Mrs. Teabody Chides Temperamental April

It's past mid-April but here I sit on this "spring" morning in my flannel pajamas and wooly socks sipping on a hot cuppa Yorkshire Gold as if it's the dead of winter.  Any chance of sitting inside the secret garden for breakfast went straight out the window when I read 31 on the thermostat. Today's afternoon plan was to prune and treat roses because the forsythia is in full flower  but what does April have in mind?  Starting out at a balmy 31 degrees at 5:00 A.M., who's to say? April is a moody and unpredictable friend. One day she is sunny and generous, and the very next day she can  decide to drop an errant snowstorm into the path of one's best-laid plans as she did just a few days ago.

Robert Frost knew all about April as he writes in Two Tramps in Mud Time:

You know how it is with an April day

When the sun is out and the wind is still,

You’re one month on in the middle of May.

But if you so much as dare to speak,

A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,

A wind comes off a frozen peak,

And you’re two months back in the middle of March.

So we have been warned about April's temperament; we know what she's like and yet we still allow ourselves to get caught up in her drama. For some of us it's for her good days; for others it's for the extremes regardless of how THAT manifests itself.

"S'posed to get up in the eighties Friday, " said Laura at the bank last Tuesday when I wore my winter coat to cross the street to make a deposit. Turned out that Laura was right and Saturday would be so warm that everyone was outside in shirtsleeves and, yes, I saw folks on lawn mowers. . .  I spent Saturday GETTING STARTED on the shed--that hell drawer* for larger objects: cardboard boxes wanting to be knocked down for recycling, enough Christmas decorations for a small town, all the dead plants which did not understand they had been placed there for hopeful wintering over. Sadly even more winter devastation was to be discovered: cannas and elephants turned to absolute mush. Ah the nature of Nature. But who wasn't happy to have that sweet warm sunny Saturday? Who didn't like going into the shower feeling dirty and accomplished? Thanks for Saturday, April! You rock! 

Friday, April 13 at 4:30 P.M.

Sunday broke cloudy, overcast  and I dressed for brunch with friends in a spring outfit, tossed on my spring raincoat, walked out the door knowing we'd see pink trees along the route but AWARE of the nip in the wind and noting the fast-paced clouds. By the end of the day the temperature had dropped FIFTY degrees. FIFTY.  Made for beautiful forsythia of course, but the magnolias shivered in their lack of preparedness. During the night it rained three inches.

Forsythias with double warning

Yesterday we drove to Chambersburg under leaden skies that spat and withheld, spat and withheld-- little heavenly holes opening up to reveal the sun for fleeting moments. We looked at greengreengreen fields and lawns everywhere, saw stream after stream swollen up over their banks, saw redbud just on the brink of bloom, daffodils and hyacinths in little patches and pale pink trees almost too delicate to be outside in such chilly weather. Persephone has made her annual return to the earth and has marked it by the flowering of the meadows and the sudden growth of the new grain. But she's wearing a coat. One bad decision  to chew some pomegranate seeds doesn't mean she's clueless.

Most days a person likes to have a grasp of events, a sense of what's going to happen next but would anyone choose a life devoid of surprises? Who doesn't like to see the beloved face of a too-long-absent friend in the doorway, unannounced? Who would be churlish enough not to smile to find a fistful of balloons tethered to the car door handle? Who isn't awe-struck to see forsythia in full throttle yellow even though it's only 31 degrees?

What will unpredictable April bring? Mrs. Teabody eagerly awaits. You should, too.

*  a hell drawer is the catchall drawer no one opens in polite company