WEATHER: LIVE SIJO FLOW:

Boil on, oh harvest of spring. Buds push open in my valley inexorably moving towards ending your mountain top winter, But they are unable to erase the blessing of The Gift Run. ---shc, New York State

Clouds of dust drift out to the ocean ice from roads once covered with snow, Streets north south I see nothing and east west no children play today. Spring and it's 10 below and I hope the fuse on my TV don't blow. ---cap, western Alaska

WIND AND SAP RUNS. Merton Pike, of the Pike farm south of Stowe village, stopped in yesterday for his annual visit. Well into his nineties now, he's a seasoned sugarmaker from the decades he sugared with buckets on the hillside across Route 100 from the Pike dairy farm. He said, "I didn't know if you'd be boiling today. At my place the wind isn't right."

ANNE LAMOTT'S GOLDFISH, Phil, is not the only one with a bowel obstruction. Ben walked in after a break and asked, "How did you get the filter press working again?" "I gave it an enema," says Lew.