April 16 - April 21 Stars Come Out in Daytime

2010-Well. The week-long trip I’d planned turned into a three week long odyssey; Boston to New Jersey to Florida to New Jersey and finally home again. While I was experiencing perpetual summer in Florida the Northeast experienced several days of 80 degree plus weather and everything began blooming.  Then the weather returned to seasonably cool, preserving the blooms so that when I came back I found tulips, apples, crabapples, viburnum, nectarine, violets, pansies, bleeding hearts, daffodils, dandelions, ajuga, mustard, etc.-all in bloom together.  The lilacs are coloring up, the maples are fully leafed, in spots the grass is already grown too long to cut easily, the fern fronds are unfurling and the blueberries in the sunnier spot are blooming.  The wisteria is, for once, full of buds. Florida comes off strangely sterile in comparison.
I open the skylight to listen to the peepers even though it’s still in the high thirties at night.  The birdsong in the morning is loud enough to wake me up.  There is some disagreement among the reservoir naturalists concerning the fate of the eagle eggs.  Some say they laid them too early and they were destroyed in the last late snowstorm, others that they are still sitting them.  Also a report of a third grown eagle.  I will have to go out and see for myself.
2011- Well things are considerably behind this year, a not particularly good one for the forsythia which are only sparsely blooming, except for the foot high skirts of solid bloom which perhaps result from the protection of snow cover.  I’ve seen a few dandelions in sheltered spots but there are no tulips, apples, crabapples, nectarines, violets, pansies (except newly installed ones), bleeding hearts, ajuga, mustard or lilac buds.  The maple leaves are tightly curled. It’s been consistently cold and cloudy, excepting a warmish day or two, and I find myself completely out of sorts with the weather.  The cold and gray makes me feel like hibernating; I have to force myself outside to clean the garden and spread compost, though I’m always glad after I have.  Then yesterday, feeling ’under the weather’ , I was so irritated when the clouds parted to let the sun shine through.  All I wanted to do was hide under the blankets.  I did think of rainbows and checked the east across from the lowering sun, but none appeared.
2012-Interesting to see that this spring that is being touted as unprecedented is so similar to two years ago. The wild plums are blooming heavily.
 A couple of robins are hanging around and I watched one gather up a beak-full of grasses and then fly into the yew and add them to the early stages of a nest. I continued with my normal activities which, since it was a very warm day, included hanging a wash and sitting outside for long stretches of time. I don’t want it to discover how active the deck is when the eggs are laid and it’s too late. But. I didn’t see the robin again all day and this morning one was sitting in the ash tree and just (sadly, I thought) surveying the situation. Will it decide to continue or not?
A little black beetle with beautiful yellow spots like watercolors landed on me yesterday. It had cute little knobs on the ends of its antennae. How amazing and beautiful and underappreciated are the multitudes of insect forms. It is easy to imagine them the knights and princes of another kingdom.
2013- More like two years ago (is this a pattern) the star magnolia are only just beginning to bloom in earnest. I always thought they were named for their star shaped flowers but when the tree is in shadow with just the blooms being highlighted by the sun, it reminds me of stars winking on in the darkening sky.
Death has been more and more in my thoughts. One reason vegan friends choose that diet is a moral one-feeling it is wrong to kill. Even ants seem to want to live and a piece on the radio suggests mice laugh. Inside me at this moment white blood cells are killing harmful bacteria. Can one even be alive without killing?  Where does one draw the line?  Digging in the garden I uncovered a moles nest; six or so hairless, star-nosed creatures entwined for warmth. I covered the nest back up, not without conflicting feelings about the harm they would wreak on my plants when grown (and continuing to multiply). This morning I found two dead while the rest had presumably been moved by their mother. Conflicting feelings.