May first is a major holiday in most parts of the world, somewhat akin to our Labor Day in September. Our May First dawned with about three inches of snow on the ground seriously interrupting a number of local events, none of which had anything to do with the real May Day. I’m reminded of a May 1st in Pamplona, Spain where a demonstration turned into a riot causing me (and the shop owner) to take refuge in a nearby building. Someday I’ll need to get my journal out and post the story of that day.
Never-the-less, May Day here dawned cold and white. I spent the day doing some work, catching up on blogs and email, and then upgrading the blog software on all the blogs on my server. I then made a short video about the upgraded blogging software and sent everyone who has a blog on my server an email with a link to the video. A couple of people have already used the new software and seem to have survived. It is actually a very nice upgrade and I like the new features. However, the software has gotten so sophisticated that I can no longer easily modify the code to fit my taste. There’s one really urgent change I want to make and I haven’t yet found the place to make the change!
By early afternoon the sun was out and the snow was gone giving the grass a small drink of water. Today will be a nice, sunny, chilly day … more like the first day of May should be.
Last Sunday we took a drive looking for possible pictures. It was a nice drive through gray farmland and hills. The canyon I wanted to drive through was closed by snow and fallen trees about half-way through so we turned around and took the long way home. Up to that point the only wildlife had been one frightened doe. Driving back towards Inkom, Idaho on the west side of the valley, we came across a farmer’s field being flooded by irrigation water where a huge flock of fairly large birds had gathered. Looking out into the field, I spotted this group of black birds with one white bird. While the white bird may have been a pigeon, I don’t think so as the bird is far too big for that. And that was our wildlife for the Sunday drive. In a couple of weeks everything here will be green. The trees will be in bloom. Flowers (particularly wild flowers) will make their appearance, and another Sunday drive will be in order.