maple syrup all the more now.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday and/or Just Jot It January! This week’s prompt was sap/sep/sip/sop/sup. Today’s pingback link is here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/01/04/the-friday-reminder-for-socs-jusjojan-2019-daily-prompt-jan-5th/
More information and prompts here: https://lindaghill.com/2018/12/31/what-is-just-jot-it-january-2019-rules/

apologies

Apologies to the people of Canada, especially Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  I am very sorry about the way President Trump and some members of his administration have treated you and spoken disrespectfully about you.

I have always lived in the Northeast United States and think of Canada as a close neighbor who shares our values. I have Canadian friends. My spouse B has a French-Canadian surname and relatives in Canada.

It makes no sense for the Trump administration to violate current, ratified trade treaties with additional tariffs and I am disappointed that Congress has not stepped in to stop it. Many Americans have been speaking out and preparing for the Congressional election in hopes of electing representatives who will uphold our values and laws on both the national and international level.

While I am apologizing, I would also like to express regret about how the President is treating our allies in the G7, the European Union, and NATO. I also am appalled with how DT insults developing countries in both hemispheres. And how his announced withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement in November, 2020 has negatively impacted the world community. Many cities, states, companies, and individuals are continuing to work to keep our climate commitments despite the current administration.

I know I am just one voice and alone have little impact, but there are many others speaking out and together we will eventually reassert our best American values.

Linda!

Sending out best wishes to Linda, who brings all of us together for One-Liner Wednesday, Stream of Consciousness Saturday, and Just Jot It January and delights and entertains us with her other blog posts, fiction, and books! She had a bit of a health scare earlier in the week but was able to get to prompt care, thanks to the Canadian health care system.

She is doing better, although dealing with some of the aftermath and waiting for test results to determine if further treatment is required. Let’s all send out good thoughts, prayers, and/or positive energy to Linda, who is intrepidly continuing with Just Jot It January in the midst of it all!
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here:
https://lindaghill.com/2018/01/19/jusjojan-daily-prompt-january-19th-2018/

 

Top of JC’s Mind’s Annual Report

My regular readers know that I only occasionally look at my stats, but WordPress has helpfully compiled an annual report for me to share with all of you.
https://topofjcsmind.wordpress.com/2015/annual-report/
All of you stats fans can read it! I would like to point out that, while it looks like I do not follow the blog of Ellen, one of my top commenters, I actually do. It isn’t a WordPress blog, though, so it isn’t showing up as followed on the list. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was dissing Ellen’s lovely blog!

I was chuckling over the map. While it says that Canada and the UK are not far behind the US in blog visits, they really are far behind. US has 5,676, while Canada has 512 and the UK has 218. Interestingly, India has 218 also but didn’t show up in the caption.

Thank you all for your visits and comments in 2015! I hope I will write interesting posts to keep you coming back in 2016.

Peace and best wishes for the new year,
Joanne

Trump is un-American

I would say that Donald Trump has gone too far this time, were it not for the fact that he has gone too far so many times before.

Yesterday, he proposed that no Muslims be allowed to enter the United States, even if they are US citizens, or tourists, or diplomats, or refugees, or young children, or US military personnel.

Apparently, Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who became the first Muslim in Congress in 2007. wouldn’t be allowed to drive back into the US if he traveled across his state’s border into Canada. Would Trump try to have him removed from his seat?

The United Nations would have to re-locate, as many of its Ambassadors are Muslim.

Muslim members of our military deployed overseas would not be allowed to then post back to the US or to come home on leave.

He has also said that all Muslims in the US would need to register as Muslims and that mosques would be surveilled.

It is ridiculous and against our values as a country.

This flies in the face of our Constitution, which promises free exercise of religion.

It harks back to some of the shameful actions of the United States during World War II, when Japanese-Americans on the West Coast were interred in camps based only on their ethnicity, along with some Italian- and German-Americans in the East.

The only positive aspect of this is that leaders across the political spectrum are publicly condemning Trump for this viewpoint.

It is hard to say whether or not Trump’s supporters will leave his camp over this.  Many of them are scared and believe that Trump would protect them by this action.

I can only say that Trump’s supporters are a very small proportion of the population. With so many candidates in the Republican primary, having 30% support looks like a large percentage, but because Republicans are only a fraction of all US citizens, it only equals about 8% of the voters in the United States, some of whom may not support all of Trump’s platform.

To Mr. Trump, I say, “NO!”

Just NO.

 

1,000 Follower Celebration: Meet and Greet

Jay Dee Archer of “I Read Encyclopedias for Fun” is hosting a meet and greet to celebrate reaching the 1,000 followers milestone! Jay Dee is an author, teacher, spouse, and dad, currently living in Japan but planning a return to Canada next year. He blogs about writing, life in Japan, being a dad, geography, astronomy, and much more. Go check out his blog, introduce yourself on his meet and greet thread, and have fun!

I Read Encyclopedias for Fun

I love milestones, and this is a big one. This blog has finally achieved 1,000 followers! So, I thought, what could I do for this occasion? Well, some other people have done something similar, one for a 500 follower milestone, and another who just does it to bring bloggers together.

Let’s have a good old meet and greet! It’s very simple, just leave a comment with a link to your blog (the main blog or a single post, it’s up to you) and say something brief about your blog or yourself if you like. If you have a book, tell us about it, too. I’d also like to ask you to do one other thing: share this post as much as you like and anywhere you like. Tell other bloggers you know about this post so they can also find some great blogs to follow.

I look forward to meeting…

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