“April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.”

Quoting T.S. Eliot's Wasteland is a risky way to start a newspaper column, but the weather this past week reminded me of the “April is the cruelest month...” line, deeply etched as I saw last Wednesday evening's overdue rains (and hail) first knock the white blooms from my apple trees, then the weekend's hard freeze drop-kick nearly everything in leaf and bloom back to somewhere resembling a grim, late week in February.

Ah, well. We'd had plentiful apples, bountiful blueberries, succulent grapes, raspberries, and blackberries, all the fruit of a successful Springtime season, for several recent Tennessee summers in a row. To lose our budding apples, or the other seasonal fruit, is not a great surprise. Just a passing disappointment.

By the second week of April I usually have a hummingbird feeder or two up and waiting for the first arrivals from Central America and Mexico. Perhaps they will be on schedule, only to find little or nothing in full bloom, for ornamentals were hit every bit as hard as apples and grapes. I note on the calender from 2006 that my first hummingbirds arrived as early as April 12, and they are almost always here by tax time on April 15. We'll see if they had an early warning system this year and show up a bit later.

The big difference in bird watching and attracting for me this summer will be the addition of two, twelve-unit purple martin houses, one put up next to my driveway and the other across the road from my garage at the edge of a hayfield. Martins are a joy to watch (being in the graceful swallow family) and eat a world of insects, including mosquitoes, so I am hoping they find me this first year that I've had up the proper houses.

My good friend Ruth Dallas, who lived in the Frog Pond community for many years, has moved to Lebanon, and graciously offered me two of the martin houses she'd kept up at her country home for years. I believe I had a “scout” show up about two weeks ago, and I am very hopeful that I will get a healthy martin population this very first year that I am providing them with housing.

Both mosquitoes and flies are a real nuisance out in the country, with many cattle, goats and horses on the farms nearby. Since a single martin is famed for eating as many as 400 flies in one day, a colony of 24 martin families could deal with about two million flies in a month. I welcome the martins, and certainly won't miss the flies!

Putting out black oil sunflower seed year-round keeps beautiful and colorful birds coming to my feeders through all four seasons. Providing several bluebird houses keeps these wonderful birds around as well, and I clean them out late in the winter, and then monitor the contents to make sure brown headed cow birds haven't laid eggs in the bluebird nests, as they are wont to do.

With rain in the forecast for mid-week, perhaps we still have some Spring-like weather to look forward to. Going from Winter to Summer without a healthy dose of Spring is a bitter pill to swallow. Perhaps ‘tis better to close with another poem, and hope for the best:

 

“The Night is mother of the Day,

The Winter of the Spring,

and ever upon old Decay

The greenest mosses cling.”

 

-John Greenleaf

Whittier 1807-1892