I think eating lettuce that came from my garden last night really drove it home. Summer is really truly here.

More evidence is that the lupine in field in front of my house is about at it’s peak. It’s pretty hard to share the real view but here is a composite picture and a few others…

click on the composite to see a larger size…

Yet another beatiful vermont photo for my desktop. This is Mt. Mansfield. The profile of Mt. Mansfield is a person’s face. You can get the properly sized desktop here at Green Mountain Club. The photos are from local professional photographer, Paul Hansen, of Ecopixel. He prepares them each month with the calendar image.

When I lived North of Burlington, Mt. Mansfield was nearby for loads of hiking and back country skiing. There are so many trails.

Towards the left is the chin. In about the middle of the photo is the nose and then the right part of the mountain is the forehead. The chin is the highest point in Vermont. Next highest after that is Camel’s Hump which is now our nearby mountain. We can see the peak of Camel’s Hump from our house, but only under very specific circumstances. “Mountain views!”

While there are still a few patches of snow on the ground, we have had a spate of warm summer like weather for the past few days. Last time I looked this morning the thermometer said it was 77 degrees! Where I live we aren’t supposed to do our planting before Memorial Day (sees and hardy plants are okay, but not things like tomatoes, many types of herbs and other annuals) – that’s how long we can expect frost for. Yet here it is April 23rd and it was 65 at 7am and now nearly 80 degrees. Crazy weather. Beautiful weather. I’m looking at my garden (which was covered with snow only 4 days ago) and feeling as though I am way behind the 8 ball already in getting it ready!

🙂

Here’s the auction page for it.

I was there in the incredible (not very eastern-skiing-like) powder on Friday, but didn’t stay long and had to come back home for a conference call. This is how I dream of skiing, but I don’t come close.

Mad River Glen (which is open today since we had a big dump of snow and it’s beautiful out and I’m tortured because I need to work… uggh) is going to begin a major restoration of it’s historic and world famous Single Chair lift next week. To raise funds, they have been auctioning off the old chairs. The VERY LAST chair is now being auctioned off on eBay.

I used to hate flying. It still terrifies me to tempt gravity and nature so. But I have to fly a lot since I go to conferences and user groups all over the place. One of my tricks is that I love to get a window seat and look out at the amazing view.

Today I flew back from Orlando where I had just been at DevConnections (which I wrote about here). I flew from Orlando to Washington Dulles, then from there a short 1 hour flight home to Burlington, Vermont. Because it was a short flight, we were in a small plane and flying low. It was a fabulously goregous sunny day. I slept for the first bit of it but then woke up whe the pilot said “if you look to your right, you’ll see a great view of NYC”. I was on the left so I was looking at Newark. However as we got a little further north, it got better and better.

I lived in the Hudson Valley for 8 years prior to moving to Vermont. I was also quite in love with the Hudson River. My favorite bike rides were ones where I rode my bike across some of the many bridges that span the Hudson. Eventually, we were following the Hudson as we headed north and it was right out my window. By the time we got over Poughkeepsie, I was able to identify so much of what I was seeing because they were places I have spent a lot of time. I was able to see New Paltz and the Shawagunks. Then Rhinebeck which led to something that made my heart jump. I quickly followed the road out of Rhinebeck with my eyes and made my way to the house that I lived in for a very wonderful 6 years of my life (okay, that’s discounting an icchy boyfriend that lived there with me for a short while (but hindsight’s 20-20, right?). I couldn’t really see the house, but I saw what was my pond when I lived there and filled in the rest of the view from memory.

I kept my eyes peeled to the landscape all the way to Burlington. Up the Taconic and Hudson river, the Hudson bridge and the town of Hudson. The Castskills (where I have spent a lot of time not only hiking and winter climbing, but bicycling through as well in my “former life”) then Albany , the Adirondacks, Lake George and finally Lake Champlain. Even flying over Vermont, it was easy to pick out the place we put in to paddle Dead Creek, the Addison County Fairgrounds, Snake Mountain, Vergennes, Shelburne Bay and Shelburne Farms. Then finally Burlington. It was a pretty boundy landing due to some strong winds, but we did it safely and I got to drive home on some of the same roads that I had been watching from my birds’ eye view.

I wish I could have filmed the entire thing, but hopefully by blogging it, I’ll be able to come back and enjoy the memory here.

Rich and i have weekday passes to Mad River so when I work all weekend long and work at night, I won’t feel too guilty cutting out for a few hours and today is the day! Even if you don’t have a pass, you might want to consider it. Here’s from MRG’s website this morning:

Starting today we will be switching to special Spring hours and rates. We will be spinning the lifts from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM and midweek lift tickets are a mere $29 for the rest of the season.  Today will simply be the best $29 you ever spent! Bluebird skies and temps in the upper 20’s. The skiing, in a word, is unbelievable, with 28″-36″ of Champlain Powder during the St. Patty’s Weekend “snow event”!   The skiing is downright ludicrous with some of the fluffiest powder this side of Utah.  You absolutely owe it to yourself to make the pilgrimage to Mad River Glen right now. you won’t be disappointed. The grooming “fleet” has been out in force pinning down the fluff on the novice and intermediate terrain.  It will be a corduroy paradise out there today  for those who like that kind of thing. The legendary steeps and bumps are about as good as they get and our glades, those famous glades, well you can only begin to imagine how good they are skiing. During the midweek period we will spin the Single Chair, the Sunnyside Double and the Callie’s Corner Handle Tow from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM.   Obviously 100% of our fabled main mountain terrain is wide open with some of the finest conditions in recent memory.

Perfect snow. We got about 18″ of dense snow between Friday and Saturday. (I know, bad for drivers, bad for travellers, bad for a lot of people, but suh-wheeeeeet for skiers!) Then overnight last night we got another 8+ inches of the lightest fluffiest snow in the world. Yesterday Rich and I went out in our snowshoes and packed our ski trail down in the woods. Today will be the payoff as we get to ski in the fluffy fluffy fluff this afternoon.

I remember trudging through piles of snow when I was little, knocking on my neighbor’s doors taking (and then delivering) cookie orders.

Now if I want cookies, I have to go track them down. I just discovered that there’s a list of where I can buy them all over vermont this week. (I just happened to think of it and it just happened to be this week!)