Dogwood Winter

A "Dogwood Winter" is a cold snap after the dogwoods have bloomed, usually mid- to-late April. Surprise, it snowed here on April 20, flakes wet and splotchy enough so I preferred to photograph snow on my redbuds rather than the dogwoods 50 feet farther away. I believe April 20 is the latest snow I've seen in Missouri. (In upstate New York I watched snow fall on May 6.) But I had to go out again anyway to brush snow off the satellite dish.

Two hours after the snow ended it was all gone. I didn't dream our Dogwood Winter: This morning we broke the temperature record for an all-time low with 30 degrees. The previous record: 32 degrees in 1904.

 

Naturally -- naturally! -- I had an appointment at 8 a.m. and had to pull out the winter coat and pair of gloves (on Monday, we'd had 72-degree weather). There's a "blackberry winter" that according to the Farmer's Almanac comes even later to the Midwest and South in spring. Hope we don't have one.

And by the way, at 2:30 a.m. on April 20 we also had a little earthquake. It didn't wake me, though, not like the one in April 2008.

Reason to Live, Reason to Love

I was so excited to have relatives visit; they rarely do. My parents are too old to travel, my aunts and uncles all passed, and I never knew my cousins, most of them much older. I have two sisters too classy to come here, one with Danish Modern furniture, the other an Easterner now. To be fair, Sister Danish Modern and her husband visited once, 14 years ago, and I taught her to shoot an airgun, there's a photo (on paper; this was before smartphones); but she must have been appalled by the bathroom, as anyone would have been up until its renovation in 2011. I visit them but they don't come here.

So my third sister, her husband, and my niece from Wisconsin visit once a year and I weep with happiness when they arrive and weep when they leave, believing they are the only people my age left who both know where I came from and care to stay in touch. And they like it here. It was Easter weekend. We dyed eggs and they brought me an Easter basket with a peanut-butter egg in it, and a plush rabbit. Weep again. Weep over Velveteen Rabbit and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, also starring a rabbit. We went to marvel over and fondle baby chicks at the farm store, and to see an 18th-century homestead, and hunted fossils, and explored the woods. They thought 50-degree weather was amazing.

Some Easter weekends fall too early for the redbuds to be out. Wild redbud trees in spring are a major reason to love Missouri (they don't grow in Wisconsin). I am so thrilled to share them with non-Missourians. They were nominated as the USA's national tree; they lost to the oak. They were nominated as Missouri's state tree. They lost to the Flowering Dogwood. Redbuds, I think, are glory incarnate. They bring me closer to God, the other who knows where I came from and cares to stay in touch.

Missouri Redbuds

Picture of the road next up from mine. No rhyme or reason to these; they're along the roadsides, not in clusters, scattered, but there is nothing like Missouri redbuds this time of year, making pink glory out of the life we've got. I heard that I could strip the flowers off the branches and eatum, that they taste good, but I'm not quite that hungry, thank you. I admire too the city's fine magnolias and weeping-cherry trees, but wild flowering trees like redbud and dogwood have my vote for most romantic.