The End of Tapping Weekend
March 30th through April 1st   
The maples are starting to bud.  The 2012 tapping season is over.  Some spiles were pulled and buckets gathered to be washed and put away for next year.
We arrived at the lake late Friday afternoon.  There was snow.  Not a lot, but enough to remind us not to get used to Spring this early.
The final buckets came in from the woods Saturday afternoon.
Having run out of buckets to be cleaned in under 2 hours, the washers began yelling for more.
A celebratory ham was enjoyed shortly afterward.
All the pails were cleaned and stacked a long while later. Afterward, no washer yelled for more.
Despite such a meager amount of rain, the stream flowing into the lake from the northeastern corner continues to flow. Huzzah!
The total after Friday's snow and Saturday's light drizzle was 0.2 inches.  We need more.
The weekend's weather was not kind to snowmen.  It never did get warm but it did get just south of cold.
The snow seems to have had little effect on the plants pushing up from the floor of the local woods.
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It would have been nice to ski up all that flat on Sunday.  Sure it was a bit cool and there was more than 7 drops of rain, but look at that flatness.  Lake Lucerne spent all day Sunday unperturbed by boat hull, ski or foot.  **sigh**  I was warned earlier in the week not to put the boat in for the season because a cold night might crack the lower unit.  There was some ambiguity whether he was refering to the boats motor or the skier.  Either way, it seemed like a rather unpleasant event.  When we built small pier extensions to cope with the low water, they were not made to last more than a few seasons because the water would come back before then, right?  Wrong.  Repairing the "extendo" piers took an hour before they were put into the lake.  The repairs should last a season or two.  More than enough time for the lake to come back.

-Nemo continues to rain dance, not ski.