The PreLeaf Time of Year

FTLComm - Tisdale - April 30, 2001

It is a good thing that the seasons change, that was what my wife was saying as we looked around us and seen the wonder of transistion once again another year. She and I have been watching seasons change for thirty-two years and not one is ever the same and each year there is surprise and pleasure in the simplicity of variety. This huge poplar tree is in its preleaf stage getting ready to fill the sky above our house with its huge green leaves. Leaves that will block the light until September when they shrivel and tumble to the drive way.

Most stores have their garden supplies out for the year, here in Tisdale the Beeland Co-op is just putting the finishing touches on this year's sales lot as they bring the stock out for the gardeners of the community. To me using these pre-grown and pre-started plants seems like cheating. How can you take credit for a gardern someone else started in a greenhouse for you. Your contribution was only to buy the plant and set it in your yard. A pragmatic approach I suppose but hardly creative and not something I should think someone should be proud of, yet who am I to complain, there is a market!

In this pre-leaf season at last the birds are starting to show themselves though in an obscure sort of way. In this picture a huge woodpecker type bird was savagely attacking a power pole and when I stopped and lowered the window to get a picture he fluttered off and sits on a limb, your quest is to find him. By the golf course three robins were busy about their business, one on the green had to stop with a huge worm in its mouth to wait for a group of golfers to putt out while the one in the picture below was on its way back to the green for another worm.