Once again it’s April

by Pat Laster

Oh, oh, oh! The vining wisteria that twines around a truncated tree (left especially to host the vine) is in bud! Unlike the bush wisteria that grows low and blooms a solid-purple mass, the American Wisteria (so called in Carl G. Hunter’s book, Trees, Shrubs, & Vines of Arkansas, 2nd edition, 1995) blooms later than “the cultivated forms.”
Also, the vine that I thought was a white-blossomed vinca isn’t. It’s blooming for the first time since it came up by the mailboxes. The buds are maroon capsules. On the underside is a hole with a white stamen that reminds me of a jack-in-the-pulpit.
Voila! One of the buds became a flower with a deep throat of maroon and a yellow flange or collar. By next week, I will have found out the name from my uncle John Pelton, the wildflower buff and photographer.
Until then, here is some April trivia.
BOOKS: Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt; April Moon (Harlequin); April Morning – Howard Fast; The Enchanted April – Elizabeth Von Arnim.
SONGS: “April is in my Mistress’ Face”-old madrigal-Thomas Morley; “April Showers” – Silvers/De Sylva, published in 1921; “April” –recorded by Deep Purple (band); “April Lady” – recorded by Queen; “Pieces of April” – Three Dog Night; “April Fool” – Soul Asylum; “April Love” – Pat Boone (Webster & Fain); “April Come She Will” – Simon and Garfunkel; “April in Paris” – Frank Sinatra.
NAMES: April Mae, Aprille, Aprilynne.
AUTHOR: Aprilynne Pike – Wings.
MUSICIAN: Johnny April, bass player for the hard-rock band Staind, gave $150,000 to buy a new ambulance for six rural, western-Massachusetts towns.
IMPORTANT EVENTS THIS WEEK: April 5 – 1640 – marriage of Pocahontas; April 6 – Robert Edwin Peary reached the North Pole in 1909; April 7 – 1827 – matches were first sold; April 8 – 1973 – Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter, died at age 91; April 8 – Buddha’s birthday; Zen Buddhists use this day as a flower festival to celebrate; April 9 – 1806 – Great Western Railway born; April 10 – signing of the Good Friday Agreement or Belfast Agreement (Information from projectbritain.com.); April 11 – a barren period. Do no planting. (from Farmers’ Almanac 2012)
ANAGRAM FOR APRIL: Think Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.
WHAT SOME WRITERS SAID ABOUT APRIL:
Shakespeare: “April has put a spirit of youth in everything.”
Mark Twain: “The first of APRIL is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.”
Hal Borland: “April is a promise that May is bound to keep.”
T. S. Eliot: “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay: “April comes like an idiot, babbling and stewing/strewing flowers.” (Some sites write “stewing”; some “strewing,” which makes more sense to me. Let’s see if I can find that book of her poems I once bought at a Eureka Springs flea market.)
Since April is also National Poetry Month, indulge me, please:

“Petit Jean in April”
Slender
sapling on mountain
path stretches skyward; at its feet
three pale blue
Phoenix violets rise above
winter’s leafy, brushwoodsy
blanket.” (a Cameo pattern)

c 2012 by Pat Laster dba lovepat press