Yellow’s the color for this time of year

Published 2:43 pm Thursday, March 22, 2018

If there was a color for the month of March it would have to be yellow. There’s so much of that color this month. It begins with daffodils and forsythia and ends with yellow jasmine and pine pollen. The flowers are okay, but I can live without the pollen. Three out of four’s not bad, but that fourth one is pretty rotten.

When I see pools of that yellow stuff on everything from mud puddles to West Point Lake, I can’t wait till we get past this to warmer weather. It’s bad for allergies and murder if you wear contact lenses.

We know warmer weather is on the way when we start seeing the kinds of birds we haven’t seen in awhile. I want to thank Althea  Head for calling me the other day to tell me she had seen her first hummingbird of 2018. “Tell people it’s a good time to put out their feeders because the scouts are on the way,” she told me.

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When they migrate here from the South they don’t come in droves. A scout will go ahead looking for good places for the larger group to come.

Speaking of attracting birds, the West Point Project is trying to attract chimney swifts to the lake. Last week, Troup High FFA students offered them a helping hand by building a chimney swift tower at the Glass Bridge boat ramp. It’s unusual looking, but if it attracts a flock of swifts that are winging their way north from South America, it will be a good thing.

On another subject relating to the arrival of spring, it’s almost Easter. It’s going to be taking place on an unusual day this year: April 1st, better known as April Fool’s Day.

The topic came up at the West Point Lions Club meeting during the noon hour on Wednesday. Someone asked Jerry Ledbetter about it, and he looked it up on his Smartphone. This year will be there first time since 1956 that Easter fell on April 1st. It’s happened only four times since it’s been a holiday, and that goes back a long, long time.