Who will tap the trees?
Nearly every morning I walk the neighborhood. Up one block and down another. And every spring I look forward to seeing the sap buckets hanging.

But it seems the people who lived in the houses and tapped the trees moved. From both places.

One family used traditional metal buckets, and the other used plastic. The plastic buckets were translucent and I could see the sap levels rise from one day to the next. I'm going to miss that.

My brother has lots of hobbies and fortunately, one of them is making maple syrup. Did you know it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup? The two glasses above (sap and syrup) are samples from his his harvest.

What does sap taste like?
Straight from the tree, sap tastes like water. It's not sweet, but if you concentrate, you can (kinda, sorta, maybe) taste a hint of maple. Though sometimes I think we want so much for it to taste like maple syrup before it is maple syrup we trick our taste buds into thinking it does.

As the sap water boils down, the liquid thickens, the color shifts, and it becomes syrup. Sweeter and sweeter the more it cooks down.

There are still no buckets in the neighborhood. But I'm watching.

What signs of spring do you see in your neighborhood?

Blustery weather and over a foot a snow. We’d been inside for the better part of two days and it was time for a change. Time to get outside and do some forest bathing in the newly transformed winter landscape.

Have you heard of forest bathing? It’s the idea that spending time out in nature is good for us. Good for you, good for me, good for all of us.

It’s not about camping or bugs or getting dirty. It’s learning to appreciate the healing nature of the outdoors. It’s a Japanese pastime rooted in the concept of using nature as therapy.

It’s about slowing down and noticing what you see, hear, and smell when you’re outside.

Yesterday we took a walk in the woods. There’s over a foot of snow on the ground and I was taken by the way the snow drifted up against the trees and settled in the crook of the branches. How blue the sky was.

When we got back, we were hungry and ate lunch...inside. Clearly there’s no seating at the picnic table.