I arrived back home in Maine Monday night, and found Spring bursting forth with flowers, including all these daffodils around the fruit trees in our orchard.  I planted the bulbs last fall because the Holistic Orchard book suggested that they could be protective of the young fruit trees.  But they also create so much beauty as the tiny trees are waking up, and look so spindly and fragile.  But guess what?  If you look closely, you can see that the new peach tree has tiny pink flowers budding out too.

I think we’ve come to that week when everything seems to wake up all at once.  In years past, this has occurred in mid-April, but this year it is aligning with May Day.  As I took a walk around the block, the forsythias were bright yellow, the grass in people’s yards was green and exuberant, and the trees were budding out. I walked along the brook and the trout lily’s spotted leaves were poking up all along the path. Back in the yard, I noticed tiny asparagus stalks emerging from the trenches where I had planted the crowns!

Back in March, I had purchased an Ostrich Fern root at the Maine Garden Show, and kept it in the garage while it was frosty outside.  This morning I noticed that even the fern was already growing bright green, curled-up fiddleheads there in the dark, in its plastic bag, so I planted it next to the white pine tree.

Today the temperature is rising to 80 degrees, but hopefully it will even out again to the 50s and 60s that are our average for Maine in May.  I love this time of year!

May our hearts wake up, too, rising from the weariness of the long winter, into the joy and exuberance of this season of growth and life.