April…It is a new world in the making on these old, old hills. It’s the sights and sounds and smells of spring creeping over the land. It’s a time when folks want to get their feet on the ground and their hands in the soil.
April is service trees starring the high mountain forests with their creamy white bloom.
It’s ferns uncurling their fiddleheads in woodsy places where anemones and bloodroot grow.
It’s the tops of the maples kindling their fires.
It’s spring beauties and trout lilies and bluets.
It’s violets blooming beside a brook and trilliums sprinkling the forest floor with clusters of pink and yellow and white.
It’s the green reach toward the sun and daffodils making the day golden.
April is the smell of fresh turned earth and the pungent odor of wild onions.
It’s combed fields pregnant with the seed of life.
It’s the mating season for earth and sky.
It’s she-rain come down from the clouds to cleanse the earth.
It’s clouds towing their shadows over the hills.
It’s the stars still glittering with winter’s brilliance.
April is a robin chattering and scolding and whistling in the dawn.
It’s a field lark darting out of the woods and a crow speaking huskily from the edge of a field.
It’s a song sparrow jingling his sunny silver in a roadside pocket.
It’s a mourning dove, walking pigeon-like about a freshly raked patch of earth and pecking away in search of food.
It’s a male grouse strutting before his lady-love, his tail feathers spread and held erect and his neck feathers ruffled.
It’s a woodchuck, careless at last of sun and shadow, wandering from his hole to feast upon the greening things.
April is a fisherman wading in a stream with a fly-rod.
It’s a hills-man walking behind his plow.
It’s a country woman gathering a mess of wild greens.
It’s a brook singing a new song.
It’s a woodpecker drumming on a dead tree.
It’s a hound dog proclaiming his challenge to the mysteries of the night.
It’s a horse nibbling away in a meadow green with spring new-come.
It’s a rooster raisings his wings in the sunlight and uttering his clarion call.
It’s chickens scratching in the yard for worms.
It’s peepers piping in the afternoon and butterflies on the wing.
It’s rabbits scampering in the moonlight.
It is a time of rising sap and swelling buds, of blossom and new leaf.
April…