April's End
The poet T. S. Eliot opened his long poem, The Wasteland, with these memorable lines: "April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain." I've always considered February to be the cruelest month, but this year April vied for that honor, with a long strings of cool, cloudy, snowy, rainy, windy days. Actually, another line by T. S. Eliot comes to mind, this time from the poem 'East Coker' in The Four Quartets: "In my beginning is my end." April's end is equal to its beginning. The temperature is the same on the last day as it was at the start of the month. The rain is the same, verging on snow. The paucity of insects is the same. But the plants have done all right, blooming and leafing out, carrying on throughout the cool weather, with or without the needed troops of pollinators. For instance, the plum blossoms which opened earlier this week have only known temperatures in the 30s and 40s. The few times I checked on them, their were no bees (usually there are audible swarms), only a few Winter Ants and cold-hardy Maggot Flies. So good riddance to April and onward to May.
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