Keeping Home :: April’s Plans
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March winds,
April showers,
Brings along May’s flowers
Yay! April is here. This is the month where spring really makes her presence felt. Deciduous trees are producing new leaves, wild flowers are popping up – the cowslips being one of my favourite, the woodlands are full of the aroma of wild garlic and this year, Easter falls in this wonderful springy month :o) I DO love April!
This year April is a very busy month for us. Not only is there allot going on liturgically, but my youngest daughter has a huge week-long dancing concert that she is involved in. So there are loads of extra rehearsals to squeeze into an already busy month. Fortunately everything will slow down after Holy Week and we can take life at a slightly slower pace.
Today I am sharing my plans for April – brainstorming like this always helps me to get a feel for the month and note down some ideas to slowly enjoy what April has to offer.
Folklaw
April’s Full Moon: Pink Moon
Gemstone: Diamond
Flower: Daisy or Sweet Pea
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Traditional Rhyme
‘If Swallows are already building on St. Marks Day (25th April) there will be plenty of fodder, grain and calves’
Faith :: Liturgical Year
Palm Sunday -13th
Good Friday -18th
Easter Sunday -20th
St Marks Day 25th
Life in April 2014
1st – April Fools Day
6th April – 160th Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race
14th – 19th – Miss J’s Dancing Show and Holy Week!
21st – Queen Elizabeth’s birthday (real)
22nd – Earth Day
25th – ANZAC Day
26th – Miss V-L and DH’s birthday
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Nature
Full Moon – 15th April
Swallows return (traditionally, the 15th is Swallow Day in England)
Wild Garlic in bloom
lambs in the fields
look out for oxslips and cowslips
trees in new leaf
bumblebees and butterflies
Magnolia trees in full flower
look out for frogs and toads on the move this month
Listen for the call of the Cuckoo – a traditional signal that spring has come.
Blackthorn in full flower
dueling robins and blackbirds
nest building
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Garden
sow or plant iceberg lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, peas, mangetout, and beetroot
Plant potatoes from mid-April
Roses ready for main prune
grow summer bulbs
Cut back Forsythia as soon as blooming is finished to ensure a good bloom next year
First strawberries should start to bloom
Home & Food
Spring Cleaning
Easter preparations and planning
Eggs
Fresh spring salads
Rhubarb Dishes
So there you have my plans and brain-storming for April. I thought I would end this post with a poem written by the Victorian poet Robert Browning. Upon reading this poem, I felt so grateful to be here in England. I do love this country and wish never to leave her shores – never to have to feel the home-sickness that this poet was feeling when he wrote this poem.
Home-Thoughts, from Abroad by Robert Browning
Oh, to be in England
Now that Aprils there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England – now!
And after April, when May follows
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops – at the bent sprays edge –
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
– Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
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