Chickadee checkoff

Air temperature 48 F, patchy fog, wind near calm. I'm a wimp, so any bike ride will have to wait for some more degrees out there. Meanwhile, I'm sure there is Someone Wrong on the Internet and I have set them right.

Floral amusement

The asters and chicory are settling into their annual defiance of blooming below mower blade height. Both plants prefer to reach 3' or so . . .

Sunday roadkill report

One dead raccoon at about 4.5 miles into my ride. Flat patch of fur with chipmunk stripes about 10 miles in. Numerous woolly-bear caterpillars, both the quick and the dead. Aged porcupine corpses maintain their slow collapse into piles of quills.

Not-roadkill, 8 or 10 geese visible on my return run by the cemetery pond. There may have been others hidden. And as I climbed the next hill, heard a clamor of honking behind me. Don't know if that was arrival or departure.

Got out on the bike, cool morning so started too late for a longer ride. Upriver, inland to the road through the bog, home. More leaves down in the bog, still only a few trees changing in the uplands. Did not die.

15.35 miles, 1:24:03