Today we say "Welcome, Spring!"

Tomorrow is May 1, May Day, also know as Beltane to those who celebrate. Yesterday our maple tree buds exploded and doubled or tripled in size. The Better Half, aided and abetted by Yr. Obt. Svt., planted three rose bushes and, unaided, a couple of other plants. Last night, today, and tomorrow the rains are helping the new plantings take root in their new homes. Next week promises warmer days and maybe even sunshine. We will be watching, impatiently, for leafout and the season’s first dandelions.

Yes, April was not like real Spring

One of our milder springs must have occurred back in 2012, because the day lilies in the picture below were that high on March 24. The leaf height is about double this year’s emergence as of April 30. All told, it looks to us like spring in our North Country can have a five or six week swing in its effectiveness. This suggests the problem may lay with our expectations more than the weather, April of 2018 was more miserable, but who can remember that far back with all the other craziness going on?

March 24, 2012: day lilies

Photo by J. Harrington

Since today is the last day of National Poetry Month, and tomorrow is the beginning of May, we think today’s poem handles the bridge nicely. Perhaps Minnesota could consider following the Celtic tradition and acknowledging only two seasons. Not winter and road construction, as accurate as that is, but winter and summer. Most springs are not what one thinks of as spring, and last autumn was an unusual bust. To borrow from the big band era, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that spring!"

 

May and the Poets

By Leigh Hunt

There is May in books forever;
May will part from Spenser never;
May’s in Milton, May’s in Prior,
May’s in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer;
May’s in all the Italian books:—
She has old and modern nooks,
Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves,
In happy places they call shelves,
And will rise and dress your rooms
With a drapery thick with blooms.
Come, ye rains, then if ye will,
May’s at home, and with me still;
But come rather, thou, good weather,
And find us in the fields together.

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