Gleanings from May 2015

Our back door is almost like a door to Nowhere.  To be fair, it does have a sturdy cement stoop and a granite-covered sidewalk that leads twelve feet to the left to the screened-in porch door.  But you can’t get to the garage or driveway or shed without walking through grass and around corners.  It is a thick wooden door with ten panels, two of which are carved on the outside.  One carving is a vine design, and the other is a dogwood-looking flower and leaves.  I’m sure it is the original door of this sixty-year-old house, and it shows the weathering of time and sun.  It faces WSW, and when I open the door, light floods into the rather dark corner of our living room through a full-glass storm door.  The door that leads to Nowhere is really a doorway to Nature’s incredible, changeable Beauty.  In Winter, I can see the River, silhouettes of old oak trees, and glorious sunsets.  In Spring, I can see my square of prairie garden, my raised herb garden outside the porch door, the shallow clay birdbath on a stump, hostas, ferns, oaks, cedars, viburnums, and other extraordinary plants that make up the woods and yard outside our door.

The month of May is the doorway to Summer.  School is coming to a close, changing the landscape of family life for the next three months–or in our case, for the rest of our lives, as our youngest graduated from college.  The external landscape changes drastically in the weeks of May, from tiny buds and leftovers of winter to the deep, rich lushness of Summer.  By the end of May, we are looking at the possibilities, plans, and potentials of Summer!

One of the delights right outside our back door has been the bright anemones or wind flowers.  This perennial herb and popular wedding flower symbolizes anticipation and unfaded love.

Close to the anemones is the pretty Nannyberry Viburnum with its clusters of white flowers.

Honeysuckle shrubs of every size and shape are scattered throughout the woods.  White, pink, and dark pink blossoms cover the shrubs in a coat of color.

Jack-in-the-Pulpits are hidden treasures in the woods–hard to find, but ever so lovely and unique.  Umbrella shaped Mayapples shade insects scuttling through leaf litter underneath them.

Fragrant Lily of the Valley flowers peek out from among the crowd of green leaves.  Their stems of pure white bells make the most beautiful tiny bouquet to bring inside.

Leopard’s Bane and Dandelion roar into bloom with sunshine yellow in this month of May.

Along with May flowers that have adorned our yard, we have also had creature visitors.  The first heavy rain of the month chased Leopard frogs into our deep egress window well.

A Pileated Woodpecker checked out each one of the mature spruce trees in our front yard.  Their food of preference is carpenter ants.

These two young bucks, probably last year’s fawns who were very familiar with our yard, walked up the driveway one evening.  They watched our Black Lab dog wander around the outside of the house oblivious to the visitors we sent her out to chase away!  (Interesting fact: Their antlers grow up to 1/2 inch each day from April to September!)

A Cooper’s Hawk is back in the neighborhood, darting through the tree branches, perching, watching, and flying again.  He was likely the hunter of the pigeon carcass I found.

May holds promise for a new season, a new chapter in Life, and renewed hope and adventure.

The month of May prepares us for Summer.  It is a time to celebrate the end of school–for the year or for life–with parties and graduations.  It is a time to celebrate anniversaries of unfaded love.  It’s a time of anticipation for the warmth and fun of the Summer months that always go by too quickly.  May is the doorway to a productive growing season of garden goodies and farm-raised crops and animals.  As we open our doors to Somewhere–a place where the light illuminates the dark, where we find our niche among the crowd, where we carve our initials in our Tree of Life, and where we find our hidden treasures–let us step out in Beauty, Courage, and Love.