We’ve had some beautiful warm days lately, soon to be followed by the traditional pre-Easter hard freeze. It looks like our younger sarvis will bloom just in time for the freeze. There’s lots of forsythia in bloom, along with those awful Bradford pears, but there are some natives coming along, too. I think some of the ramps we planted last year are poking up, and I’m almost certain I saw a Sweet Betsy or two ready to bloom up in Tennessee. I still haven’t seen a Mourning Cloak, but I’ve seen lots of Blue Hairstreaks flying around, both here and in Tennessee. We saw the brown bat at dusk the other night, which is the first time we’ve seen him this spring.
Trout season comes in this Saturday, and it may be the last opening day, as there’s a proposal on the table to eliminate trout season statewide. Previously, the regulation was that when the river was open, it was illegal to fish the mouths of the closed creeks. It seems now that the authorities have decided that there really isn’t any significant fishing pressure in the winter, so all the streams might as well be open year-round. With the river open all year round, opening day isn’t what it used to be. In the old days, everyone had a party the night before opening day, with lots of hopeful fishermen sleeping on the floor.
Turkey came in last Saturday. Remember that if you’re out in the woods and hear gobbles, yelps, crow calls, owl calls or other slightly bogus sounding calls, that you may well be hearing a turkey hunter. They generally wear full camo and sit with their backs against a tree, so they aren’t easy to spot. Obviously, they don’t like to be disturbed. Apparently, the turkey are fully in the rut, as I’ve talked to several people who have called in a bird.
In restaurant news, the Tellico Grains Bakery is now serving their famous “Saturday only” pizza every day (Tuesday – Saturday). They tell me that they have a little more room in back now, and that helps them manage the oven for both bread and pizza. The story previously was that they had to run the oven too high for pizza to bake bread, so they only made the pizza on Saturday. The menu still says the pizza is only served on Saturday, so it must be a pretty recent change.