If April showers bring May flowers, we’re going to be buried in flowers soon. Precipitation was the headline for April this year — we had well more than average. The skunk cabbage spathes in the bogs thought it was wonderful, but the rain chains were overcome, and the last of the year’s snowstorms — we hope — reminded us that we were in Maine.
However, April delivered its fair share of beautiful days here. We enjoyed clear vistas over Blue Hill Bay to Acadia National Park, very full marsh ponds, sun-speckled country lanes, and balsam-scented woods.
The rain-swollen streams hurtled through their mossy banks in April, providing a little day music.
There are no leaves here in April, but it is the month when early-budding plants give us a promise of lush times to come, including katsura tree flowers, pussy willow catkins, and red maple tree buds. And, of course, there were the blossoming forsythia plants that are almost at their peak during April.
There were virtually no spring break tourists here during the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. However, we did get some good-looking winged visitors on their way north. Flocks of big-beaked surf scoters and big-necked Canadian geese were among them.
But, we were most grateful to see our annual winged summer residents, small and large, that came north again to nest among us. Those in the small and unobtrusive category included Eastern Phoebes.
In the large and loud category, our spectacular ospreys returned in April to their summer residences here. They displayed courting behavior, such as males feeding fish to begging females, and extraordinary aerial maneuvers. It looks like we’ll again have some nestlings in May.
April also is the month that our full-time white-tailed deer residents get frisky, frolicking in the fields and jumping large stone walls just for the hell of it.
April winds here were much stronger than average, often producing white caps in usually placid Great Cove. But, we also had still days when the sea was virtually motionless.
Brooklin’s famous WoodenBoat School cancelled it’s early summer classes due to the virus. The gear for its fleet of small boats remains waiting for good times that may not come this year.
The scallop fishing season ended in April and the fishing vessels started dismantling their scalloping equipment, converting for the summer lobster season — if there is to be one. But the season for catching migrating elvers (glass eels) continued with Fyke nets at stream mouths being swept into graceful forms by the high tide currents.
Of course, April is the Easter month, the month of renewal and hope. But, this year it also was the month of harm and fear, as the plague reached us.. The two road signs below tell a tale of two Aprils here — one is still in front of a long-term care facility in Blue Hill, the other was beside a driveway in Brooklin:
Finally, perhaps the most dramatic April moment was when the month’s full moon, a “super moon,” rose big and orange out of the horizon and shot into the sky like a molten cannon ball:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Blue Hill, and Surry, Maine, during April 2020)