There has been birdwatching hysteria in Arkansas over a 2005 alleged spotting of an ivory billed woodpecker in the swamps of Eastern Arkansas. “Among the world’s largest woodpeckers, the ivory-bill is one of six North American bird species suspected or known to have gone extinct since 1880. The last conclusive sighting of the woodpecker was in Louisiana in 1944,” reports the National Geographic in April 2005. The magazine published this picture of the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker.

Well lo and behold, on Tuesday 11th of May, Fr. John came running to my cell summoning me to the back kitchen door where we saw, not one but two huge woodpeckers that looked just like the picture in the National Geographic. He wanted me to take a picture of it, but I didn’t have the right equipment. As all he had was his cell phone, I went back to my room to get my Coolpix 3100, set it’s little zoom as far as I could and snapped three pictures from inside the screen door. I was afraid to go out and frighten them off. Later Fr. Marion Joseph got his high powered Nikon, but by this time they had flown up high into a tree. The second photo was the best shot Marion’s camera could get.

I finally decided to retrieve my own three shots. The second bird was disappearing to the back of the tree’s trunk in my first shot. The first two shots were out of focus, but lo and behold on the third shot I managed to get a decent shot of the woodpecker. Is this the elusive Ivory billed woodpecker? If it is we had two of them at Marylake at 5:00 pm on May 11th.

April was azalea season at Marylake. We have four different colors on display surrounding our back porch. On top of the columns are the violet impatiens I bought at the local Ace Hardware store to add some color to the Easter altar with the white lilies. They are recuperating from Easter week inside in this photo, but soon revived in the sunlight and began blooming again once the azaleas faded.

Whenever I visit my family out in California, I am always amazed by the bougainvillea everyone seems to have growing in their back yards. In the San Francisco bay area this hardy plant seems to bloom all year around. At Marylake it can’t take the winter. I kept this one alive from last years’ Easter and thought I had lost it in February when all the leaves fell off, but come spring it sprang back to life in the south window of my cell.

This last year a lightning storm took out my favorite Marylake tree. It was a hundred year old white oak that dominated the front view of the monastery. The stairs that lead up to the novitiate ended at a window with a spectacular view of this grand old tree. When the lightning bolt hit it, the tree exploded sending bark flying through the downstairs windows into our library. You can see it’s stump to the right of this photo under the purple Martin houses. The azaleas are happy it’s gone as they get more light now.

My final azalea shot is of the other side of the front of our monastery. Once that Redbud tree’s blossoms fade, the azaleas begin to bloom. Although I cleverly omitted it from these photographs, we have had scaffolding and equipment on the front porch this spring finishing off the point and tuck sealing of the stonework in the upper parts of our lakefront façade.