Outdoors

Nature Notes Saturday was such a fine day, it seemed that everything that was going to bloom early did bloom early. The shads in Montauk are perhaps our best barometers of local climate. They are generally a full two weeks behind the shads on mainland South Fork. In Montauk, they normally peak near the end of the second week in May. This year they are peaking at the end of April, and a very fine peak it promises to be. Deckers Are Delicious There's a new bait working wonders with flounder in Lake Montauk. If the truth be known, quarter-decks, "deckers" as the baymen say, have likely been used off and on throughout time. Notes From Madoo Sonnets to April are in order, all of its mornings when I awaken, sky just beginning to shake like foil, birdsong ascending, the bitter odor of box like some quick arrow, crowding in on the revealing room. Like cat or crown imperial and something a bit garlic, almost tangible as it lopes in and then out again, the night window open to where the knot garden lies. One thinks of a swirled hat topped with feathers and rich purple suiting, not old baseball cap and gardener's sackcloth of muddied denim. Not with lute and songbook but simple trowel and shears I go forth.