April, the bringer of Spring, this year also brought us a significant snowstorm; torrential and damaging rain-and-wind storms; a historic solar eclipse; a white full moon named Pink; the end of the scallop fishing season; the return of fascinating flora and fauna, and some tingle-inducing sunny days. We, of course, begin with sunny days and their reflections.
In her first week, April brought forth a significant snow storm and all the beauty and trouble that go with such events. The snow flakes soon were followed by more damaging torrential rain and high winds.
The precipitation swelled the streams to flood levels and the winds brought down trees, which brought down power lines, which brought out power company trucks and road graders on our country lanes.
As for our flora, our earliest flowering plant is the beautiful (unfairly maligned) skunk cabbage. (It doesn’t emit bad odors unless crushed.) It didn’t seem to be bothered by being under snow or under water, probably because it generates its own heat and hides its flowers in pointed pixy hats (“spathes”).
Our trees weren’t leafed out, but that made it easier to see the arthritic curvatures of old apple trees, the fuzzy blooms of red maples, and the cats’ paws of pussy willows.
Blue Quaker ladies and yellow daffodils often kept company in support of Ukraine. On a larger scale, eager masses of forsythia were welcomed by the waving buds and pom-poms of star magnolias.
In the formative stage, the arrow arum had not yet grown its massive arrow heads and the ferns had not grown out of their fiddleheads.
On the wild side, the white-tailed deer had some frosty-flaked breakfasts, the migrating birds began to return, and the painted turtles rose from their murky beds to bask in the sun. Of special interest was the return of a pair of ospreys to a nest that we monitor yearly.
On the working waterfront, scallop-fishing season officially ended in April and the dredging (“dragging”) booms, masts and netted dredges (“drags”) were removed from the fishing vessels and stored. On the recreational waterfront, fleets of lazy boats continued to snore in their winter sheds as their mooring gear braved the elements.
As to things lunar, April was spectacular. The April 8 moon created a historic total eclipse of the sun for much of central Maine and a 97 percent eclipse (all but a radiating sliver) for us here on the coast. We were able to see and photograph the sun and interfering moon through solar-filtered (black polymer) glasses and camera attachments
Finally, later in the month, the April full moon rose on a chilly evening. It’s called the Pink Moon, one of the names that Native Americans gave it because it appears when pink phlox does (so the say). Nonetheless, it was a white moon and not nearly as spectacular as the black (new) moon that dared to hide the sun. But what was poor April to do? She had used up most of her magic by then in a bravura performance.
(All images above were taken in Down East Maine during April 2024.)