Finished listening to Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout. It was fine, one of those women-fiction type books.

Sunday turned out to be a gorgeous day with high temps in the low 70s. The rest of the week will be highs in the 50s, lows in the 30s and cloudy. Ugh. The first shoot of the new asparagus has appeared. The brunerra in my garden is blooming. The wild violets in the woods are in full bloom. This morning I heard a Baltimore Oriole. Must get the feeder out asap!

Had another productive day on Sunday. Took dog for an hour birdwatching walk. I was hoping to see that owl, but the only bird of interest was a female wood duck in a tree. It took me awhile to identify it because I was looking at her belly. But the ring around the eye helped make the identification. When we got home, I prepped for my lunches then went out to work on the new garden. Three hours later, I had removed half of the now-dead grass. It is slow going, using the flat spade to slice just below the roots and then shaking off the dirt and tossing the grass to the tarp. My fingertips were getting sore and I wanted to get a bike ride in, so I decided to get to the halfway point and quit. Hauled all the stuff to the yard waste site.

Took the bike to Lake Phalen again, but rode all the way around the lake this time. 10 miles 1 hr 10 min roundtrip. I like Lake Phalen because it is a lake for the people, not just for the few who can afford lake property like the lake I live near. Although, there are some pretty gorgeous houses across the street from the lake. Anyway Phalen has separate walking and biking paths, so it annoys me when people are walking on the bike lane. And people with dogs on long leashes walking on the bike path suck worse. (I get to say that because I have a dog and he is held near me if people or bikers go past.) And people on ebikes going 25mph on the bike path suck the most because they don't slow down when passing or when pedestrians are around. Instead of using the epower to get up hills, they're treating the bikes as motorcycles. I think if you're going to ride your ebike that way, you need to be on the street, not endangering lives. Especially when the street speed limit is 25mph. And what's the point of riding them that way? People aren't getting any exercise from it and they're going as fast as a car, so they're not seeing anything any better. I can just imagine these same people telling their doctor they 'ride' their bike 25 miles every day, as though they got some exercise. They may as well drive their car and stick their head out the window like a dog.