A Mardi Gras Nighthawk

+ More Signs of Spring

Vol. 142, March 4th, 2025 Published a day early online

The Signs Arrive

The new fire pit is making yardwork fun. A few more branches, another match, and the flames crackled to life in the warm evening, kindling spring.

I sat and watched. The frogs are back, turning the pond into a concert hall. High above, the winter constellations keep marching farther west each night–Mother Nature is putting away the Jupiter and all the other Christmas decorations. The dazzling winter Milky Way drifts towards the sunset, leaving the quiet spring constellations to watch the softer nights.

Devoid of the “city lights” of nearby stars and obscuring cosmic dust of our own galaxy, this dimmer sky is a clear window into deep space. Even a modest backyard telescope turns up swarms of galaxies “far far away.”

I sat and watched and listened to all of this, suddenly wishing you all could join me ‘fireside. Wouldn’t it be fun to hang out, talk life, and tell star stories? As the light flickered, I could almost see you there, telling everyone how you did it. There are some strong people out there, facing days with courage and grace.

I’m lucky. I don’t need a campfire to hear your stories. You tell them every day. Still, it’s fun to pretend.

So, anyone ever see Bigfoot?

“Whatcha Think, Honey?”

A pair of wood ducks checks out the birdhouse I made. Fingers crossed they’ll call it home!

Half a binocular view of the prospective buyers

Wear Your Green, Purple, and Gold

Mardi Gras is March 4th. It’s also known as Pancake day or Shrove Tuesday. New Orleans recorded their first parade in 1833.

Here’s a shot from 1898, and the article about it.

Song of the Week

“Go To the Mardi Gras” (Professor Longhair)

A quirky, iconic musician of the Big Easy, “Fess” is a must-hear. He’s also credited with influencing Fats Domino.

Carol’s Appalachian Word of the Week

Keen (sharp): “Go out in the yard and get me a keen little switch for your whipping!”

Quote of the Week

“If I have done the public any service, it is due to patient thought.”

–Sir Isaac Newton

Write to Us!

The Nighthawk is a new old-fashioned way to connect, published weekly. You’re invited to write back, or just enjoy reading. Let’s have some fun! It’s a social paper! Send stories, etc to: PO Box 783, Rustburg, VA 24588 or JoshUrban@protonmail.com

Letters from Josh

(A weekly update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #223)

Appearing in the Altavista Journal, etc.: A Fresh Start

Howdy, folks, and welcome back to the show! Breaking news: FROG ALERT. FROG ALERT. I heard them singing in the night. A few Spring Peepers lived up to their name, and cut through the winter still down by the pond. As a DJ, I spin a lot of records for a living, but no track makes me stop like the first frog of the season. Hallelujah!

I’ve been busy outside, shaking off winter. The fallen branches are cleared away, but the yard looks mighty bare. Maybe it’s better to look at it like a blank canvas. The “new” house is nearly a year old, and it’s time to get things planted. I leaned on my shovel, looking at the winter-brown yard, wondering what it could look like.

The first warm day of the season found me hacking away at a hydrangea plant that wasn’t mine–yet. Mom donated it to the cause. The folks live right across the hay field, which means it’s easy to heist plants (but I always ask).

After a few of the little clumps of the shrub kicked me around, I called in the big guns. Pops rumbled up with the mini-excavator to finish the job. Hydraulic power brings a new dimension to yard work. “Steady as she goes!” The huge plant floated up, safe in the steel jaws of the scooper.

There’s something about these twiggy shrubs with their cool green leaves and rafts of midsummer flowers that brings me back, way back. There was one at my second childhood home. It had been there way before me, turning a whole corner of the yard into a forest of dry, pithy sticks in the winter, and a haven for rabbits and crickets in the summer. Creatures lived in the depths. Humans could only get to the edges. I made a tunnel behind it with my brothers, a perfect respite on a hot summer day, but a risky bet for hide-and-seek. Hidden, but well-known, with no back escape. Better for lurking if you were “It” and wanted to surprise your quarry.

Then I grew up. The hydrangea eventually dwindled down in the new shade of a new tree. Or maybe I got taller. Memory and height is a relative thing.

Now, two hundred miles to the south, I’m wrangling another hydrangea that’s been here long before me. The big clump went down by the rocks, the little ones by the deck to grow a screen for the lawnmower storage. I wonder who planted this the first time around.

Buying stock from the box store is well and good (that’s where most of the new apple trees came from), but I like plants with a story, known or unknown. They have a way of growing history, season by season. I’ll have to see if mom has any of the phlox from the earliest years. One sniff of those pink blossoms brings me right back to being a toddler, and the little garden by the fence. It would be nice to continue that. A cutting from grandma’s Forsythia roots in a bottle by a window. I’d like to grow that into a hedge here, so spring might be a little more golden.

Maybe sometime far in the future, a decisive game of hide-and-seek will be won or lost by these brittle twigs of hydrangea plants I’m tamping in. Maybe some kid will look up at the blue flowers overhead as he hides in the foliage, and wonder what unseen hands planted it. As the frogs sing in the night and the sun warms the good country soil, it seems a good time for sowing, and for pondering.

I guess these things go both ways.

–Josh

Happy Birthday, Grandpa

I inherited his forearms, five o’ clock shadow, and through learning, the appreciation for the harshest red-line edits. He taught ‘em to mom, and mom to me. The first slash through the awful sixth-grade “essay” was a cold-water splash of a wake up call. Now, it remains the single most important lesson in creative freedom.

Cut the fluff. If it’s rubbish, trash it.

What liberation.

Grandpa would be 93 today. I’d love to send him a birthday card like this:

Dear Grandpa,

On this auspicious occasion, I heartily wish you all of the greetings of the season and trappings of the day, and hereby proclaim a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

Yours truly,

Joshua

P.S. Thanks for the family traditions.