The crocuses are blossoming, the perennial poppies are up, and the geese are very busy trying to produce more geese.

What a difference a week or so makes! Nearly all the snow has melted, except for some located deep in the woods and a pile on the north side of the house.

Spring is truly here. And along with it is lots of mud, lots and lots of dead leaves from last fall waiting to be raked, and signs of new life everywhere.

April is my second favorite month, right after March. The smell of the new season permeates everything, the snow has melted from the garden, bags of soil are piled on the porch waiting to be mixed with pigeon manure and placed in five-gallon buckets and planted with tomatoes, and a feeling that anything is possible provides hope.

April is also the best time to sit on the porch after supper and watch and listen to the birds, and the occasional passing car or pedestrian. Mosquitoes and black flies have not yet hatched, and it’s just warm enough to wear a sweater and relax.

Hopes are high this year for a clutch of goslings to hatch and grow into teens and adult geese. Last year’s clutch disappeared before they grew up. 

While most of my thoughts are on getting outside into the garden to rake, or to clean up the lawn, my mind also focuses on redecorating the kitchen, or making some other change to the inside of the house. 

New life? New paint? New???

The woodstove still keeps us warm at night, but we no longer need to light it during the day. As the weeks pass, even the nightly wood fire will no longer be necessary.

During the next few weeks, the longest daylight hours of the year will peak, and supper will get on the table later and later, or, much earlier so we’ll have a couple of hours to work outside after we eat.

Our cats continue to closely watch the huge variety of birds eating at the feeder from the back of our loveseat. And Dusty, our precious old Golden, still gets so excited when he thinks we’ll take him for a ride. He stays pretty far away from the geese, however. They are just too threatening.

April – a time to get outside to survey the lawn, plan the garden, let the geese graze outside their pen, and to just relax on the porch. What a month!