We have a couple of announcements of fund raisers for Kingdom Animal Shelter in St. Johnsbury Center.  As you know, it takes a fair amount of money and volunteer help to keep a shelter like this operating, so fund-raising has to be on-going.  Helen Morrison has been a volunteer for many years at the shelter, and lets me know when activities are planned.  Here are two coming soon; click to make them larger.

We are enjoying lovely spring weather today.  It has been in the 50s - might have gone a little higher for a short time - and water is running in ditches and brooks.  The snow pack is settling and birds are singing.  Everybody's happy!  

Fred and I took a walk along West Shore Road towards Brickett's Crossing Road and it was very nice.  The road isn't muddy at all - wet in spots, but no mud holes.  So far we've been really fortunate.  I took a couple of pictures of the road - which only people living on back roads will appreciate, probably.  Roads like this in April make us very happy!  You can see some other walkers down the road from us.  Quite a lot of auto traffic, too.  People like getting out on a nice day like this, especially when the weather has been so nasty.

Here is a picture taken in 2004 of this same section of road that shows what mud season can be like.  This was a big hole where the culvert had washed out under the road - the same culvert shown in the middle picture where the big hole in the snowbank is.  We're looking at it from two different directions, but it is the same culvert.  It was replaced that year and has since been ok.  But you can see there's a big difference in the road condition.  Someone stuck a log in the hole to keep drivers from hitting it and damaging their vehicles.  Mud season on our road so far has been just another sign of spring, and no big headache.  We hope we can keep it that way.