Spring bounty can put sensory deprivation in the past

You can’t complain about this month of April.

Not when you’ve survived the winter we had, where a mere month ago all was an unending canvas of stark, cold white with nary a sign of greenery in sight.

Nor when you see the first snow crocus push through the ice-flattened earth to blossom furiously in tiny bursts of color magnified by the sensory deprivation of the past few months. Then come the tiny compatriots: the snowdrops, the glory-of-the-snow, the scilla and yes, the first small daffodils, their brilliant yellow munificence illuminating the landscape.

Nor when you watch ribbons of robins bobbing and darting across the lifeless grass. Or catch a glimpse of a duck and its mate paddling across a flooded stream, cracking its mirrorlike stillness. Or see an eagle circling higher and higher in an afternoon’s liquid blue sky. Or hold your breath as a Cooper’s hawk floats by effortlessly just feet away in the hunt for its next meal. Or observe a pair of the flitting phoebes making a nest in the eaves of your garden shed overhang.

You just can’t complain, not when you hear the first peepers oh-so-faintly peeping under a moon-drenched sky, the sound warming the crisp darkness and bringing back memories of peepers past, engulfing you in a soul-satisfying hug.

Nor when you follow the moose tracks as big as potholes weaving across the front yard and then down the path and into the backyard.

Nor when you uncover the first peony shoots pushing through last year’s detritus of leaves, weeds, grass and mulch, and you suddenly feel the heat of a June afternoon and remember the heady perfume of dozens of fluffy, exuberant blooms wafting across the yard.

Nor when you turn over a piece of sod and find fat, wriggling earthworms squirming through the roots, humbling you in the realization that the robins knew long before you did that the worms were crawling about in their earthen tunnels.

You really can’t complain, not when the yard resonates with the first buzz of a bumblebee, and you look to find it in the brown grass and then worry it won’t find enough pollen, only to see its back is covered with the stuff.

Nor when you wander by a raised bed and see a row of sorrel, its baby leaves shining in the sun. It practically waves a sign in your face: Pick me! And you do, getting a hint of lemon as you chew.

Nor when you jerk back from the ponderous flight of a wasp moving with slow deliberation as if it had just awakened.

Nor when you spot the first wrinkled leaves of rhubarb emerging through the soil, where just the day before there was nothing. The leaves’ ridges and veins sketch a masterpiece of a maze that will grow into fan-sized proportions. And then you start imagining the bite of a spoonful of rhubarb sauce on a slice of toast. Or a rhubarb pie bubbling in the oven, its sweet-tart aroma drifting through the house and out the open windows while you toil in the garden.

Nor when the first volunteers pepper the far edge of the vegetable garden: a bit of chard, a few spots of lettuce, some parsley and spears of green onions. It’s the makings of a salad, all from last year’s plantings, offering up an encore performance before the bed is turned over for this year’s entertainment.

You truly can’t – OK, I can complain.

Blame it on sinus trouble or allergies rearing their irritating selves, but in between blowing my nose and coughing, I couldn’t smell a thing in this picture of spring.

Not. A. Thing.

jpineo@bangordailynews.net

www.janinepineo.com