The Tendre Croppes

They're saying that tomorrow, Wednesday, the temperature in Boston will hit 86 degrees. (It didn't. It hit ninety.) Decades from now, if global warming doesn't make such unseemly numbers common, future forecasters may say, "The record high for this day: a sizzling 86 (make that 90), back in Twenty Ten." And people will picture a sepia-toned Boston with men in suspenders and loosened neckties fanning themselves with their fedoras (men always wear fedoras in the distant past) and women lounging on stoops with tall glasses of ice water, while the radio warbles jazz from the open windows.

Meanwhile the heat draws the little buds out like a mystical piper's tune. Commands the maple buds to push into little florets, those delicate pea-green tree flowers that will eventually rain down from the tree in a pea-green puddle. Commands fruit trees to burst into white or pink clouds like prom queens. Beckons leaves to push out into the welcoming wake. Hastens the normal sedate timing for such opening, turns April into May June July like a giddy time-lapse movie, turns nature into Disney, IMax into Yakety Sax.

What happened to Chaucer's Aprille with his shoures soote?

Whan Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth,

Inspiréd hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halve cours y-ronne...

In other words, when the sweet west wind has literally breathed into and figuratively inspired, in every town and countryside, the tender buds, and when the young sun is halfway between Aries (the Ram) and Taurus, in other words right around now...when that happens, it's time to start worrying about the tendre croppes. They're growing up too fast!

And what about the smale fowles that maken melodye? Just this morning in the Fells Reservation, a birder not given to wild claims reported a blue-headed vireo, a Northern parula (lovely little warbler) and two wood thrushes! Back about a month early. Will they find sustenance in like-minded early-on-the-scene insects?

Stay tuned for the next exciting adventure of April in the 21st Century!