LEEKS & BIRDS: “I just wanted to add a little bit more to the spring fever,” Gordon Sherk called to tell us on Monday.

“Me and David Anderson went out and picked leeks over the weekend. They are yummy, and they are hot,” he reports, adding they are almost tall enough to peek through the leaves on the ground.

“We’re going to have leek and potato soup today,” he said. “That’s spring tonic.”

In Ridgway, Jim Delong saw two purple martins at his bird feeder on Tuesday.

Jim explained the birds are “very seasonal” and come out in the spring.

On Wednesday, James Lowe of Lewis Run dropped a line to say, “Today, Feb. 28, I spotted a pair of killdeer in our front lawn.

“They have raised their families there for the last four years. This is the earliest time they have returned.”

Just under three weeks until the calendar agrees with the activity outside.

SO LONG: Frances Wolfe Haight sent a poem she wrote in memory of Pastor Craig Smith.

Pastor Smith was the minister of the Mount Jewett and Hazel Hurst United Methodist churches. He passed away Feb. 12 at the age of 79.

“So Long, Pastor”

Our preacher has now left this earth,

And gone to see the world above,

With God, he will have a good visit

And express his faithful love.

Then God will say, “Well done.”

And reward his many good deeds,

And the preacher will be so happy

To have met so many needs.

We will miss him here on earth,

He was surely a man of God,

And we know his love was from his faith

While he walked this earthly sod.

We won’t say goodbye to Pastor Craig,

We know he was ready to go,

And we look forward to our reunion

When we also leave this earth below.

RADIO: It was 125 years ago on March 1, 1893, that many learned about possibility of one piece of modern technology.

The Associated Press reports, “In 1893, inventor Nikola Tesla first publicly demonstrated radio during a meeting of the National Electric Light Association in St. Louis by transmitting electromagnetic energy without wires.”