Busy May tends to things

Once again it’s time for the sweetness of ripening mulberries, designed to stain the lips and calm the cravings of Nature’s winter hungry souls.

This morning brings a splendid awakening of all, it is scheduled to begin about an hour and 45 minutes earlier and ending about two hours later than it did last December. More important is the feast of miracles it also brings, beginning with increasingly cheerful and optimistic love songs, celebrating the returning song birds and the unmuted trilling of spring peepers, filling the still dark and cool lowlands in persistent undiminished courting songs. Nature in her never ending inspection tour has found her time is ticking along at its usual rate and with only a month before the hours of sunlight granted for this fast-moving season peak and start to slide downhill at an ever increasing rate, it’s about time to get downright serious.

It’s much too early to take time for slacking off, for there are a lot of nests still to waiting to be built, eggs to be laid, chicks brooded until self-sustaining, not to forget the suckling baby squirrels, rabbits and a host of other valuable forms of earthly life, all seeking to be fed, tended and protected long enough to pass on the basics of survival. The future cannot not wait.

Trees shimmer with all the brilliance of spring tender leaves, fields are planted, an early harvest fulfilling promise.

What’s the rush? Sunlight, the foundation of life, is the transmitter of energy required to grow the krill that fattens the whale, the plants that sustain bird and animal, fish and bees to pollinate the flower that feeds butterflies.

May is nature’s overseer who wears a sunbonnet before she milks the cows and sees that we feed our chickens.

This story was originally published May 21, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Busy May tends to things."