This was a gloomy week, weatherwise. By Thursday, the drizzle qualified as April showers, which I know are supposed to portend May flowers. But let’s be honest with ourselves. April showers portend mostly mud.

If your craving for flowers is intense, take a slow drive up Mt Pleasant and cast your winter-weary eyes on the daffodils on the south-facing embankments. Every year they are among Newtown’s earliest harbingers of the softer seasons. So go on up and infect yourself with a little spring fever.

Speaking of flowers, anyone who happened to have read Umberto Eco’s obscure 1980 best-selling novel The Name of the Rose, and who after reading all of its 500 pages, was still in the dark about what exactly what happened, there is light the end of the tunnel, er, month. Booth Library Program Director Kim Weber has announced the addition of another book discussion group on Thursday, April 29, at 7:30 pm, in which The Name of the Rose will be dissected.

“This story is so complicated, it has to have its own explanatory notes included, and some of us still aren’t sure what it was all about,” Kim said. The program is part of the library’s World of Words Celebration of Italy month.

Since The Name of the Rose takes place in late medieval Italy (1327) where a series of murders befall monks living in a Franciscan monastery, there is an Italian connection of sorts. Whether the secret goings-on in the monastery’s labyrinthine library have any parallel today is doubtful. Still, it’s a great read. And after all the hoopla over Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, we’re all getting used to unraveling arcane clues supposedly hidden in Gothic art and literature. Copies of the book are available on loan at the circulation desk.

 A lot is going on at St Rose this weekend, beginning with the annual Easter boutique and plant sale. This year there even will be live bunnies for sale. I haven’t heard what will happen if there are bunnies left over after the sale. Father Bob is pushing the plants too. His motto is why should anyone go to Wal-Mart and buy a plant for $5 when they can go to St Rose and buy one for $7.

The weekend will wind up with the St Rose Festival Chorus presenting its fourth annual concert at the church at 7 pm on Sunday. The chorus includes about 70 talented singers, some from the St Rose Choir and others from other area churches and choral groups. Tickets are available in advance for $12 (call Deb Archer at 364-1064) or $15 at the door. Tickets for children under 12 are $5.

Corey Robinson, who is the first assistant chief of Newtown Hook and Ladder Volunteer Fire Company, has gotten rather proficient with his new digital single-lens reflex camera. While at Bradley Field in Windsor Locks recently, Corey decided to photograph some Connecticut Air National Guard combat aircraft while they were in training maneuvers. Using his trusty Canon D-10, Corey snapped a corker of a shot of an A-10 Thunderbolt anti-tank jet aircraft as it was making a landing approach.

Affectionately known in the military at the “warthog” because of its ungainly appearance, the low-speed jet is used to attack advancing tank columns.  The digital shot Corey snapped includes the fine detail. You can count the rivets on the airplane’s body panels. Getting a crisp photo of an aircraft in motion near the ground involves a high film speed, a high shutter speed, plus a panning action with the camera that synchronizes the lateral motion of the lens with the forward motion of the aircraft. Good technique, Corey.

Margareta Kotch says the Visiting Nurse Association recognizes that people are developing high cholesterol at younger ages so they have dropped the age requirement for their next screening to 50 and above. The free screening will be held on Thursday, April 8, from 9 am to noon, at the senior center on Riverside Road but appointments are required; call 270-4310.

John Lorenzo called The Bee recently to say that before the ice melted on Lake Lillinonah, very strange looking circles appeared in it, resembling the mysterious crop circles. John said he hasn’t seen anything like in the 35 years he has lived on the lake. But he finally decided the circles were a combination of weather conditions and the fact that the lake authority lowered, then raised the level of the lake. John also saw – and took photos of – a pack of coyotes that killed a deer on the ice. He has told all his neighbors to keep a close watch on the cats and dogs.

I think I’ll be staying away from Lake Lillinonah for a while, so you should be able to…

Read me again.