Column for May 13, 2010

I already miss the month of April. Besides being a pretty girl's name, April is a pretty month and perhaps my favorite of the year. Each year, I look forward to the first part of the old, "April showers bring May flowers" expression. At least here in North Carolina, April showers bring April flowers. Once it hits May, the flowers are pretty much gone and the temperature gets uncomfortably hot.

March can be rough or mild, but when April 1 rolls around, I just plain enjoy North Carolina for at least 30 days. This year, as soon as May 1 hit, the weather turned hot and uncomfortable. April weather is sufficiently mild so that we can open the windows during the day and enjoy a temperature that is cool enough to not run the heat and warm enough to not have to run the air conditioning. Because of that, April is an economical month because we don't have to pay as much for Selma's over priced electricity to make the house comfortable.

Each April, my lawn starts to come to life after its hibernation. I have to get out the old lawnmower and get it running for the first time. I pick up a lot of limbs in the backyard after stiff winds blow out old, dead wood from my ancient pecan tree. Of course we can not forget the pollen that comes along with April, either. My pine tree in my back yard was just a sapling when I first moved there, and "Little Tree", as I call it has grown tremendously since then. Little Tree also covers my automobiles, car port, and yard with nasty yellow pollen. This year seems to be about the worst I remember in my 22 years here in the Tarheel State.

I have put more bird seed into my wild bird feeder and put more fresh water into my birdbath in my front yard than in any other year I can recall. I am not an avid bird watcher as my step-dad used to be, but I enjoy watching the doves, cardinals, robins, and black birds come and partake of the feed I put out for them. I also get to watch the psychotic but persistent squirrels attack my feeder. I have tried several different types of feeders in times past. I have found two kinds that squirrels can not totally destroy but still can steal from. The one good thing about these cute rats with bushy tails is that they cause a lot of seeds to fall to the ground so that the doves can eat. Doves seem to be too clumsy and stupid to get on the feeder so they scavenge off the ground. Basically, they seem to be retarded pigeons, but are still neat to have around.

My bird bath has gotten quite a work out this year. I sometimes have to fill it twice a day, and usually every day at a minimum. I laugh when I see birds jumping in and out of the bath. There is a group of black birds that love to all come to my bird bath at the same time. I affectionately refer to them as the "town council". They all sit in a semi-circle on the ridge of my bird bath, chatter at each other, and take turns jumping in to the center of the bath, making quite a splash. When one has taken its turn, the bird hops out and another chatter box hops in the bowl to splash around. This may go on for quite a while. I can never anticipate how long their council meeting will last or whether or not there will be enough members to have a quorum, just as I have seen in times past here in Selma government.

Spring is symbolically a time thought of as a renewing or of new life. The Bradford Pear trees come to life with gorgeous though short lived blossoms. My dogwood trees and azalea bushes in my yard come to beautiful, fragrant bloom, although the dogwoods did not have as nice flowers this year as usual. In the vein of new life, my wife and I also found out in April that a new LaPlante will come into this world at the end of the year.

Because of the pleasant weather and the sheer beauty of nature during that month, if every month could be April, I would never want to leave North Carolina.