Having now lived the majority of my life in New England, I’ve come to associate April Fool’s Day with twenty plus inches of heavy wet snow. Not because that is the inevitable result on April First but because it is the ironic result that would best capture the spirit of this odd “holiday.”
Well this year’s edition is a less dramatic but more typical version with cold rain and cool refreshing air that I find suits my mood today. I wandered out of the living room onto the lower balcony and breathed in that freshness and approved of the weather and the day and surveyed the soggy battered appearance of the “estate.” The forest is full of dead leaves and sodden moss. The fields are covered in brown grass and sodden moss. Here and there a few daffodils have blossomed. The pond is swollen with the rain and the mallards are nowhere in sight. Maybe ducks are just as sensible as I am and don’t like to get wet. Maybe they’re holed up in an old coyote den waiting out the rain. Naturalists would deny such a thing but I like to think that the animals that inhabit my habitat share in my virtues and vices. Why shouldn’t the ducks crave warmth and eschew getting wet? Very possibly the drake is often scolded by the duchess for forgetting to take out the trash on time and neglecting to repair the flushometer in the spare upstairs bathroom in a timely manner. To me all these things seem possible and in some way fitting. Although I somewhat doubt that the ducks have a spare upstairs bathroom. Probably just the one.
April First is a pivot point. For me it is the essential beginning of spring. Even the rare April First blizzard is a rearguard sally during winter’s final retreat into history. From now on it will be yard work to repair the ravages of winter and take advantage of the short growing season to grow the vegetables and flowers that we hope to produce. And it’s the signal for outdoor activities of all sorts; more walks in the forest and the search for photographic opportunities. It’s a very hopeful time of the year and even impossible hopes seem less impossible after the First of April.
The week ended well. Today should be a good day to work on the book. Well, let’s see where that goes. I look at the headlines and it’s Trump, Trump, Trump as far as the eye can see. Well, I haven’t got anything interesting or useful to add to that circus. The only thing worth noting is that the term banana republic is now completely ubiquitous and rightly so. Later on, something may occur to me and I’ll put virtual pen to virtual paper but for now I think I’ll put on a raincoat and boots and be at play in the fields of the Lord. But maybe I should take my cue from the ducks and cozy up next to the duchess where it’s warm. “What? I said I’ll fix that flushometer next week! Sheesh.”