April’s almost done

We collected our CSA share today. It contained:

• Winter Density Lettuce
• Pirat Lettuce
• Red Russian Kale
• Cilantro
• Pea Shoots 
• Sunflower Baby Greens
• Watercress

On our drive through the countryside, we saw a pair of tundra swans in a cornfield; lots of ditches full of water; several residual patches of snow(?); a flock or more of very small waterfowl resting on a small pond; a cooper’s(?) hawk; clouds that look more summery than wintery; several scattered rain showers.

a red-winged blackbird is back at the feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

None of the fields we drove past looked anywhere near dry enough to be worked. Next week is forecast to be mostly dry and partly sunny. Maybe by the end of the first week in May the ground will have dried enough. Maybe by then we’ll get some yard chores done with our own tractor. Meanwhile, I can walk the grounds and pick up sticks, not the kids’ game, the grown-up version, collecting downed branches and throwing them onto the burn pit embers. I believe the technical term may be “decluttering.” 

April is a coquettish month, flirting and teasing instead of sharing real warmth. Every year I get sucked in. Every year, by mid-May, I’ve begun to enjoy Spring, soon to become Summer. It could be a variation on the folk saying “We get too soon old and too late smart.” “We get too soon took and too late warm.” 

April

James Schuyler - 1923-1991

The morning sky is clouding up
and what is that tree,
dressed up in white? The fruit
tree, French pear. Sulphur-
yellow bees stud the forsythia
canes leaning down into the transfer
across the park. And trees in
skimpy flower bud suggest
the uses of paint thinner, so
fine the net they cast upon
the wind. Cross-pollination
is the order of the fragrant day.
That was yesterday: today is May,
not April and the magnolias
open their goblets up and
an unseen precipitation
fills them. A gray day in May.

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