What the Dickens, It's April!

"Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go;

it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow."

Alice M. Swaim

I found these brave fools on April 1st.

"Yesterday the twig was brown and bare;

To-day the glint of green is there;

Tomorrow will be leaflets spare ..."

L.H. Bailey

This tree stands in in a clearing that overlooks Swayze Falls

in the Short Hills Provincial Park.

Last week

I was happy to see some green poking through the pine needles on the ground.

Ecstatic, actually.

"First a howling blizzard woke us,

Then the rain came down to soak us,

And now before the eye can focus,

Crocus."

 

Lilja Rogers

This poem always makes me laugh.

How April!

"Spring, slattern of seasons

you have soggy legs

and a muddy petticoat

drowsy

is your hair your

eyes are sticky with

dream and you have a sloppy body from

 

being brought to bed of crocuses

when you sing in your whisky voice

the grass rises on the head of the earth

and all the trees are put on edge

...

E. E. Cummings,

Spring Onmipotent Goddess Thou

These guys and gals were having a great time last week.

Full of chicken lust

they chased each other around in the muddy April ditch.

 

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,

it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,

it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,

it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,

it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,

we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."



- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities




Dickens' words could very well have applied to April,

it is such a month of contrasts, although I must say

this week the weather has seemed more worst of times than best.
 

Last year we had a dreadful calamity

 when an April storm blew the purple martin house down

 and killed one of the birds.


 Today is mid month and it has been cold, wet and windy

for at least a hundred years

and I heard the TV weather forecaster use the 'f' word tonight,

FLURRIES.

:(

Jeesh. 


Hurry up, May!





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