If there is an easier-to-please, more attractive, longer blooming, non-complaining, less demanding tree with a higher degree of success and accessibility (even without enough sunlight, proper soil pH, good drainage, regular pruning, adequate fertilization, winter mulching and prudent insect control) than the crape myrtle, well, I haven’t met it.

Did I mention sexier?

The sexy crape myrtle

Snow birds are in the air — not the kind from Montreal or New York who pack up their cars and clog up I-95 on their way to Florida — but the feathered variety. Aside from Charles Seabrook, who writes a nature column for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and just published, “The World of the Salt Marsh,” and the venerable Janisse Ray, no one covers the news of nature better than Rudy Mancke, who broadcasts a brief daily report on S.C. etv radio (even if I can never understand his last name as he says it; speak up, Rudy!).

Today it was snow birds: the dark-eyed juncos (“which our grandmothers always called snow birds”), loons and yellow-bellied sapsuckers (“not much sap up north this time of year”).

Local programming that can be streamed via the Internet. Great combination.