Keeping Home :: April's Plans

March winds,

April showers,

Brings along May's flowers

Yay! April is here. This is the month where spring really makes her presence felt. Deciduous trees are producing new leaves, wild flowers are popping up - the cowslips being one of my favourite, the woodlands are full of the aroma of wild garlic and this year, Easter falls in this wonderful springy month :o) I DO love April!

This year April is a very busy month for us. Not only is there allot going on liturgically, but my youngest daughter has a huge week-long dancing concert that she is involved in. So there are loads of extra rehearsals to squeeze into an already busy month. Fortunately everything will slow down after Holy Week and we can take life at a slightly slower pace.

Today I am sharing my plans for April - brainstorming like this always helps me to get a feel for the  month and note down some ideas to slowly enjoy what April has to offer. 

Folklaw

April's Full Moon: Pink Moon

Gemstone: Diamond

Flower: Daisy or Sweet Pea

Traditional Rhyme

'If Swallows are already building on St. Marks Day (25th April) there will be plenty of fodder, grain and calves'

Faith :: Liturgical Year

Palm Sunday -13th

Maundy Thursday -17th

Good Friday -18th

Easter Sunday -20th

St Georges Day 23rd

St Marks Day 25th

Life in April 2014

1st - April Fools Day

6th April - 160th Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race

14th - 19th - Miss J's Dancing Show and Holy Week!

Primrose Day

21st - Queen Elizabeth's birthday (real)

22nd - Earth Day

25th - ANZAC Day

26th - Miss V-L and DH's birthday

Nature

Full Moon -  15th April

Swallows return (traditionally, the 15th is Swallow Day in England)

Wild Garlic in bloom

lambs in the fields

look out for oxslips and cowslips

trees in new leaf

bumblebees and butterflies

Magnolia trees in full flower

look out for frogs and toads on the move this month

Listen for the call of the Cuckoo - a traditional signal that spring has come.

Blackthorn in full flower

dueling robins and blackbirds

nest building

Garden

sow or plant iceberg lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, peas, mangetout, and beetroot

Plant potatoes from mid-April

Roses ready for main prune

grow summer bulbs

Cut back Forsythia as soon as blooming is finished to ensure a good bloom next year

First strawberries should start to bloom

Home & Food

Spring Cleaning

Easter preparations and planning

Lamb

Eggs

Fresh spring salads 

Simnal Cake

Rhubarb Dishes

Hot Cross buns

So there you have my plans and brain-storming for April. I thought I would end this post with a poem written by the Victorian poet Robert Browning. Upon reading this poem, I felt so grateful to be here in England. I do love this country and wish never to leave her shores - never to have to feel the home-sickness that this poet was feeling when he wrote this poem.

Home-Thoughts, from Abroad by Robert Browning

Oh, to be in England

Now that Aprils there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England - now!

And after April, when May follows

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!

Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops - at the bent sprays edge -

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children's dower

 - Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

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