The diary, and why I don't have one, except

More than once in my life I have attempted, with the best of intentions, to keep a diary, a daily journal of anything and everything I might think to jot down at any given time.

I thought of my diary attempts -- all failed, of course -- as I tried to remember this week if it's time to put out the hummingbird feeders. I know the migrating birds are sending scouts this direction. It seems like mid-April is the time to begin the sugar-water hospitality campaign.

If I had been keeping a diary, like I said I wanted to, I would be able to flip back to April 2014 or April 1991 or any number of years in which I would have recorded, if I had kept a diary, the exact dates of those first appearances by lonely explorers with wings that beat faster than the speed of sight.

Alas, there are no diaries. There are notebooks, some bound with expensive leather or fronted with clever illustrations -- all containing identical pages of unblemished paper. There's not a smudge to be found anywhere.

So, I can't decide if this is the week to put out the hummingbird feeder. I'm pretty sure we are past all danger of freezing temperatures, which is one of the critical criteria for making such a move. And I think I saw a hummer, all too briefly, whizzing through the honeysuckle vines in the wild thicket between us and the neighbor's yard.

Although I have kept no formal diaries, it occurs to me that I have, in ways direct and indirect, kept a log of my life and the world around me for more than half a century.

Think about it: I wrote my first column, for my college newspaper, in 1963. I have been writing columns at least weekly ever since, sometimes twice or three times a week. Many of those columns, as recent readers well know, are about me or my family or my friends. Write what you know, the experts advise.

Actually, I've never heard a single professional writer say that, but it makes sense.

In addition, I have reported daily events or edited reports of daily events for those 50-plus years. That's almost a diary, isn't it?

If I had kept a diary, I would be able to tell you when the redbud blossoms burst open. Same for the dogwoods. And azaleas.

I would be able to tell you when the first indigo bunting of the season visited the backyard feeder.

I could say, with some certainty, whether the wisteria decided to bloom this year. (It has, by the way, in amazing glory, but the vines are in serious need of a haircut.)

Since I am among those writers who once thought a diary might be interesting reading, provided I had led anything resembling an interesting life, I can lament the fact that my autobiography, my memoir, my life story, will have to rely entirely on my memory. And we all know how reliable that is.

What about you? Are you a diarist? Do you keep tabs of insignificant odds and ends that turn out to be fairly interesting when reread decades later?

Good for you.

As for my diary aspirations, you'll just have to rely on these weekly get-togethers and take me at my word when I say the things I tell you are exactly what they appear to be: whatever is on my mind whenever the little deadline alarm goes off each week.

Diary entry for April 14, 2015: Wrote a column today.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.