Open Writing

Each spring, when I contemplate the return to New England from Florida, the critical decision is always when to start the trip north so as to avoid the lingering winter weather up there. Unlike Britain, where, at one time anyway, April was predictably the “Cruelest month of all,” April in the southern New England states generally has been warm, bright and dry, with nary a sign of April showers for these past several years. Instead, it is now May that will dash your hopes that winter really went away, and May is when I want to get back to my boat in Connecticut.

In recent years, May has brought high winds and torrential rain to the North East, with daytime temperatures in the 40’s and 50’s. Sad looking gatherings of sodden boat owners could be seen in every marina, trying to console one another, waiting hopefully for a break in the weather so they could work on their craft.

This year we finally left a hot and uncharacteristically arid Florida in mid-May, driving through clouds of smoke from fires that had consumed thousands of acres of trees and brush on the Georgia border, and had intermittently closed major highways during the previous week. Once we left Georgia and the Carolinas, we believed that the fire hazard was behind us, but in New Jersey we began to smell smoke again, this time from the tinder-dry grasses and reeds of the salt flats, set alight by an accidentally ejected flare from a military aircraft.

The weather forecasts we had monitored before the trip began indicated that the beginning of May promised to be a repeat of past seasons, and we arrived in Connecticut to typically cold and wet conditions. But within a couple of days, grey skies turned to blue, and temperatures were soon in the 70’s and rose from there. One wonderful benefit of this turn for the better was that we could enjoy the late spring blossoms that in previous years had been dashed by incessant downpours. We reluctantly had left behind the exotic, sub-tropical Jacarandas and the Frangipani, and the bright orange, Royal Poinciana trees, but we were due for a new treat.

Connecticut, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is a verdant state, heavily treed with grand old Chestnuts, Black Walnut, stately Maples and graceful Weeping Willows. Every shade of green imaginable is represented, especially at this time of year. Though the greenery is pleasing, especially to those who have endured the monochromatic winter months, it is the late spring blooms that really delight the eye. This year, the blossoming trees and shrubs were particularly spectacular. Chief among the eye-catchers were the Azaleas, in colors from white and the most delicate salmon pink, to the wildly extreme reds and violets of the more intensively hybridized plants.

Almost outshone by those examples of Mother Nature’s neon signs are the more subtle, white, purple and pink Rhododendrons. But my favorite blossom is the shy ballerina of the woods, the Dogwood tree. In their natural habitat, the lacy, creamy-white blossoms pop out of the deep shadows of the woods, and would look perfectly at home in a Chinese, silk wall-hanging. But the botanists and horticulturists saw the potential market for these trees and produced versions with a wide range of blossom colors, just as they did with the Azaleas. So now, every self respecting Connecticut home-owner has at least one Dogwood to add sparkle to the neighborhood.

In writing about all these dazzling new trees and shrubs, it’s easy to discount the traditional blossom trees that were gracing the back lanes decades before the showy newcomers. Nonetheless wonderful, the Ornamental Cherries, the various types of fruit trees, and the exotic Magnolias, many times provide a soft, more subtle foil to the ox-blood colored foliage of the attendant Japanese Maples. When they are done blooming, their petals lay down a soft carpet of pink and white on the lawns.

Competing for our attention this May, both visually and audibly are the many types of birds, which in the inclement weather of the past have been less outgoing. Though we enjoy the Herons, Egrets, Pelicans and all our other feathered friends in Florida, their Connecticut cousins provide a charming alternative. Even the Mocking Bird’s song seems different to its southern relative. Many of the water birds now have young, and seem to want to stage them for everyone to see, like human parents at their daughters’ first dancing class recital.

The show might begin with a pair of geese, Momma leading, with Pa riding herd on a gaggle of goslings, exiting stage right. Moments later, entering stage left, a pair of elegant, white swans with their scruffy looking signets takes over the stage. Not to be outdone, a Mallard and his mate shepherd their young carefully through the performance. Then of course, no successful harbor performance could be put on without its chorus of immaculately costumed seagulls who contribute both grace and knock-about humor. For a dramatic finale, an Osprey hurls its self vertically from five hundred feet, wings folded, to snatch a fish from the water, hardly wetting its leg feathers.

In the face of all of this theatricality it would be easy to overlook the small birds: the yellow flash of a Grosse Beak, or the sudden, red burst of a flock of male Cardinals; both species looking more like tropical birds than the northern natives that they are. Almost unnoticed, unless you have a bird feeder, are the finches, Woodpeckers and Chickadees. At this time of year in New England, nature doesn’t stint on the entertainment, and for once it would seem that our timing to migrate north won us a font row seat.

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