Joe Writes . . . 

Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

lines 1 – 4 from the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Ramps carpet forest floor

A herald of spring.

One of the rare occasions we dug up a ramp.

April’s showers have indeed pierced the dreary drought of March, and Spring is arriving even here in northern Michigan. Ramps carpet the forest floor, to be replaced in a few weeks by trillium. The ramp is a wild leek found in the woods here in the early Spring. They are easy to find right now; Linda has been sautéing the green leaves with spinach for breakfast and in other dishes where she might normally use garlic and/or onion. I can tell when she brings them into the house, as they have a pungent but not unpleasant garlicky aroma. This is our first year of identifying and using ramps, and we leave them largely unmolested by merely snipping off a few leaves. We only occasionally harvest the bulb, which looks like a scallion and can be used as such  or any time a mild leek flavor is desired.

from Birches by Robert Frost

I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.

The bare white birches provide nearly the only contrast to the monotonous grey of every other tree’s trunk at this time of year. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

A Drinking Song by Wm. Butler Yeats

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

And how could I not look at her and sigh? My companion on this walk and my walk through life.

from Lift High the Cross, a 19th-century English hymn by George Kitchin

Lift high the cross
the love of Christ proclaim
’til all the world adore
His sacred name

There must be a new cross on the steeple at St. Ignatius Catholic Church in Middle Village/Goodhart, on the shore of Lake Michigan north of Harbor Springs. It shone in the sun and I immediately thought of this hymn, which I suppose I’ve sung a hundred times in church without realizing how much I liked it until I saw this cross gleaming in the sun.

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Thank you for visiting our blog. If you enjoyed it, please share it on social media or with a friend. If you leave a comment we will respond. We Neely brothers look forward to getting back on the Grand River in 2020. Don’t be a dummy . . . stay in and stay safe. This, too, shall pass.