Wednesday, May 13, 2009

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.

3 comments:

Heather said...

What a fabulous piece of prose you have written here Meg. You engaged all of my senses with it. No images are necessary, as you summoned them in my mind with your words. It is indeed a blessed month of Bliss. Thank you for capturing it so well in words.

Maggie said...

If I didn't have so much to do here I'd spend May at your place in a minute. It sounds way more civilized than our May here.

I love the word "bliss" both in concept and the way it skips off the tongue. I love it enough that Libby is actually "Liberty Bliss".

Welcome back!

Meg said...

Thank you so much, Heather. Given your talent for the visual, I take that as a major compliment : )

Maggie--Liberty Bliss is a most wonderful name! Yes, I am back, but apparently only once a week. So it is...