April is the Cruelest Month

April is the cruelest month,
breeding Lilacs out of the
dead land, mixing Memory
and desire, stirring Dull
roots with spring Rain.
– T.S. Eliot ~ The Waste Land

Ah, April. This year, a month when most of us are sheltered indoors to avoid being exposed to a pervasive and deadly virus spreading throughout the land. Where I live, April is a good month to stay inside anyway, because there’s no such thing as “spring” when you live so close to that frigid inland sea just to the east of me…Lake Michigan. The lawns around here are just starting to green up. There are no buds on the trees. A few of the early wildflowers bravely try to stick their stalks up through the dead leaves in the woods, searching for hard-to-come-by sunlight. In the fields and prairies, only the dead grasses and dormant growth of last year show their drab colors.

Today it hit 50º here, about normal for this time of year. We sometimes get a warm day here and there, just to tease us. Then the cold comes back. Next week, the low for one of the nights is forecast to be 24º. It’s supposed to snow two to four inches tonight into tomorrow.

To escape indoor captivity for a while, I grabbed my camera and headed out this afternoon. Nothing real serious or heavy duty; just a chance to take a walk and see what some outdoor air felt like. I headed north on a local county highway, ending up at Forest Beach Migratory Preserve, an old golf course that’s been converted to a nature preserve. There wasn’t much worth photo- graphing there, but I did come back with a few snaps. I’ve also included a few shots of some of the photogenic barns in the area. Such as it is, here you go. Enjoy!