April Showers

Date: 2 April 2017

Time: 4:30pm

Temperature: 60°F

Another week, another blog, another classic phrase on spring…April showers bring May flowers. April showers—aka a whole ton of rain in an almost non-stop, around the clock timeframe throughout an entire month—brings us flowers in the following month. A precious gift to cherish after the onslaught of gloomy skies and endless rain, a little bit of pretty for all our suffering.

Clearly, whoever came up with this phrase, ignored the flowers we have in April (and sometimes the tail end of March): light purple crocuses, delicate white snowdrops, bright blue hyacinths, powdery fresh dogwoods, pink eastern redbuds, two-toned yellow daffodils, and pink, red, and yellow tulips. These flowers were not gifts from April showers but from the melted show of January and February.

Not to mention that April showers bring sooooo much more than just May flowers. I listed some things (as many as I could think of in a ten- to fifteen-minute time period, while sitting next to my tree) that this little phrase forgot to mention (probably in favor of saving time). But before we get to that list, let’s break down rain itself really quick.

On Earth, it rains water, but on Venus, it rains sulfuric acid (just imagine that next time you complain about weather in Pittsburgh). When liquid water forms droplets from condensed atmospheric water vapor, it precipitates and falls to the earth’s surface as rain. Antarctica has the least amount of rainfall per year. Rainforests, on the other hand, get no less than seventy-five inches of rain every year.

Before it rains, you can smell it. Well, you can smell the ozone layer descending lower into our atmosphere, brought in by the thunderstorms downdrafts. After it rains, you can still smell it. Well, you can smell the petrichor, the disturbed and displaced molecules on surfaces, especially the drier ones, that are carried into the air from the rain.

April showers bring:

·      May flowers (and those, as we know, bring Pilgrims)

·      Forsythia bushes

·      Wellies, umbrellas, slickers

·      Poison Ivy

·      Mud, puddles, potholes

·      Floods

·      Mulch and Manure

·      Mother’s Day, Easter, Passover

·      Bon fires

·      Shorts, Bathing Suits, Diets

·      Concert Seasons

·      Picnics, Dog Parks, Yard Sales

·      Misquotes

·      Lawn maintenance items (grass fertilizer vs. weed killer)

·      Babies: deer, bunnies, robins, ducks, chickens, squirrels, etc.

·      Summer

April showers bring all that is spring. You can feel it. And no, it has nothing to do with the “Color Me Spring” Starbucks cup I’m sipping hot cocoa out of, or the onslaught of television commercials advertising for spring/summer. But spring is here. It’s settling in. You can smell it in the worms that litter your sidewalk. You can taste it in the air, in the petrichor. You can feel it in your bones and memorize the way it roots itself in your muscles. You can hear it in the early morning bird songs and the evening calls of peepers (which are always so much louder than you remember).

Spring is here. Revel in it, bask in its glory.  

Please, feel free to add to my list of things that “April showers bring”.