Pictured above is about 1/20th of the pruning debris I produced during 6 hours of working in the yard. I removed 100s of saplings and cut down a few 20-foot-tall trees. The prior owner of our property let the forest grow wild for several decades, and we are hoping to introduce a little more diversity to the ecosystem. I was quite exhausted by the end of the day, but also 3.1 pounds lighter at my next morning weigh-in. Normally, I prefer to chip away at such large undertakings, but this is the first dry day in several and I will be busy for the next few. The work is much easier before the trees have had a chance to leaf out which is just about to start.

Several months ago, I helped construct stands to support a number of photo cutout boards that are going to be used for the Concord 250th Celebration this weekend. Today, I completed the project with my partner. We cut out the face openings and finished drilling the mounting holes for each of the four boards, which feature Revolutionary War characters.

Next weekend, the 250th anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War will be celebrated in Concord and Lexington. A drone light show will be one of the significant events. It will happen over the Concord Carlisle High School baseball fields. I was asked by the Concord Bridge, our local newspaper, to capture an aerial image of the high school grounds so they can illustrate where spectators should gather to get the best view of the show.

During the last few days, we have seen increasing numbers of Blue Heron returning to fish in the Sudbury River. This evening at dusk, this beauty took up a perch to survey the menu. I am surprised by the image quality given it was shot with an ISO of 51,200. In years past, such a photo would have been unusable but now using the latest noise-reduction software it is quite acceptable.

Earlier in the day, Kyle stopped in to spend time with his mother on her birthday weekend. Nico was here as well and the four of us watched the Liverpool game. I was reminded that this family gathering was made possible by the new couch. I was back on the soccer pitch later in the afternoon for the first time since the fall season ended. All the hiking in New Zealand and the ten pounds I left there certainly helped my game. Our league match scheduled for the morning was canceled due to weather so we played a 6v6 intra-squad scrimmage.

Jeanine celebrated her 62nd birthday today. It was the first time in her life that this auspicious occasion found her in the presence of snow. We enjoyed breakfast at the Colonial Inn with friends and Nico before attending the raising of Concord’s new and substantially larger American flag.

Later in the afternoon, we caught up with our good friends Dave and Sarah before a roaring fire, the perfect antidote for the unseasonably cold weather.

Jeanine has been known to stretch out her birthday celebration for days if not weeks. This year, she decided to cram it all into one day.

We joined Maya, Nico, Jeanine’s friend Stephane, and her son Ben for drinks and appetizers at the Mad Monkfish in Cambridge before walking over to the Havana Club where we hit the dance floor for Bachata and Salsa dancing.

Ending a tumultuous week on Wall Street, temperatures also dropped, leading to an uncharacteristically late snow here in Concord. Fortunately, I completed a third day of yardwork before the weather arrived.

When we purchased a bistro table base for our patio, I fashioned an octagonal piece of bluestone (salvaged from the original house) for a top. Unfortunately, it was a bit too small and not uniformly thick or particularly flat. To address this, I ordered a circular granite top that arrived today. I still need to affix it to the base but wanted to do a test placement first.

For the first time in days, the sun was out and it was not raining. Jeanine and I took advantage of the weather to do some spring yard work. Among other tasks, I removed the straw waddles that were in place to prevent soil erosion while our plantings took root. Jeanine said that our neighbors might be interested in reusing these. Let’s just say I was a bit skeptical. Even more so when I explained how hard they would be to transport. They are bulky and heavy, especially when wet. Our neighbor suggested draping them over the roof of his car. It is an idea I would have never considered but it certainly proved effective as shown in this photo from one of our security cameras.

My first introduction to Patricia was during the excavation phase of our house-building project. She introduced herself and asked if she could take some of the clay that was abundant in the mounds of excavated earth. I told her she was welcome to as much as she wanted.

Today she arrived on our doorstep with a beautiful housewarming gift that she had crafted in her ceramic studio. She had hoped to use the clay harvested from our property but explained that the resulting plates were too fragile.

We were thrilled with the gift which will find a prominent place for display in our home.

The couch evaluation committee convened this evening and unanimously approved our new sectional before enjoying a lovely all-family prepared dinner.

It has been several months since we have all been on the same continent, and we were thrilled to catch up with the kids and to share tales of our adventure with them.

I spent some time today curating photos from our New Zealand and Australia trip. My goal is to reduce the keepers to less than a thousand. I am almost there having deleted more than three times that many. I also reviewed some of the short videos I made. I decided to post this one because a picture alone did not do justice to these beautiful falls in the Milford Sound.

Based on my experiences over the last decade, I can predict with some certainty that I will pass a kidney stone whenever I am on a flight that lasts for more than a few hours. I cannot explain why but there is no longer any arguing with the data. I passed the pictured stones after our flight to New Zealand and started passing another after the flight to Australia (still struggling with that one). I apologize for posting on this topic but this blog, now almost twenty years old, also serves as something of a medical history.

On a less gruesome note, I received a request from the Marketing & Communications Director at the Greater Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce in Gloucester seeking permission to use three of my photos in the Greater Cape Ann Guide & Directory for 2025. A sample of last year’s guide can be seen here: https://issuu.com/bostonguide/docs/cacc_2024_issuu?fr=sZTUyMTY2MDI3MDg. She found the photos with a Google search that landed her on my website.

I was happy to submit my photos and look forward to seeing them in print later this year.

While we were in New Zealand, my sister shared this photo of herself with Joe Canelos. He is the son of my cousin Alex (son of my mother’s brother). They met by chance at the Hudson Valley Tango Festival.  Joe has been taking Latin dancing classes with my mother’s former tango instructors and somehow Alissa made the connection.

It turns out that Joe is a budding professional furniture maker. Between my brother, Joe, and I, that makes three woodworkers on the branches of the Canelos family tree. Joe’s website can be found here.

While we were away, the new sectional couch we ordered last year finally arrived. Jeanine and I are both pleased with the new piece and believe it will address the key issue raised by the kids (the ability to sprawl out the way they did on the sectional we owned during their childhood. Nico has already tested it and issued a thumbs-up. Hopefully, Kyle and Maya will reach the same verdict.

Now we need to sell the 1-year-old sofa it is replacing (pictured in the foreground). For reasons that I am unable to ascertain, my Facebook Marketplace account has been suspended for something like the 6th time with no reason provided and a cumbersome process to reinstate. I have listed the sofa on Craigslist and will ask Jeanine to post it on her FB account as well. Reach out if you know someone looking for a like-new modern sofa for half the original price.