Avril

Not this one.

This one.

 

I found a tiny half-egg this week on the sidewalk leading up to my home, and I thought it was the perfect thing to bring inside for April. I didn't photograph it, and I can't find it anywhere, so I believe it was probably eaten by a dog. (There have been a few of them around these parts, lately.)

I only lamented the loss of my tiny half-egg for a moment, though, because as soon as I stepped outside I realized that late April is really not for bringing things in.

Late April seems most suited to bringing ourselves OUT.

I watched a mother and her adult daughter release balloons outside of the Polish American Club on 1st Street. I walked past a hundred strange Uncle Sams. I listened to some Otis Redding in my garden, planting all kinds of poppies, bachelors' buttons, daisies, sweet peas, sweet annie, and raking the beds smooth. I walked my dog through the woods, where giant swaths of skunk cabbage sprout up in the lowlands like succulent green eyelashes.

And then I brought things in. This is the first week that I've populated bouquets entirely with my own stems and branches, and I can't tell you how happy that makes me. I still have to go to the flower distributor for some things, and it'll be awhile yet before those seedling babies make good on their promises, but for now the tulips, fritillaria, grape hyacinths, the flowering cherries and plums on the streets, the forsythia that Marwin adorably calls happy-new-year-flower, and the glowing daffodils (and popping dandelions) are more than enough for a calendar page.