April Snow in the Glass Path Garden (with flute music video)

A few years ago I sat at my desk and looked out the window. It was April and big, fluffy clumps of snow were coming down fast and furiously. But it was April! What ever happened to the ”April showers” and “May flowers” scenario? So, I started writing a flute melody line that sounded to me like the the snow falling.

Now, it’s happening again! Just when I thought we were headed towards spring the snow started falling and we got another 3-plus inches. I’m always so anxious for my gardening season to begin we even excavate the snow from the Glass Path Garden a wheelbarrow load at a time We haul the loads of snow out to the front of the house, dump it in the driveway and convince the neighborhood children playing in the street that it is fun to stomp on it! It’s a great way to speed up the melting. Now, it’s snowing again! The only consolation is that this time it will probably melt more rapidly.

We have bees arriving in next weekend. Our hive is ready for 10,000 Buckfast bees and a beautiful queen, but it’s snowing…again! When we took delivery on our bees last year the weather was bad and we couldn’t hive them, so they stayed in the dark of our coat closet for a day and a half. Can you imagine 10,000 bees in your coat closet? They were still in their travel container which is a wooden frame with screen on the sides and the queen in a small separate queen cage for safety. We misted them at regular intervals with delicious sugar syrup for extra food and hydration. They were calm and didn’t seem to mind being in the warm, dark coat closet. I wondered if they would be getting used to the smell of our coats. Obviously we got them into their hive-home as soon as possible.

I finished writing “April Snow” for flute quartet with the idea that it would work well for very intermediate players. Over the years, until Covid shut down my studio, lots of students of all ages played this quartet because, after all, here in Alaska we are very familiar with April snow.

-B.A. Eberhart