“The Earth was the most glorious instrument and I was audience to its strains.” — Henry David Thoreau
April arrives.
Glorious, sunny rain-filled, early Spring is April.
Time for black umbrellas bouncing down the street and for windy days blowing the green garden shoots this way and that.
There are a host of beliefs, some not quite true, that pass from generation to the next. Here are some of them:
Step on a cricket and it will rain. Release a fly on the inside front screen door and it will bring you good luck. Catch the first butterfly in the Spring and bad luck will follow you the rest of the year. If a honeybee circles around you, a letter is coming. If a butterfly alights on your shoulder; you will receive new clothes.
Such is Nature ever alluring, ever unpredictable, utter charming and changing. The past December in a week one day it was minus-30 wind chill and four days later the temperature reached 48 degrees. The saying is that if you do not like the Chicago area weather, wait a day and see how much it changes.
That is April.
The Romans gave this month the Latin name April is. The traditional etymology is from the verb aerire to open. The allusion is that it is the season when trees and flowers begin to open. Some of the Roman months were named in honor of divinities and because April was sacred to the goddess Venus, her Veneralia being held on its first day. King Numa Pompilius approximately 700 B.C. named it the fourth month of the year.
April’s birthstone is the diamond. The birth flower is the daisy or the sweet pea. The zodiac signs for the month of April are Aries until April 19 and Taurus from April 20 until the late May Gemini.
There are all about us many examples of Nature’s beauty mastery. The down feathers of a hummingbird. The wing scales of the Emperor moth. The mother rabbit’s blanket made of quilting of her own fur and matted wisps of grass.
One Spring I happened to move some hydrangea branches and underneath she had given birth to her babies and there were four tiny baby rabbits underneath. They were asleep. Quite the sight! Nature’s simple nursery where the mother rabbit lights the garden with one of her loveliest radiances.
Because the wetlands are just across the street from my home, I have seen all manner of animals, including opossums, raccoons, frogs, turtles, hawks, snakes, egrets, and others. Nature plays out her eternal show all year long, but especially during Spring and in the month of April.