APPLAUDING EARLY APRIL

      On April 8, 2021, I drove through our suburban area in New Holland, Pennsylvania and continued on in farmland, and along a creek in a 200 acre woodland.  On that warm, sunny day, I drove by lawns, cropland roadsides and fields, all human-made habitats.  My whole tour was a total of 16 miles, round-trip.  And along the way I saw many lovely, inspiring signs of spring as a result of longer periods of daylight per day, each succeeding day, and increased warmth.

      Short grass on lawns and rye (another kind of grass) in fields were greener and more lush than in mid-March.  Those grasses create lovely, green carpets that are appealing to people because the green represents life and growth, which is essential to peoples' emotional well-being after a long winter. 

     Garlic with grass-like, dark-green shoots reached above the grass on lawns, fields and roadsides.  Related to onions, garlic has a strong, onion fragrance that is most noticed on mowed lawns.  

     In early-April, deciduous trees are still bare of foliage, therefore showing their artistically delicate twigs silhouetted before the constantly changing sky.  I never realized how many red maple and Bradford pear trees had been planted on local lawns until this early-April when red maples grew many red blooms per tree, and the pears each flaunted thousands of white flowers, making those species of trees stand out.  The flowers on the red maples caused a red haze in those trees, while the white blossoms of the pear trees made those trees look like snow fell only on them.  And its inspiring to see American robins and purple grackles foraging for invertebrates on green lawns under those trees.  

     I saw a few kinds of small flowers on roadside shoulders as I drove along in the country, including pale-blue ones on Veronicas, pink ones on purple dead nettles, yellow dandelions and bluish-purple on grape hyacinth and blue violet plants.  And some corn stubble fields were pink with thousands of pink dead nettle blossoms.  Interestingly, all these plants are originally from Europe, except the native blue violets.

     The cheery, bright-yellow blooms and glossy, deep-green leaves of prostrate lesser celandine plants, which are aliens here from Europe, form extensive, beautiful carpets of themselves on the floors of floodplain woods along local creeks, including the one I visited on April 8th.  Related to the adaptable buttercups of local meadows, the equally adaptable lesser celandines grow flowers that glow like sunlight above their lush foliage.       

     Lesser celandines grow so close to the ground that they get sunlight, but avoid cold winds that can still prevail at times in April.  And, interestingly, a few other kinds of flowering plants peek their blossoms above golden and green rugs of lesser celandines to expose their leaves to sunlight and their flowers to pollinating insects.  Those other plants include native blue violets, Dutchman's breeches with their unique, white flowers, Virginia bluebells that have blue blooms, May apples with their umbrella leaves and white blossoms, and the alien grape hyacinths.  All those flowering plants blooming together create beautiful flower bouquets that are a joy to see.

     Two kinds of woody vegetation, ash-leafed maple trees and spice bushes bloom in April, adding more beauties to bottomland woods along creeks.  The flowers of those maples droop from their twigs and almost sparkle in the sunlight.  The tiny blooms of spicebushes cause a light-yellow haze on each understory bush.

     I've always applauded early April because it so represents spring and the many beauties of nature God created on this planet.  Add the singing of birds, the humming of bees and the peeping of spring peeper frogs to make early April even more appealing and wonderful here in southeastern Pennsylvania.      

     

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