I love spring anywhere,

but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.

Ruth Stout

On this wonderful May long-weekend, I find I must agree with Ruth Stout. This might be the loveliest time for our wilderness garden.

I know that later in the summer it will be lusher, more crowded with colour and production. It will present itself as an overdressed grand lady who flouts herself to the world. But now, as spring reaches its zenith, the garden is a young slip of a girl dancing along the paths, her brightly patterned dress flashing colour as she races by.

Everything is crystal clear and wonderfully set off against the background of the evergreens.

The rhododendrons, lilacs and apple blossoms cause me to catch my breath with pure joy.

The erupting profusion of the Hostas make me think I might actually see them growing, if only I watched closely.

A Japanese Maple showers a garden bed with blood-red leaves.

Lest I seem to have fallen too far under the month of May’s spell, I offer you this poem I discovered this morning – point and counterpoint.

May

by Jonathan Galassi

The backyard apple tree gets sad so soon,

takes on a used-up, feather-duster look

within a week.

The ivy’s spring reconnaissance campaign

sends red feelers out and up and down

to find the sun.

Ivy from last summer clogs the pool,

brewing a loamy, wormy, tea-leaf mulch

soft to the touch

and rank with interface of rut and rot.

The month after the month they say is cruel

is and is not.

(North Street & Other Poems, 2001, HarperCollins, NY.)