We're in the Month of Bliss

The Ecological Calendar calls the three month spread of April, May and June Trill, Bliss and Bloom.

I think mid-May might be my favorite time of year. Even though I could go for higher highs temperature-wise, the freshness and tidiness of new green growth is so...hopeful, to use a cliche. Everything seems manageable in terms of growth, as if everything will stay petite and contained and lovely all year. It is a delicate tasting on the tip of the tongue--not the voracious gobbling of huge summer mouthfuls. The woods are exquisite. The leaves are all out, but still small, allowing a generous filtering of light to the forest floor where the undergrowth is demure. The meadows are green, grasses not yet gone to seed as they do surprisingly early in June. When the breeze blows, a tide of dark green billows across the hill. It is simply lovely and one is right and lucky to be outside when it happens, holding on to her hat with one hand and a camera, useless to capture the scene, in the other.

We are working outside, cutting up dead locust trees in the woods to use as fence posts, planting containers, painting windows (with the windows open) and staking and re-staking the horse barn site.

A twig-mimic caterpillar crawled up my arm in the woods. John flushed a field sparrow off its precariously placed nest in the grass. I walked the lower woods trail and heard and saw so many different birds busy with their lives. I slipped into "don't know mind" and enjoyed it all without any striving to name it.

The month of Bliss indeed.