Friday fun

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. There will be some summer-like weather in the Twin Cities this weekend. My favorite way to beat the heat is to stay inside and read a book. There are zillions of books in the St. Paul libraries. If you don’t want to go to the library you can borrow electronic books to read on your computer, iPad, Phone, or Kindle. They have audiobooks too.

My daughter and I are keeping track of how many books we read in 2024. We often recommend books to each other. I’ll complete my 55th book for the year this weekend. I am not including the “how to” books and cookbooks I have borrowed from the library this year.

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. My cone flowers and lilies tell me that we have reached the halfway mark for the summer of 2024. We have about eight weeks of summer left here in the bold north. Early forecasts predict a colder and snowier winter for the winter of 2024-25.

Now is the perfect time to have your old furnace replaced and to consider more insulation and maybe even a new window or two. Get the snow blower tuned-up and send the winter coats to the dry cleaners.

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. Many years ago my mother gave me half a dozen primrose plants. They didn’t do much at first but after a few years, I had so many I was pulling them out or digging them out and giving them away. I have way more than what she gave me and over the years they have moved further away from the shade of the house.

My primroses are a reminder of my mother and her love of gardening and of primroses. She passed away a few years ago and the primroses remind me of the many conversations we had about gardening and of the time she caught me pulling them out like weeds.

Primroses are native to many places in the Northern Hemisphere. They prefer climate zone 5, but survived just fine in zone 4. We have been upgraded in the Twin Cities to zone 5b. The leaves and flowers of the primrose plant have medicinal properties but I wouldn’t eat them.

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun.  I recently went to the local garden center to buy more herbs. I grow them in the house all winter and outside in the summer.  When I got up to the register to pay for my herbs, I told the clerk that my basket held “parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.  I thought maybe I would get a smile or something but it was clear that she did not get my reference to “Scarborough Fair” by Simon and Garfunkle.

After that, I had the song in my head all the way home. I think the person who rang up my order was in her late teens. I am a few decades older than that. I don’t consider myself old but I am definitely not young. I was in grade school when Scarborough Fair was released.

 

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. I really enjoy biking and am considering an electric bike this year. I read about tax incentives for electric bikes. Seems to me there should be tax incentives for bikes that are powered by humans instead of batteries but what do I know.

Minnesota is offering rebates on electric bikes but with a twist.  A person needs to get a rebate certificate before buying the bike to get the rebate. There is an application process through the Minnesota Department of Revenue.

The website and only place to apply for a rebate certificate opened and crashed and apparently died on June 5th, 2024 (R.I.P) moments after it went online. (or did it ever even go live?) We don’t know when or how applications for rebates will be available.

 

I am not a fan of rebates or Minnesota government websites. I can’t help but wonder what is going to happen to the 2 million dollars allocated for the electric bike rebate program. Will the funds be used to build a better website?

On May 25th of this year I road in the Med-City Meander in Rochester Minnesota. I rode 30+ miles on my old-school manual bike.