And soon that pink froth will be filling the four basins of the Otter Fountain, clogging and making it inoperable. Well, so it goes, and this too will pass.

The Japanese take the cherry blossoming very seriously. To them it is not the ephemeral thing it is to me. But the many blossoms are indeed pretty. Yet when it rains, as it has for the past three days without a pause, the boughs dip low, burdened with rainwater, and I, forewarned each year as to what will happen, repeatedly walk into the same lowered bough and get drenched.

VP Cheney, who shoots pheasants and friends, is also a trout fly fisher from Wyoming. Here he tells the President about a big brown trout that he landed on a recent guided boat trip. "That's nothing," the President responds. "I caught one this big" gestures widely "and on a dry fly."

George Bush tells Dick Cheney how much classified CIA information to release to the press. (Tongue-in-cheek, of course, but the real question is, Whose tongue and whose cheek?)

I think we will reuse this wonderful picture for the coming week in order to boost our readership and to furnish us with more raw material for our quips. Stay tuned, or bookmarked, or whatever.

Apple blossoms were a little slow in arriving this year, but here they are, at last. This is Shizuka, a Japanese hybrid

In my tiny orchard--actually, it is my wife's, but I will take full credit, especially when it is time to harvest the crop, six months from now--there are only two apple trees. The other one is a HoneyCrisp. Both are delicious, but not Delicious. Dig?

This year we have added, at my urging, a peach tree. It is barely rooted and, so far, there are no clearly recognizable leaf buds. But just wait. It's crop is two years off, maybe three. But I can almost taste them now.

The big trout continue to hit slowly, as they have all winter long. And I almost dread the coming hatchery plant of rainbows that will probably run 7-9 or 10 inches. These beautiful, fat, bright holdover trout run 12-17 inches, invariably. And they compare well with steelhead--at least with the hatchery steelhead. Often they show similar fighting characteristics and will run, turn over on their sides, recover momentarily, and be off on their next run, with a jump or two at the end and middle of it.

Of course they are fighting for their lives. I try to reward them, or compensate them, by gently letting them go. And I am convinced that nearly all of them recover and will live.

A couple of weeks ago, they had sexually matured and would have spawned, had there been any inlet stream with gravels and lots of dissolved oxygen. But there wasn't. Now they are either shedding or absorbing their eggs and milt. This is hard on them physically. But the fish the past couple of weeks look healthy and have fought well.

Another sunset on my favorite lake

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What's in a word? Well, often, a lot. For instance, wood ducks (see left column) have been aptly described as "shy." I agree. And they are easily spooked. I know because I often spook them just by being present at what I think of as a reasonable distance.

Now, the green-winged teal (of which we have none at Lake Ketchum, and only once or twice have I glimpsed one here) was described by Champion Fly Tyer Paul Schmookler as "secretive." I agree entirely. It is the right word, and perhaps you may have to observe these ducks fairly often to recognize their behavior pattern: they don't want to be anywhere near you (or me) and will do anything to maintain an excessive (to me, that is) distance.

Seattle's Montlake Bay at the edge of the UW campus has all all three variety of teal--cinnamon, blue-winged, and green-winged--the first two not excessively shy, that is, secretive. Ah, but the green-winged are hard to even glimpse, and you will need strong binoculars even to detect them, there, off at the edge of the marsh. And the binoculars will be necessary to identify their distinguishing marks and to glimpse the close harmony of the green and rust on the heads of the males.

I just realized how much I miss them, and the inherent difficulties of getting to know them a little. if at all.