I'll try to answer the accumulated questions in order:
1. The Amsterdam is great, and my wife and I both love it. There haven't been any fights over it yet, but that time could come. I had a front wheel built with a Sturmey-Archer X-FDD drum brake dynohub. I'll write the review as soon as I get a light hooked up again (the stock light went away in favor of a basket) but for now we're enjoying the good life with brakes on both wheels.
2. Yes, I've been planting stuff, some of it sneezy but most of it not. I currently have 3 gardens, a yard full of perennials and a bunch of container plants. Oh, and I'm working on becoming a master gardener and master composter volunteer. And I'm volunteering at the community garden. More than my thumb has turned green.
Here's the community garden in mid-April:
From the same spot today:
And from another angle today:
This space is 20 feet square and contains 2 kinds of cabbage, broccoli, peas, garlic, 2 kinds of onions (red and yellow), swiss chard, beets, turnips, radishes, lettuce (which immediately went to seed when it got hot), corn, tomatoes, tomatillias, parsnips, carrots, edamame, 3 kinds of green beans, summer squash and spaghetti squash. I grow da herb too, mon: borage, dill fennel, lovage, parsley and cilantro. Plus a couple of daylillies, a hollyhock, poppies, lupines, sunflowers, coneflowers and vetch.
I have a garden at my folks' house in the country too, with more onions, beans and corn, plus black-eyed peas, acorn squash, watermelon, Noir des Carmes melons strawberries and buckwheat (mmmmmmm...pancakes.)
I'm growing some lettuce and a few tomatoes at home.
Here's my pickup bike in gardening action:
Cabbage plants seeded on January 15 (ready for planting back on April 15):
Hard to believe these are about 2 feet across now (in the foreground of the photo above):
3. Nope, no more snow. See?
Before:
After:
(Same street, different blocks.)
4. Therefore, it is no longer winter in 'Sconsin, it's our only other season—Road Construction:
Madison's West Beltline is being resurfaced. Makes me glad I ride. Taken from the Southwest bike path bridge at Hammersley Road.
Pacific Cycle's World Headquarters, background left. That's where all those Schwinns, GTs and Mongeese come from.
