More about all things April

by Pat Laster

Are you still exulting in the exuberance of Easter? If that feeling was not caused by the extra-ordinary pomp of a worship service, perhaps it came later over a family gathering—like ours—or an afternoon with friends. Hallelujah! Christ is risen!
As I promised last week, I discovered from my uncle John Pelton that the plant with the maroon capsule buds and the trumpet-shaped blooms is Cross-Vine. He only had a small picture on my cell phone to go by, but he gave me three possibilities: cross vine, trumpet creeper and trumpet honeysuckle. Pictures on the Internet proved that my first-time-to-bloom vine is a Cross Vine.
Last week’s anagram for April is Pilar, a main character in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.
One morning this week, I watched out the south window as a male robin commandeered the freshly-filled birdbath. He stood his ground, er rim. A female cardinal flew up faced him off by staying on the other side. Soon, a brown thrasher joined the two. As if waiting for the robin to leave, the thrasher swooped down and ate from the grass. When it flew back to the rim, the cardinal left and so did the thrasher. Meanwhile and afterwards, the robin availed himself of a good bath. In the background, an adult squirrel nosed around in the grass for who-knows-what?
The narcissus are blooming. Since they are later than the daffodils, tulips and jonquils, I always wonder if they are even going to bloom. Just when I decide they are too crowded, up pops the first white blossom and then another. Soon, there are enough of the heavily-scented, long-stemmed whites to snap off, take inside and slide down into a water-filled, lead-crystal vase. Along with Easter lilies and hyacinths, these flowers can be enjoyed by sight and smells.
A couple of tiger swallowtail butterflies have appeared this week, stopping at the azaleas and the dianthus.
April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month. It is also National Soy Foods Month. According to Rosemary Boggs, ADG, three companies that make soy products are Soyjoy, Morningstar Farms and WestSoy.
April is also the peak of tornado season that runs from March to June. (ADG wire)
The April poem for this week (in celebration of National Poetry Month) was written by Langston Hughes, who can also be heard reading it on the Internet. I found it in a severely-yellowed, Scholastic paperback book --bought for thirty-five cents by my first-grade-teacher (now deceased) mother, Anna Pearl Couch-- the Arrow Book of Poetry – poems selected by Ann McGovern and published in 1965.

“April Rain Song"

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night

And I love the rain. – Langston Hughes.

So do I.
written 2012 by Pat Laster dba lovepat press

Seasonal preparations continue

by Pat Laster

Little by little, slowly but surely, Couchwood is beginning to look more like Christmas and winter. Sunday night I washed the last two windows and laid “blankets of snow” on the frames where upper and lower sections meet. On the “snow” are freshly washed pieces of cobalt blue glass--the light-weight ones ballasted with marbles.
Monday’s task was to organize the loose papers from the library table, one end of the buffet-cum-cabinet and the work table in the middle of the room. My BFF Dot (dothatfield.com) wrote on her blog last week about kudzu. My flat surfaces are kudzu-ed for sure.Here it is Thursday and those papers are still a mess.
When I told people that I was taking a break from church, one person said, “But the Christmas music! You don’t want to miss the Christmas music, do you?”
My CD and cassette players, the radio, the two bell symphony music boxes Billy (and his mother) bought me, the Christmas VHS movies, the piano with all the Christmas songbooks out of the bench and onto the ledge—how can I miss Christmas music? (OK, writer friends, I know I used Christmas five times in two paragraphs, but…)
Oh, and I was lucky enough to get invited to ride along to the River City Men’s Chorus Christmas concert last week. Talk about beautiful music! But a downside: the next morning, I had a fresh cold, a sore throat, as well as all-day sneezing and dripping, the first such malady to hit in many years that lasted longer than 24 hours.
Alas! My paperback dictionary finally came apart at the “o”s. (If I were on Facebook, would that be the kind of information I’d post?) Keeping to the trivial, I have something in common with Taylor Swift, who at 21, is the same age as grandson/ward Billy: “I love a good flea market,” she told Parade magazine.
Parts of Arkansas woke up to a surprise snow last week Check out my blog, pittypatter.blogspot.com to read some poems that developed from it.
Records for a one-day rainfall fell in five Arkansas towns on December 5. Amounts at Adams Field in Little Rock broke the record set in 1936 (my birth year). In North Little Rock, the last record was set in 1984. In Hot Springs, in 1996. At the Jacksonville/Little Rock Air Force Base, rain shattered the old record set in 1984. And in Batesville, the record set in 1943 was broken. I still haven’t dared look in my basement to see how high the water is.
Billy auditioned for next semester's Henderson State University Chamber Singers and “made it,” he told me last week. Color me proud, again. I missed their concert a Sunday or three ago. It was raining and I didn’t want to drive in it. Color me cowardly. He said me there was a link to viewing it, but he’s yet to show me where.
Hot Springs’ son Eric “didn’t get even one shot off” during this deer season, he said. None he saw was large enough to produce a “trophy.” But his 10-year-old niece (my granddaughter) Emma killed two in Mississippi. There should be enough venison to go around in the Paulus-Laster family in 2012.
May it be so with you and yours.