Spring flowers are everywhere and it’s National Poetry Month, so there is plenty of beauty to be seen and appreciated all around me. I planted new bulbs last fall and they are blooming now,  joining the annual parade of crocuses, daffodils, hyacinths, tulips–iris and peonies will arrive a little later, and lilies later still. Over the years, I’ve come to know which ones to expect each week as spring progresses.

And we are at last, I hope, beginning to emerge from this long year of Covid restrictions and cancellations. I’m optimistically planning for events a year from now, looking forward to gathering with other writers, with friends and family.

Not so happy is the news from friends in Myanmar/Burma. People are suffering under a military government that forcefully took power just before the democratically elected government would have been sworn in. Because we have friends there, we hear first hand reports of brutality against citizens who dare to protest. Children, poets, journalists, and students are among those who have been detained and killed. It is difficult to know what actions or words are helpful, beyond assurances that “we see you.”

Bluebirds came in early January, and are still here, looking now for nesting sites. This is the longest time we have seen them at our feeders. So far, they are unsuccessful in fending off the “hosp” or house sparrows for the birdhouses we have put up. Someone suggested ways of making the birdhouses inhospitable to sparrows, and I wondered if that pun was intended.